City Council · 2024-01-09

Yeah, I just got off the phone with council member Chris Kilpatrick.

He says he's literally on Centre Street, would be here in 2 minutes. So I think we start off with the group picture, get that done so that—

Okay.

Glen Riggs can move on from here, and then we can get going with the rest of our agenda. My name is—

I always have to look at her email, but yes. C-A-M-R-Y. Sorry, K-A-M-R-Y. Let it be written.

Primarily, yes.

Do you need specifics now?

I don't.

That's all I'm asking. Just remember her name. How's the code? She was scarfed sometimes.

Jan, you know, it's the office.

You can survive.

What?

Are you gonna be okay?

Yeah.

Oh, pretty.

Maybe it's from Brent.

Oh, it says Brent's.

Nice.

There's some other good stuff here too.

Serious options. Yeah, really.

So let me look.

The only thing that's going to take time Sorry.

Deputy Chief, look at you.

Okay, I'm glad I asked.

DC.

Chief Earl, is it our normal annual meeting?

Yes.

Okay.

Yeah.

Training.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So yeah.

All right, everyone, are we ready to go? Are we, are we online? We're good to go. We're good.

Okay.

All right, well, welcome to our first official in the chambers City Council work meeting of 2024. Uh, we just all returned from a retreat over the weekend and had 2 days of solid meetings and, and made a lot of good progress. We'll start here with item number 2, and this is the Open Public Meeting Act and Ethics Training, and Steve Earl will present that to us.

Thank you, Mayor.

Uh, Mayor and City Council, uh, this is our annual training that we do for open meetings and Ethics. And Utah law requires that we do open meetings training for all members of the council, not just new members, every year. So this is in fulfillment of that requirement. So to start with the open public meetings, I'm sure you've probably all heard of the Open Public Meetings Act, which is Utah Code Section 52-4-101. But the purpose of that act is to ensure that the public's business is conducted out in the open in public meetings, uh, at which notice has been given so that the public can know what's going on and can see how the public's business is conducted and how matters affecting the city are decided. So a meeting, uh, is defined in the code as the convening of a public body or the city council with a quorum present for the purpose of discussing, receiving comments from the public about, or acting upon a matter over which the public body Has jurisdiction. So it's important to note that a meeting does not include a social gathering like a Christmas party when we get together, or a chance meeting if you happen to bump into each other at Summerfest. That does not constitute a meeting, and notice obviously doesn't have to be given for that. However, you should be aware that even if you are meeting in a Chance type situation or in the park or what, what it may be. If you have 4 members of the council there, you shouldn't talk about city business, basically, obviously, because even though you didn't intend to have that kind of a get-together, if there's 4 of you there, you just have to avoid the temptation to talk about things that are on the upcoming agenda or policies or items that you'd like to see come to the council anytime in the future. Again, those kinds of things need to be done in an open public meeting. So just to kind of let you know some of the requirements of the Open Public Meetings Act, we're required to give notice of public meetings 24 hours in advance. And obviously, a lot of these things we'll talk about are things that staff does. But it's good for you to be aware of what we do and how we do them. The notice that we give of these meetings includes the meeting date, the time and place, and the agenda. And the agenda has to provide reasonable specificity as to the topics that will be considered at the meeting, and each topic is supposed to be listed under a separate agenda item. And for those of you who've been doing this for a while, you, you're very used to seeing an agenda with items numbered sequentially that are before you for consideration and ultimately decision. Sometimes a topic will come up as raised, like in a personal appearance portion of the meeting. Those are really hard to predict. We don't know what people may necessarily be talking about, but if somebody brings up something that's not on the agenda during that time, the council is able to talk about those and respond to them and address them, but you can't take any final action. Basically, the rules say that no final action on any item can be taken unless it was first included on the agenda. So you might be able to talk about it, but ultimately you can't make any decisions unless it was on the agenda. So another requirement of the Public Meetings Act is that we maintain minutes of the meeting. Written minutes and a recording have to be kept of all open meetings. The written minutes are supposed to include the substance of all matters that are proposed, discussed, or decided by the council, and may also include a summary of comments made by members of the council. Teresa does that for us, our city recorder. She does a great job. And you obviously have a chance to review those minutes before they are approved, and the council ultimately puts those on the agenda to approve the minutes after Teresa has finalized them. The minutes generally will also include the substance of comments made by staff members and the public as they make comments in the meeting. So basically, there's a good record of what happened, and if the public wasn't able to listen to it live or chooses they want to read a written summary, they're able to go back and read the minutes.

And then, Steve. Not to interrupt, but just as far as— and with that being said, the council has the ability to look at those minutes before they're actually posted.

Yes.

And so we've done that in the past to some extent. So, those of you that are new, want to review those minutes, you know, for any reason, that's an option.

Thank you.

Yeah, and that's a great comment, Mayor. And sometimes, you know, nobody's perfect. So sometimes you'll see things that maybe were not quite correct, or maybe things that you thought were important that didn't make it into the minutes. And so you have an opportunity to make sure that they do get reflected in the minutes. However, I will say that, you know, the minutes can only be amended to reflect what actually happened and not what we wish might have happened. You know, sometimes we, you know, this has happened to me personally, you know, you make a comment in a meeting and you read the minutes and you think, that's not what I said, or that's not what I meant. You're not allowed to go back and change it to what you meant. It has to be what you actually said. So, Anyway, unfortunately sometimes, but that happens to all of us. So also, in addition to minutes, the city recorder keeps a recording of all meetings, and generally we also have both a video and an audio recording. We're only required to have an audio recording, but we try to go a little bit step beyond that and doing a video recording and actually a live stream. That people can watch the meeting remotely from home or wherever else they might be. The recording is supposed to be a complete and unedited record of the meeting from the commencement of the meeting through the adjournment. So essentially, when the mayor calls the meeting to order, to the final vote is made to adjourn the meeting. And Pete can correct me if I'm wrong, but ultimately the recording, including the video, is posted on YouTube, city YouTube channel. So again, people can go back and view that. If they were unable to watch the meeting live. Sometimes, as you know, the City Council goes on field trips or site visits, or we take a tour of a different facility. We're not required to take or keep a recording of those kinds of visits as long as no vote or action is taken by the council. So if you're wondering why Teresa is not following everyone around with a recorder during a site visit, that's the reason why. It's not required in those situations.

Thank you.

Also, sometimes you see this, a city council meeting. A person not affiliated with the city could come and make an independent recording or video or audio at the city council meeting if they choose to do so, as long as it doesn't interfere with the conduct of the meeting. So if you see somebody in with a video camera or a tape recorder, no reason to get concerned. That's perfectly legal under the Open Meetings Act. Um, so obviously we've talked about—

Listen.

Meetings generally needing to be open to the public. There are some situations where we're allowed to go into a closed meeting. You probably had some education on this already, but we can go into a closed meeting in certain situations to discuss certain limited topics. The code outlines a whole list of things, but the main Areas that usually apply to the city council would be discussion of the character, professional competence, or the physical or mental health of an individual, a strategy session to discuss pending or reasonably imminent litigation, or a strategy session to discuss the purchase, lease, or sale of real property. Those are the 3 primary categories for which the city council would have a closed meeting. Now, the city council can't take a vote. In any closed meeting, except for a vote to adjourn the closed meeting and go back to regular session or to adjourn entirely. So you can't pass any ordinances or resolutions or enter any contracts or appointments or anything like that. No final action can be approved in a closed meeting. Again, going back to that theme of the public's business still needs to be conducted in public and out in the open. And even closed meetings have to be recorded unless the only topic discussed In the meeting is about the character competence of an individual. In that case, the mayor has to sign an affidavit affirming that that was the only topic that was discussed. So if there's any other topic that is to be discussed in a closed meeting, the meeting needs to be recorded. So, one of the things just to touch on, the Open Mass— Open Meetings Act does allow for electronic meetings to be held. And we passed a resolution governing how those electronic meetings are to be held. Typically, what that means is you have to have an anchor location here in the city council chambers. Typically, you have to have at least 1 council member there. Usually the mayor, the mayor pro tem has to conduct the meeting. But aside from that, other members of the council are allowed to participate remotely. So if for whatever reason you're not able to attend a meeting, You do have the option to attend electronically. Typically, we do that through Zoom, although other arrangements can be made as well.

So there are—

just so you're aware, hopefully this will never come up, but there are penalties stated for violation of the Open Meetings Act. Essentially, an intentional or a knowing violation of the Open Meetings Act is a Class B misdemeanor. So, Hopefully that will never come up, but just be aware that, you know, the legislature is serious about making sure that all the public's business is conducted out in the open. So, um, one, one point I want to make is, again, if you ever get 4 council members together, don't talk about city business. Don't— if you only have 2 or 3, it's okay technically, and it's also okay to discuss things with staff outside of an open meeting. Again, as long as you don't have 4 council members present for that, it's okay to gather information or ask questions of staff beforehand so you can get all the information and education you feel like you might need before, you know, going into a meeting and needing to make a decision on something. So that's basically it for open meetings. Does anybody have any questions or comments on that portion? There is a bill before the legislature that's going to change some of the definitions of the accidental meeting kind of thing.

Yeah, that's being proposed.

Yeah, that's, that's very possible. So we'll see what, we'll see what happens with the legislature, and, uh, we'll let you know of any changes to the Open Meetings Act if they, if they happen to occur. Any other questions before I move on to ethics? So with regard to ethics, we have provisions in our city code, and we also have provisions in state law that govern ethics. I'm going to talk about the city code provision first. Our ARM City Code Section 2-6-8 talks about conflict of interest and how you deal with potential conflicts of interest. And essentially that section says, If in the performance of your official duty dealing with required governmental action on any matter involving your personal or a relative of yours' direct financial or personal interests, and where it is reasonably foreseeable that the decision will have an individualized material effect on such interests distinguishable from its effect on the public generally, then you must disclose the conflict and disqualify yourself from deliberating, deciding, and voting upon the matter.

Thank you.

