City Council · 2023-04-11

Do we have a scarecrow owl on top of the library?

Yeah.

How long has that been there? A long time.

I saw it, and like, I wonder how long that's been there.

Yeah.

But this is what gets me. No, same deal.

It's just actually working.

It's lighter. Hey, how are you? There's more light coming in. Maybe it's because the curtains are up. It does look better. You can take credit for it. Look what I did.

This is what I can do for you.

Thank you.

Yeah, nice to meet you.

Good to meet you.

David, how are you today?

Doing good.

You're heading south?

So swap those 2.

Okay, I'll have that for you next time.

Doing good.

Feeling good.

Doing good.

Seems like I've been here a couple days, huh? Yeah, I was here yesterday. Nice to see you again. Had to come back and look at this.

I give you checks in the mail.

Oh, I sent you an email about this. It's been, it's been written, the bike trails. You did today?

Recently?

Oh, about 800 North from Murdoch? Yeah, the same. Yeah, we did. So the person Dr. So-and-so responded, their car was hit by a biker. They're kind of blaming it on the size of the sign in that email. I did have— I had Taylor review it as well. I mean, we can continue to apply things. We think that we can do an advanced warning for southbound coming down at 1100. Is that 1100 or 1000? It's 1100.

1100.

For southbound, there's like a flashing sign saying bike crossing ahead, use caution. I know that the stop bar's in, that the crosswalk's in, the other side— the other stop signs are in on the trail itself. And then we are also going to put up an advance sign for people to stop at the stop signs on the trail.

All right, we are ready. Yes, we have a good question.

Um, we're going to start.

Welcome to the work session. Uh, we'll jump right into it. We've got Cameron from League of Cities and Towns who's going to give us a report on the legislative session and talk about what we need to do from here forward.

Cameron.

Terrific. Thank you, Mayor, and thank you, Orem, for the opportunity to join you today. And it's nice to see some of you in Orem and not at the Capitol, because for January, February, March, that's unfortunately all I— that's the only place I ever get to visit is the Capitol. But I want to also thank Orem City for your participation during this past legislative session. So, Councilmember Peterson, thank you for joining us for the Policy Committee on several occasions. Jesse, thank you for your participation. I know Brent and I had multiple conversations during the session on different issues that were pertinent specifically to Orange City, as well as just the general participation at LPC. So thank you for your— The League is the membership, and it's the unified voice that we all bring to the table. We represent 254 cities, towns, and metro townships, and so we work hard year in and year out to make sure we know what's of importance to our communities around the state so that we can advocate for you at the Capitol. My objective today is first to return a report, give you an overview of what happened during the session, and then it's also to actually get your feedback on what you thought of the session and prepare for 2024. As terrible as that is to say, tomorrow, literally tomorrow, the middle of April, the Unified Economic Opportunity Commission kicks off. And it'll be All Systems Go. And the Unified Economic Opportunity Commission is chaired by the governor, but includes the Speaker of the House, the President of the Senate, the governor's cabinet, and the League has a representative on, on that UEOC. And the UEOC has really been the place the last 2 years where the big-ticket policy— In fact, the Commission on Housing Affordability, which Councilor McDonald serves on, on behalf of the League, is an official subgroup now of the UEOC. So the UEOC starts tomorrow to start the preparations for the 2024 session. Keep in mind that all the bills that passed the 2023 session aren't even law yet, but we're already underway for next year. And so that's why I wanted to make sure to reach out and have a conversation with Orem City about not just what happened and your thoughts on what happened during the session, but start laying the foundation for next year. When I mentioned Orem's involvement in the league, I reminded Bren when I got here today of one of my favorite ORM stories in the past. Actually, 3 years ago, we were right in the throes of a battle over land use authority about regulating billboards. You may remember this too, where there was legislation that would have preempted the ability of local governments to regulate the digitization of billboards. There was an offer that the bill sponsor put on the table. And I reached out to a handful of cities that I knew were gonna be most dramatically impacted by that potential legislation, Orem being one of them. When I reached out to Orem and said, I need to know within the next few minutes if this is something that we can accept, the answer I got back after they— after Orem city staff did the analysis of what it would mean to Orem was an absolutely not. To which I said, thank you for the feedback. And we ended up basically going to battle and defeating that bill on the Senate floor 15 to 12. It was a hard-fought fight, and— but it was a successful victory to preserve that local control. Didn't have— I didn't have time to call all 254 cities, towns, and metro townships, but knowing that that bill dramatically impacted Orem City, I made sure that Orem City was one of the first calls I made. Another example that comes to mind from yesteryear, and this will date me a little bit, but we were having a battle over sales tax in Orem City. is a city— all cities have sales tax as a component of their base, but it's of major importance in Orem City. Mayor Washburn came to the Capitol, and again, I'm showing my age, right? A couple of you just looked up. But Mayor Washburn came to the Capitol, and he and I and a few other lead staffers and others sat in the Senate President's office to walk him through what the impact of making these potential changes to sales tax distribution would be on Orem City. And ultimately, we were successful at fighting off those types of impacts because of that data that we were able to bring and demonstrate what it would mean to warm cities. So those are just some of the examples of how us working together is in the, is in the best interest both of warm cities as well as the general league. I'm going to hit 4 key themes, but my request is interrupt me anytime as I walk through these themes. I'm going to take maybe 5-10 minutes to hit the themes, and then I just want to open up to discussion of your thoughts of what happened and then start to pivot to next year. The, the session by the numbers is really quite staggering. It was historic by every sense of the word. More passed bills than ever before in state history, 575 new laws, of which the League tracked 244 bills. 2/3 of those 244 passed. The legislature also enacted a $29.4 billion, with a B, dollar budget, which again is the largest in state history by quite a while. The first real piece here is it is a year-round legislature. I mentioned to you about the, the April 12th meeting tomorrow of the Unified Economic Opportunity Commission. Tom's work will start with the Commission on Housing Affordability in the first week of May.

Even though the governor said I was fired after the last meeting.

I don't think he meant it. It was one of those, uh, one of those—

For a few months.

Yes, you were fired for a few weeks, actually. Ultimately, the way the Unified Economic Opportunity Commission works— this will be year 3— is you have that big committee that includes a league representative. Tomorrow they will create subgroups. So they dissolve the subgroups. That's what Councilor McDonald's referencing, is they dissolve the subgroups at the beginning of the session. Because subgroup work was over, and tomorrow they'll reconstitute those groups based on a variety of categories. So I, I know, for example, that I will be representing the League on the Growth and Transportation subgroup, which existed last year. I'm going to talk about some of the things we delivered on through that group last year. The Commission on Housing Affordability will resume.

Commissioner—

or Councilmember McDonald is the lead representative on that commission. I'll talk about some of the bills that came through that. through that last year as well. The second, the second big theme: the state of Utah has a surplus, budget surplus, when cities do not. We push this message at every turn at the Capitol, and it made a positive impact. So for example, you see in that bullet point, we tracked the negative fiscal impact of the bills that that could have impacted local government. And the final aggregate amount, if all of those bills had passed in their original form, would have been unfunded mandates on local governments to the tune of $118.5 million. So let that set in for a second. Those bills have passed in their initial format, you would have had an unfunded mandate in the aggregate of $118.5 million. Due to the lobbying of our team and the collective efforts of you and your team, we were able to on those bills alone dramatically scale those unfunded mandates, negative fiscal impacts, from $118.5 million down to $13 million. Now, of that $13 million, a good chunk of that is in a one-time adjustment to the gas tax, so I'll come back to that in a second. The actual number is even smaller than that. And then when you throw the new transportation dollars that we were successful at acquiring on behalf of local government, cities and towns actually ended up tens of millions of dollars in the positive as opposed to negative, which is where the legislature started in January.

Cam, as you'll be talking about this, are there estimates yet of how some of those particular bills particularly affect city morums?

Yes.

As you know, one of the things that we tried to work on was the I'm forgetting about Terry. What did the— I'm sorry, I was—

It was the—

Utah Lake Authority?

No, it was up Provo Canyon, the—

About Brundlewell?

The excavation. Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, yes. As far as the gravel pit. Gravel pit.

Following the tax, Cameron, you know, we're following the taxes and which cities.

Yep. Following up the Spreadsheets.

Sorry, I was in another world.

Yeah, so there are actually 2 spreadsheets I'll be pulling up. So I'll— when I get to those here, the return report, I've got one up and then the other's not coming, but I've got it on my phone. So I actually presented to the conference, the Council of Governments, Utah County Council of Governments, last week. It had the data ready to go.

for that meeting.

I just need to find it. I took a screenshot of it, and I just need to find that screenshot before all my members disappear here.

But I'll find it.

Let me get to that section. The 3rd key theme is partner with local government to plan for growth, and this gets to the transportation piece. I just finished my 15th session at the League. And this was the second highest amount of aggregate dedicated transportation money for cities in the last 20 years, the second most in my career. And there's probably been more than 20 years, but that's just talking to people who predate me. Other than the 2015 session, nobody can think of a bigger year than this year in the aggregate for transportation funding for cities and towns. The other bullet point here is respecting the role of local government. And this is where, where Tom's advocacy came in handy on the Commission on Housing Affordability. We advocate based on 3 key principles: respect, collaboration, and outcomes. We urge the legislature to respect the role of local governments as we respect their roles as the state government. We want to collaborate and work together. We want to focus on outcomes that benefit our shared constituents. We have fought off through the years, including this year, many bills that disrespect the role of local government, either because they are trying to preempt local government or dictate certain outcomes. But we felt like we were able, again this year like last year, on some really big land use fights, we were able to thread the needle and find the balance and still respect the role of local governments. I'll talk about those in a second. The last key theme was a lot of emphasis on rural Utah, and I'm really proud in particular of the Local Administrative Advisor Program. We think this is the first of its kind in the country and will help It'll actually provide dedicated state money to help small communities that don't have full-time staff. Orem has fantastic staff, tremendous staff resources, but you go 15 miles to the south and you start running into communities that don't have any full-time staff. And this will provide the opportunity through the Mountainland Association of Governments and the other MPOs to have individuals on staff who can contract with those communities and help them Whether it's update general plans, write ordinances, or do other things that can help them prepare for growth and manage their local governments well. Okay, 244 tracked bills. As you can see, about 2/3 of them passed. I'll quickly run through the fiscal impact here. I hit the highlights of it already, but you can see in the green between SB 175 and SB 260, tens of millions of dollars for local governments that offsets that remaining minus $13 million that was still there. I mentioned those already. I'm only going to hit a handful of bills. The rest are all in our legislative wrap-up. You can use that link, or you can see it here at the bottom. It's on our website where we've written in more depth about the bills that passed. So let me just quickly hit the transportation bills and the housing bills, because those are the ones that are the big-ticket items. Transportation bill, House Bill 301. From a local government perspective, what you need to know is that in the short term, for this upcoming year, as you budget, you will, you will still see growth in motor fuel tax. And cities receive 30% of the motor fuel tax. 70% goes to the state, 30% goes to local governments, and then cities, towns, and counties receive a portion of that 30% based on your weighted lane mile and your population. Back in 2015, we modified the motor fuel tax and made it cents per gallon, and then there was a cap that was put on that motor fuel tax. The idea was to allow for the motor fuel tax to have some indexing and to grow over time and not just be stagnant, so it would keep, keep pace a little bit with CPI. Certainly hasn't kept pace the last 2 years, but it would keep pace a little bit. What this bill did is it— you know, the other thing I should note is that each year gets set by looking at the past 3 years, the rolling average of the last 3 years. So essentially what this bill does is it decreases the amount of growth for next year. So you'll still see some growth, it just won't be at the same rate we would have seen before this bill. But it also increased the cap slightly. We would have hit that cap this year, so then we— the buying power of the gas tax would have started to wane. Now, by slightly increasing that gas tax cap, it gives local governments and state government more room to grow. So short-term, this is what I was referencing about the $7 million and the $13 million. In the short term, there'll be a slight decrease for the state and for local governments, but in the long term, we have more room to grow with motor fuel tax, and that's a big deal for us. We also— you'll also see this electric vehicle charging tax, and cities and towns will receive a portion of that. And the companion bill with House Bill 301— actually, I'll just skip down to—

Can I just ask a question about your charging station?

Yep.

What is— what's the definition of a retail charging station?

A charging station that is not free. So if you— I don't know if you have—

So we have them out here. Are they paying that tax?

If they're free, then they would not apply. But if I—

They are free, aren't they?

It depends on the time of day.

Yeah, because I saw a guy pull up at night one time and leave his car.

It's outside of working hours.

Okay, so at that time, there would be an additional fee that would be imposed. That's good to know that you've got it.

You've got a hybrid charge point. Runs on solar.

Perfect. Thank you.

The other thing related to the gas tax is actually in SB 185, and this gets to the new, the new age of transportation. When we revisited the motor fuel tax back in 2015, electric vehicles were barely a thing, and now you've got one— you've got a charging station right there. So there was an effort to say everybody's using the roads. Doesn't matter if you're driving an electric vehicle or if you're driving a pickup truck, everybody's using the roads. When a pickup truck is gassing up, electric vehicles charging here, how do we still make sure there's a user fee component to the use of the roads? What we successfully did in SB 185 was to ensure that cities and towns would participate in the road usage charge program. Utah is one of just 3 states in the country that has a road usage charge program. Right now it's voluntary, but by 2030 it'll become mandatory. And this is the long-term supplement to motor fuel tax. And the idea here is to eventually get to essentially a, a charge per miles driven based on which roads you use. So if you are driving on I-15, then we would aggregate— or we'd be— the state would aggregate how much you're driving on I-15, and the state would get a portion of— or the state would get that revenue. You're driving on Orem city roads, Orem city would get some of that revenue. The state is still working out those details of building out this road usage charge program. Right now, again, it's just voluntary, about 4,000 cars. But rather than wait until it was fully implemented to get city and town participation in the revenue sharing, We got it, we got ourselves included in it now through SB 185. So again, long term, we set our cities up for success as this program gets underway.

Jesse, quick question. How would we know who's driving on what roads?

Yeah, it's a great question. That's still being worked out because part of the policy challenge with the road usage charge is respecting the privacy of the individual driver while also collecting that data. Now, Apple knows where I am right now.

Right, but it's—

we all can recognize it's different when Apple knows versus when the government knows. So those questions are still being addressed. That's why right now it's still a pilot program to figure out privacy, to figure out how you would track. Do you track it by roads? Do you have people voluntarily submit the information and just run it through a formula? And those pieces are still being worked out, but we wanted to make sure cities and towns were at the table. As those policy questions are being answered, and UDOT has a statutory mandate prior to this bill of having this program up and running by 2030.

Because that's the biggest hurdle, is the privacy.

Yep, absolutely.

Yep.

From what I've heard.

Yep, you're spot on, you're spot on. And we're going to be now at that policymaking table to figure out the future of road usage charges. The other thing SB 185 did, what really got the headlines, was the trail network. legislature allocate almost $100 million, the biggest one-time and ongoing amount of money for trails in the history of the state, which is, which is super exciting. SB 260 is the big kahuna for local government in sales tax funding. This modified the 0.20, and I want to thank all of you who contacted legislators during the final week of the session to help get this across the Finish line, because this was a big lift. This was an existing tax, not a new tax, but the previous version of that tax would have gone 100% transit. Now, a quarter of this money, if the county were to impose it, would go to cities. So we estimate that if every county were to impose this tax, that Orem City would collect about $1.8 million annually if the, if the county were to impose the tax. I keep saying if because I don't want to put words in the mouths of the County Commission, but the County Commission was very active in advocating for this modification. So my recommendation would be to work closely with them to figure out when makes sense to consider closing this, this 5th 5th.

So, Cam, your experience was that the Utah County Commission was interested?