So, kind of summarize that. If you have a direct financial or a personal interest in a matter that's coming before you on the city council, you need to disclose it. And then if it's going to have, uh, have an effect on your ability to impartially decide a matter, you should recuse yourself. So there's lots of examples where, uh, that we could talk about, but, you know, most of them are pretty obvious. Um, if you've got You know, a relative, a close relative, say a child or a sibling that says bringing a rezoning application before you. Pretty obvious, you should probably recuse yourself from that. If there's a zoning, a rezoning request that comes before you that might affect property that you own and affect you in a direct financial type of a way, you probably should recuse yourself. There's no way to possibly go through all the different scenarios that might apply for this. So I think you'll probably all recognize, oh, this item might affect me, or it might affect members of my immediate family in some way. And if that's the case, I would just suggest you come and talk to me and decide whether that's a situation where you ought to potentially excuse yourself. What I will say is that there's ever a time where you feel like I'm not going to be able to be impartial and fair in my judgment on this matter, then you probably should always recuse yourself in that situation. But sometimes there are, you know, if you have a cousin that they're bringing, or a more distant relative that's bringing something before you, and it's not really affecting you directly, it's not automatic that you need to recuse yourself. So again, my advice would just be, if there ever is something like that that comes up, that you consult with us and And we can help you walk you through whether that's a situation where you ought to recuse yourself or not. Any questions on that? Okay, next is— this is a little bit of the heavier stuff, so apologize for this, but we're gonna talk about what's known as the Municipal Officers and Employees Ethics Act, which is found in Utah Code Section 10-3. And the purpose of this act is to establish standards of conduct for both municipal officials and municipal employees and require them to disclose actual or potential conflicts of interest between their public duties and their personal interests. There's kind of several categories that this deals with. So I'll maybe just list all these areas, and I'll go back and talk about each of these individually. But the first one is, this act prohibits the use of your office for your personal benefit, number 1. Number 2, it outlines some disclosure requirements if you're ever receiving compensation for assistance in a transaction involving the city. 3rd, requires disclosure whenever you have an interest in a business entity that's regulated by the city. And finally, it requires disclosure of when you have a personal interest or investment that potentially creates a conflict with your duties. So, going back to the first one, so the Ethics Act, again, this is called the Municipal Officers and Employees Ethics Act, prohibits the use of your office for personal benefit. And this is— these are actually criminal offenses. So, The legislature again takes this pretty seriously as well. So, to summarize what this, what this prohibits is using your office for your own personal benefit, for your own personal advantage. Almost as simple as that, but it gets into a little bit more detail. But if you can remember that, not to use your office for your own personal benefit, you're going to be 95% of the way there.

Steve.

In other organizations, you fill out an annual form verifying that.

We have not done that here, that I recall.

So I'm not aware that we have affirmatively required council members to say that they don't have any of these things. We simply require them to file disclosure statements that they do have them.

Thank you.

So some of the specific things that are declared to be improper are Disclosing or improperly using private, controlled, or protective information, essentially information that's not public, for your own personal, financial, or the gain of your immediate family or others. So basically, if you come into— you come to know certain things in the course of your duties, or you're working with the city that's not generally known in the public, or not available to be known to the public, you're not allowed to use that for your own personal or your private gain or the gain of others. So not only just yourself, but you can't pass on to somebody else as a favor or let them benefit from that nonpublic information. Second thing is you're not allowed to use your official position to secure special privileges. So You know, that could be a whole range of different things. So it prohibits using your office for economic benefits and also to obtain privileges that would not be available to you otherwise, if not for your official position. Also, and this one I think is pretty common sense, you're not allowed to knowingly receive, accept, or solicit directly or indirectly for yourself, or for another, a gift of substantial value or substantial economic benefit tantamount to a gift that would tend to improperly influence you in the— to depart from your faithful and impartial discharge of your public duties, or that you know, or a reasonable person in your position would know, that is primarily for the purpose of rewarding you for official action taken. So don't take anything of economic value from somebody else that was intended to improperly influence your decision-making, or could be construed, if you will, as a reward for having taken a certain action in your capacity as a city official. Now, there are some exceptions to this rule. The most prominent exception to that, I think, is a political campaign contribution. Obviously, you're going to get campaign contributions from people who either like what they think you're going to do, or they like what you've done in the past. So that's okay, you can do that.

If you're—

somebody wants to present you with a public award, that's also okay in recognition of your public services. And also, if somebody gives you an occasional non-pecuniary gift having a value of less than $50, That's also okay. So, you know, somebody wants to send you, I don't know, a Christmas card or give you a small value Christmas gift or something like that, or send you something for your birthday having a value of less than $50. That's okay. That's not a violation. But if somebody is giving you something that's worth more than $50, should not accept that. Even if it's for, you know, Christmas or You know, if it's related to your, to your office, you should not accept that. Any questions on that?

Okay, so how exactly— just to be clear, so you got friends and family that give you stuff? Yeah, that's— how's that?

Yeah, so, so those kinds of things are not tending to improperly influence you to depart from your, your duties or influence your decisions, right? If it's somebody that's a family member or a friend that you would normally exchange gifts with or something like that, that's okay, as long as it's— they're not somebody who has something coming before the city council, or they anticipate having something come before the city council, or they want to influence you in some way in your capacity as mayor or member of the city council.

So this is more people who want something from—

Yes.

Right.

Yeah, but it doesn't, it doesn't, you know, you can't, you don't have to tell your wife, hey, you can't give me anything less than $50. So that's, that's not what we want.

Okay.

I was hoping I could tell my wife.

Yeah.

I couldn't.

All right, so the next, the next item is dealing with disclosure requirements. This is probably— these next items may not apply to you at all. They might apply to a couple of you, but they're basically— they apply to situations where you have interactions or dealings with the city in some form or fashion where you're receiving compensation of some type.

Okay.

So the first one is where if you're receiving compensation in for assistance in a transaction involving the municipality, then you have to make basically a disclosure. You have to file a disclosure saying basically your name and address, the name of the person or business entity that you're assisting, and then a description of the transaction as to what service is being rendered and the nature of the service performed or being performed. Now, the best example I can think of this is probably something like if you happen to be or work for an architectural firm or an engineering firm, or maybe a real estate firm or something like that, and you're assisting in bringing a rezone application before the city, or a plat amendment or something like that, and you're receiving compensation for those kinds of services, then that's where you need to file those disclosures saying, hey, you know, I work for this engineering firm. We help clients, you know, try and get rezone applications through the city council. And you would provide the information that I just described, you know, the entity involved and a description of what services are being provided. So that has to be filed at least 10 days before any agreement between you and the entity that you're assisting. And it also has to be presented to the city council at the meeting at which that item might be discussed. So, and obviously that also might implicate potential you know, a recusal as well, depending on the level of the involvement. So the 2nd situation where disclosure of your interest is required is where you might be— you might own or work for an entity that is regulated by the municipality. And in that situation, you also— and that this is supposed to be done basically as soon as you take office, or as soon as you become aware that you potentially have this interest. You just again are required to file a disclosure statement, basically the same information: your name, the name of the entity, the nature of the, you know, the regulation that's involved. You know, an example of something like this might be, you know, the city— if you have an— if you own or have an interest in a towing company, let's say, the city has Regulates towing companies. And so if you had— and obviously those are always subject to change, and they could, you know, you could try and influence what those regulations are. And so that's a situation where you would need to file a disclosure statement indicating that you have an interest in that type of entity. I don't know if that would apply to any of you, but, you know, you might just think, do I, you know, do I work for, or do I You want to have an ownership interest in any of these kinds of entities that do business with the city or are regulated by the city. And not that that's prohibited, but just you have to disclose that. And this last one is really along the same lines. If you— you're supposed to file a disclosure of any personal interest or investment that may create a conflict. Basically, the language of the state statute says that you shall disclose any personal interest or investment which creates a conflict between your employees or officials' personal interests and your public duties. And again, this in the same manner as we previously talked about. So, you know, again, not only do you have to think about, do I work for or own an interest in a company, but do I have any investments that potentially create a conflict with your official duties and your own personal interests? So the penalties for violation of the Ethics Act, the State Ethics Act, actually quite severe. So we want to be really careful that we don't violate the act. Basically, a person who knowingly and intentionally violates the act is subject to— and this applies to employees as well as elected officials— is subject to dismissal from employment or removal from office, and is also guilty of a second-degree felony if the total value of the compensation, conflict of interest, or assistance exceeds $1,000. And then it goes down from there, a 3rd-degree felony if it's more than $250 or less than $1,000, Class A misdemeanor between $100 and $250, and a Class B misdemeanor if it's less than $100. So pretty potentially severe penalties for knowing an intentional violation of the act. If you're, you know, if you happen to slip up, you fail to, you know, file a disclosure statement timely, or you're missing some information and it wasn't done, knowingly or intentionally, I don't think anybody's going to be clapping the cuffs on you or anything, but just try and be aware of those situations and do your best to comply.

So—

What is— who enforces that?

That's a good question. It's potentially— Jesse and I have had some discussions on this. Right now we have an ethics commission. that's formed by different cities. And, but we're— but the state also has an ethics committee to handle these things. And we're actually looking at amending our code to get rid of the city thing because there's really some difficult challenges with that and making that system work. So ultimately, I think it would probably end up being the state. And but we need to kind of clean up our ordinance in that regard as well. So, so any, any questions about that? I think I had a half hour and I think I just about hit it on the nose.

So.

Okay, well, thank you for your time. As always, you know, if you have any questions about any of this, and if you're interested in some really interesting reading, I'm happy to give you my handout. on this if you want to be able to refer to it. And, uh, so just let me know if you're interested.

Yeah, Steve, our mayor and council sometimes serve on other public boards that they've got to receive this kind of training once per year, and they can use this training here in lieu of—

I think so, yeah. So would they—

would we just work through Teresa to provide, I guess, proof that we've received this training?

You know, it probably— it may depend on the entity. So if you're involved with an outside entity, they may— they might say, no, we want you to have our own training. So I would probably just check with them to make sure.

Great. Thank you.

Steve, could you send me a copy or end up?

Sure.

Thanks.

So do you want me to send it down?

Yes.

Okay, good.

$49.99.

Okay, let's move on to item number 3, station area plans, and turn that over to Jason Bench.

Thanks, Mayor. So we have, uh, Chris from People in Place. He's our consultant. He's going to give us a presentation on where we are just about with our station area plan. Probably not the one they were— the apartment station.

Where we've been and where we're going.

Hopefully by March, April, we'll be back to—

Christy has a—

Okay, sounds good.

Thank you.

Thank you, Christy.

Sure.

Looks like you get an up close and personal view of my email here a second.

Um, All right, that's what we should be looking at.

Yeah, I'm Christy. It's good to see you. Um, seen some of you before, and there's some new faces too in the room, and it's just a, a good time to be here and give you a little bit of an update. We are on a, um, rapid clip tonight, so I'm going to blast through a bunch of slides. I'm not going to go through them all, and, um, hopefully we'll have a couple of minutes for questions and, and discussion at the So just a reminder for those of you who may not be familiar with the station area plan at the Frontrunner Station, it comes from the State House Bill 462 Housing Affordability Amendments. And the idea is to maximize development potential in appropriate areas. And the good thing is that cities and citizens get to determine how best to meet some shared regional objectives. Which include increasing the availability and affordability of housing. That's the big one. Promoting environmental conditions, enhancing access to opportunities, and increasing transportation choices and connections. So this is the station area for Orem. See the star there in the middle? That's the station. And then we're looking at a half-mile radius around it. You see the tracks, you see I-15 kind of running through it as well. UVU there. Several pictures. Both sides of the freeway, the train. And the goal is to, to ask people, what do you imagine? And then create a vision and a plan.

Whoa.

But first, a little bit of context. Just a reminder of how many people are expected to live in Utah by 2060. You might have a guess. If you guessed 5.5 million, you'd be right. And more than 30% of those people will be here in Utah County. So you're really the epicenter of growth. Basically, our population here in the county doubles, reaching about 1.3 million residents by 2060. So growth has been a part of our history. It's also a part of our future. So we want to make sure that we're proactive when we're planning for that kind of growth coming our way. Where will the majority of Utah County's growth come from? Unlike the rest of the state, these days it's still coming primarily from natural increase. We have a lot of new babies and we're living longer. So good things. There's also some other context in regard to housing shortages nationally. In 2019, the US was almost 4 million housing units short. Utah was about 56,000 housing units short. We've made progress by 2021, reaching about 28,000 housing unit minutes short, but as you know, lately housing permitting and construction is dropping. It's interesting to look at median home sales prices and household income in Utah County. You see that, that these days the median home sales price is about half a million dollars, household income about $86,000 a year. So if you were to buy a median-priced home, you'd be looking at a mortgage of about $3,900 a month. The annual income needed for that is about $151,000 a year.