Yes, they advocated for it. Yep. In fact, I took a selfie with with a couple of them outside the House chamber. I could show you that picture because we were both pointing out that legislators are important, which Utah County legislators to talk to. But this is, this is how it'll break down in Utah County. The 0.20, if the county imposes it, 0.05 goes to cities, and your eligibility for that money would be tied to your compliance with modern-day housing plans. That's how we were able to open the door to new revenue, was to say say, rather than the state constantly beating cities up, let's provide an incentive of new revenue. And we had great reception from state leaders on that. So 0.05 to cities, 0.10 would go to UTA for the first 3 years, and then half of that money would end up going to the transit TIF, Transit Transportation Investment Fund, but would still have to be spent in Utah County. Then 0.05 would stay at the county to be spent on transportation. So, as I mentioned, huge year for transportation funding. It was just in a variety of, in a variety of bills. I've already blown past my 5 to 10 minutes, so I'm going to summarize the land use bills this way, and I want to pause for conversation. There were 3 land use bills that came through the Commission on Housing affordability. But there were a lot of bad ideas that did not make it into that final bill. Again, I mentioned Councilmember McDonald sits on that, on that, on that commission. And how many, how many brawls did you witness between us and some of the other, the other members of that committee on some of the ideas that ended up not making it into the bill?

There were certainly opposing views, in fact.

Right.

That's a diplomatic way to put it, but you're spot on.

Basically, some who want no zoning whatsoever.

That's right. Yep, that's where this conversation actually started last summer, was to preempt local zoning. And we've actually collected a bunch of headlines we'll be sharing at the mid-year conference next week of the battles in Colorado, California, Oregon, Arizona, Montana, Idaho. and other states around the country— New York, Florida, Texas— where their legislatures are trying to take away zoning authority from cities. That's where this started last year, but we fought it off. And the way we were able to fight it off was to focus— we made it very clear we were going to fight tooth and nail to preserve your ability as a city council to plan your community. Where we were willing to have discussions was to improve the administrative functions of land use in the subdivision space. So how do we better, at the local level, do our subdivision process? And how does the development community elevate and raise the bar for what they submit in this subdivision process? And we felt like we got to, we got to a very good spot there that will result in good land use policy, good land use decisions going forward, while still respecting your role as a city council.

How does that affect us as a built-out community?

Yeah, great question. So in the case of subdivisions, I'm not aware— Brent, I'm looking at you here— I'm not aware of how you handle subdivisions now. Do you run it through your— do you run it through staff, the Planning Commission, City Council, nomination of—

Planning Commission only?

Great. So the impact on Orange City is actually relatively minor, because you as a City Council are not engaged in the subdivision because it always already fits zoning requirements on Right. Yes, that's exactly right. And this was the exact line we were trying to draw, is we want public input, and we want the city council members to be making those zoning decisions.

We all—

public input— excuse me, the zoning regulations. But once you get to a point where the subdivision proposal is consistent with the zoning, let's improve that process. And that's really what this bill spells out. There will be— we've got a comprehensive synopsis, and we're working on some spring training on this piece. We held a virtual workshop a couple weeks ago on it.

Can I ask one more question on that? So if a developer proposes a plan to get the zoning changed, you know, if we approve that zoning change, he doesn't have to follow through with that plan that he used to advocate for that zoning change?

No, the proposal would still need to be consistent Okay. Yeah. And that was actually one of the key sticking points going back and forth is if the property owner comes in and says, I'd like to subdivide property, but there's a zone change required as part of it, that zone change is still a legislative function.

Okay.

And we were adamant that we needed— that we were going to defend that legislative function. Where we were willing to discuss was improving that administrative process. And it was a complicated bill, it's a heavy lift, but we think it'll in the end run improve the land use decision-making process and hopefully expedite it and provide predictability for property owners too. So that's why we felt like it was an always-win space.

Thank you.

Ultimately, those are the, those are the big tickets. There are a few others, but I want to make sure we have time for additional conversation, so I'll just wrap with the sand and gravel that you guys, that you guys brought up. We, we actually requested a veto of Governor Cox on March 10th. Our officer submitted that. He's agreed to— he signed it, but he's agreed to meet with us to walk through the concerns. And we have told him we intend to bring up this gravel pit issue within the UEOC as well, because Orem is in a weird spot on this one that you will lose some of your sales tax revenue to Because of this, but you'll also likely gain some. But what we still can't do yet— this gets to your question— is we can't calculate how much you'll get because the new formula that is in this bill is based off of private information under GRAMA that only the Tax Commission can access, and they, they aren't even authorized to do this calculation until later this summer. So we're basically stuck in a holding pattern. We plan to bring this issue up again through the UEOC, and in fact, Justin Lee, our Deputy Director who manages our government relations work, is in a gravel pit meeting right now up in Davis County starting to lay the foundation for trying to fix this and address gravel pits at a broader scale. We have a video conference next week in sunny St. George. The in-depth recap is on the page, but I'd like to hear from you on your thoughts on what went well this session or where you think there could be areas of improvement, and then just your initial high-level thoughts for the interim that we can— that I can take back to the League board. They'll be working on priorities next week at mid-year and setting the priorities in mid-May. So over the next few weeks, we're trying to gather input from as many communities as possible. So, Mayor, I'll turn it back to you and the members of council for your thoughts on what went well and what you'd like us to look into for this upcoming interim.

Any questions?

Terry was pretty involved.

So, um, so Cameron, this isn't new. I think you've heard this from Michelle Caffucci and our mayor. Um, I talked to Michelle the other day, and Mayor Young has talked to Michelle about this, about the challenges that college towns have versus, uh, cities that aren't college towns.

Yeah.

And this is regarding, um, high-density apartments, uh, you know, and all the things that come with that, uh, transportation, that our— the requirements we have should be different than other cities, uh, because we already are way over the top as far as, you know, our share of apartments. And Michelle, actually, I talked to her about it and she said, oh, absolutely. She had pushed this for years and that, you know, we already get gold stars on our forehead for all we've done for— because it's unique, because we're a college town. So, you know, this would be, uh, Logan, Provo, Orem, St. George, Ephraim. Salt Lake's a little different because it's such a huge— you know, I don't know, I don't know if that would be the same as a Orem college town where you've got the biggest university in the state in Orem, and then another one right behind us.

Yeah.

Anyway, so I just want to I mean, that's a concern when we talk about, uh, you know, and when the state's talking about affordable housing and all those kind of issues, uh, that they can't just say that one policy fits everybody because some of us are already way above meeting those parameters they're trying to set and others are not. Anyway, that you already know that, but I just wanted to go on record with that because that was something Michelle and I talked about down at the state.

She's very—

has a say in this.

Yeah, and I agree with you. Mayor Capuzzi, as you know, will be the league president come this fall. And this— you said that the state shouldn't have a one policy fits everybody approach. You've heard me say one size misfits all. We're constantly preaching that. One, one example where we, we were able to successfully convince state leaders of that difference between an ORUM and a non-college town is in the case of internal accessory dwelling units. And during that debate 3 years ago, we were successful at saying essentially there are 2 mandates. There's one mandate that has a certain percentage on cities that don't have colleges and universities of a certain size, and then there's a different mandate for the Cedar Cities and the Ogdens and the Orem of the world. And what was very helpful during that battle is I was on the phone with your city attorney on a regular basis getting information about what was already happening in Orem City. I'll give you an example from Logan City. Mayor Daines provided us with information of basically the map of Logan City, and if Logan had to follow the same mandates as non-collegetown cities, and what it would mean for the neighborhoods that were already under a lot of pressure and under a lot of strain from the colleges and universities. And we were successful in convincing the legislature to distinguish the two in that, in that bill.

So.

I'm glad you brought it up. I think, you know, I think you're spot on about recognizing those differences. And my request back to you is to make sure that your legislative delegation champions that at the Capitol, because ultimately the first place we turned during the IAU fight was to legislators with college towns in their districts. And we were disappointed at the number of legislators who disagreed with that sentiment. There were certainly some champions, but We were, yeah, we were disappointed in some. I won't name names, but we were disappointed with the response from some of them who said, nope, we don't care.

So do you think this is— this carve-out is something that you are advocating for every single legislative session?

You have to fight for to keep within the IADU piece, the internal accessory dwelling units? Let's put it this way. I anticipate that the legislature will continue to look at policy tools to incentivize housing of all shapes and sizes everywhere. And part of our job is to help them recognize that while we are in the midst of a housing crisis, that crisis looks different in different communities, and we need to make sure we've got flexibility to meet the needs where they are. So part of our job is to advocate for those types of differences. But I think it's imperative for everybody in this room to make sure that legislators understand Orange circumstances. I feel— or if memory serves, Orange has the second highest amount of rental units in Utah County, only behind Provo, and there's a pretty big gap between second and third. So we've done a lot of that data to figure out the housing stock in the different communities so that when we are at the negotiating table working out these policies we've got that data to bring front and center in the conversation. That's where your voice with your legislators, so that Representative Peterson and others can step up and say, hey, wait a minute, instead of having this sweeping action, let's recognize what's happening in these different communities.

I was just saying on that note, you know, if you look at Orem and Provo, you know, Orem's like 40-45% or something, uh, rentals or apartments.

So I mean, so what—

so maybe there's a percentage you need to say, okay, Alpine, how many do you have?

You know, you come up to 40% and talk to us, leave us alone. That's the key, I think, because we already have it. You know, Lehigh's building big time, but American Fork, PG— I mean, it's got to be all fair, and it's not.

Well, what's interesting about some of the data that we've collected is there's the units that we see being built But then there are over 113,000 housing units that are entitled right now, waiting for building permits across the Los Angeles Valley.

113,000.

So in Saratoga Springs, for example, they have 22,000 housing units that are entitled, waiting to be built. 22,000 that for market reasons or other reasons permits just haven't been pulled for those. So that's another key piece to this story is What's your existing housing stock and what have you planned for? Because that's what cities can control, is what you plan for. What cities can't control is when you actually put a shovel down.

I would really like to see some advocacy for the middle housing, the owner-occupied middle housing for our teachers and for our first responders. You know, we seem to just be talking about affordable housing, and too many times that falls into the rental housing market. So I don't know, is there a way to advocate for that type of housing product or incentivize that? That's, that's really what I keep hearing that we need here is that starter home, that starter townhome. I would love to see some advocacy on that because too many times affordable housing, I'm sorry, but that means rental housing.

Yep, the committee sees a very big difference between affordable housing and housing affordability. Affordable housing is the low end that you're talking about.

Mm-hmm.

And housing affordability, which is what you're talking about, is how do people get into a home. And I think that that committee had some success too with, with some— well, for the lower end is some grants to get people into a first house, and then some of the small rental homes or the What's the one they're doing out there with West Salt Lake with the Bingham Court?

No.

Oh, come on.

They're building the mini homes.

Oh yeah.

What's that called? Out the other side.

Other side. Yeah.

And they're building a bunch of 400, 500.

So that's in the very small housing But you're talking, and I think so is that middle committee that I was primarily focused on, is how do you get people into that $400,000 home if one still exists?

Well, how do you get that product? I mean, I have realtors saying that's what we need, we need a product to sell, and yet all the land's going to—

Well, because the price of land doesn't justify building a $400,000 home. It has to be a higher price.

So I'm saying, how do we, how do we encourage that instead of— we are You know, we're encouraging the big apartments, honestly. So I'd love to hear some advocacy for the first-time homebuyer.

Yeah, amen, amen. In fact, this is the conversation our board of directors was just having. Mary Silvestrini of Mill Creek is currently the league president, and he has been banging this drum as well. And as Councilmember McDonald referenced, we brought this up within the Commission on Housing Affordability. One of the things that Mill Creek did is they are redeveloping downtown Mill Creek, or they're creating a downtown Mill Creek ice skating rink. And there are a bunch of housing— there are a bunch of housing units being built around it. But they were frustrated that all of these multifamily units that the city frankly took some public heat for approving were all going to be rental properties. So they worked out an arrangement with some developers to say, after a certain period of time, these units will convert from rental properties to owner properties. And so Mill Creek learned some, some valuable lessons from the development community about why essentially condos weren't profitable. And Councilmember McDonald's got an excellent point about all of the inputs that go into housing make it almost impossible to deliver a townhome at that price. Nevertheless, there is significant interest from state leaders in that exact outcome. And I think it's an area where we as local governments can agree too, because a lot of it's outside of our control of zoning. You as a city may zone for an area, say we would like to see this sort of product here, we're willing to have higher density, we want to see some owner-occupied. How do we overcome the barriers to make sure they become owner-occupied? Is it what Mill Creek did, where there's a delay? In that case, it was a financing issue that they needed to be able to pay off building and then it could be converted to the individual units. We also think there may be some problems with federal law around condominiums. We were in Washington, DC a couple weeks ago and Mayor Silvestrini brought this up to each member of the delegation. Could the delegation help us understand some of the obstacles to condominium development so that instead of the starter apartment, it's a starter condo in some of these multifamily units? So, amen. I'll make sure the board Knows that that's a priority for, for you as well.

We were talking about it just a couple weeks ago. Thanks.

Kind of to add on to that, um, we have a lot of older neighborhoods here, and it would be nice if there were some way that we could help young families with financing, or if there's a way that we could kind of help people get into those older homes as a starter home, right? Um, that would be a blessing to those families, but at the same time, it would be a blessing to those neighborhoods, uh, to see those neighborhoods revitalized. You want the upkeep, uh, just to kind of regenerate that excitement in those neighborhoods again. And I don't know how you do that.

I don't know if there's a a way to do that, but it's—

I think it would be a wonderful thing to be able to explore that.

Yeah, there's definitely a way to do that.

As far as—

I mean, I've been really involved in home flipping businesses in the past, and I mean, you're just turning neighborhoods over. You're taking them from trash to nice, and it's real profitable, right? So there's definitely a way to do it, do that. And I think to that point We've got a lot of these neighborhoods that are more dilapidated and older and could use that refurbishing, and so they wind up doing rentals. Um, but I think if you can flip that to homeownership by going through some kind of process where you're revitalizing these neighborhoods and making them more desirable for homeownership, that's how you would do it. But to me, that's, that's been a big, a really big issue, and if that could be figured out— I know it could be figured out, uh, that you could basically shift. What you do is you wouldn't necessarily increase a lot of new capacity. You would in some areas, but you'd be switching it from rental to ownership. And that's really what we're trying to do as a community, because like Terry said, we're at 43% or who knows what rental percentage. To the extent that we can bring that down to ownership, it changes the whole dynamic in the community.

So yeah, 2 quick thoughts on that. Number one, you're spot on, and you're, you're facing a similar challenge as a lot of older established communities across the Wasatch Front. President Adams, this past session, championed a housing appropriation of $50 million for first-time homebuyers to help with some of those upfront costs. So I suggest that Orem look into that program and try to promote it in a way that hopefully helps connect people to some of these older neighborhoods where you're, you're trying to incentivize young families, young families to move in, and then see if there's a role for, you know, warm city to try to match those, those 2 pieces. The second key piece here is I grew up in, I grew up in Murray, and my dad still lives in the house I grew up in. He's an empty nester, and most of my dad's neighborhood is empty. is an empty nester neighborhood. When I grew up, my elementary school had multiple portals, year-round school, 800+ kids. Now my, my buddy sends his son to that elementary school and he doesn't even live in Murray, he lives in Taylorsville, but it's open enrollment and that school is half the size it was when I was a kid. It's because my dad is still taking up valuable real estate. I'm glad my dad's here so he can correct that.

No, you're spot on.

No, right. But you go up and down my dad's street, and there are a lot more of my dads than there are me's. Well, Murray hasn't had to close any schools within the city or within the city school district, but there's a portion of Murray that's an even older part of Murray that's part of Granite School District where they are talking about closing schools. And you go further north into Mill Creek, same conversation happening. You go further north in Salt Lake, there are several schools on the chopping block.

block.

And Concord Heights went through this a few years ago. They actually closed 2 schools in Concord Heights. Well, ultimately what they did in Concord Heights, they repurposed that property into neighborhood parks so that it still was an asset and an amenity to that community. So even though the community lost the school for now, it's still an amenity that ideally draws families to it. It wasn't— that property wasn't necessarily sold off and developed. It was invested in as a community asset. I bring this up because Brandon and I were having a conversation a few weeks ago about Warren priorities, and Mayor, I watched your message as I was walking in here about your emphasis on public lands, and it's a challenge for all built-out communities is how do you maximize the open space and the public lands that you have. We are in the middle of a 2-year partnership with Science Bank and Intermountain Healthcare to help local governments maximize public assets in their communities. It's called Your Land, Your Plan. So actually, I brought some paperwork for Brent to look into it. We just did a training in Provo last month. But the whole idea here is to help elected officials look at publicly owned land, whether it's city land, school district land, Utah land, and say, what— how can we maximize this asset to improve our community? And that's going to look different in different places. So I'm aware of one community that's actually looking at taking some old parking lots on a college campus and trying to build some housing there so that it reduces the impact on the neighborhoods essentially across the street. That may be— that's a good idea for that community, may not work everywhere else. I mentioned the Cotton Heights example where they worked with their school district to turn these 2 old schools into parks. that still are magnets for the community, which then if you're trying to incentivize homeownership in these older communities, well, the opposite direction is to lose the school, to lose the open space, and lose some of the gems. You want to invest in those, but also recognize that population growth is cyclical. And at some point my dad won't be here, and ideally a young family moves into this house and they'll still need an elementary school and park to play in. And So making those decisions today that set you up for success 10, 20, 30 years from now is in part why we created this year-long year plan program. So there's information about that on our website, and I brought a packet that I'll leave with, with Bren, and we'll have more information about that at the conference next week.

So what you're saying about your dad, what the mayor's saying, we're seeing in Orange— it depends on the neighborhood. My neighborhood's like 40 years old, so we're seeing that these people are older than your dad. They are all dying off.

it is younger families moving in.

Yeah.

Um, and, and that's why as a city council we're fighting really strong to try to protect— if anyone, if the district's going to close a school, let's protect that property, uh, you know, and protect parks, city parks. So government property, school property, because everything— well, you mentioned everything recycles. All of a sudden now you've got young families. If the schools are gone, yeah, you got a problem. But one thing I was going to say about Orem that doesn't even show up in the statistics is the accessory apartments, which is huge. The city's tried to make an attempt at trying to figure out how many we have. That's really hard to do. So, you know, our numbers would be way crazier as far as the number of rentals and what we show. Then the other thing that I was just going to make a comment, which you face as Cameron, was With our representatives. But yeah, give the guys a surplus in Salt Lake, and that sometimes is scary because sometimes, sometimes the government can't solve everything. I mean, the housing crisis is not unique to Orem. It's not unique to the state of Utah. It's a national crisis. And what Jeff's saying is it's a national issue about how to get those homes. So I hope they realize they can't solve everything. by writing checks, taxpayers' checks. Some, some of it just runs through a natural cycle. You know, the homeowner dies, young families move in, they fix up the house. Or like you're talking about, the business you have where you've done that. Anyway, just, just, just a couple random thoughts about that.

Well, I agree with you. Well, ultimately what we keep preaching in the housing space is cities have no control over land costs, costs, labor shortage, materials supply chain challenges, inflation, interest rates, the economy, all those outside of our control. What we do control is how we plan our communities, and planning needs to be holistic, and housing is a piece of that. So recognizing that Orem City is built out as an older community, you have, you have an issue with older infrastructure and older established neighborhoods. That your counterparts 15 miles to the west don't have, right? Totally different communities addressing the housing crisis in totally different ways, and we need to make sure we've got the flexibility that takes into account those different unique circumstances.

That's really important. Um, just one thing, because I know you're running out of time. Can you go back to that slide on the transportation on the 5th? I don't want to create a major conversation on this. I just thought about this because I saw this when you were at the MAG meeting the other day, and I was kind of thinking about it on the way home because there seemed to be pretty universal— most of the cities thought this would be a great thing to do. But as I thought about it, I thought, so if we add the 5th/5th for our residents, which is who we represent, we were increasing the tax by, you know, that's 20%. Um, but the actual benefit our residents are getting for that— and these aren't the right numbers— but say a 20% increase but a 5% benefit, right? Because the 5% benefit is what actually goes to our roads.

Mm-hmm.

And that's where we need that benefit. And so there's 15%, you know, of the 20 that goes to, uh, to public transportation. And if it goes to public transportation, then you have to ask yourself, well, that sounds good, unless you ask yourself the question, how much are we benefiting from public transportation? Because here in Orem, I mean, our classic thing has been empty buses forever.

True.

And those buses are driven because there was sales tax put in place create the revenue to have those buses. So that's why we have empty buses. And so we don't really have a need for more empty buses, I guess is my point. And so that's just a different perspective.

No, it's a great point. It's a great point. And that's why, that's why I started by saying this, this was not a new tax. But for our advocacy, 100% of this tax goes to transit, right? And what we did last summer through the UEOC, we brought this through the UEOC's Growth and Transportation is we said, look, the major need out there is a holistic view to transportation. Right now, this is the only local government tool that is in the toolbox, and it's 100% for transit. This should take a holistic approach. There should be cities— like, we wanted— in an ideal world, this would have all gone to cities. But at the end of the day, in order to get the bill across the finish line, State leaders said, we want at least half of this money going to transit. The only way we're even willing to consider changing it from 100% transit to 50% transit is, is because you convinced us that there's this additional need for non-transit transportation. So the simplistic way of looking at it is, but for our advocacy, Orem City would have gotten zero out of the $0.2 Now you're getting 0.05 of the 0.20.

Right.

And, and you also have more control of this point— of the 0.10 that goes to transit than you've had of any transit money to date.

Right.

So part of it will go to the TIF eventually, but previous sales tax authorizations would essentially pass through immediately to the transit district. Under this, The money goes to the transit district, but the county directs it, which means you as a mayor and you as a council have more influence over how that transit money gets spent than you currently do now. That was another big piece for us, is again making sure that local leaders were at the table on how this money was being spent. The county piece had to be part of it because it's a county— under current law, it's a county tax. So the county says, look, we're going to impose the tax, we want to be able to retain at least some of the money. So that's giving you a peek behind the curtain about how, how all the pieces came together. But that's why we feel like it's a big deal that we went from not having a dime of this to now having, in Warren's case, $1.8 million if and when the county closes.

Right. And I fully understand that. It's just to get to that $1.8 million in revenue, we've got to tax our citizens $8 million.

True.

Yeah.

Right. Yeah. So that's where you step back and say, is that a sensible benefiting us enough to impose that tax on our citizens.

Yep.

And so I, I think what you've done is you've taken a flawed system and made the best of it you could. That's the way I see it.

Yeah, I think that's a fair— I think that's a fair assessment. And I don't think the legislature was ever going to give us, us being collective local government, a similar new authorization again. So yeah, it was either kind of let this one Flutter in the wind, or we make the best of it and make sure we're at the table for it, right?

Okay, what, what, uh, the way I would kind of characterize what you're constantly doing, but we are constantly doing, um, unlike, unlike you don't find in any sport, we have to play defense and offense at the same time the whole entire game, and it often feels like an impossible possible situation.

Appreciate making that effort. It's, it's tough.

And I think, I think Councilmember Pedersen and Jesse, you know, you were part of us trying to do that all at the same time too.

It's tough.

Well, let me finish there, Brent. Jesse and I were chatting as we walked in. We as a league We have a small staff. We have a staff of 11 full-time employees, and as you saw, we worked on 244 bills this session, and a lot of those bills are year-round efforts. So we can only do what we can do because of the membership and because of the active participation of elected officials and city staffers. Just now, earlier, welcome his participation. in this role with us on key issues that are important to the City of Orem. And Catherine, thank you for all your time at LPC this year. And Brandy and I worked together forever. And we need to know, we need to know the specific issues that matter to Orem so that we can make sure we advocate for that and that we can stay in that two-way communication. So over the next few weeks, as you're thinking through any potential proactive policy that we'd like to see this type of policy change, let us know so we can add it to that aggregate list. But this has been great feedback on what's happened thus far, and I appreciate the opportunity to represent you at the Capitol. I finished my 15th session. It doesn't feel like it's been that long, but I appreciate the partnership.

Thank you.

Any other questions? Thank you, Ken.

We appreciate what you do for us. We think it's a really important role, so we appreciate it.

Perfect.

Thank you, Mayor.

Thank you, everybody.

All right, next on the docket, we've got a station area plan kickoff, and, uh, Grant Allen, Matt Taylor, if you'd like to lead that discussion.

Do you have another question? There, got it.

All right, and then I need to share my screen. I don't see the option.

Oh, here we go. You want to wait for—

Stretching.

Stretching.

As soon as you guys are ready, I'll just wait for Councilmember Lampson to come back in and see some kind of stretch out. Okay, Mayor and Council, um, I'm Grant. If you don't Who I was. Matt and I are here to assist Christy from People in Place. We've hired them as a consultant through the technical assistance that was provided under HB 462 last year that required Forum City to go through this process to create and adopt stationary plans around transit stations. So that was— that technical assistance was sent to MAG. So MAG is kind of the oversight of that technical assistance along with us. So, Kristi, we're here to go through the kickoff of the station area for the Orange Front Range Station. So I'll kind of turn over to Kristi to lead. Here's some slides.

Yeah, sounds good. Thanks, and I really appreciate you letting me come today and introduce this process. We'll get to know each other in the next year, and I'm looking forward to working for you and alongside you in this effort. So just a few minutes of slides, and then I'd love to just have some discussion. So in terms of overall objectives, it's funny that this is right Okay, just making sure you don't see the big green bar across your screen. Um, this is a process that is coming from House Bill 462, the Housing Affordability Amendments Bill that was passed not this last session but the one prior. And the goal of that bill is to maximize development potential, development potential in appropriate areas and It's, it's a collaborative city-led planning effort. And I think that Cameron probably was, was helpful in making sure that this process is one in which cities determine how best to meet shared, shared objectives, which I'll talk about in just a minute, without meeting— without the state mandating a specific approach. So in terms of shared regional objectives, increasing the availability and affordability of housing. That's nothing new in terms of housing crisis, right, both locally and nationally. Promoting sustainable environmental conditions, enhancing access to opportunities, whether that's working, access to recreation, shopping, all of those things, education, and then increasing transportation choices and connections. So in this case, we're looking at The requirement in regard to the Frontrunner station. So cities with Frontrunner tracks or streetcar stations are required to develop a station area plan for the half-mile radius around their station, and cities with bus rapid transit are required to develop station area plans within a quarter mile of those stations. So in this case, we're looking at Orem's Frontrunner station area plan, and you can You can see the red dot, probably very small, in the center of this outline that looks rather like a person with a very large nose. That is the lands that fall either entirely or partly within that half-mile radius around Frontrunners Station and more. So you see there— let's back up one second— you see UVU is a big Landowner there, UDOT, UTA, some of your business district is in there, your office park, and your single-family homes and apartments. So a lot of different uses. And then of course the freeway and the rail goes right through it. So in terms of station area plan requirements, there are a few. We'll be working with the city to develop a vision. Which will include the development of an existing and future land use plan, including open space opportunities, constraints, future transportation. We're also required to prepare a map that identifies plans for the station area plan. We don't have to develop the entire area, but rather focus on areas where it's appropriate. We need to develop a 5-year implementation plan together. That's an action plan that would specify land use changes and capital improvements. And then we'll be doing a retreat together that identifies responsible parties for implementation, whether that's regulations, infrastructure improvements, legal documents, funding, environmental remediation, what have you. And then we'll need to prepare a statement that identifies how we're promoting those for shared regional objectives. Again, affordability, availability of housing, that includes moderate-income housing. So you mentioned ownership opportunities as well, promoting sustainable environmental conditions, enhancing access to opportunities, and increasing transportation choices. The plan or the process also includes and requires significant public engagement and stakeholder stakeholder engagement. And so we'll be initiating those processes as well in the rest of this year. And at the end of the effort, we'll be seeking Station Area Plan certification from MAG, and also including it in the city's Moderate Housing Report. So at the outset, Grant mentioned that the city was funded 100% $50,000 for technical assistance. So that's the front end, and at the back end will be going to your MPO, to MAG, for certification of your station area plan based on staff recommendation. So that's the nutshell of the process. And I'd love to just really spend a few minutes here today to really understand, at least at the outset, your initial thoughts, what's working in that area. You think about the last time you've been out there. I don't know how often you get to your, your front-runner station, what you hope to see more of or less of, what big questions need to be answered in this process, what are your challenges, your opportunities. And to do that, just a few questions. We'd love to do a phone poll. So if you take out your phones, and this could be anybody in the room. I'm gonna just poll the audience here and see what you're thinking. Go ahead and scan that QR code. I'm sorry, it's late in the afternoon and you cannot order pizza with the QR code. Everybody got to know these during the pandemic, right? My favorite restaurant still does not have my menu on paper.

I'm a little annoyed.

All right, now scan. Okay, so here's your first question. What's working? You can think of one brief phrase. What's working when you think of the FrontRunner station area? In the years that that's been in existence. What have the successes been? The pedestrian bridge, easy access and parking, clean and effective.

Going down— we're supposed to pick one of those?

No.

Oh, okay.

That's what people are typing in. Going to jazz games, it's so easy. Close to residential housing, transportation to UVU, already has private student housing, has a pedestrian bridge, is close to businesses and UVU. Yeah, so a lot of things going for it already, it sounds like, both, um, maybe people who are living there and also people who access the station to head out of town. BYU football on UVX. Close to UVU, maybe it'll alleviate some traffic for the city.

We'll be looking at that in the coming weeks.

Okay, let's move on then to the next question. Probably guess what it is. What's not working so well?

You're talking about that specific spot, right?

Yeah, if you think of that half-mile radius around the station, what's not working so well? Parking in the access Promenade. I've been hearing about that. Okay, so it's hard to get other places in Orem by way of public transportation. So you get off at the train and then what? Is that kind of the—

okay.

Split by the freeway. Big barrier right through the middle of it.

Yep.

Only one entry to the Orem Business Sounds like front rider still takes more time than driving. Parking is terrible, neighbors hate it. Tell me about that one. Is there parking that happens on neighborhood streets and that's the problem, or what's the issue there?

Straight up some potential over-occupancy. had some spillover from student parking. Yeah, I didn't write it, but my guess is it's not the people taking the front lot, it's people who live near the front lot. Yeah, there's a couple neighborhoods had some students parking.

Gotcha. And the parking requirements were lower, weren't they?

Parking requirements per apartment were much lower, so there's not sufficient parking for Residents.

Okay.

And charging for parking. And charging.

So they seek out the free option, which is in front of the homes.

Sure. Yeah.

All right. Anything else? Okay. Next question. What do you want to see more of? So a vision typically looks out a generation or two. So we've got time to really think long term in terms of what Orem needs, not tomorrow, but 5 years, 10 years, 15 years.

Maybe we'll see more of structured parking.

Biking. More connections and routes, better walking corridors. That's interesting. We walked the site a couple of months ago, and it's really hard to not walk through parking lots. Yeah, in terms of when you get off the train, there's not a sense of, I've arrived in a place, I know where I'm headed. Small grocery store. Closest grocery is Walmart, I think, right? To the station. Designated parking structures again. You've already made it a mess. Please, no more help. Sorry, guys. All right. Parking close to residences. More green space and landscaping. And that's a piece of, of that, that regional set of goals, right? Access to those opportunities, including open space, places that make places nice to be in. All right, let's move on to the last poll question. What do you want to see less of? Think of that map and look at an aerial of that area. Think about what you see there. Would you like to see less of over time?

Cars.

It's a lot of parking lots out there, lots of surface parking lots. Fewer large apartment structures with tasteless architecture. Design matters, doesn't it?

Congestion.

All right, well, that's helpful, um, and we hope that we hear more from you too, as far as moving into the project and the process. Those are kind of warm-up questions. These are not phone ones anymore, but I'd love to just spend a couple minutes just talking. What big questions do you need to be— do you need to have answered out there? Challenges or opportunities that you see as a city? Not every city has the opportunity to have a frontrunner stop. So it's an opportunity, challenge. You think about that space in 20 or 30 years.

I would really like to plan for the future of safety for women in those areas. I used to ride BART in the Bay Area. There were some stations that I felt very safe at and others that I did not at all. So I think that that should be a major goal, is to create that type of environment of lighting, of, you know, pathways that are safe, concentration of people versus the parking lot way out where you have to— like you mentioned, you have to walk far to get to the parking lot. I just had a bad experience at one of those stations, so I just Really feel pretty passionate about making sure that that woman's point of view is considered in this planning process.

I think what's difficult about the area is that it is mostly built out now, um, so it's hard to think about redevelopment in 30-plus years. There is the one Parcel that's right next to University Parkway. Is it too late to try to see if there's an owner-occupied condo, you know, option there?