What income—

what interest rate are you using for that? 7%.

Yeah, recommended mortgage for median-priced income these days, about $2,000 a month. So there's a disparity there. And you might be homeowners yourselves. Ask yourself, if you had to buy your home today, could you afford to do so? And then a follow-up question, how will those just starting out find a place to live? So really, we're thinking about kids and grandparents.

I'm sorry, one more clarification. So you're assuming that the $500,000, the mortgage is the $500,000, or is there a down payment there?

10% down.

10% down with a 30-year term?

Yep.

Yeah, so what is affordable housing? Well, it depends on what you mean. Usually in the news, if we read about affordable housing, it refers to low-income housing or 60% of area median income. And you can see the home prices, whether you're at low income, moderate income, or median income, the home prices that you might be able to afford. And we're just not seeing those prices around these days. What about average renters? Average rent's about $1,500 a month in our state. 48% of renters are cost burdened in terms of housing. Only 12% of renters can afford to purchase a median-priced home in Utah. So it makes it hard for people to make that step up from renting to purchasing a home. Governor Cox was quoted in the paper several weeks ago, uh, just saying the only answer to this is more supply. What can we do to help relieve that crunch? So when we think about the station area and we ask, what do you imagine? Um, it really, it helps to think, well, when growth pressure is high, creating great places to live in the right locations, this is a place where transportation costs can be low. That matters a lot what we do. So we entered into a public stakeholder process, meaning that we provide research and information to the public. We seek broad public input throughout. We build vision directly from the feedback that we receive. We're transparent throughout, so you can go all along the process and understand what's happened and the resulting conclusions. And we hope that that builds momentum for implementation. So this is the public process. We had a brainstorming workshop in June. We had an open house this fall where people could examine a number of scenarios created from public brainstorming. We're moving toward a vision and implementation and adoption process. So brainstorming, what did we learn? I'm not going to take a lot of time here, but we, we spent time with a survey, over 550 responses. Nice age range, range of where people lived. And we got a lot of results here, and I'm just gonna click through these very quickly. But—

Could you go back to that where the results came from?

Sure.

Right here.

The next one.

This one.

Oh, I'm sorry. Yeah, there you go.

This one?

The next one.

The next one.

Okay.

So we had about almost 90% of people were Orem residents. About 30, 35%, 36% lived in the station area themselves. So, a good mix, I think, of people who live in Orem, also people affected by Orem, maybe working here, going to school here. That help?

Yeah.

Cool.

All right. So, we asked a lot of questions, got a lot of answers. I'm going to share the nutshell of these responses in just a minute. We also looked at maps that the public created. And looked at the kinds of places that people placed on those maps. And placemaking, parking options. We looked at the study area, then we looked at what people did, various parts of the study areas on those maps. Didn't want to change existing residential south of Geneva Road and west. We looked at that area, different ways people addressed that. Different ways people address the northeast part of the study area. And then the station area itself, where we saw about a third of maps treating it fairly lightly. Another just over a third or so looking at a real village kind of component. And another third or so extending that village idea to include UVU on the east side. So a lot of variety in the maps. Here's the nutshell in that process of what we learned. In terms of residential neighborhoods, let's preserve existing and add new, but with green spaces. Let's look at mixed-use villages, both at the Frontrunner Station and at UVU, incorporating market rate and affordable housing, parking garages, destination streets and buildings. So things to do and see, placemaking, retail like groceries. Green spaces throughout, trails and pathways, and roads that were efficient and safe for multiple transportation modes. So we took those ideas and we said, okay, let's explore some options based on what we learned from the public survey and mapping. And our task then was to develop some scenarios looking long-term out to 2050 and say, based on public feedback, what are some alternatives that we could explore? for that station area. We looked at including station area plans that had about the same number of households, about the same number of parking spaces, really focusing on the pattern of growth rather than on how much. So just trying to look at different patterns. So across the state, across the scenarios, we've got 3 of them here, and I'm going to dive into those very quickly. Here's the poster for the first one. A station mixed-use village. On the land use side, then we see a mixed-use village on the west. We see a lot of green space. We see commercial along Geneva Road. Another way of looking at that same scenario. So, in the immediate station area, we'd see most growth near the station is most intense. It's 8-story maximum, tapered out to 3 stories before you get to existing neighborhoods, mixed use. Pedestrian-friendly, includes a destination street, a station plaza, parking garages that are internal to buildings wrapped with commercial and housing, natural areas, some urban forest, parks, plazas, dedicated pathways out to Utah Lake and along Geneva Road. Some signature buildings. And then if you close, close up here to the station itself, you see the plaza, you see a UTA parking garage, and Mixed-use buildings, green spaces. Beyond the station, we see little change. There's existing single-family neighborhoods are preserved. We've preserved green spaces for farming, orchards, recreational use, and UBU continues planned expansion. The 2nd scenario is UBU Mixed-Use Village. So if we zoom into the land use on this one, the mixed-use village extends east across the pedestrian bridge. You see light industrial between the tracks and the freeway. There's commercial on Geneva Road and some new housing. Another way of looking at the same scenario. So, in the immediate station area, in this one, growth is, is more spread out. It's focused near the station and on UVU land. Because it's more spread out, that's somewhat less intense, maxing out at 5 stories, again tapering down to 3 before it hits Existing neighborhoods. It's a mixed-use village. There's on-campus student housing. There's parking garages that are internal to buildings or wrapped with green walls or murals. So it's minimized in terms of visual feel. UTA parking garage and services is featured in this scenario. There are dual plazas at either end of the pedestrian bridge for gathering. And there are bike lanes and sidewalks that connect UVU and the region.

So when you say— I'm not understanding— wrapped with green walls?

Oh yeah, I can show you a picture. So, um, bottom right, you see the picture there is just plants growing on the walls. So we had a massive parking garage.

One more clarification.

You indicated it was on UVU land.

Are they going to make that provided?

Are they selling that to developers so that affordable home is ownership?

We haven't talked through those specifics at all yet, but the idea would be that it would be student Housing of some sort.

So it wouldn't be private ownership for families, affordable housing.

No, no.

Yeah, I think that would be on the other side of the freeway. Yeah. So if we zoom into this, you see 2 bubbles. The top one is by the pedestrian bridge on the east side and the pedestrian bridge on the west side at the bottom. Again, wrapped parking garages, UTA parking. And lots of mixed-use space there beyond the station area. Some change, so existing single-family neighborhoods preserved. We see some new single-family homes with detached accessory dwelling units and some new commercial and light industrial.

And why the detached ADUs?

They came up as an affordable option that people wanted to explore.

So, well, but you're increasing density then in the area.

Yeah, you would be. That's your bottom line, right?

What does that look like? Single-family home with a deep catchment, big view?

Well, the little cartoon graphic includes one just in the backyard. So it's a little tiny home in a backyard.

Like the man cave turned into a—

you can think of it that way.

She shed.

A she shed with a bathroom and a kitchen.

Never had a she shed.

Oh, she shed, it would be a dream. Okay, so a neighborhood info infill is the third scenario. And land use map, so a lot of residential on this one. And I'll dive into that in just a second. Another way to look at the same scenario. This one we'll look at beyond the station area first because it has more impact. So we're spreading out growth out more across the study area. In this case, we have residential infill rather than that focused mixed-use village idea. So there's new residential on undeveloped areas, it adds accessory dwelling units onto Some existing residential lots. It's not feasible everywhere, and people might not choose to do it. And of course, it's the owner's choice. Then there's some student housing on campus. Clustering yields a neighborhood park on the south end there, and there's some new commercial on Geneva. At the station area itself, rather than a mixed-use village, we're looking at single-use townhomes, 3-story stacked homes. Most UTA land remains a surface parking lot. And there's additional parking between the tracks and the freeway.

Right.

So you see example images there really focusing on surface parked, lower intensity space.

So, how are you comparing these in terms of, are they all supporting the same amount of housing? Yeah, just spread different ways.

So it's the same numbers.

Yeah, just looking at different patterns and trying to understand what What patterns people like for this area. So then we asked people, well, how do those scenarios compare? And people were able to, at this workshop, weigh the scenarios against things at the first workshop that they thought were valuable. And I'll give you one more view of the scenarios. So scenario 1, scenario 2, scenario 3, and then existing condition. Again, scenario 1. 2, and 3. So 3 pretty distinct scenarios. And we said to people, well, what do you think? And this will spend a little more time on. So we asked people—

Can I interrupt you for just a sec before you go into this? So when you talk about the affordable housing, are you going to have a— are you going to require— is the Idea to require a particular number of units?

We can still, like, have to think about that and talk about that a lot more. But there are options where maybe there's a 10% requirement or something.

So that's not indicated. What I'm trying to find out here is, you're, you know, if you're calling this affordable housing, you've got to designate that. We've heard that so many times where we've had developers bring projects and say, you know, I'm going to do affordable housing. And then as they build it, Grant's shaking his head, yes. As they build it, there is not a full house included in that.

So that's a code issue for you.

Yeah, and that's what she just said. That would be implemented through a land use regulation that we'd have to put in place as like an overlay zone for the station area to have inclusionary zoning. Hey, but oftentimes developers say, well, it doesn't pencil if you're going to require 10% affordability, then the developers say, I need some other incentives to them to be at the table to offer that. And so a lot of times with inclusionary, that 10% or 15%, and some places even try 20%, um, there's, there's other parts of the zoning code that offer either incentives for the developer, or there's, um, the HTRC stuff that we've talked about, that, that there's tax incentives or tax inclusionary incentives.

Redevelopment or increased density.

Or increased density, other incentives, correct.

So the way to think about it, this is the more of a general plan portion. When it actually comes to implementation, that's where the city council is going to have to make ordinance changes and things to allow for that type of thing to implement the plan. This is simply just a plan. The council ultimately in the future is going to have to decide how to implement a plan through ordinance.

And there's some really interesting survey results I'll show you about housing.

So if we want deed restrictions, that's something you're going to counsel?

Yeah.

Okay.

Yeah. So, so even though we started with affordability, this is all just showing 3 options. And now we're supposed to figure out how to make those options affordable through deed restrictions or zoning or whatever.