It's hard to feel— it's honestly hard to feel like it's too late to plan there because of how much it's—

Well, that's what Brent's saying. We don't have any employment at our station. The office sector is dead right now, but at some point it would make sense that there's some kind of office use there so the students have somewhere to work and not have to drive to their apartments.

You know, some kind of employment within that station area.

Yeah, it's not a destination except for housing.

Correct.

Yeah, well, UBU, they walk across the bridge or take the bus around. So last week we heard from UBU, we met with them and just engaged them in this kickoff. They told us the last semester, fall semester, they had over 250,000 trips across that bridge.

Really?

Yeah, that's amazing.

So 250,000 trips of students going back And forth to campus, I think, is a powerful indicator that, to Ryan's point, maybe there is an opportunity there. Maybe from that perspective, you've had those trips existing now. I think we're gonna connect with UTA soon and also get some indicators on—

How many folks are coming?

partnerships are originated.

That's something we're coming up on pretty soon as well.

Yeah, UVU did mention a parcel that they are actually open to having us think about in terms of a redevelopment option. And in St. Jude or in Orem? In Orem.

Yeah, yeah.

And so it's interesting to think that UVU is contemplating That possibility of redeveloping, and is there a possibility for more of a destination space there, a space that feels safe, not just a parking lot?

A little bit of that is light industrial around there, so maybe there's a sooner opportunity to redevelop. It's easier to We develop light industrial into— Another opportunity we thought, we thought about is, is close to the radius, we, there's potential really great connections to the trail systems that are around this area, and leveraging the opportunity for recreation connections. You get off the train, you could, right, you know, connect to a trail system and further connects you to more trails. So we're also looking at examining that possibility.

I think healthcare would be a great thing to locate near. I mean, I have to drive to primaries, right? And once you get off the freeway, you're on Foothill. I don't know why Foothill has not been Widened. It's ridiculous because of all the employees that work in the hospital, the 2 hospitals up there. Yeah, it takes like almost a third of my trip, the time of my trip to go from the 215 to the hospital.

Yeah.

Because of poor planning. So, you know, if you can bring the healthcare to the students, if that's who we have there, you know, or just someone who can jump on On the train and be able to have that be their healthcare destination.

Yeah, and healthcare is dispersing more and more, right, in smaller offices rather than large.

So, so we're talking about this little—

Brim brought it up— we got with this little pocket here, it's pretty built out, there's a lot of stuff in it. If we go west of this little pocket, we've got plenty of land that UVU owns. some of that land. So that might be another discussion, is further growth, that you ought to consider going on the west side of it so you're not worried about the hassle of trying to figure out how to deal with I-15. And it'd be much easier to figure out a bus route going west than it is trying to keep figuring out what we do with this little parcel.

Yeah, so what are our options as far as I mean, for me, it would be useful to go down there and look around. I mean, I've picked people up from the TRAC station. I've never ridden the TRAC station, so I'm not really familiar with it other than picking up people here and there.

Sure.

So for me, maybe I'm a minority here, but I don't have a real great vision of exactly what we're trying to figure out. Yeah, I hear it's built out, but then what does that mean we can still do?

Yeah, yeah.

I just said, I just think we need to gather more information to be able to make it legitimate.

Yeah, and this is just the warm-up chat, right? We're just kind of seeing where you guys are at, what you're thinking about. Um, but yeah, getting, getting on site would be a great idea. Um, and it's— we're right now just trying to understand, especially the main use that, that is there when you get off the train is parking. And absolutely, parking is needed there, but it doesn't— does it need to be surfaced? Could it be structured on the road to create more opportunity for destination and other uses?

Just curious, when you met with UVU, have we had any kind of perspective from the students? Is there something that they're missing that they would like to see there? We're waiting to hear back from them on engaging a student or to participate in. I'm going to kind of— maybe we're going to get there in a minute on the slide showing our stakeholder committee that we're forming and having them be involved in that process. I think they would be able to offer some valuable insights into what they think would be helpful.

Yeah, yeah, when you think of those quarter million trips, what are they going back and forth exactly for parking on one side and taking classes and then coming back, wishing there was something there.

Yeah, it's a quarter million both directions, right? Less than 1,000 per school day.

Yeah.

So 500 coming and going. So it's a significant number, but it doesn't sound quite as big as a quarter million.

Yeah, right.

When you spread it out like that.

Yeah.

So could we make sure and insert into the process, some type of site visit, whatever the right moment is in this process.

Yeah, I love it.

Have any of you walked across that pedestrian bridge?

Bring your earplugs.

Yeah, it's pretty— once you cross over the freeways, we were actually going to take a decibel— Oh yeah, yeah. Just kind of curious on how high is it.

It go once you cross that sound wall? Yeah, that's interesting.

All right, so in terms of process, we'll be engaging a stakeholder committee. I'll show you that slide in just a minute. Really hoping that the city is able to engage in partnerships with UTA, UVU, as we look out those decades, right? Those major landowners. Incorporating robust public engagement, lots of opportunities for the public to take a look and voice their opinions, including students. We'll be building a range of scenarios based on what we hear from stakeholders in the public, and then from those scenarios, we'll bring those to the stakeholders in the public, get their preferences on pieces, parts of those scenarios, and then look toward a vision that cherry-picks the pieces that people like most and would like to see there to create that vision and that plan. We'll be doing an implementation retreat with stakeholders to figure out at least a 5-year plan and hopefully look out a little longer than that as well and work toward adoption and then certification, like I said, with, with MAG. This is the stakeholder committee. It's a little on the small side. I hope you can read it, but Planning Commission, Natural Resources, Transportation, Public Works, Neighborhood Commission, and then a whole bunch of organizations— UVU, UTA, UDOT.

So you have a council member on there?

I haven't heard back. So Debbie volunteered because we only got one person from Natural Resources, so she volunteered to represent the other natural Resources person. So we do need council members involved, so we're hoping to have at least 2. If we have more, should they be more liaisons?

Notify all the meetings.

We're hoping to keep it to 2.

But you can't get anybody else to volunteer from Natural Resources? That's kind of their thing, right, is planning?

And well, we had 2 interested. One person just said they didn't have the capacity. Darren stepped forward, and then because we hadn't heard anything else, Debbie kind of just said, I'll do it. So, but that's, that's who I had received from Jason. I had received those names from all of your nominations. Um, uh, Councilmember Larray, I, uh, I'm sorry, uh, Millie. You nominated Sunday and Linda, but we also wanted to for sure have the representative of the neighborhoods in the station area boundary, who is also sensitive.

I thought she was leaving.

Oh, okay.

I didn't know that.

Okay.

Which is fine if she's here for your— for that long. She might be here still.

Okay, so just in confirming with Kenna as well, just for sure wanted the Sunset Heights, East Those are great neighborhoods. That's where most of the boundary is for the station area boundary. So just so you're aware of that. And then Sean Clark, if you're not aware, he's the owner of the big vacant piece by University Parkway. So he's— and some— so some of those organizations are landowners or other major partner stakeholders. The Davis family owns the farm between the tracks and the freeway that has exotic animals in an industrial area.

So, so define what this means exactly, the stakeholder committee. How do they interact with the final outcome of what we come up with?

Sure, sure.

So these are folks that have an interest in the, in the plan, right? They may be able to help implement it. They're certainly affected by it, and so we'd like them to be involved throughout. We'll have 6 or 8 meetings scheduled with them throughout the process at various points. They'll be helping us develop the public meetings, making sure that we're providing an open and transparent process for the public. They'll be making sure that we provide an honest look at what the public says, what stakeholders say, and make sure that that input is drafted into the eventual vision, and that a range of ideas are reflected in the scenarios. So they'll be working behind the scenes kind of every step of the way to make sure that we engage a process that's valuable to the city forum and helpful to stakeholders and also the public at large.

So, so that group is basically trying to gather all the interested parties to come together.

Yeah.

And give all of their input. And then ultimately what that input looks like, then does that go to the city council? Is that how that works?

Yeah, it'll go— correct me if I'm wrong— Planning Commission first.

Right. Planning Commission.

Yeah.

But I think We would, as we get nearer to developing from the stakeholder group, narrowing down the vision and some of those scenarios, I mean, we're more than welcome to come back to you all in work sessions, type this type of environment, and, and kind of bring you, catch you up.

I guess what I'm trying to understand is if there's any reason to have a couple more city councilors on that committee, or if that's not necessary because it's going to go through the council. You have any opinion on that?

I, I think, I think it's really up to you. It's up to you, Mayor, Council. You want to be involved with what to have, you're comfortable with the stakeholder committee we have.

Either way, does anyone have an opinion on that as far as—

I mean, I can't help. It's good to have council members there. We try.

Anybody else?

I'm already on the Utah Lake Authority, but I'd like to be on part of this too, so this is— so they're hearing not just the lake authority's voice but our voice as part of what we feel, in case it's not the same as what you're—

Maybe what we could do is have that calendar developed. That way we can make sure to get Full involvement from the council who's interested, but still kind of maybe divide it up a little bit so we stay within the 3 limit or whatever.

There's another issue too, is how long is this going to go on before it's done?

So, um, we're required to ultimately adopt all the stationary plans that we're required to develop by 2025, so we kind of thought This year, work through this process, go through a robust public engagement stakeholder process. We'll probably come towards the end of the year, beginning of next year for adoption, bringing something forward that for all of you to consider to adopt. And then we would actually towards the end of this year begin the process to go through the second technical technical assistance process to start on the bus rapid transit stationery plans that would be next year.

Okay, I guess I'm just trying to figure out a timeline. So we have 3 people that would like to be on it, be Tom, Terry, and Dave. Um, but we've got Debbie on it, but Debbie will come off, right, of the council because she's not running again.

So I'm happy to bow off too. If you need me, I'll serve. If you don't, I'm fine.

Maybe what we'll do is, if you don't care as much, we'll have these 2 do it for now. And when Debbie comes off, you want to jump on?

Well, I think—

I mean, Debbie works for Max. I don't think that's a do. I don't think she should be their representative for resources.

That's true.

So then Tom can just slip into Debbie's spot there.

Yeah, maybe we just do that.

I don't think Debbie was lobbying for it.

I think she was just saying she'd go to the—

yeah, she was kind of just— she just replied and said, hey, I'll jump in that. Why don't we just do that?

We'll start with you 3, and Debbie can come off.

Okay, so Tom, Terry, and Dave.

Yeah, great.

All right, get excited for them. And Councilmember Pearson, just so you know, I did reach out to Eric Ellis. from the Utah Lake Commission. Just, he's the kind of the— just so you know, he is— I did meet him and just sent a kind of a hey organization invite. So if you see him— I'll see Eric first, I can tell him. Yeah, if you could just tell him, no, I think those invites have gone out. And we sent a letter that was signed by Bren kind of to invite them. The first meeting is April 27th. 6 PM here in this council—

this conference room.

April 27th, Thursday.

I think we have it.

Yeah, I'll stop. I'm just letting you know that's, that's the first date, but I'm developing— waiting to hear back some confirmations, and then, um, but the calendar invite will go out today.

What time is it?

Is that going to Care Commission meeting?

5 to 8?

What time of day? It's 6 PM. Mayor Cameron stuck with us because he was kind of part of the process to make sure that the house bill associated with this made this requirement. He was kind of— drove the whole idea of this being council-driven.

Hope that told you.

Sure, Mayor, can I take just 30 seconds? This was awesome to observe. I applaud you for the strong work. I was the lead negotiator on this bill, so it's exciting to see it get off the ground here. But, you know, give you a peek behind the curtain like I did about this past session. The original version of this bill would have had a mandatory minimum of 50 residential units to the acre around all tracks for 100 BRT stops.

Well, we said no.

That's actually exactly what happened in the state of California through legislature, and it's what's being discussed right now in the state of New York and other places. We said, although the station sets some objectives which you highlighted around housing affordability and access to opportunity and sustainability and transportation connectivity, but the front-runner station at UBU looks fundamentally different from the track station at Sullivan International Airport, which looks fundamentally different than the track station at Sandy or the BRT line under construction in Long Island. And so it needs to be a locally driven process to figure out what makes sense in those local plans. So it's a need for me to be able to see you get this underway, and I think it's important for you to relate to your legislators the work you're about to undertake to plan your station in a way that makes sense for Orem so as to avoid that potential mandate in the future, one size fits all, and all stations should look alike. Kudos in advance to the work that you're doing.

So if I may, maybe in that spirit, I think we still get a calendar. And then if there's— if there are meetings where, you know, Terry, Dave, or Tom can't attend, let's get another from the council.

I can't be there.

conflict too. So is that in stone, or is that—

Um, yeah, it's, it's, I would say it's pretty dramatic, but that's the kickoff meeting. So like Kristen said, we're gonna have 6 to 8 of those meetings subsequently throughout the rest of the year. And then we're also, I think, 3 public open houses, kind of type engagement opportunities. Just give me your power of attorney, gentlemen. But yeah, I'll be glad to develop that calendar and share it with all of you.

Okay, all right, we better wrap up unless you've got anything else.

That's it. Thank you so much. I'm excited to get to know you all and work with this.

Right, thank you. Let's go ahead and go into item number 3, a formal city flag design description.

Brooks advertising.

Hey, Brooks. Ready?

Oh no.

Okay.

Just so everyone's aware, we had a pipe freeze over the winter.

They turned the chiller on today.

A water leak.

They fixed it this morning. The glue has to cure, so the air will be on tomorrow. So we apologize.

That's why we need a new building.

So people are in charge tomorrow.

We already voted for it, right? I know, but we don't need to start forcing it.

Let's just take 5 minutes and grab your lunch, and then we'll come back and keep going.

You did this last time.

I know.

Well, it's—

and bring ice cream next time or something fun. It's like dinner and a show.

So we have a prayer offered by somebody.

I'm standing.

I'll say this.

Our beloved Father in heaven, we're so grateful for Thank you.

We're grateful for this opportunity we have to meet together today for these pleasant conversations and these, um, the planning for the future and the welfare of our residents of Orem. Grateful to be for the nation that we live in and the opportunities it affords us. We pray at this time for a blessing upon the food that we're about to partake of, that it will give us nourishment and health, and we can use that strength in serving thee. Grateful at this time For many blessings and say these things in the name of Jesus Christ. Amen.

Amen.

Thank you. We'll start in 7 minutes.

What?

We'll start in 7 minutes.

Start in 7. You ever want to breathe less?

All right, let's go ahead and start.

Restart.

Have you ever noticed that when we come to these meetings, always Bring out the food and the party and everything happens.

That's right.

I'm Peter, this is Jacob. We're Brooks Advertising. We're here to talk about your flag. We have the solutions to all your problems. I was gonna say, uh, Peter and Jacob are batting 1,000 in all of our, um, you know, logo designing. So, you know, no pressure, but you better keep up that.

Exactly.

Well, our next project is we're gonna take Main Street and make it just a 2-lane road.

I just thought—

all right, let's talk flags. This is an interesting topic because it is kind of a sensitive topic. Again, what does a good flag look like?

If I was going to describe to you like the Japanese flag, everybody can go, you know, you know what that is immediately. Canadian flag.

Does anybody know what the Mexican flag looks like? The other people in Southport?

I told you not to ask. No, no, I can't be a summer-term missionary if you're doing Mexico.

I went to Japan, you know. Well, then Japan tried to force out the flag during World War II and stuff like that. Let's just show what our ideas are.

We've been working with people already on this. Let me, let me further say this. So everybody's aware that Utah has been, you know, in the process of getting a new flag, and they just passed it recently that it is, right? Uh, with some backlash. But besides that backlash, it started with a podcast.

Who has listened to 99% Invisible?

Y'all need $5, $10.

$10.

There's a podcast where this, this guy talks about design of flags. What makes a good flag, right? And like anything, like a billboard, it's legibility, it's readability, it's memorability, right? When we design a flag, it has to be simple enough that you can go by on a bike or a car and recognize it right away and not have to read it. Does that make sense? Right, so if we're putting a bunch of words on it, it's no longer— under the pretext of— what is the word called?

Vexillology.

Vexillology. There's a study of flag design. So with that said, there's been a trend among cities to simplify their flags with good design, essentially.