Yeah, we can talk about that. Let me show you what some of the survey results said. We weren't sure how concerned people are about affordable housing, and it turns out they really are. So let me, let me talk through those a moment. So as we, as we look toward this 2050 vision development, and we'll get into the more detail as the process moves on and implementation goes forward, the idea for us is to pull concepts from the 3 scenarios that captured previous public feedback. And we want to reflect the overall input from those hundreds of residents that participated. We want to implement regional goals, but in a way that matters for Orem residents, and we want to meet demands for Orem and Utah County generational growth. So we're really thinking about kids and grandkids. So the survey that we're responding to here, we had over 400 people responded. Again, we looked at all the results. We also looked at results by where people lived, by their age. And so we can parse it all different ways, which is kind of neat. So in terms of age range, we got a nice mix of people. In terms of where people live, again, about 80% this time in Orem. We also heard students and people working in the area chiming in as well, 20%. And we asked the question, which approach to housing makes the most sense as you think about the needs of the future? And these questions are tuned each of those scenarios. And so the, the first 2 here, 84% favor housing in a mixed-use village, and that speaks to those first 2 scenarios as opposed to new housing that's more spread out, more single-use. How important is it that UVU begin to provide student housing on UVU campus? Almost 80% say it's important or very important. How important is providing moderate-income housing? So that's 80% of area median income. Important or very important.

Are students included in that, in your opinion?

I'm sorry?

Are students included in the moderate, in your opinion? Are they part of that demographic?

Probably they're not making that much money. Yeah, so we do have a low-income question here. How important is providing low-income housing, so making 60% of area median income, maybe 52%?

So they're included in that one.

And we've got a— you— that UU question too, where there's interest in that. So a lot of interest around that. So I think as a council, this will be, you know, how do you implement this on a code— on a code side? And then also important to think is this: how important is home ownership? So the ability to move from renting to purchasing a condo or a townhouse in the station area, important to people. When thinking about moving people efficiently and safely—

I'm sorry, how important was that last question?

17%.

Yeah.

So that, I mean, if that's very important, that's going to be difficult with 7-story towers and that sort of thing.

Yeah, you might plot it differently, huh?

So where's our 19 to 30 demographic?

They're incorporated in the all here because the result wasn't different enough. If it's 10% different than the all, Okay. Yeah.

Thank you. Yeah.

Yeah, I'm sorry, we're speeding through these so fast.

You just put so much work into this. I just want to—

I'd love to spend 3 hours with you. Yeah. Okay. So when thinking about moving people efficiently and safely through the study area, which approach makes the most sense? 85% says one that provides safe and convenient routes to cars, pedestrians, and All scenarios have about the same number of parking stalls. Which approach to parking is most appealing? 88% are looking more toward scenarios that include parking garages that are masked, largely interior. So there's not seas of parking.

Is there a parking— I'm sure there is— when you run all your numbers and all the different scenarios, What type of parking are you figuring?

1-to-1.

So, 1 bedroom, 1 parking stall is what we were aiming for.

The other thing that's tricky for the station is, is, as UTA has told us, as FrontRunner is projected to double-track eventually, and these are suburban stations where people drive to the station, then they also have to park those people coming to the stations. So, there's also the demand for UTA parking, in addition to what housing would be.

Yeah, how do you deal with that? I mean, you got a parking lot, you're saying the grant petition doubles twice as much, a bigger parking lot, maybe you should take it all away with it.

Yeah, you're garaging it instead of parking lot.

Garaging. And there's some— sometimes there's a public-private partnership that happens where you have day users, night users, And that's, that's kind of an overlap that efficiently happens.

Yeah.

Is that ideology applied in this?

I don't know that we've narrowed down some of the UTA-specific numbers in our scenarios yet.

I guess, I mean, are we 1-to-1 in here? We're not doing the mixed-use model where they leave during the day and opens up a spot.

We're not.

And bedrooms are 10 by 10. Is that what I'm remembering?

You tell us, Jason, if it's wrong.

I can't remember what we plugged in, but yeah, we accommodated.

Kind of designed for 1 bed, basically, right?

Okay.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So think about walking or biking along a busy road in the study area. So maybe Geneva Road. Which type of pathway do you prefer? Most dedicated pathways separated from the roadway. Now think about quieter streets near the train station itself. Which type of pathway do you prefer? A little more split here. Bike lane and sidewalk comes out on top, again, followed by a dedicated pathway separated from the roadway. Several larger gathering areas or plazas are featured in a couple of the scenarios. So places for things to— people that do things together, hang out together. Almost 80% favor some sort of plaza or gathering area, most at either end of the pedestrian bridge. Ideally, new and existing residents could access day-to-day needs. 75% prefer mostly on foot or bike. So that mixed-use village idea. Think about the area nearby the train station in terms of amenities. What do you imagine? Destination uses like a theater, a hotel, restaurants, neighborhood uses like a grocery cafe, or a blend of both. More people said a blend of both. When thinking about access to nature and the outdoors, which amenities are important? More people said the ability to access pockets of urban forest or green space a short walk from where they live. When thinking about building heights at the station area, which statement do you most agree with? About half said it's okay for those taller buildings up to 8 stories transitioning down as they approach neighborhoods to be at the station. About a third said 5 stories, and about 20% said up to 3. And then what do you envision south of the current business park on the west side of Geneva Road? 63% said some sort of residential use. In existing neighborhoods, we asked about accessory dwelling units, almost two-thirds wanting to allow that option for people. In the largely undeveloped parcel just northeast of UVU, again, more favoring a residential use. Understanding that the stationary growth is highly likely, this is kind of the, the all-encompassing question here. Which scenario are you excited about and most willing to support? Just over half look towards Scenario 1. And when we asked the Slightly different question. The result stays the same. Which scenario best meets the needs of future residents? So you see the split there. And then a slightly different question. Think about environmental sustainability. Which is your preferred scenario? And one bumps up a little more as to Scenario 3. So that was a lot to absorb, I know. In terms of public engagement to date, the nutshell at the bottom here is that we've had over 225 people participate in public workshops. We've had a lot of other meetings. We've had over 950 survey responses. So we, I think we have a good feel for what people are thinking in the area. That's been very helpful. At this point, we're looking toward developing a vision together. And so again, our task is to pull concepts from the 3 scenarios that captured previous public feedback, reflecting the overall input, addressing those regional goals, and then meeting demand for growth. And so I'd like to read the vision and the vision principles to you now. And you'll see in the orange, those are changes that our stakeholder committee helped make. And I wanted to make sure those were clear too. So the vision: Orem Station is an urban neighborhood that supports Orem residents, UVU students, and commuters who are living, working, playing, learning, and traveling in the area. It's a friendly place to call home, an innovative educational and vocational hub, a launchpad for workdays and schooldays, and a place to gather and enjoy time with friends, family, classmates, and coworkers. The principles. Number 1, focus growth in a station area and village with a range of housing amenities and educational and employment opportunities. 2, provide housing options to meet the needs of a variety of households, incomes, and life stages. 3, provide safe and convenient transportation choices for driving, biking, walking, and transit. 4, connect people to nature and engaging opportunities to be outside. 5, encourage the community with public gathering spaces and friendly streets with shops, restaurants, and entertainment. 6, support long-term positive economic impact and opportunity for Orem and its citizens.

Thank you.

And then we've taken just a first stab at looking at a very basic land use map. So you see mixed-use village, you see green space, you see light industrial, you see some new residential and some commercial on Geneva Road. Little detail, and if you don't mind me reading through these very quickly. In terms of map components. So, as we develop it, maybe a beautiful graphic of the vision, these are the pieces we keep in mind. Preserve existing neighborhoods. At the station, there'd be a mixed-use village, mostly on the west side, up to 8 stories at this— at the very heart of the station, but with a large transition down to 3 stories to protect existing neighborhoods. Moderate and affordable housing at the station. UVU housing on both sides of I-15 with a small pocket on the east side. Encourage ownership, whether that's single-family, townhomes, condos. Safe and convenient multimodal transportation. A dedicated bike path— pathways on busy roads. The Utah Lake pathway could extend all the way to the station and connect to the city and regional trails and amenities. Bike lanes and sidewalks on quieter streets. Parking garages would be interior to buildings with some on-street parking. Main streets, you'd see 1st floor commercial, upper floor residential that masks parking. On secondary street, you'd see streets, you'd see 1st floor residential or parking garages with green walls or murals that masks parking. Moving to the top there, 11, you'd see plazas at either side of the pedestrian bridge. On the west side, it would be something that's larger. It's active, it's shady, good place for people to go and gather. On the east side, It might be more of a pedestrian or plaza street connecting to student housing. Station improvements might include a UTA bike, car, and park— bike and car parking, restrooms, Wi-Fi, indoor waiting area, a snack counter and vending, small hardscape plaza connected to the pedestrian bridge plaza. Walkable neighborhood uses in the area with some destination uses, perhaps a theater, a restaurant, a tell. Ample streets on all— street trees on all streets, pockets of urban forest in the immediate station area, a large urban forest and a detention area between the tracks and the freeway to improve air quality, reduce noise, and enhance visual appeal and experience. Some light industrial on the north end between the tracks and the freeway. And then the areas just beyond the station area, southwest of Geneva Road there, A single-family townhome mix with accessory dwelling units, a neighborhood park, and some commercial. On the northeast side of UVU, a single-family townhouse mix with ADUs and preserving that orchard and integrating it into that new development. And then allowing detached accessory dwelling units where feasible in existing neighborhoods. So those are the vision components, the principles, what a map might look like. And we'd be looking then toward further developing those ideas, bringing it back to the public, and then looking toward that implementation, the adoption strategy, all of the code things that you've been asking about already. So that's the next steps. Do you have anything to add there, Grant, or any questions?

Or—

Christy summarized it really well. We wanted to bring it to all you back. give a summary, also bring the new council members up to speed and see what we all thought for the next steps.

When is our public meeting next scheduled?

We kind of had the tentative date, and depending on this one, we're going to be able to come here tentatively. I believe it's the end of February would be the next one.

Yes, I have it here somewhere. Do you want me to find it?

So, I mean, what I'd like to see as far as— like you say, the way we started this conversation was affordability is a big deal, a very big deal based on the first couple charts you have.

Yep.

Another thing is ownership is a big deal. If you're going to try and start out here and build some equity and go somewhere else or whatever, affordability and equity are a big deal. So more than just having it say we're It's in here somewhere. We should have some specific benchmarks and some numbers that we hit in those areas.

Yeah, and we can— I mean, the scenarios that I showed you already have some of those assumptions baked in. We didn't take the time to go through those tonight, but as we go through the vision and then that implementation process, for sure, thinking about metrics that we're wanting to hit from a code perspective or other implementation perspectives would be huge.

I just think that's a big deal because I think otherwise You wind up just— excuse me, excuse to develop, right?

Yep.

And get it just a development that has all the normal components, and you can make that whole development work without affordability, without home equity. Yeah, but to make that work in that context, that would have a benefit.

Yeah, yeah, and that would be the huge challenge is to make that work. And there are tools we've been looking at that, and code is huge code. that provides the right incentives. So—

Well, and may I also add, you know, I noticed on some of your slides you would say, you know, we expect a hotel here, right? I mean, so we're talking of residential properties, but in order to make this work, we have to have the commercial. You got to have the supermarket or grocery store. You had a hotel in one of the slides there, I noticed. So I guess what I'm saying is, I think as we advance to— because what you were asking basically on step 4 is that we adjust our ordinances to make it required by law that these things be built in this— our zoning, correct? I mean, that we tailor the zoning to direct these types of developments. So I guess what I would like to ask for more information on is how can you— how can we have these needed commercial developments Be implemented also, because it's like Mayor says, then all we have is a bunch of housing with no access to anything. You know, we don't have the health clinic, we don't have the grocery store, we don't have the hotel, we don't have the whatever green space. So that's what I would like to see happen a little more in this vision scenario is, you know, show us the tools that we can use to create that outcome.

Yeah, yeah, that'd be great. And I We're looking at an implementation workshop. I think it's scheduled in March, and that would be a great time to really unpack. Okay, from, from a nuts and bolts perspective, what can we do to make sure that grocery store comes to town and that kind of thing?

Yeah.

And part of what I mean, we're talking about downtown Salt Lake, right? Part of what happened there is you had a huge investor, the LDS Church, that put the Harmons grocery store in there.

Yep.

You know, that's a weakness that I see. So if there's other tools that you have recommendations for us, I want to know that we're going to get the outcome we want before we change the ordinances that make it favorable for developers. If we don't tie them to also, we're making sacrifices as a city to provide this affordable housing. Well, I think we need to have that component there also.

Yeah, and it was such a huge desire by the public to see see truly mixed use. They want to see amenities in that space.

So that, that is a good point though. I mean, downtown Salt Lake was kind of a disaster, but when you had that huge drop of money from the church, that changed the entire game down there. But maybe you talk to the church.

Yes, come on down. They've got that temple just half a mile from the city.

There you go. Maybe we can do it.

So, Christie, I mean, would it be fair to say, so, so far you've looked at primarily 3 different scenarios?

Yeah.

Sounds like the next step would be trying to pick and choose the best aspects of those scenarios to create essentially sort of a hybrid of them that is ideally the best aspects for Orem specifically.

Yep. Yeah, and that's, that's kind of what this laundry list is. We're like, okay, based on everything we've heard from surveys, The mapping. This is kind of our, our to-do list for illustrating, but also on a code level and other implementation-wise, what we need to look at, funding sources for trails, all of that kind of stuff. So, thanks for your time.

Can I ask you a question? Would it be possible to have you send this to us so we can spend a little more time looking at it?

Yeah, yeah. Sorry for the Death by PowerPoint.

Even if you have a report rather than just the slides, but the report, the facts on the slides, more detail, I would appreciate that.

Yeah, we'll have a report ready. Boy, it'll probably be March or April with everything all pulled together really well. So, and that will be what you'll be asked to be thinking about.

What are you doing in your February meeting? What's the goal?

We are looking at, and this may change, but I think we were initially looking at a February '22 public meeting where we do a vision unveil and, and go through this, and then we'd be moving into implementation.

So more than this February meeting, you're going to do more specifics on the look of combining whatever, one, one look.

Yeah, yeah. And we haven't shared the results from the last survey with the public. I just showed you those and the public needs to see those.

So our same commission, our same committee will be engaged there also.

Yeah. Another stakeholder meeting to prepare for that public meeting.

Okay.

The 22nd. Also for the new council members and all the remaining council members, I'm happy to share the slides as well as our That's been on the website. We've been posting updates throughout the process there as well. So you can go and kind of look at the maps from the workshop and some of the existing survey results from each section of the phase.

Okay. Thank you. Thank you, Kristin. Appreciate that. Um, let's go ahead and grab some food really quickly, and then we'll come back and take our seats and continue on with the last couple items. Would somebody like to say a prayer?

Father in heaven, we're grateful we could gather under favorable circumstances, and we're grateful for the food that's been provided. We ask thy blessing upon it, that it will strengthen us and give us nourishment and wisdom as we carry out our events this evening. In the name of Jesus Christ, amen.

Amen.

All right, let's go ahead and come back to the meeting.

Yes.

Okay, next up, item 4, Strategies, Innovations, and 2024 Projects. Uh, Jennifer Jones.

Thank you, Mayor and Council. So what I'm here to do today is just give you an overview of the city's— what will be the newest division. This is part of the MGT study that we're going through right now, that this is one of their recommendations that we create a new Division of Strategy and Innovation using existing personnel, but just to refine the job descriptions and responsibilities of the new division within the Management Services Department. So, I'll just give a quick overview of our division and what we're responsible for and how we will help the city. So, just—

Yeah, and just to clarify, uh, because we're just getting going, but this is a big deal. This is, uh, this is our city coming together, creating this entity to essentially work on special projects, which innovation, uh, grants, strategy, data, Which are all— have been kind of dispersed all over the place, but we're bringing that together to make it more effective.

Yep, exactly.

We're expecting great things out of Jennifer and the team.

Thank you.

I hope so.

We've already seen some.

A few. So yeah, as Mayor said, we'll be responsible for the grant centralization of that process, making sure that we can be an asset to all departments and seeking out funding opportunities for various projects and city needs. Wrapping up our strategy and data analysis efforts, fostering innovation throughout the city, and then some other miscellaneous things, mainly including community and neighborhood services. So as far as grants go, historically that's been fairly decentralized. It's been up to departments to look for opportunities, apply for most grants. If they needed help, they could reach out to, at the time, City Manager's Department. And they could may or may not be able to help with that. But now we have personnel that are dedicated to this and making it a huge part of our job to be able to look for those opportunities because there are there is a lot of money out there, but we just have to know how to apply for it and hopefully be awarded it. So we we work with departments to find what their priorities, what are some hot projects they have coming up so we can be looking. Looking for funding opportunities from the federal government, state government, county, even private companies that may be able to fund some of these things. So I won't go through all of these on the list, but these are some of the things that we are looking for right now. Obviously, this is subject to change, and if a new project comes up, we're more than happy to look into it and help find a grant. We'll be responsible for coordinating that research. Obviously, we'll work with departments A lot of the information needed, but we will be— our team will be responsible for submitting that grant application and making sure we have everything necessary, as well as depending on if the grant is awarded, the reporting process.

Sorry, sorry to keep interrupting, but to make the point that this is a big deal, um, as far as when these guys can come up with grants, there's a lot— there's tons of grants out there. But it takes a specialized skill set to get those grants. And so that's where we want to create this, where we've got a specialized skill set where we can take advantage of it. Because the extent of how big of a deal is it? Well, every time we raise $1 million, we find $1 million. That's $1 million less that our taxpayers have to pay. So we can build a much stronger city with this money and keep our costs down.

So, yeah, I appreciate it.

We're all for it.

Thank you.

And Jenica is so on this, on the ball that she even has some other things that were discussed in our retreat.

That's right. Did you have something, Fred?

I was just— Jenica is being kind and saying fairly decentralized, because I would have used the term extremely decentralized in the past. As a person that has to deal with the reporting of many of these grants, Having one place to be able to work with, um, in that reporting capability is a significant change and benefit to the city in regards— and that doesn't even count trying to get and find new grants. That's just even dealing with grants we kind of generally already release. So, just so you're aware how much I appreciate these efforts. Thank you.

And this is the reorganization that occurred through Bryn and Mayor, right? I mean, collaboration there with others, or—

Our executive team works with you.

Yeah, this is all decentralizing, and a lot of this is Bryn's vision of how he wants things to work.

You, you've tasked us as the executive team to try to find whatever efficiencies that we So this has definitely been a key, key change that we've made to just be more efficient. And, and like Brandon says, not only in finding them, but it helps us on the back end. There's always strings attached, you know, there's always constraints associated with every kind of government award. So with the making sure we're implementing and using them as, as we're supposed to and as intended. All right, thank you.

Okay, and then moving on to strategy, uh, we're again trying to wrap up our data use and efforts. We collect a lot of data in the city, but department to department it's varied in how much that's used to inform decisions and make goals. Um, so that's what our team is here to help with. When, when a department has a question about a new project or an investment or equipment that they may need, they can come to us and we can help put together some data and determine if that's a good idea to move forward with. This year we are also wanting to implement dashboards for every department so we can visualize that data that will help you as mayor and council as well as department leadership be able to see how we're doing at reading or creating and meeting our goals and forecasting future needs and trends. Um, yeah, a lot of this is kind of the same thing. Structural changes. If a department wants to make a personnel change, if someone's leaving the city and they may want to kind of change how they're doing positions, our department does the analysis for that as well. So we work with HR.

So in other words, we want to be dynamic moving forward in, in, and quickly responsive and even proactive in finding future efficiencies or optimizations.

Exactly.

Make it part of our culture.

And then again, making it part of our culture, innovation. This is something that's been in the city for years, and obviously innovation has been happening, but just formalizing this, uh, we use Bloomberg's i-team approach, which was designed for government. It's a 4-step process that looks at any issue. It can be as I guess I say minor, but it can be as specific as a specific process in a department for personnel. It can be as global as homelessness or something like that, but it's the same steps that you go through for whatever those issues are. The teams are project-based, so we look for employees who are interested in contributing and finding a solution for whatever that issue is from various departments. They probably don't work on this on the day-to-day, but They get to come together and get their hands dirty and look at the data and look at how can we make this better in our city. These projects are things that can lead to city cost savings, improved efficiencies, and improved resident and/or employee satisfaction. So in the coming months, we'll be training or retraining some city employees who've gone through this process, but we'll be doing that again to train them on what this process is and leading citywide iTools. Our hope is that our team will be kind of project coordinators for a lot of these, but by training city employees throughout the city, they can go to their own departments and kind of implement this on their end as well. So, again, non-exhaustive list. This is some of the things that we are considering right now in the upcoming months. We have both community-centered and employee-centered projects. We're looking at improving tourism, just making the city a more attractive place. Uh, various parks projects, uh, improving our neighborhood program. And then we also have employee-centered projects. Some of these are already underway, such as the employee engagement response, which I'll discuss in a moment. Asset management, making sure that we have a seamless onboarding and offboarding process to protect the city's assets. Looking at employee health clinic and many more to come. And then the miscellaneous of our division is managing some of these community and neighborhood services. When Kenna left the city, a lot of her stuff has come over to us. Obviously, uh, the neighborhood improvement team has stayed at police department, but a lot of the community and neighborhood is now the responsibility of our division. So, um, that includes the neighborhood program, CDBG, critical home repair. This top bullet point is super important. It's something that Heather on our team has made a point to basically resurrect the Orem Community Foundation. So residents have a place that they can donate, and that we can go out to residents, businesses, if they want to contribute to city projects, to be able to pitch in there. Again, leveraging those community partnerships and various policy research and implementation.

So if I may on that, a lot of us remember, uh, the success we, we felt and, and how the community came together and bonded in relation to the Altogether Playground. So when Jenica says kind of resurrect that, the idea is to again make that more of an ongoing thing, uh, and so that would be applied and used as we continue to try and, uh, encourage donations for the Gold Star Camden Monument or for other historical Memorial markers throughout the city, or new ideas that come up in the future and make it more of an ongoing living thing that we're constantly engaged in.

Exactly. And that's all I have for this. Are there any additional questions?

I just want to say, I'm really excited about this because it falls right in where we're trying to go, which is forward thinking. you know, cutting edge, being the best amongst the cities. And I think this helps us position there. And we need to give a shout out to Carrie also because she's been doing a lot, basically, you know, a lot of the brains, along with Bren, coming together with all this. So, absolutely.

Yeah, we are super excited about the opportunities that lay ahead and think that we can make this the best place to work, the best place to live, There's just so much opportunity there.