And so with that said, We're gonna let you look and we're going to decide. Mayor, are we voting today or just discussing?

Right.

How well it goes. Okay, that's, that's good. Here, John, pass it half down that way. There's enough for one of you.

Don't get one.

Accepting feedback.

How about that?

Yes, that'd be— yeah, we would love to hear feedback on this because this is the result of many meetings with representatives of Warren Sure, already.

Okay, sure. But I do hope— I do hope since you guys have hired us that you will maybe listen to our expertise and what we've seen other cities do.

And again, we're not making the decision, you are. So.

So when Brad approached us, He said, listen, we're changing our— or not changing it, we're trying to emphasize Family City USA. How do we incorporate this in a flag? And I said, I don't know if we should. That's the first thing I said. The second thing I said is, I'll show you different mockups of what it looks like, and then we can decide and talk it through, right? Right now you're looking at a flag. I don't, I don't know the proportions of What it looks like if there's a flag right there, what would you guess? Arm's length, maybe, of the proportions of what you're looking at? What I'm trying to say is, when you're looking at some of these flags that have words on it, keep in mind that the flag is going to be 30 feet in the air, right?

It may just—

it may not even be legible, so just keep that in mind, right? So as we go through it, um, the first thing is flagpoles. With any flag, you know, process, they like to add some symbology to the iconography, right? You look at the Utah flag, you got the beehive representing industry, you got the mountains, obviously. It's very trite and very straightforward. We've already done this with our style guide, right? We have a sun, it's vibrant, it's happy, we got blue that represents family. And we're basically just trying to continue the process of our logo, our style guide, and throw it up onto a flag. Jacob?

Yeah. We don't have a presentation now, so you're on—

I'm on page 1, I'm so sorry. Yes, page 1, symbology, right? It's pretty evident we're going to use the logo in some capacity, right? I doubt we're going to throw on anything else, so With that said, why don't we go through version 1, and then we'll, we'll go through each slide, and then when we're done, I think possibly we can talk, you know, everybody has ideas or concerns, we can go through that as well. Number 1 is my choice for the reason that I talked about in terms of simplicity. It conveys what OREM's logo is, and it shows, you know, who we are. We're a mountain, we got sun, we're happy, right? There's also simplicity to it. This thing is flying in the air, you don't have to worry about reading it, you don't have to worry about saying, I don't— does that say family something?

I'm not quite sure.

So if I was going to lead and give my expertise, this is the one I would choose.

Before you go on, um, if you're going to go look at every flag of the entire world, there are maybe only 2 or 3 out of the hundreds of countries that have any wording on there whatsoever. So this is following the rules of good flag design.

On the far end of the spectrum—

let's keep going.

Yeah, we're gonna go through it.

Okay, this is at the far end of the spectrum.

So then we thought, you know what, you're paying me a lot, I'm just gonna throw the logo on there, right? Make it simple, right?

No, I'm just kidding.

Peter W. over here mentioned white flags probably aren't going to last very long, especially in our climate.

You're on the next page.

On the next page.

Excuse me.

Sorry.

B2.

B2. Um, it's beautiful. It's clean. Your logo is beautiful. But I don't like the idea of putting it on a white. Within 6 months, this is going to be a beige. I don't know very many flags that are white and last a long time. I mean, I guess there's one. The city's got a white flag. I mean, you can also make the argument that the American flag also has some white on it. So, but as a majority of the flag, I would argue against actually doing this one.

But red, white, and blue, right?

Red, white, blue.

There is white on it, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So that's B2. Why don't we turn to B3? This is when we start to decide where, if anywhere, the wording should go in terms of our slogan as well. We can put it on top, and if you're going to swipe to B4 as well and go back and forth, Placement is really everything, right? You could, you could do V4 and have it gray, but it's a lot of gray. From a design standpoint, it's very heavy. V3, you know, it's a little more airy, a little more light. I think out of the two that— between those two, I'd probably choose V3. And then V5, you want to go swipe over to V5? We just did another variation, right? I'm not going to create anything brand new here. Like, it's, it's, we're not, we don't have that much space to be that creative, right? Um, so yeah, with all of that said, I would love to hear input and possibly an open discussion of what is your first impression of the flags you see. Go ahead.

Well, you're talking about places that most don't have writing. Yeah, but they also have hundreds of millions of people. Everyone knows what the US flag is. We are a country with 60 million people. Even people with our neighbors to the north with only 20 million people, we have 100,000 people.

Yeah.

So I like the name on, but I don't think we need the slogan too.

Okay, so you're thinking maybe just the name only?

Yeah.

And if they don't see warm, yeah, because it is 30 feet away.

Yeah, the look is still good.

Yeah.

And whether or not they see Orem or not, they'll see it in enough places that are close.

Yeah, my only push— not a pushback, but I mean, to use an example like Chicago, I mean, a lot of these, a lot of these cities, um, most people don't care outside the city unless you're in it.

Does that make sense?

Um, but you make it definitely a good point for sure.

Oh, keep talking.

This is—

yeah, sure.

I like the white.

I originally did, and then Peter's like, dude, it's gonna get— this is like getting married.

It's like choosing one.

You have multiple flags?

We can totally buy a new flag. I actually like Family City USA on there. I like it written in the mountains though. I like that one better. It's just the balance is a little better if you have to go color and not white.

I actually like it split. I think that's why I like this.

Yeah. So I'm number 5, number 4, 2, or 5.

Oh yeah, again, so we need to figure out what we value. Do we value good flag design, or do we value, uh, I guess, legibility in terms of, you know, what we want to sort of project, right? Because if we look at the Utah flag, they had the outline of putting Utah on there. But they didn't, and I wonder why, right? Iconography is more powerful in my opinion. I could see a symbol and know right away what that symbol is based on the shape and stuff like that, whereas words, you sort of have to really focus on those words.

But you wouldn't put Utah on the flag because it's written in a seal on the flag.

Well, I'm talking about the new one, excuse me. So the new one that was approved has the beehive in the center. Yeah, Salt Lake also did a new one with the segal lily in the upper left-hand corner. Go ahead. Sorry.

No, one of the problems of showing you these designs in use is that it's with 80-mile-an-hour winds.

Well, if you're looking at it, I was trying to explain the proportion. You're looking at it as if the flag was closer than it really is. I mean, I wish we would have had a budget flag. Say that again.

A big supply.

4 by whatever it is.

6 by 5. Doing 8 by 10.

Okay, you can make it a whole—

if you do it that big, you can miss each council member's name.

I just say something.

Councilman, my favorite flag in the city of Orem is Macy's.

Yeah, there you go.

Yeah, I mean, that flagpole is just outstanding. I think I agree with Renee on 2 and 5. So if you don't want white, I'll leave it at 5. But I think we need to stay at Orem. We're proud of Orem. We're the central part of Utah County.

That's it.

We are it.

I'm surprised you're willing to give up your swoosh.

The swoosh is there. Yeah. Again, we're trying— here's the thing. So I'm approaching— you guys asked us who— I am an expert when it comes to flag design in terms of what makes a good flat, right? And it's simplicity, right? If you see it enough, it becomes a brand, right? Somebody sees your logo once and you're like, I don't know. They continue seeing it. I mean, the reason why you have it stuck up on your wall, like, it's a continuation. The brand doesn't die, it evolves.

It goes on to—

Isn't that a logo?

Jake?

What's the same sort of— Yeah, goodbye, May.

Yeah.

To kind of build off what you're saying, and honestly, I think Renee actually makes a good point in terms of if we do something, it can be changed. So to me, a big thing here is that we are still in the process of building and establishing a more brand that you guys have just begun to help us with.

Yeah.

And so to me, that's the biggest argument for trying to more fully incorporate our logo. But we're, again, we're, we're still in the beginning stages of proliferating the logo. You want to keep that logo the same too. On one of your signs, it's been elongated a little bit or squished.

Yeah, I think you got to be really careful about that.

If you want us to take pictures of the yard, we will, but you got a brand new sign up there and So you gotta follow the style guide when we're all done here. But yeah, we want a cohesive message here. Don't, you know, don't go changing in 5 years, you know.

Well, here's my question. Who is the flag for, right? Is it, is it for our citizens? Is it for people who are from St. George to be like, oh, now I'm in Orem, right? I mean, they see the Orem sign when they come in. I think it is to reiterate what you're saying, Brett. to basically pound the Orem identity throughout the city, right? But again, I'm not making decisions.

I mean, every street coming into Orem will have that same logo. Yeah, that's—

I think, I mean, the key thing is we're proud of where we live.

And well, I mean, I'm proud to live in America, and America doesn't have America on it. Like, I don't think necessarily having words on it means I'm more proud of it.

That's a country.

You know, Chicago. I like Chicago. We don't like Chicago.

Okay.

I love, I love your constructive criticism.

Just a question about this.

If we have, you know, on the side of trucks and everything else, we would definitely, I think, have the Orem Family City, USA. But if the flag didn't have that, Is that a problem if the flag didn't have it, but it has the same logo? Everything's the same, except it just doesn't have the writing.

Here's my— that's a great question. My concern, my main concern of putting the logo or putting a name and a font on it, it's not the same logo. Like, if you're going to look at your bottom right-hand logo, who has the Family City USA underneath it?

Which one are you talking about?

Right there, right there. It's what I'm saying is that is the logo, right? I'm taking elements of the logo. I feel like if we do, if we add like wording to it, we're sort of changing it. It's no longer the same.

Like, I don't know.

You can have the same logo on the flag.

This is your question.

You just do the flag maybe without the writing. You bet you just, we just still adapt, adopt this as the, on the side of the trucks, on the t-shirts, on the hat, and everything in Orange. Or like Dave said, there might be flags on poles as you drive into the city.

We hope that your next project is the truck design, starting with the police department. They are the most visible people, them, and there's a certain way you can do your, your cars. I don't know what your cars look like right now.

I'm not picking on you.

I don't know if I like them or hate them. I'll go look at them and we'll talk after.

We'll pull you over.

Check it out personally.

Okay, so I say, Mayor, yeah, we can go in circles on this forever.

Oh no, I work on this and lobby each other.

No, it's fine. I've come in, you guys have hired me. Okay, I've been like, you're gonna go to a doctor, you're not gonna argue with like, this is more subjective. That's where the that comes in, right? Not everybody likes certain things when it comes to design. So I've given you my opinion. Okay, Mayor, you guys now have to make a decision.

You probably should do it. So we're, we're passionate, we're noisy and whatnot. Usually in these kind of meetings, we'll have one or two that they formed a committee, you know, right here in the meeting. I like this one, Hill Forward, you know, what was the one I called the title of Liberty, you know, this is something that you probably want to discuss. What's that? You did that again for me. No, I cannot.

Well, there's a certain passion, and, and so you don't want somebody selling it on you too.

We—

the, the winner should be number one.

However, we're gonna go back out of this meeting and you have to put it up on a flagpole somewhere. Okay, so it was something on a flagpole. I don't know what.

So let me—

go ahead.

Okay, so, so I think, you know, and obviously we're gonna— this can be debated. This is obviously— we decided to take It's pretty clear. Um, but if you go back to your page 1, that's the one you like the best because of the design, right?

The simplicity of it, the memorability of it. I want a 3-year-old to be able to draw your flag, essentially.

Right, but that's the one that you like.

Yeah, I think, I think number 1, I'd go with number 1.

We both agree on that.

So then you move to whether or not we have War Room Family City USA on there. Right, and that's kind of the debate, right?

I mean, because you're giving it your best shot on page 1.

We go to page 3 and page 5, which are different iterations of Families to the USA, Orem, right?

And I think that's where the conversation goes, is kind of those 3. And then do we want Families to the USA or don't we want Families to the USA?

Okay, so just to spin back, we're saying the main thing you want is Orem on there, is that what you're saying? No, no. Oh, oh, okay, he's trying to narrow us down. Oh, I see what you're saying.

Sure, right.

Okay, which is, which is 1, 3, 5.

But I'm just taking note of that.

Okay, because you're saying your best design shot is page 1, and I agree with that.

I think that's just, you know, Riley, nice design. And so then whether we do version 3 or version 5, to me that's the conversation.

Yeah, well, I know what Jeff's thinking right now.

Where's my name? For me personally, Right, me personally, I mean, we're both here, but I, I really—

even though it's, you know, there's 2 places I'm not in that do the words, I really don't care. But if you think it's cool and we want to be branded through and through as Family City USA Forum, yeah, I like having the writing on it. And I, and I think you take our— that flag and you compare it to— let's take every flag in the county if they have them, and people would know this is Aurum. They're not going to know this is Aurum, right?

I mean, nobody knows except people look at it.

So this is, to me, is a serious branding of Aurum. Yeah, that's my argument.

No, no, it's a valid argument.

Once you do vote on it, we're behind it 100%. They'll help you do it really right.

So yeah.

So if you like version 1, yeah, then version 4 adds the writing. It's the same thing, right? But then with the writing. That's not your version of one, right?

Yes. It's a little, it's a little higher, the mounts are a little higher, so more grace. But it's essentially writing, same, I guess, to make it feel—

is that because you, how you felt you needed?

Yeah, I needed, I needed padding because if you, if it's too tight, it's going to be even harder to read, right?

But I guess I'm saying there's the size of the writing, which would have the bigger one.

Say it again.

Which would have the bigger worm, 4 or 5?

So my question—

oh, I see what you're saying. 4 or 5? Oh yeah, 4 definitely has the bigger worm for sure.

So if you—

could you go a lower, a smaller font?

I could do a smaller font, but then it becomes harder to read, right?

Well, I guess I'm—

didn't you put a smaller— are these consistent fonts on all of these?

No, based, based on, on where the mountains are, it forces me to adjust The type size, right?

If I could add, okay, I believe our current flag out there has a worm on it right now. So if you want to get a good visual, I'd suggest walking out front. Oh, we got one here too. Checking that flag out. Oh, that's true.

Oh yeah, it's okay, right?

I forgot about that one, but you can see it 30 feet out.

Yeah, there you go.

Keep in mind that if you put the word Family City USA on there, it's ineligible no matter where you are. But people know what it is. It's a slogan, and it's pounding that in, which you own. You own Bountiful USA now. We'd be consistent with our trucks, our flag, our logo. Well, the police department is a special situation.

I'm gonna write that on the way out of here. So the color was, um, it's a dark gray.

It almost becomes black, doesn't it?

We're gonna have to lighten that up.

Oh my gosh, that's gonna be a lot lighter. Yeah, the gray really looks good.

So that makes it almost like your moon up in the sky higher.

Yeah, it does, doesn't it?

Yeah, because that's like this guy has bigger mountains and the moon's up higher.

Yeah, well, that's like number 1, right? Or similar, right? Because it's a little bit lower.

Yeah, 4, because I like—

yeah, because 1 and 4 are the same, right?

Almost. I think number 1 is slightly lower.

It's—

yeah, the mountain's a little bit different.

Yeah, just a little bit. But yeah, so 4 is slightly larger, right? The mountains are. So, and again, if we want to— if you guys want to go down that route, Visually, warm is at the base of the mountain, right? If it's going to help you, if it's going to make your decision easier, right? Rather than up in the sky. But again, I don't know how— how— you know what, it's not that bad actually, now that I look at it. I mean, it turns into like something— you think warm is so heavy?

Heavenly.

Oh, heavenly.

So let's just go with 4 and call it good. I think Jeff was on his head. Um, what we do at this point is, you know, you through Bren, I guess, give us some advice on the direction you want to go, or if you vote on it. Again, we're going to be behind you 100%. This is— they're all very similar.

They're all—

I love them all. Yeah, who doesn't love Warren? Yeah, that's a problem, man. Yeah, so you give us duration and we'll—

I think we should put a timetable on it.

Okay, right.

But I think the council should go carry this around for a week, look at it, think about it, talk amongst yourself, and then come back.

Yeah, should we do a 4.5 and make the amounts a little smaller?

4.5, so you take number 4.

Yeah, I can definitely look at it.

It's sort of a balancing act, right?

Then one would be smaller, right?

And that's, that's what you give up, right, when it comes to design. It's like, we make that lower, I have to adjust other things, which might make it look completely— but again, why don't you guys start your committee, decide if you want to make any additional changes. I don't want to make too many though, because when you get too many designs, it's going to be really hard to decide. So let's try to narrow it down to a few. Right, right.