I'll just say we've had tons of serendipity in terms of creating and having an environment where, um, Jennifer, when she first started at City, was as an intern, and she's just been an exceptional talent in terms of capability. And so it's been nice to bring her on full-time and have her Managing this team.

Thank you. Yeah, it's been almost 6 years now. I start to lose track sometimes.

6 years?

Yeah, 5 and a half, but rounding up. Okay, do we still have time for this one? Yeah. Okay, I'll be quick. It looks the same, but it's different. So I'll be talking about one of the things I mentioned in the last project, but just the employee engagement survey and what we're doing in response to it. So, in the summer of last year, we conducted an employee engagement survey. We had great turnout and results from that, but we wanted to say, okay, we have these results. What do we do with them? How do we improve the city? So what we did, Carson and I, we led a group of employees. There were over 30 employees. There was multiple employees from every department that came together to look at these survey results in multiple meetings. So we appreciate their efforts. They took hours out of their time to help us look at every single question and come up with ideas of, based on these results, how do we improve the city? Uh, we took their ideas, and there were literally probably hundreds of ideas. There were amazing things there, but we whittled it down to a few things that we can start to do now. There will be more to come, but this is kind of the first phase, what I'll be presenting to you today, of what we are doing to implement their solutions. So the first area— the areas are on the top, and then there's specific action items that we're working on underneath. So employee recognition, wanting improvement in that process. So some easy things that we were able to implement already is creating a way for employees to recognize their fellow employees for good things that they're doing at the city, and also letting them nominate their fellow employees for employee awards on a year-round basis. So historically, it's been primarily supervisors giving recognition to their employees, and then once a year before the employee party, about a month before, opening up those nominations. But we know that there's things happening year-round, so we want to make sure that those are recognized. And sometimes supervisors don't see and they still want to be recognized. So in the portal, we now have a way for employees to nominate their peers for either BabbleBacks or Babble Awards. And the BabbleBack system has been super successful and people are very excited about it. Once they do this, it goes to HR and they can review the nomination and give the employee the BabbleBack along with the recognition. Um, also creating more consistency throughout the city. Some supervisors are recognizing employees differently than other supervisors, so we will be training supervisors in the coming months on ways that they can recognize employees, and it may not even be monetary, but just how to be an effective recognizer of what employees are doing. The next area is employee development. Employees were very excited and interested in opportunities to continue to learn and grow their career. Uh, we've seen this be very successful in certain departments, particularly those with career ladders in their positions, because they have set requirements that they have to continue to meet to advance in their career. But other employees are wanting some of those opportunities once they get hired to continue to get certifications or continuing education. So making sure that we have an efficient and sufficient tuition reimbursement for some of those certifications, as well as opportunities for employees to develop and grow in every single department. Um, this includes opportunities internally. We already have been doing some of these, uh, with ramping up some of the Babel trainings every year, but making sure that we're doing that more often to give employees opportunities to train and learn specific things about being a city employee. And also, we will be working to organize opportunities for employees to go to different cities and learn from what they are doing to be more effective or cross-train with them. The next area is improving the onboarding experience. In the discussions, this was mainly related to within— when an employee is hired, helping them become an effective employee much quicker. Um, so this involves solidifying what the department supervisor's role is on— in onboarding and making sure that supervisors are trained, that they know what policies and procedures, practices that they need to inform their new employees about. Because we heard feedback that some employees were here for years and they didn't know a specific policy. It may or may not have been in the policy manual, but it's something that we can improve and make sure that supervisors are helping new employees be successful with. This also includes implementing a mentorship program for new employees where we can assign mentors in every department to help those new employees, help them learn what it means to be an Orem City employee. The last action item in this area is to create knowledge bases for positions throughout the city and also department-specific documentation. So when a, a new hire comes in in a certain department, that they are given a document that tells them the software they're going to need to know, people that they will work with, and hopefully for their position that they have something, because they— especially if it's a single incumbent position, there may not be someone else that can train them on what they need to know to be effective at that position. The next area is interaction and communication with city leaders. So employees were wanting more opportunities to spend more personal time with the city manager, So, uh, everybody's full. We will be organizing Breakfast with Bren, uh, on the month of employees' anniversary date. They can go to breakfast with Bren, they can get opportunities to ask him questions and also get great food. So, great.

Bren may look a little bit different than you remember.

I think this is everyone's acknowledgement that all the good ideas don't come from me, so we need to create a situation where everyone can bring their ideas.

There we go.

And then I'll have to go work out more often at my family fitness center.

Good for everybody. Okay, the next, um, item is employees wanted more opportunities to see both exec staff and mayor or city council and potential town halls that they can ask questions and hear what's going on in the city. Um, this also includes the last item of regular updates from city leaders, email updates of things that are going on in the city. Sometimes those things don't get trickled down to the frontline employees, and they're not aware necessarily of what our goals are. And supervisors can do a better job of that. But also, there could be more opportunities for both exec staff, mayor, city council, to provide some of that information to our employees. And then just a few other items is creating an organizational role chart. We don't have an org chart in the city, and so when employees need to know who to contact in another department, it often— they just contact the, um, office administrator or something, which is fine, but we could make it more efficient, help people understand if there's an org chart that also lays out things that people are responsible for, so they can go directly to who they need help from. Looking at the employee evaluation process, making sure that's effective, that it's not just a once-a-year check off the box, making sure we're actually helping employees set goals and making sure that's effective for everybody involved and it's a positive experience. And then also looking at both our holiday schedule and leave policies just to make sure they are good, or if there are any potential adjustments that may need to be made based on what other cities are doing, or what we see in other organizations, just evaluating how those are. And again, this is just what we are starting with. As I said, there are hundreds of ideas to implement, but these are some of the things that we took away that these are feasible, and these are— these were top priorities for those participants.

Mm-hmm.

who helped us review the survey results. So these are things that we will be starting with, but there will be more to come. And with that, are there any questions?

I'll just say and reemphasize, you know, while I might be tempted to try and take credit for things, this is really an indicator of how the employees of the city across the organization want to be the best. They want to continually improve. They want to be, uh, forward-thinking and proactive and energetic and, and, um, you know, helping you and helping residents move the city forward.

Yeah, thank you, Brent. I would— these— the meetings we had were very positive. There was a lot to build on that they appreciated about the city as city leaders, how things are going, but there's always room for improvement. So these are just some of the ideas.

Okay, thank you, Jenica. We're looking forward to you and your team's good work.

Thank you.

Okay, next up, uh, Lynette, do you have time to go through?

I do, yeah, I can do it real quick. Um, so I have 6 commissions that I was, uh, that I was on.

Um, first one, Public Works Advisory Commission. I'm now passing that wand to Tom, but, um, great commission. It's been very rewarding to see, um, Chris Shirkey's leadership there and to see the people on that commission in dealing with the things that you don't necessarily want to know about, but you just want to have work— your water and your sewer, right?

It's the soul.

It's the soul of the community. And to see our parks and just the great things, improvements and renewal happening on that commission.

So I really—

I'm kind of—

it's just one that you just feel when you sit and you're amazed at the at the goodness in the, in the wisdom that happens there.

Thank you.

So, um, UCCU board member, you know that, that, uh, the arena has recovered well from COVID They're doing some great events, and it's a privilege to sit on that, um, board. Our Historic Preservation Commission, they're collecting Orem's history, they're identifying historic areas, and Grant— where'd Grant go? He's been great to help out with that commission. appreciate him there. Library Advisory Commission, of course, just as we heard at our retreat, Bryce has just done an amazing job of guiding the library in the direction and of the future of libraries, and that commission is just running like clockwork. So, um, Orem Neighborhood Commission, we are doing some reappointments tonight for that and looking forward to connecting resources in the community with the needs of in the community. We're really focusing on getting people on that commission that know what's going on and that are actively engaged and passionate about their area of forum. And then CDBG, that's kind of starting up again, right? All those grant— the grant process there. So haven't— that's just a brand new year.

And it—

Jenica, are you doing CDBG?

I'm not. Heather on my team is.

Heather, okay, will be taking that for Kenneth.

So anyway, that's going to be done. That's it.

Okay. All right, well, thank you for the update. Let's run through the agenda real quick. Um, for the first city council meeting of the year, it's a very light agenda. Um, So anyway, that's kind of a nice break to start out with. We'll start at 6. Uh, we'll have call to order, invocation, and Pledge of Allegiance. And that's Del Mortimer and Kitty Mortimer. Who invited them?

I did.

You did? Would you like to introduce them? Okay, and then we'll have, um, an item that's not on your agenda. It's National Law Enforcement Day, Law Enforcement Appreciation Day. So I'll just make a statement on that. And then we've got item 6.1, uh, presentation on the City Council area of focus. He's based on our retreat that we just had, and, uh, Brent and I to some extent will be talking about What we came up with and where we're going.

Highlight and summary of our successful—

and then we got item 6.3, Utah Legacy Cities and Towns. You can show us what's their legislative priorities for the cities. And we've got something a little bit unusual, um, and I'm changing these around, but item 6.2 will be 6.4. And that's going to be meeting with our Utah state senators and representatives. And because the time is short and they're going to be going to session, and we need to have that meeting, and we had a light agenda, we decided to put that in this meeting. I'm not sure how long it will go. I would expect less than a half hour. There'll just be a chance for USC council members to ask them questions you have and talk about priorities and talk about what they're doing. How we can work together.

And we did that 2 years ago, that I really—

when I was first elected.

So, yeah.

Just to be clear, that, that's intended to be a discussion, not, not those reps like presenting per se, although I'm sure they can share what priorities for them, but it is intended for you to be able to ask them questions they have or express some of your hopes for Specifically, you know, if you'd like to mention from the podium, the podium, the dais, that Doyle Luckwater, a former city manager, passed away, right? Wasn't Doyle Luckwater— someone help me who knows Longtown oral history.

I just read his obituary.

I thought he was the city manager, but that goes back in time.

I mean, if we're going to do that, we might want to— might want to do it next time.

Okay, so we don't have more prepared.

I thought somebody here might know more.

I just know him as a professor, so I didn't know.

Okay, thanks.

Happy to have it next time.

Maybe do a little bit of research on that.

Would you mind forwarding me this?

Just so you know, he was on the Blue Ribbon Commission that was referenced at our last retreat.

Remember when you brought that up?

He was the leader of that Blue Ribbon Commission that investigated the different forms of government.

Yeah, so yeah, we'd be happy to bring back something recognizing him and his service upon the next—

Then we have item 7, personal appearances, and we might have to massage that around exactly where that goes. It hopefully will just go in this order, but depending on the time frame of some of these presentations Um, and then we get into the easy parts. We got the consent items, approval of meeting minutes, uh, for December 5th through the 12th— or no, the 5th, 12th, and 29th. Um, and then appointments, uh, for the neighborhood commissions. Uh, those individuals will be, uh, appointed for that.

So mine are all reappointments, so I don't need to say anything.

Okay, no, Eric Allen is replacing Skip McCord who passed away.

Okay, so does anyone want to say anything about any of these folks, or we good? Okay, so we'll have appointments to Recreation Advisory Commission, we'll have appointments to the, uh, Beautification Advisory Commission. And that'll all be consent items. Um, and so then we've got scheduled items, resolution, uh, the Utah Lake Authority appointment, and Steve will present on that and when they will, uh, start to serve on that, replacing Terry. And last we've got, uh, well, that's not even something, that's just for our information, the monthly financial statement.

Okay.

And then C, information City Manager information items, and then we'll adjourn to a closed session. And we're still doing that, right? I think so.

Right?

I think so.

Okay, because you had some things—

I'll receive the list of items.

Okay. All right, sounds good. So, so we'll turn minutes to prepare. Okay, so we'll adjourn to a closed session, uh, after that. So let's go ahead and adjourn this meeting and go to our seat down. Go ahead. Yes.

Yeah, it'll show up right here. See, Marsha's already on.

Test, test, test.

Great.

How are you?

Happy to be here. Yeah, thank you for having me. It's nice to meet you. Yeah, it's good to see you.

How are you?

Good, how are you?

Good.

Thanks for being here.

Yeah, it's always something.

Hey, man, how are you?

Good. What did he say? Understand this in the future. We're neighbors.

We're sitting next to each other.

Nope. I haven't seen that. Wendy's off ahead. We're not back. Still trying. Still. He's tied to that boat strap. But, uh, we're not. We tried to bring it up in the last hearing. I said, let's see if I'd use that on something. Because we did it right. There you go. Learned how to turn them on.

We're just, we're just waiting for a minute to bring our flag back from the inauguration event the other night, so we'll just be a sec.

That's gotta be real. That is a— so that's a good question. Listen. They doubled the number of people they had on that, you know, so those were just supplied for— they were folks doing double duty. On the clocks. Yeah, on the clocks. There they are.

All right, welcome. We'd like to call this, uh, regular session of the City Council to order. We'll start out with an invocation, uh, from Doyle Mortimer and a Pledge of Allegiance from Kitty Mortimer. And Tom, if you'd like to introduce your friends.

These are neighbors and friends of mine. Doyle's a former member of the House of Representatives and a church leader in our area, and Kitty's just a wonderful human. So there you have it.

Our Father in heaven, we're so thankful this crisp winter evening to be able to meet here in this city council meeting. We're thankful for the freedoms that we enjoy in this country and This state and in this city. Father, we pray that Thy Spirit may overshadow this meeting and others in our country, that we may maintain our freedoms, that we may have the way of life that we enjoy in Orem City. We ask Thee to bless each and every member of this council and the mayor and others who lead us, that they may make wise decisions.

Amen.

On behalf of us, bless them with success in their families and in their personal endeavors. And again, we put this meeting this evening into thy care and keeping, in the name of Jesus Christ.

Amen.

Thank you, Doyle. Kitty, if you'd like to lead us in the pledge, and would the audience please rise?

Please repeat after me. Or with me, please.

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. Next, we'll add— move to, uh, item 6.0. I'd just like to make a, a statement because today is National Law Enforcement Appreciation Day. Each year we call our city's citizens to join us in support and appreciation of our local law enforcement professionals. We deeply appreciate appreciate our city law enforcement employees and want them to know they have our full support as they carry out their duties to serve and protect our community. In light of the recent negativity directed at law— towards law enforcement nationally, there is a need to show law enforcement officers that we and our citizens recognize the difficult and sometimes impossible career they have chosen for the greater good of us all. Orem is often recognized nationally as one of the safest cities in the country, and that reflects our remarkable law enforcement employees. Thank you for all you do to keep Orem City safe and secure.

Thank you.

Okay, next we're going to have item 6.1, and this is just a presentation Uh, about what went on in the City Council retreat this last weekend. Wren, would you like to lead that?

Yes, um, Pete and Carson are pulling up a kind of a brief presentation, but, uh, we felt like we had a very productive and successful annual retreat, and so just wanted to kind of highlight, uh, some of the, some of the takeaways and, um, and, and start to get the word out to the public of, of the positive nature of that meeting. So, um, kind of top of the, the list for areas of focus for the coming year is to align City Council, city employees, and citizens, and, um, making sure that we're working together in, in a spirit of unity as a, as a council and with our executive team, with with honesty and respect. And then another big point of emphasis was uniting with the community through additional service opportunities. Next, in the— with the area of focus of safe, livable, connected, and engaged neighborhoods, we heard from you that we wanted to increase our outreach to our Hispanic/Latino community and also businesses that are, are run by our Hispanic community. And we also wanted to be in a continuous mode of evaluation and improvement related to our neighborhood improvement team efforts. In terms of thriving and balanced business environment, we wanted to increase our outreach with our OBA or our Orem Business Alliance, and then In particular, kind of a repeat of a previous one there, expand the resources for our minority business owners within the city. With the area focus of dependable infrastructure, we wanted a word that became something of a theme for the retreat was to— was the word renewal and kind of renew our State Street and And set a vision for it. And then, uh, kind of off of State Street and throughout the city, look for additional trail opportunities, and then make sure that we're staying up to speed on capital improvement and capital replacement projects. With community focus and effective government, we wanted to make sure and and strengthen our relationships with community partners and have meetings, for example, with our surrounding cities. And then also emphasize, as we heard in the work session, emphasize our Orem Community Foundation and make sure to work with not-for-profits and in terms of fundraising for historical monuments and the Gold Star Family Monument. And then lastly, in terms of skilled and talented workforce, we wanted to complete the efficiency study that we've been working on this, this last year and continue to expand the hybrid STEP program that we have found is so successful amongst our first responders and public works employees. And I think that's the last. So that's, that's kind of an overview of what we went through. Again, sure appreciate the time that you spent away from families, and I think a total of something like 30 hours in both celebrating and recognizing the things we have accomplished, and then also making sure that we keep up the momentum and, and continue to look forward for the city and, and, uh, continue on the, the positive trajectory that, that we're on.

Thank you, Bryn. And you just saw a, uh, a very brief summary of all of those hours. Uh, there was great conversations amongst the council. There was a ton of input and, and, uh, working through things. And so that list gave us an area to focus, uh, areas to focus on in this upcoming year. So we appreciate the council for all that they did to get to this point. And you may not appreciate it when you just see it in a bullet point PowerPoint, but you will appreciate it as the year gets going.

Thank you.

Thank you. Okay, next up, um, we've got a presentation from the Utah League of Cities and Towns as far as their legislative priorities for cities. And this is timely because we're about to go into the legislative session, and, uh, and this is one of the groups we work with as far as information on what's going on up there.

Uh, can you hear me all right? Awesome. Uh, thank you all for having me. My name is Carson Eilers. I'm the policy director at the Utah League of Cities and Towns. I'm lucky to be able to come down to Family City USA twice now in a few days. So I'm thrilled to be here. I don't have a formal presentation. I'm hoping to just hit some, uh, hit some items that we expect to see, kind of, uh, give you a little briefing on what we've heard, uh, over the past few months and what we expect. So hoping to keep this conversational. If you have any questions, please feel free to interrupt. I want to make sure that if I don't have the answers to your questions, I'll follow up and provide provide you so you have a solid foundation going into the session next week. So yeah, we're excited. I'll try to keep this brief. I've got myself a timer here, but also, Bren, feel free to cut me off if I'm running too long. I don't want to keep everybody here in a snowstorm. So yeah, just a quick roadmap. I want to first kind of hit some key themes that we're expecting to see. I'll talk a little bit about housing and growth, the Commission on Housing Affordability, some transportation legislation, water conservation, And public safety recruitment and retention. There's already more than 300 bills numbered, so there's a lot of bills out there beyond these things, but these are kind of what we at this point anticipate to be the hot topics for this year. So quickly want to mention, for those of you— first, congrats on the election for those of you who just won. Congrats on reelection, Councilmember Lamson. We're excited to have you. The Utah League of Cities and Towns has been around for more than 100 years. We provide training and advocacy for all of Utah's local governments, all 255 municipalities. We pride ourselves on collaboration, respect, and outcomes. You'll hear our executive director, Cameron Deal, say that at the beginning of every testimony. We try to— we have a 23-member board of directors who provides us direct direction as staff. And then we have a legislative policy committee. Every city has three seats along with an alternate seat, and they we bring legislation to that committee and they give us direction during the session. So things move quickly, but we try to make sure that you're the ones in the driver's seat making the policy calls, and then we as staff will try to implement that direction as best we can. We evaluate all policies under three criteria. We first ask what does this bill respect the traditional role of local government? Obviously, in recent years we've seen more. Preemption around the country. We've kind of seen that as a trend, so we try to bring that to the forefront. Is this, is this bill respecting what you have run to do? Is this bill respecting your ability to provide for your communities and quality of life? Second, we ask, is this a one-size-fits-all approach, or does it respect that every city is unique? I can tell you, in the 6 and a half years that I've worked for the League, I've really come to appreciate how unique all of your different challenges and resources are. Every city across the state, whether it's North Logan, whether it's St. George, whether it's Orem, you all have different leadership, you all have different communities, you all have different needs, and we need to make sure that you all have the ability to do what you need for your communities. And then finally, will the bill result in an unfunded or unworkable mandate on cities? We, as League staff, submit fiscal impacts to the Legislative Fiscal Analyst's Office at the Capitol. So for every bill that affects the local governments. We don't provide any final say, but we provide recommendations on what we expect costs to be. There's lots of legislation that will impact local governments financially, so we try to make that a major point. We also started tracking that in aggregate to make sure that legislators have a sense of what this bill or what a given bill or collection of bills really does for taxpayers. They pay a lot of attention to their budgets, Sometimes it's just harder to see the secondary effects on local government budgets, but obviously that affects taxpayers as well. So with that being said, I want to jump into these kind of 2 key themes. First, the state does not have a surplus this year or is not anticipated to have a surplus this year, and neither do cities. Again, we've been ringing this bell loudly every year at the Capitol, but just because a bill doesn't impact the state financially doesn't mean it doesn't hit taxpayers. doesn't mean it doesn't disrupt your budget. So we've brought that up repeatedly and we'll continue to do so. What does this mean for your communities? The last few years we've had record surpluses at the state level. The state's been able to give tax cuts. They've also been able to pass a lot of legislation that they can afford. But this also means this year that fiscal notes could carry a bigger weight on bills. They could— some bills could face larger headwinds, but it also means that some legislators could try to push fiscal impacts down on municipalities when the state doesn't have resources. So again, we'll be hitting that message hard. And then the second theme I want to mention is talk to your legislators. There's a lot of legislators who have primary competitors this year. There's a lot of bills. It's going to be kind of fast and furious this session. So make sure your legislators are aware of your issues. Make sure that you're interacting with them regularly throughout the session. Make sure that they understand your needs and how bills impact your communities. Because it's one thing to hear from us, it's a whole other thing to hear from the people that they represent. Are there any questions kind of on that framework before I jump into some of the issues?

Great.