Yeah, yeah.

You know, we were afraid of putting this in print because now it's out in the open, right?

Yeah, give us a—

give us your—

yeah. So what do you ask? You know, why don't you take a picture of it, put on Facebook?

Yeah, do a little polling. We can talk about it.

You tell agencies.

If you could funnel your comments through Brent. Brent, people contact me directly, I'm gonna put it back to you if that's okay. And when media contacts us, we'll go right through you also.

Council has decided.

Okay, great.

Hey, this is Debbie.

I— someone send me the flag design again.

Can you put these all on one page?

Absolutely.

Oh, I like that idea.

Do you want me to— I can take a picture outside and mock up the size of what it would be from my vantage point, and maybe that may help as well. Yeah, and not necessarily moving towards number 1, but I just want you to see what it might look like with, you know, windstorm or something. So, I'm in the wrong industry, honestly, because Everybody has their own opinion and life experience. Somebody hates the color blue for whatever reason. Her brother stole her jelly beans, like, and now they're triggered by it, right? Like, I can't— I'm not going to win it all, but I wanted a general consensus of the direction we're going.

So this is long-term design.

So yeah, this—

I know you want it done right now, but you want to make a good decision on this one. And the nice thing is that we already have a logo that we love.

I love it.

And we have We're best.

I love that.

We're making the right— this is important. You guys are controlling the future with our title of liberty there.

Goodbye.

Thank you.

Title of liberty.

Hey, thank you. All right, we're moving on to our municipal wastewater planning program.

That was in the middle. Okay, ready, ready.

Mayor and Council, it's, uh, great to be with you today. Today I will be reporting— it's an annual report that the State Division of Water Quality asks that we present to the governing body of any organization that has a wastewater collection system or a wastewater treatment plant, which of course we have. It's called the Municipal Wastewater Program Planning Program. And what this does is it's an annual survey where it asks us as management to go through and answer roughly about 100 questions related to our wastewater system, the collection system, the treatment plant, as well as the financial backing to do the things that we need to do to ensure long-term viability of the assets that we have.

So what this, what this survey does is it evaluates and summarizes the technical, operational, and financial conditions.

And then what that does is it helps us to identify and resolve any potential problem areas that we have, that we see them coming. It's not something that blindsides us. We should, as we consistently do this on an annual basis, we should see issues that might pop up. And in fact, this has brought issues to us, up to us in the past. So I mentioned the survey has a financial evaluation, then there's Questions regarding our collection system or the sewer pipes that take the sewage from our homes to the treatment plant, then the treatment facility itself where we treat the water and discharge it to Utah Lake. The report was provided to you in the packet, so if you want to review all 100+ questions, you're welcome to. To be succinct and to To be respectful to your time, I just chose a handful of questions that I thought would be of most interest to you, to show you that we are— that we're in good shape. You'll recall that we passed the capital— that you adopted the capital facilities plan just about a month ago, and that's part of this as well. So first of all, some of the questions that they ask: are revenues maintained in the dedicated purpose enterprise district account? Yes, we have what we call Fund 52, the water reclamation fund. All of the fees that we collect from our residents go into that fund, and it's used only for water reclamation activities. Are you collecting 95% or more of your anticipated sewer revenue? The answer to that is yes. Are debt service revenue fund requirements being met? Yes, we are fulfilling the debt obligations that we, that we have, that we have. Continuing in operating revenues and reserves, it asks, are property taxes or other assessments applied to the sewer systems? Now, we don't use property taxes, so the answer to that's no. Are sewer revenues sufficient to cover the operation and maintenance costs and repair replacement costs? At this time? Answer to that is yes, we're able to operate and maintain what we have. Are the projected sewer revenues sufficient to cover OM&R costs for the next 5 years? The answer to that is yes. On Part 3, it talks about capital improvements revenues and reserves. So the big question there is, are sewer revenues sufficient to cover all costs of current capital improvement projects? Answer to that is no, right right now.

That's—

we, as you're aware, after adopting the capital facilities plan, you asked staff to, to find a way to fund that, that plan. We are— we will be working with Lewis Young Roberts in Birmingham as soon as the impact fee study has been done and those fees have been adopted, then we will look at what— how do we fund the capital facilities plan.

That's a pretty normal answer. Yeah.

But again, this, this is just a report that as management we go through and we answer these.

But it doesn't create a red flag.

Absolutely, absolutely not. Absolutely not.

The question, quite frankly, isn't that helpful? Because probably 99%, if not 100%, say no. Yeah, of course.

No, no really great information.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Why do you even ask the question?

Part, uh, part 4 of the fiscal sustainability review: have you completed a rate study within the last 5 years? Yes, we updated that in 2021, and we will be updating them again with the capital facilities rate plan that we will be conducting here in the next few months. Do you charge impact fees? Yes, we do. Have you completed an impact fee study in accordance with Utah state law in the last 5 years? We have, and in fact, we're updating Moving on to the collection system. So we're shifting from some of the questions that were asked regarding the financial viability of the wastewater funds to looking at the collection system. What's the total length of sewer pipe? We have just over 300 miles. We have 8 lift stations in our collection system. That's where we have low points in the city where we have to pump the water up over the hill, and then it's Gravity flows to the treatment plant. How many days last year was, was there a sewer sewage bypass overflow, basement flooding in the system due to rain or snowmelt? We had none of those. How many times did we have a sewage bypass flow or over— bypass overflow or basement flooding due to equipment failure? Unfortunately, we had one of those last year. There was an equipment failure at what the— the UPS unit, the uninterruptible power supply failed. And when there was a power failure, the pumps didn't kick on. So there was a backup, which we had some sewage flow out onto the Sleepy Ridge Golf Course.

Okay.

It was—

we were able to address it quickly. Reported it to the state, who took remediation efforts to do it, to get everything cleaned up.

It was fairly straightforward.

It was an unfortunate incident. The good side of things is we always wondered what would happen if that lift station failed, where would it go? Now we know, and it doesn't impact homes. It goes out onto a golf course, which is much easier to remediate.

Just if you're interested in knowing, it's on the south side of Green Number 16. It's never looked greener. I think my dad would call it human.

Now we're going to shift to the treatment facility. The questions here just try to help us as management make sure that the facility itself will be able to meet the needs of our community well into the future. So the first question is looking at the design. What is your facility designed to treat, and what are your current demands on the system? But you can see that we are designed for 13.5 million gallons per day, we're only getting 8. So we're still well within what our design is, meaning we don't need a significant upgrade of the large basins.

We're able to treat those, those things.

The capacity for flow, but the hydraulic capacity is good. BOD5, which is a measurement of the strength of wastewater, we're designed for about 40,000 pounds per day. We're currently treating about 17,000, so we've got lots of room to grow there as well. And the same with TSS, which is total suspended solids, or solids that are coming to the treatment plant, 40,000 there and right around 17,000. How many notices of violations did you receive, meaning We're regulated based on BOD. We can't exceed certain levels. We're regulated on ammonia, regulated on bacteria, specifically E. coli. How many times did we violate last year? Zero. How many times in the past year was there a bypass or overflow at the facility due to high flows?

Was—

did water come spilling out of our treatment areas because we couldn't, we couldn't accommodate the flows coming in? That was 0 as well. When it comes to facility maintenance, have you implemented a written preventative maintenance program for your treatment system? Answer to that is yes. Have you updated the treatment system operations maintenance plan manual within the past 5 years? Answer to that is yes. So again, this presentation, we're just required to give it to the governing body just so that they are informed and confident that we are that we are in good shape when it comes to meeting the requirements to treat wastewater in our system. We, as management, are on top of these things. We have plans to make improvements, and we are pursuing those.

We feel that we're in good shape.

Do you have any questions for me? If not, I know Jake's anxious to get to his presentation.

So it looks like you've got a great capacity and everything's working.

Yeah, we're going good. Thank you. One thing you mentioned in there for last year, that, that was published for last year, 2022. That 8 MGD was the average over 365 days. Right now the plant's pushing about 9.5. And we're up almost a full 1.5 MGDs because of the weather. That's just— that's a snapshot, it's not an average over the course of the year? That is averaging from the first of the year to about now. It's up, it's way up.

We've had a lot of inflow and infiltration in our sewer system this year because of the weather that we've experienced.

Well, I appreciate what you do. I appreciate having these first world conferences just happen.

We like to not be— we like everyone to not know that we're doing our jobs.

That's the way.

Thank you.

This is just to show off because I did follow with it. So it looks like there's 143 new residential sewer connections as well.

Thank you.

I just wanted to talk about that.

Bob, how many new commercial industrial connections I think it was 17.5. Oh, brother. Any quick updates on water reuse project?

Yeah, we had— so the water reuse facility, that's the tertiary treatment that we'll be adding at the end of the treatment, where we'll be treating water so that we can use it to irrigate Sleepy Ridge Golf Course as well as Lakeside Sports Park. It also has a treatment portion of it that can remove phosphorus. You'll recall that this was the project that we thought would cost about $10 million back in 2021, and in 2022 when we got the bids back, the low bid was about $20 million. So, we needed to find $10 million. We were successful in doing so through ARPA funds and Utah Lake grants, things like that. We were able to cover that shortfall. We signed the contract last month and had our pre-construction meeting last week. They expect to start cutting dirt on May 1st, so that project will last about almost 20— almost 2 years.

So what is the net performance going to be?

We budgeted $9 million. And we'll be— part of that is paid for by Vineyard and Linden as well because they have flow that comes to our facility as well. So they're well aware of what their portion would be.

They're having conversations with their city council to make sure that they can pay for their portion.

Is that— you talked about that being Sleepy Ridge and Lakeview Park.

Will that also be residences down there at some point in the future? We've envisioned that in the past, but that's not a part of the scope of this right now. It's expandable and scalable, so if we choose to, if the city chooses to do that, Vineyard has requested to be a part of that discussion as well. So I think they would like to do that to help hedge some of the culinary costs.

There was some legislation that, that was passed during the last legislative session. It was focused on helping the Great Salt Lake, and the original language came out with an outright ban of reuse facilities. And we were ready to turn dirt. We thought, this isn't good. We were able to meet with the representative that was running that bill and got an exception for anything that was under— was currently being designed. So we're good to go. However, expansion in the future may be challenging because we would have to identify additional— we would have to get— we would have to apply for water rights to convert water rights that we owned for reuse.

It's an interesting ban, ban on water conservation.

It's all tied back to the Great Salt Lake.

Right.

And water reuse and aquifer recharge are 2 major components of water resource management that the legislature right now is— perhaps some of them are looking down on those because it would have less water that would flow back to the lake. It's risen 4 feet this year, and it's going to continue to rise a little bit more through the runoff.

Right.

But there is a niche, a little component, a little carve-out about, I would say, in the bill that also says that federal waters can be used in the future. We are under contract with Central Utah Project, or Central Utah Water Conservancy District, for 7,520 acre-feet annually, which is about 25% of our annual consumption in the city. They have approached us and said, we're interested in teaming with you and scaling and, and making this a larger project and a bigger win for the community. and also for Utah County, the region altogether. So in summary, we'd like to just say that you can flush with confidence.

So thank you.

Hey Jake, left you plenty of time.

So I do have one. I had someone reach out to me that said, what's ARM doing about flooding? Because they were saying other cities are, you know, you can go to this location for your sandbags, you can do this, and I know we've got— and I've seen some of the things you're putting out, Chris, but do we have— you know, we've got the Berkshires down on Carterville, which their groundwater is fairly high anyway. We've got all the southwest part of Orem. So are there things that— what do I tell people?

Well, so you've mentioned Berkshires. I don't believe there's any concern for any overland flow of flooding from the riverbanks itself. However, they have high groundwater, so that's a groundwater issue, and it's not the same as flooding from runoff. So it's 2 different issues. We do have other experiences, like isolated incidences on the west side by 2000 South and Geneva Road, where we have some homes that have some flooding issues that have occurred recently.

You brought that to our attention.

meeting with them as well.

Is that groundwater also?

It's groundwater. Yeah, it's not— so regarding snowmelt, I think we're, we're not in the clear. Of course, if it— if the temperatures are 80 degrees for the next 40 days or 30 days, we're probably going to have some challenges. We do know of 2 areas where we may have challenges. Those are along 2000 North and Skyline Drive or Dry Canyon Road. I've shared that report with you. Where we have Jersey barriers up there today that are staged up there, we're coordinating our efforts with Juan Garrido, who is the Public Works Director at Linden City, to put those out, deploy those in the event there's a sudden increase in temperatures that stay for an extended period of time. We're hoping that you have an increase in temperature and a cooling, increase in the cooling. So it'll gradually come off over an extended period. Along the river itself, it's regulated by Central Utah Water and by Provo River Waters Association. I'm not concerned about that. We're in a very good position. We're on a bench for 90% of our community. A lot of communities are in a hole. Those communities that are in a hole, you have concerns.

So will you say what you said at the snow removal appreciation luncheon? where you talked about the rivers, and just so anybody watching can hear, how close should you get to the river?

I would say don't go, don't go near the river. There was a report on the news the other day that suggests, you know, you know, stay at least 15 or 20 feet away. What I'm saying is don't even go near it. Stay away with your kids and so forth. In 19— excuse me, 2017, a 3-year-old girl was with her mother and others at a picnic Along the river when it was flowing at about half capacity, which is like 1,000 CFS.

The child went in too close to the river and got drawn in.

The mother dove in after her, then a man, a bystander, innocent bystander, dove in after the two of them, and then their bodies were removed 3 miles downstream. So what we're suggesting is stay away from the rivers with your families and children. You can keep, keep a distance, a clear, safe distance away.

Go to our parks.

Yeah, I know I keep asking questions, but the Deer Creek situation— yes, if Jordan L is carrying— they're going to hold back a lot of water because we're trying to go to Deer Creek. Is that a problem, or is that— I mean, that was all planned before you had this storm?

Yeah, the intake project.

Yeah, Deer Creek intake project is going to— they're going to start construction on that this spring. The thought was, if possible, they could hold back some water in Yeah, or drop the waters down, the levels down in Deer Creek. However, it's going to fill this year. Jordanelle is going to fill this year. Utah Lake will almost be full this year. So all 3 bodies in our area are going to be full.

When are they going to do the project? Yeah, when are they going to do the project?

Oh, it's going to be—

They were draining Deer Creek to do the project.

No, construction will be in the way. Meaning it's all going to be underwater via scuba and construction underneath. Yes, there were 4 bidders on that project. 3 of them said drain Deer Creek. We knew that Lynnae was going to be mad, so we said no.

I remember when they did that last time.

Yeah, and then there was only one that said we can do this in the wet. We said, you got it. And so they got the bid on it, and so it's going to stay up. It's going to fill the way this year, and so is Jordan L. Jordan L's down 40 feet, Deer Creek's down 20 or about 20 feet. Yeah, there's a lot, a lot of water in the ponds.

Okay, so we just need to—

yeah.

I'm not objecting to reducing my time.

Reduce it just a bit.

Not a problem.

7 minutes.

I was asked to present on some developments that have come to our attention in the Attorney's Office. Before I get to what the developments are, I want to give a little bit of context. In 2021, there were over 100,000 overdose deaths in the United States. One American dies every 5 minutes from an overdose. Unfortunately, Utah is not immune to this same public health issue. Since 1999, Utah has—

Is that all overdoses or is that just opioids?

That's all overdoses, but the vast majority of them are opioids. Since 1999, Utah's seen an increase in the number of lives lost to drug-related overdoses. And as Mayor, you just pointed out, the leading source are prescription opioids.

In recent years, Utah has been as high as number 4 in the nation for overdose deaths.

In 2017, the Utah State Legislature started implementing new laws, bills.

Per capita.

Per capita, yes.

They started taking on new programs, new bills, to try to react or respond to this. Since then, we've now dropped to 38th in the nation per capita. As part of a response to that crisis, Utah State Attorney General's Office joined other Attorney General's Offices throughout the United States in suing manufacturers of opioids and distributors, as well as pharmaceutical chains. In 2021, there were a series of nationwide settlements of which Orem joined and participated in.

Those settlements were with major pharmaceutical distributors as well as Johnson& Johnson as a manufacturer.

Utah is standing to receive about $309 million over the next 18 years as part of that settlement. When Utah entered into that settlement, the state and participating counties entered into a memorandum of understanding to distribute the money. It is a 50/50 relationship where 50% of the $309 million goes to the state, and the other half goes to the counties for allocation for grant programs, expansion of treatment programs, programs, and other related programs to help mitigate and respond to the opioid crisis. So, in a broad sense, the funds are used to address needs of the criminal justice— of individuals involved in the criminal justice system, prevention of overprescribing, misuse of opioids, and also to assist first responders with training as well as providing Naloxone and other opioid mitigating agents. So those were not the only lawsuits that were filed. Currently, Utah State has entered into a settlement with many other states with Teva, Allergan, CVS, Walmart, and Walgreens. Teva and Allergan are manufacturers.

and distributors of opioids, whereas CVS, Walmart, and Walgreens are pharmaceutical chains that have prescribed opioids.

That settlement, as it stands right now, Utah stands to receive approximately $210 million. The overall settlement is for $18.6 billion to be paid to States over the next 15 years. The allocation of funds is based on population, where Utah has about 1% of the population of those involved in the lawsuit.

Utah's standing to receive 1.18% of the total settlement amount, or $210 million.

The amount Utah receives, though, is dependent on participation of all 29 counties And municipalities with populations greater than 30,000 people.

The city of Orem's population is critical to maximizing the total amount that Utah will receive as part of this settlement.

So similar to the 2021 settlements, the settlement funds are split 50/50. The state will receive 50%, counties will receive 50%. So Utah County stands to receive approximately $16 million over the next 15 years. The allocation and the use of the settlement funds are to be used for treatment, education, prevention, and similar programming. As such, the City of Orem stands to receive benefits both directly through potential funding of grant programs, resource and training funding, indirect benefits from increased, expanded, and improved programming aimed at preventing, mitigating, and responding to opioid crisis. As we have evaluated the settlements that have been presented, the global nationwide settlements, we have communicated with Utah Attorney General's Office. We've reviewed those documents. We've had communication with them to find out what other cities are participating. As it currently stands, those that have either already entered into a participation agreement or have verbally committed to entering into a participation agreement include Salt Lake City, West Valley City, Provo, South Jordan, Lehi, Murray, Draper, Spanish Fork, Pleasant Grove, Tooele, Saratoga Springs, as well as many other cities throughout the state and our county. So the timeline for this is we have to submit our paperwork to opt in or participate in the settlement by the 18th of this month. Once the participation deadline passes, the defendants have until May 18th to decide whether or not to proceed with the settlement. If so, then the settlement becomes effective in June, and payments will then begin to be disbursed in June, July, and August for their respective defendants. So our belief in reviewing the global settlement as well as the MOU and the documents provided from the Attorney General's office is it is in the best interest of the city to opt in and submit our participation agreement paperwork. As we prepare to move forward and execute the participation agreement to join the nationwide settlement, we wanted to include the city council and mayor in voicing any concerns or have any questions regarding these settlements.

So what— how does that work? So we accept the money, what do we have to do?

So what we do is there are a series of 5 different settlement participation agreements that we will fill out. We would have probably Bren as, as the executive official. Sign the paperwork through DocuSign. Once it's submitted, it goes to the Attorney General's office. They collect all of the participation agreements and they submit them and they follow through.

They're actually one of the enforcing agencies in the agreement.

So that's the extent of our participation.

I guess my question is, is, okay, so we do that, now we get a check for whatever we get a check for. What do we have to do to qualify for that?

So Orem City is actually not going to receive a direct check from Walgreens, CVS as part of this settlement. The money hits the state of Utah.

Utah then will divvy the money out 50/50 to the counties based on a per capita basis.

So they keep 50% of the funds, the county receives 50%.

Each—

both the state and the county are developing programs and allocation and funding mechanisms.

So as those come online, if we want to participate or receive funding, then we would apply or reach out to the county or the state for that funding.

Okay, so they would put together programs?

Yes.

And we would decide if we wanted to participate in that program, but we would have to do something to receive money, which would be participating in those programs.

So we would want to be actively engaged in what programs, what grant opportunities there are for the city to engage in, but it is the state and the county that will be administrating the funds.

Okay, so there's no harm in us signing up?

Correct.

Then ultimately, I mean, we don't know now, so we'll see whatever these programs are. Correct. At that point, we go down that path. We didn't go down that path, we probably get excluded from the program, right?

That's correct.

Okay, so any, any other thoughts, questions?

Do we—

does it is there a certain percentage of the resident population from each of the municipalities that they're required to serve? Or does the money just go to whoever applies first?

So this is all in the development stages, both in the state as well as the county. So the settlement paperwork doesn't have any— they have limitations as to what the money can be spent on.

And then it's up to the states to develop their own programs on how to allocate or administer the funding.

So no guidelines?

Correct.

So we're just basically saying, yeah, we'll sign up and see where it goes, just to at least have the opportunity.

Right, always keep your options open.

Correct. But I mean, in Utah County, if other cities don't sign up, we might get bigger pieces of the pie.

Yeah, so, so again, to maximize the amount of money that the state will receive, we want to sign off. And then once the money is actually allocated to both the state and the county, we want to watch for those programs, those opportunities.

And if other cities don't participate at that point, we could receive a larger funding.

Anybody have a question or opposed to signing up? That seems like no-brainers.

Okay, okay, thank you.

Well, thank you. All right.

Go ahead and do the rest of our agenda real quick.

Are you not on the table? Oh, Council, you can scan me again, that's fine. We also have a light regular session, so we could, we could have Dave give a brief update, you know, as part of the city manager information. That's my—

whatever.

Just do it now.

What do you have? Okay, do it.

Okay, so I am the liaison with the Beautification Commission, and they just finished up doing the Christmas, you know, signs for the houses, and they're working on the Summerfest parade.

Recreation—

Lakeside Park is a big one.

That we're doing.

And, um, also the, uh, the swimming pool, the new leisure indoor and outdoor— indoor-outdoor thing is open now, right? Indoor is open now, uh, open for spring break.

That's good.

That was way ahead of schedule, so that was good. Um, also the seniors— I'm over the seniors and they had their Grammys, uh, a couple weeks ago. So very fun activity, and Gina does a great job, and she'll be honored tonight with an award. So Public Safety, I think we're trying to restart that engine and get that moving. And then Care Commission, Jeff Lance and I serve on that, and we're starting up in a few weeks to listen to the mini and the mid grants. So that's it. Awesome.

Thank you.

You didn't get skipped.

I could be offended.

I didn't want to offend you. That's why.

Okay.

Um, moving forward, we're just going through this. It's a very, very light council meeting. It might be our lightest one ever. We had a really light one a few weeks ago, but I think this is even less.

It's good.

So number 3, 3, call— excuse me, call to order. Uh, invocation, Jordan Mielstein.

Jordan and Crystal are the ones fighting to keep Windsor Elementary open right now.

Okay, awesome.

Advocating.

Jordan, Crystal, Mielstein. Um, maybe report 6.1. Utah Parks and Recreation Association Award recognition for Tina Burleson.

So am I leading that or someone else? We've got a presenter from the URPA, the Utah Recreation Parks Association, to be here.

Is that Bronco Hunter?

Yeah, that's another award for Jason Cordner from Public Works.

And Bryce, are you— and do you know if you and Chris are part of that presentation as well? I believe Bronco is handling all of the presentations.

So should I just invite Bronco to the public presentation?

Yes. Okay.

All right, uh, personal appearances, 15 minutes. And 8 consent items.

Yes, consent items. I know that Rodney Gardner is here.

So although we'll just consent and I won't make a motion other than to approve all the consent items, perhaps you could recognize him and then see if Alex Rex—

Alan Rex and Deborah—

yeah, from the—

some of them are here.

Yeah, perhaps we could just have them stand, but they can be part of the set items. That's okay.

Yeah, that's good.

But Mr. Gardner arrived in a vintage old car.

I could show you the picture.

I said it was not— oh, okay, good.

And he was the person who was really wanting to be on that commission?

Yes.

And yeah, he's a Warm High alumni, probably when you graduated, Terry, 1963.

So, you know, he said, Terry, I would respond to his report himself.

So should we let Rodney—

Just understand, that's all. I'm just thinking where he's pretty enthusiastic about, you might want to say why he wanted to get hired.

Okay, um, can we move on to 9, scheduled items, public hearings? He will receive public comment on the CDBG Projection of use of funds for fiscal year '23-'24.

Are we going to make Ken an honorary member of city council for this 103rd presentation?

I'm kidding. Um, and then communication items, that's just review only. And then you have some things you want to say, Brett?

I was just going to point out a few events coming up. Tour of the Valley is tomorrow evening at 7. Then on Friday, we kind of get a taste of what we'll be a part of, um, hopefully later this, this year. Uh, you should have all received an invitation to go and see what the temple tour, the VIP temple tour, is like in Saratoga, which Ben will be a part of here in the morning.

This year.

So that, that is the— right, I signed up for mine on Thursday. Tess set aside time, I think, for everyone. I never got it. But I signed up for it.

What time is that?

Friday afternoon.

There were a couple of times.

Yeah, I'm doing a different one.

Uh, 3:30.

Is everyone just showing up there?

Yeah, I never got a count of everybody, so I signed— I think I told Tess I signed up because I got an invitation.

But we're just meeting over there.

Yes.

Yep.

As of now, yes.

So, um, Bryn, I, I will be at Pillars, but that's also the Planning Commission meeting at 5, and I will stay for that.

So, so I'll be late for Pillars. We'll make sure and save a seat.

Yeah, thank you.

Uh, and then last things, of course, we've got, uh, the league, the 16 Towns Mid-Year Conference. Next week, starting on Wednesday next week.

So we'll be— where are we working some of that hotel stuff?

That's actually all I have. So it looks like I'll leave before our meeting, so we might just finish even earlier.

Okay, it's up to you, Mayor. Let's see what you can do.

Okay, let's adjourn this meeting and go to another one.

So, Carrie, I asked this question. I really messed up on these. You know what, they do that. I thought it was me and whatever, but I misread it.

understood, which is probably both. So, but I won't have to say, can I start it 6 months before? No, that's a federal rule.

Okay.

Yes.

Okay.

All right. So unfortunately, but you can still do the HSA.

Yeah, I'm doing the HSA.

That's what there's only— yeah. Okay.

I didn't know.

Yeah, unfortunately, those are the 2 things that Debbie, can you hear us?

Debbie Lurie?

Yes, Peter, I can hear you. Oh man, can you hear me?

Am I coming through to you?

Yeah, I can, I can hear you on the computer.

Okay, thanks.

Will you just make sure I get to vote on the items that I need to vote on?

Yeah, you got it.

I'll get it through.

I'd like to open this meeting and welcome you here tonight. It looks like we've got a relatively short agenda, probably our shortest one ever. And so we're taking wagers on how much time it's going to take, and there's an over and under. If you'd like to place your bet up at the Publix. Just kidding. All right, um, we'll call this meeting to order, and we'd like to have Crystal— or Jordan Mielstein come up and give the invocation, followed by the pledge by Crystal Mielstein.

Our Father in heaven, we are grateful to be here to participate in the democratic process and to discuss the needs of our city and its residents.

We're grateful for the blessings that we have.

We're grateful for the beautiful weather we've enjoyed this week and for the plentiful snow that we've received. We ask a blessing on us and our neighboring communities as the snow begins to melt, that there will be safety, that the actions to protect homes and businesses and property from floodwaters will be effective, and that volunteers will be effective and efficient in their service to help those around them. We ask that you also bless us as we Seek to make decisions and actions as a city and in our personal lives that will improve the lives of those around us. And we say this in the name of Jesus Christ.

Amen.

Thank you. Crystal, if you'd like to come lead us, and if the audience would like to rise.

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

Thank you. We'd like to have a presentation, uh, item 6.1, on the Utah Recreation and Parks Association award recognition. And to take care of that, I'd like to invite Bronco Hunter to come up and make those awards.

Mayor, council, thank you for letting me steal a few moments of your meeting tonight. I hope that whether you bet on the over or the under, I can help you get to the destination you desire here. Uh, my name is Bronco Hunter. I am a past president for the Utah Recreation and Parks Association, and, uh, one of my favorite parts of my responsibility is to go around the state and to highlight amazing individuals and amazing programs and amazing departments. And it's awesome because I get to steal all the good ideas and take them back and implement them in my own community. So it's my pleasure to be here tonight. The first person I'd like to recognize— can I invite Gina to come up with me really quick here? I've known Gina for a few years now. We've actually both served on the board of directors together. She's serving currently. I'm retiring. This is my last night. One thing about her is she put senior citizens or active agers on the map. Everybody across the state of Utah, when you go to our conference, it's, it's been primarily focused on, on recreation and aquatics. She has put seniors on the map, and our— we've had, we had the highest attendance, uh, at our conference this year with Active Aging representatives than we've ever had. It's because of her, and, and she's amazing. So I'm here to highlight one of her programs that she was recognized for tonight, uh, Brilliant University. Over the past 5 years, the Warm Friendship Center has offered Brilliant University, a continuing education program for 2 semesters each fall and spring, offering at least 1 dozen new classes to try.

Wow.

Patrons are able to pick and choose according to their interests. Some of the most popular classes have been What's Your Sign, all about astrology, and You, uh, ukulele group, Be Smarter Than Your iPhone or your phone, and Hobby Haven, where your patrons learn to care for backyard chickens, and many for the first time held a live chicken.

I mean, we've all had the rod that meets chickens, right?

This was a live version.

Which is, which is pretty cool. I mean, this isn't a kids program. This is a—

this is an active aging.

So the first time they held a chicken in their life, that's pretty impressive. Our teachers have been volunteers from the community, senior center, senior services partners, and some of our very own seniors. Our center had been hosting ElderQuest, a program through UVU that promoted continued education for our seniors. And I'll let you know that Spanish Fork City, we've cheated and copied her and are implementing that in our program. They found a new place to call home.

That opened up a lot of programming space that Brilliant Universities have—

has created. Having them teach new life skills to our patrons, whether it is in line with their business or not, helps our patrons in so many ways, including forming good relationships with our partners. So when they do need services, they know who they can count on. Whether one of our patrons, a volunteer from the community, or a senior service partner, we have been able to offer these quality classes at literal no cost to our patrons. And we all know that serving that population, they need friendship, they need support, they need guidance. She's the best professional in the state at doing that. You guys have her here in Orem, and so it's my pleasure to award her for Outstanding Program for Brilliant University in the State of Utah.

Thank you, Gina.

Appreciate you.

All right.

All right, Jason. It's a long walk up here. That's all right, they took me over. So this is another part of the profession that I love highlighting. I feel like our parks professionals probably have the most thankless job when it comes to leisure services. They make everything look good and us programmers go down there and take all the credit. It's not fair, but our parks professionals do a lot with a little. I know collectively across the state of Utah, many departments are analyzing the how many acres each professional should take care of or have in their stewardship. And collectively across the state, I know, I'm sure that's the case here in Orem, that they're doing a lot with a little, and our parks professionals are very behind the scenes. It's oftentimes a thankless job, and I am excited to be here and recognize— is it over 30 years of service?

30, yeah.

30 on the dot. 30 years of service, and I'd like to congratulate Jason Kortner for his dedication to the field. He's one that All of his colleagues who I've rubbed shoulders with quite a bit just rant and rave about how he's willing to always go the extra mile. And I think after 30 years, that's pretty impressive. Never saying that's not my job, willing to pitch in and help. And those are the kind of professionals that we need across the board in, in our leisure services and on our responsibilities. And I wish we had about a million Jasons in the state of Utah, and I appreciate his services. So it's my pleasure to—

Thank you.

Award him with Outstanding Parks Professional in the State of Utah. Congratulations, Jason.

To embarrass Gina and Jason and ask you to come up and get a picture with the mayor and council. Lost 2 of them in front.

You got the fish off?

Yeah, everyone's looking good.

All right, here we go.

1, 2, 3. Very nice. Good.

So, so, Mayor, I'd like to make a statement about Gina. She's, um, they're doing their own cooking now at the senior center, and Fleetbird is flocking, and it's $5 off for a meal. So if anybody wants to get lunch, you go to the senior center and pay $5, and it's a really good meal. So we appreciate you, Gina, for all you do.

Thank you and congratulations for those awards.

Those are awesome.

Next we have something we've never had before, uh, personal appearances, and nobody signed up. We've gone from like 60 people signing up to zero. So yes, that's a first. Uh, we'll move on to item number 8, the consent items. Under the consent items, we've got the approval of meeting minutes. We've got the reappointment to the Rec Advisory Commission, and that's Alan Rex and Deborah Schumann. Are they here?

Okay.

And then we've got, uh, 8.3 consent items. an appointment for the Heritage Advisory Commission. That's Rodney Gardner. Are you here, Rodney?

Yes.

Rodney, would you like to just come up and just quickly— I'm just curious, uh, because I know you were very enthusiastic about the Heritage Commission. I'd just like to hear a little bit about you and, and what your, uh, your enthusiasm is there.

Ever since I was a youth, I read political books. I've been very much interested in politics and in protecting our Constitution. I served 3 years active duty in the Training Administrative Reserve Program, training naval airmen. And I loved serving my country. I graduated from Orm High School. I was on the Orm High School track team the year that they took state. However, I was working and I didn't get to go, but I was there with David Hoffman and Bob Ashton and all those great heroes that took state and football, track, and I think they took in basketball for 2 years, or at least placed. So we have a great heritage. I left Utah to serve in the military. Then I served as an insurance agent in Florida to earn money to go back to school. I didn't know we had grants that would have helped me. And I'm the youngest of 7 children, the first one to graduate from the university, Brigham Young University. I have taught business classes to students, and if any of you have a chance to go online and to look up a short book called The Law by Frederick Bassett, He talks about our great nation. I would encourage you all to read it. I required every one of my business students to read it. The reason I didn't retire until I was almost 75, because I was afraid no one would carry my tradition on. I became a principal. No one in Utah would hire me as an assistant principal, so I applied in Wisconsin as a principal and they hired me. I love my students and they love me. I was sent to the toughest school, assigned there, that a friend of mine told me was the toughest school in the state. I said, don't worry about it. I read the board policy and I saw a policy in there that students should not swear. The second time they would get a citation. So I enforced that policy. No one broke any of the bigger rules. They were afraid that I might be really tough on some of the bigger rules. I believe that as long as we enforce the rules, then we don't have to worry about the big ones. I had, I had a hard time getting substitute teachers. I said to a former principal, please substitute. If you don't like it, don't come back. He says, oh, I, I just don't want to substitute at your school. However, after 3 months, he told me my school was the only school he would substitute at. And I think that's because I let the students know that rules will be enforced. consequences will follow. But I still love them. And I want to help. Now that I have retired from education, I moved back to Utah because my daughters didn't— couldn't find anyone to marry in Wisconsin. And taught school in the Tooele School District. And when my son was transferred to be the chief medical officer at Dugway. I transferred to Dugway. I retired from Dugway almost 3 years ago now and decided that I would serve on the American Legion, especially since my neighbor was Ellen Anderson, who had served with Pete Workman for many years. So after serving in American Legion for almost a year, My comrades elected me to be their commander, which is a great honor. Since that time, our Legion has grown. We have become involved in Be the One. We have became more involved in visiting schools and providing scholarships, and not, not just the funerals that we attend. attend, which is a great honor to honor these military people. So, with that, is there any questions?

I don't— oh, I don't think so, but thank you. Well, thank you. Thank you, Rodney. I think you'll be a great asset to the Heritage Advisory Commission. We look forward Good things to happen. Let's move on to item number 9.

Do we have to approve the consent items?

Oh, sorry, Mr. Mayor.

I approve—

I move that we approve the consent items.

Second.

Aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Thank you.

Thank you for reminding me on that. Okay, let's move on to the Scheduled items. We have item 9.1, a public hearing. The city will receive public comment on the Community Development Block Grant projected use of funds for fiscal year 2023 and 2024. And we have someone who's never been here before, Ken Ransom and Keena, presenting to us.

Thank you, Mayor and Council. It's fun to be here again, so I look forward to it. Hopefully we don't take too much of your time. Representing the Advisory Commission for the, the Orem Community Development Block Grant Citizen Advisory Commission, so want to recognize our other, our other members on our commission: Ashley Gill, Eileen Black, Joey Elisa, Janet Alvarez, and Stephen Heaps, and Tanya Harmon, and Thank Councilmember Millett for her help with this year on the, on our commission. So thank you to all those who helped us. So our funding this year is total, total $710,247.37. That includes the rollover funding that you see and the funding for the current federal fiscal year that we received from HUD. And so, before we get to the actual recommendations that we have for you, we'd like to just go over a couple things that we use to guide us through this process. So the first is the priorities of Orem, Provo, Utah County, the service agencies, and there was a citizen survey that was done. And so those are the priorities that we tried to, try to use in our recommendations. So Orem's— just a reminder, Orem's priorities that we were, that we were following were housing, services to special need populations, and public infrastructure.

So the—

so our first recommendation for you is the Orem Police Department's Victim Services. We recommend $30,000 on that. That program benefits victims of domestic violence who— there's— that pays the salary of an advocate who helps them through that process of getting the services they need following, following those tragic events in their lives. The second recommendation we have for you is the Orem Police Department's Homeless Service Fund. That fund the police department can use for things like gift cards to help people transition and be able to move forward in their lives. And that can be— that's a valuable resource for the police department. So we recommend the funding amount that you see there. Our next, our next recommendations are the joint recommendations. Orem's partnering with Provo and Utah County to pool our funds to be able to limit the amount of paperwork they have to do, the number of agencies that these organizations have to answer to. So Hopefully, to streamline this process, we're partnering with those agencies and OREM. Our recommendations for OREM is to fund these next 4 with Community Health Connect. They provide— covers administrative costs for them to connect people who need medical services with providers who are willing to provide those medical services, usually free. So that's an important, we feel, service to our community, and we recommend that that be funded in the amount that we recommended there. And Kids on the Move, we— that this funding will go to paying, helping with a cook to provide food for the children that participate in their Early Head Start program. So we recommend that funding amount that you see. And the next is Rocky Mountain University. This program is— we recommend it because most of the services provided are provided by volunteers. They do a great job of of leverage— leveraging volunteers to help provide the services that the organization provides. And then our final joint recommendation is the Family Haven, used to be known as Utah Valley Family Support. They provide counseling services for children who are the victim of abuse. They're here in Orem and West Orem, and we think they provide important service to our community. We recommend that they be funded with the amount that you see there. So those were our public services recommendations. Our non-public services recommendations include City of Orem CDBG funding to administer the program. You can see our recommendation there. And City of Orem Section 108, we recommend that we have to pay that loan payment since Orem agreed to— it's paying back a bond that Orem agreed to pay years ago, so we need to continue that payment, so we recommend that. And the Orem Code Enforcement. This provides for a full-time civilian officer to help with neighborhood preservation. They've heard a presentation from them. They look to work with neighborhoods to help deal with issues, help make improvements, and help people who are struggling to, to meet code-specific codes with their property. And the next, you can see our recommendation there. The next is the City of Orem's Critical Home Repair and Home Rehabilitation Program. That's a fund for citizens to access to make improvements to their property. It has a maximum loan of $15,000, and we recommend that that be funded in the amount listed. And the next is City of Orem Neighborhood Preservation. This program is— and staff costs for community development events and activities in the target neighborhoods in Orem. We feel like that's an important, important program for our city. And the City of Orem requested funds for improving park signage in our parks. So we recommend that be funded at the amount listed. And then finally, Mountain Country Home Solutions requested funding to help them with their infrastructure costs to develop senior housing, a fourplex in Orem. So that'll help them get closer to their goal of getting started on that project.

Before you leave that slide, if I may, Mayor, if you go back one slide, please.

I noticed that one of them— first of all, I assume you get a lot of interest from more than we're able to fund, much like the CARE tax, and you go through a process to allocate this. Is this done by the whole committee whose names you showed us earlier, Ken?

For the City of Orem-specific ones, yes. And then The Orem Provo and Utah County. A couple of us represented Orem on that committee to make recommendations for that joint shared funding. So it was a kind of a 2-part process.

Then a follow-up question. I noticed you said on some of these you'll provide grants or loans. If they're loans and they're paid back, then they're reallocated in the future as, as additional funds to various programs.

Yeah, so basically they go back into the revolving loan fund to provide more grants and loans for people that need repairs to their homes.

Thank you.

So go ahead.

I just have a question on Section 108. What— tell me about the car dealerships. I don't, I don't understand what that is.

Yeah, so in the '90s, correct me if I'm wrong, Orem took out a loan to help car dealerships in South Orem on University Parkway. And so Orem is paying back those funds. It was refinanced a couple years ago during COVID got a lower interest rate, made those payments more affordable. And there's 2 or 3— kind of correct me if I'm wrong— 2 or 3 years left on that.

Yeah, so what they did is back, I think it was in '94, they took out a loan. It was called a Section 108 loan. It's for economic development to help the car dealerships along University Parkway, improve their, you know, improve the car dealerships and also provide jobs to low-income people. And they made all of their goals. So part of what we had said is if they make their goals, their tax goals and their employment goals, then the city would use their CDBG money to pay that off. So we're getting really close. I think we're done in 2025. So that money that's been—

2025.

Yeah, 2025, sorry. I've lost 20 years on me here. But they will pay that, will pay that back, and then that money will be available for other things in CDBG.

So has that been being paid at that rate for that entire time?

Or— Yeah, it just depends on the year. And, you know, so we've had different payments along the time, but we were able to refinance it to a lower interest rate a few years ago, which helped. with the payment as well.

And you figure you got 2 or 3 years left on that?

2025, I believe.

Okay. How about the— this critical home repair and home rehab, $100,000? Do most people take grants or loans? And do you use up all that money usually? Or is there a surplus left over?

How's that work?

Yeah, we usually use all the money. It depends on their income and their property value on their property. So if they're very, very low income, they can get up to a $7,500 grant. If they're moderately income, it's about a $5,000 grant, and then anyone a little bit over that gets up to a $15,000 loan. So it's a total of $15,000. The loan is what we call the 0%, so they can either pay for 10 years on the loan and pay it back at 0%, or it's deferred. So it just goes on their home as a first or second mortgage depending on their mortgage situation. And then it's paid off when the home is sold or it's changed ownership.

So, and are those all loans all to the actual homeowner that lives in the property?

Yes. So they're all homeowner-owned properties. We don't give loans to any landlords.

Okay. It'd be interesting in the future to take a further look into that particular program as far as maybe expanding it? Because we've been talking a lot in city council about rehabbing older areas of town that need to be upgraded and helped, and it seemed like these kind of funds can be pretty, pretty useful for that.

Yeah, we do help a lot of people that— they do have to be low to moderate income and homeowners, so it does limit who we can help. But a lot of the people are in the older neighborhoods. We help a lot of seniors with this program because it's really critical home repairs. We do what we call a lot of roofs and ramps. But, you know, we do a lot of roofs.

Perfect.

I have a quick question on the Mountain Country Homes.

Can you tell us a little bit about that program?

And also, do they have property purchased that they're ready to move ahead? Or is this kind of a preliminary stage?

So they, they used to be Neighborhood Housing Services of Provo, and then the NeighborWorks of Provo. They have now expanded statewide, so they've changed their name to Mountain Country Homes. Eric is actually here, and he'll probably be discussing when he comes up for comment. And we actually gave them money to help buy the property. And so they just, because of COVID and because of the rising costs, they just haven't been able to get it to pencil to keep the rent affordable. So we're trying to keep it at the Provo housing rate or the housing rate. And so we're trying to help them so that they can keep that. units to be penciled. So once they get the infrastructure in, they should have enough money to continue the project and get it finished.

So I would just like to encourage anyone to go watch the recording of our CDBG meeting because I was very impressed by the presentation done by Mountain Country Home Solutions. They really provide a great solution. Appreciate your doing that in our community.

Thanks.

Did you have more?

I did just want to add, Councilmember McDonald mentioned earlier, we do— the asks are well over twice as what the funding that's available. And so we try to, try to do what's— what would help the community the most, and realizing that we— if there was more money, there would be more that could be done for all these programs. Just wanted to add that. And I also want to thank Kenna for being a great resource to our commission. She's extremely helpful and we appreciate her. So thank you, Kenna.

Thank you. And I appreciate Ken for all he does. You know, he's been here— I think now this is his 23rd time in the last 2 or 3 years. So it's quite a few times to appear in front of the city council for us.

So thank you, Ken.

Do we have any other questions from the council? Let's go ahead and open this up for Public comment, if there's anyone that would like to make a comment.

Thank you. My name is Eric Jorgensen. I'm the operations manager for Mountain Country Home Solutions, and I would just like to take this opportunity to thank the council for their consideration. We have been trying to get this project off the ground for We were very close to getting it done right when COVID hit, and unfortunately that put the door costs just above what we had in our pro forma and our budget. We have since that time secured additional funding. We are going to be applying with the Federal Home Loan Bank of Des Moines for some grant funds to supplement this project. And that's why we're serving seniors that are 80% and under AMI. So a lot of these individuals are on fixed incomes of Social Security that are under $1,000 a month. They're trying to figure out how to pay their rent or their prescriptions or their food costs. And so what we are doing, we feel, is very important to the city of Orem and the surrounding communities to ease the burden on the other public services. And this is our first project in Orem. We have several scattered site rental units throughout the county, but this will be our first project here in Orem, and we're very excited to, to hopefully get it off the ground this year and complete it. Do any of you have any questions Thank you.

Good evening. My name is Janelle Christiansen. I'm the executive director of Family Haven, formerly Family Support and Treatment Center that was mentioned. And I also want to thank the council for the consideration that you have this evening of these funding recommendations. And our mission at Family Haven is prevention and treatment of child abuse and family trauma. And we really just wrap around the whole family to support them in any way we can. But especially in these treatment plans for kids who have experienced abuse, we are, we are the best at it. Our facility has these playrooms that are perfectly equipped for kids to be able to process this trauma in a way that helps them find hope and healing at a young age. Research indicates that if you wait to process and to go to therapy for these types of things, it can take, you know, upwards of years for people to be able to find recovery. And with kids, they see an average of less than 16 sessions. And so with these types of funds, we are able to intervene in lives of children who have experienced some of the worst things you can imagine at a very early age and try to provide some of that resilience and set them on a totally different trajectory for the rest of their lives. So this funding makes a difference to so many families in our community, and I just appreciate your consideration, the past support we've had from this program, and hope to continue working together in the future.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Do we have anyone else who would like to make a comment? Okay, we'll go ahead and close the public comment. And would someone like to—

we're going to make—

Yeah, Mayor, this is just a public hearing. We have to have 2, so we're just presenting now and you guys will vote in May.

Okay. All right.

Sounds good. Well, thank you for coming and sharing all that with us.

We appreciate it.

All right, we are to item number 11.

What's that?

But that's just for review only, right? The monthly financial summary, that's just for you only, just for review.

It's in your packet, right?

If there—

if you ever do have any questions about it, we can of course get with Brandon Nelson and provide any answers.

Okay.

And then finally, item 11. Brent, if you'd like to share anything with us.

Nothing else other than just a public thank you for attending, I guess, the first of 3 appreciation lunches with our snowplowing crews. As you know, they've been extra busy this year and they have certainly loved being with you. So look forward to, I guess, future opportunities here in the near future.

So thank you.

Thank you.

Yeah, thanks for setting that up. That was actually really enjoyable to get to know them and to see the good work they do.

And it was pretty amazing, actually, as far as the amount of salt and the different processes and everything that's involved to keep for them going in the wintertime. And we talked— and we did talk a bit about everything they were doing, and how now, through the winter, we've got a pothole situation that is an act of God. And so it had— these same guys are going to turn and start fixing all of that. So anyway, it's—

Yes, our asphalt crews don't thank us for the freeze-thaw effect. of our streets, but we'll, we'll be getting working on that now.

Right. So, all right. Well, any other comments?

I make a motion that we adjourn.

Second.

Okay, I'll let you—

aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Aye. Meeting's adjourned. Thank you.