First, I want to talk about housing and growth. And housing seems to be the all-encompassing issue over the last few years. A couple years ago, the state created the Unified Economic Opportunity Commission. This commission is chaired by the governor. It's co-chaired by the Senate president and the Speaker of the House. There's a lot of legislators involved. There's a lot of senior cabinet members involved. And this group meets throughout the session to try to recommend legislation to be expedited through the regular legislative session. I bring this up because this group has spent a lot of time talking about housing. This group spent a lot of time talking about transportation. The Commission on Housing Affordability reports to this group. So it's kind of become another process where policy can move forward. We've been heavily involved in this. League staff are on many of the workgroups, if not all this year. So we try to make sure that we're present through all those meetings and prepared. So to engage, because there's a lot of housing legislation, there's a lot of things that affect local governments. Our board this year adopted 4 key principles. First, how does this proposal preserve the quality of life for current and future residents? This is important as, as there's sort of a focus on new housing, but how does that affect existing residents? You all, of course, are at the forefront of this, but we want to make sure that state leaders who don't always hear from residents are seeing that side of the coin too. Um, second, does this proposal allocate the current and future costs to ensure sustainability of infrastructure? Again, sort of a focus on we need to figure out growth, we need to manage growth, but what does that mean for the pipes that are in the ground already? What does that mean to make sure that you have the ability to provide public safety service, to provide water to your current residents? And then— sorry, I have a lot of questions that we ask legislators. Third, will the proposal result in more housing units that are directly affordable to the buyer-renter? This has been key as there's been a lot of proposals through this Unified Economic Opportunity Commission that have been really focused on cutting input costs for housing production, but there's not always guarantees that that translates to affordability on the back end for somebody who would be buying a house or renting a house. And, and so that's an important part of the picture. It's not just saving costs. Yeah, Councilmember.

Carson, you mentioned that sometimes it's more effective for us to call legislators than for you.

Could—

I think in the past you've let our city manager know where there's an issue that you think we should be involved I trust you'll do that this year as well, particularly if one of our local people are sponsoring the bill. Is that correct? Will you do that for us?

Yeah, absolutely. And, um, Brent has always been fantastic to work with. Um, we, we have a close relationship, and he's one of the first we'll call when something bad happens. Sorry, Brent. Um, regardless of whether it's 11 o'clock at night or 6 in the morning.

And, and if something good happens, let us know that so we can call our representatives. Thank you.

Yep, yep. It's not all bad up there.

Carson and I have exchanged cell numbers, so we'll be texting at all hours, all hours of the day.

And Carson, we also have our legislative counsel, Jesse Riddle. He's going to be up there throughout the session, and he'll be very active with League of Cities and Towns. So you want to meet him and work together. He had to leave tonight because he's not feeling well. But anyway, I'd encourage you to work with him.

Yeah, absolutely.

And I should say, so Jesse Riddle is a voting member on the ULCT group, and then new council member Chris Kilpack here, and then myself.

Okay, terrific. Yeah, we look forward to, again, having as much involvement as you'll let us have. Um, and then I just want to hit this last, uh, Unified Economic Opportunity Commission principle, and that is, will the proposal result in more homeownership? This has been something we've seen a lot around the state where a lot of new housing units have become rentals, which in some areas is needed, but in other areas it's adding to a rental surplus and not providing the homeownership opportunities that we desperately need in a lot of our communities. So that's been kind of the guiding framework on that broader commission. I mentioned that one of the subgroups there is the Commission on Housing Affordability, and Councilmember McDonald has been a rock star on that for local government, where we spent meetings throughout the summer discussing a lot of these hot-button issues. This commission had kind of 2 buckets that they were recommending up to the UEOC. They had the consensus policy items and then the non-consensus policy items. And I think I'm happy to say that most of those consensus policy items really are true consensus. There'll be a couple tough ones to manage, but many of them are related to funding. Many of them are related to giving local governments more flexibility. Flexibility with their reinvestment set-asides, creating better processes for land use courts so disputes can be settled more quickly and more expeditiously for everybody involved. Modular building code will be a big one where we're trying to create a statewide building code so that you all have more— you have a better understanding of how modular structures can be built, what that process looks like, and there's more predictability for the building community as well. Um, there's a number of non-consensus items which will not be in the official commission bill or any UEOC endorsement bill, but, um, there might— those topics might still appear in other legislation. Those include preemptions like binding general plans, um, some other zoning preemptions. So we'll be on— uh, we'll be vigilant for those, but just be aware that some of those conversations are still going. Um, I also want to mention, aside from the Commission on Housing Affordability, affordability bill, the governor announced his First Homes Initiative, which appropriates something in the tune of $150 million for various facets of homeownership, trying to make sure that our next generation can afford to buy homes and enter that bottom rung of the real estate ladder. And then there'll be some policy that's expected to accompany that. There's been a lot of moving pieces, and I don't know as of now where that will land. But just be aware that there's been a lot of additional conversations coming from that initiative. You may have seen that former Representative Steve Waldrip was appointed as the housing czar for the governor's office, and he'll be taking point. He's been an excellent fair broker of legislation in the housing space over the last few years when he was a legislator, and he's been very receptive to local concerns and is really trying to, I think, trying to strike a fair balance. So expect a lot to happen on that, but just I don't know any details for you yet. Are there any questions on housing? I know that's a major issue and we're all trying to work through it, but that will continue to be a hot-button issue for at least this year, if not the next few years.

Yeah, just as far as the housing affordability, we've been talking a lot about that, but the missing piece is the money that it takes to make that happen in real life. where you're talking about $150 million allocation, uh, that's where, I mean, it would be good to be involved in that conversation. And ideally, if cities could get a piece of that and use it for the changes that they're asking them to make on the zoning side and building outside.

Yeah, thank you, Mayor. I think that's an excellent point, and we've brought that up in the, um, particularly in the Commission on Housing Affordability space, the need for a state infrastructure bank to help, um, Help communities bridge the— like, you have a lot of planned units. We have more than 190,000 entitled units across the state, and many of those would be built— cities plan for them, but they would be built if there was infrastructure funding to move that along. So that's a big piece of it. But you're absolutely right. Every time you modify your general plan, every time you have to go and plan something over again, that costs money. And it's really important that that's not solely absorbed Thank you, Carson.

If you don't mind, that, that number that you said, you said it quickly, but I think it's an important point of emphasis. How many units would be available but for the needed infrastructure?

So, um, so we've, we surveyed, uh, municipalities. We received more than 80 responses on that, and the number is 190,000. Not all of them are ready to go tomorrow. Some of them are maybe 10, 15 years out. Some of them are ready to go tomorrow. Just the infrastructure is not there yet. So they kind of run the gamut, but that's our kind of current count on how many units are out there, which demonstrates the point that cities are planning for housing, but there's market forces and other pieces that are obstacles. All right. Well, another piece of this, of course, is transportation. Transportation's always a major challenge when it comes to new growth. growth, making sure that's planned for accordingly. There's been a lot of transportation funding in the last few years. I want to focus on the transportation utility fee legislation that's been proposed. We don't have a bill yet, but there's been a couple of key concepts that I think there's, there's some consensus on. So the current legislation would— there's kind of 3 parts to it. First, it would codify the transportation utility fee in state code. Right now, cities have broad fee authority to do this, but there's not Clear authorization to do it. There was a court case recently with Pleasant Grove. Some of you probably were following that, and the court ruled in Pleasant Grove's favor, but the question of process or appropriateness of the fee was never addressed because the litigants dropped the case before that was settled. So we've heard from a lot of communities who are interested but want to see some more certainty before they move forward. There's still some concerns with the capital about whether these would be abused, but we think that codifying the fee would be a really good first step. The second piece of it is it would clarify some things in the broadband space, specifically the opt-out fee. So if you— I don't think— I think there's only one city who's contemplating this, but it would impose a fee on all residents, and then you have to pay a fee to get out of the service area. So we think this would This clarification would be consistent with existing law. It wouldn't be a new policy shift, but just something to be aware of. And then the last piece would be just adding some more process to the transportation utility fee. So, um, it would add a 10-year

one of those that are represented. So, as a little bit of background, the Utah Lake Authority basically is responsible for management of the lake area, including essentially zoning authority. And they also are tasked with working with the state and federal agencies regarding the management of the land, basically the lakebed, as well as the all the federal or state land that's where that dividing line is between private property and government-owned land. So it's a very significant responsibility.

No, it's very significant. And it's much more proactive than it ever has been.

And this commission is basically— Lynnae would be our voice, our representation for Orem on that commission. It's something we take very seriously. You ready to make a motion?

Sure.

Would you like to make a motion?

I would like to make a motion. I think Councilmember Millett would be an excellent representative on that commission.

I would like to move that we appoint Lenee Millett to serve on the Utah Lake Authority.

Second.

We'll start down here.

Hi.

Aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Aye.

The resolution passes. Thank you. Okay, we'll move on.

Um, well, are we close?

So I just sent a link to, um, Representative Jetten, so she should be, um, jumping back in.

Okay, and Representative Stratton's okay. Now we're in a snowstorm outside, right?

Senator Grover on? Um, I have not seen him come on. He was only in meeting. I'm curious.

Chris Bramble, he had a, a, uh, situation in his family. He couldn't come on tonight. No, I mean, yeah, there's nothing we need to go over on that. Um, Does anybody want to tell a joke?

I usually have good dad jokes at the spur of the moment, but nothing's coming to mind.

Yeah, really. So is Representative Judkins on the—

on there?

She just said thanks, so I think she's logging in.

Okay, because we can start as soon as we have one of them.

Mayor and council, uh, Brandon can just touch quickly on the monthly financial statement item that's on the Item 10.1 on your agenda.

I just thought it might be— since we have some time, I thought it might be a good idea, just particularly for Council Member Gale and Council Member Kilpack, but just to give an idea of that financial summary that you see. So the concept of that summary is to give you an idea as far as each of our funds that are of significance to the city. And giving you an idea of the revenues associated with those funds, as well as the expenditures, and how those relate as far as a percentage of the budgeted amount. And then on the far right side of that report, you see what the prior year was for that date, so that you have some kind of a comparison of where were we, you know, in the prior year as compared to the current year, just to give you some kind of idea of where we sit currently. Obviously, you can look at those revenues and look at the expenditures and kind of have an idea of where we are as far as positive or negative in that particular fund at this current— at the current time of that report. So just to kind of give you an outline of what that report is, it's obviously meant to be a very quick look and not a lot of detail in there per se for that. And we didn't want to necessarily list every single fund because we have a lot of them. And so I didn't want to necessarily bury anybody in a bunch of numbers and percentages either. So just to give you an idea, obviously, if you look at that report and there are any questions about any of those particular funds and/or the information presented there, you're welcome to contact me and I can try to explain any— you know, try to answer those questions. So, okay.

Thank you, Brendan.

We are good to go now, I think, right?

Representative who's on the— oh, yeah, looks like Stratton also decided to do that. That looks good.

Pete, are they able to come up on our screens in terms of the Zoom room aspect of it?

Yes, uh, Representative Judkins and Stratton, can you hear us? You can start saying, are you there? Are you there? There we go.

I'm walking in.

Okay, we'll see you in just a sec.

Is Representative Judkins in the Zoom room? Are we able to unmute?

Kevin, come on up.

We're waiting, so we appreciate it.

It was just, uh, patronizing one of our good old warm businesses.

Nice. Is it snowing very much outside yet? Is it snowing very much outside yet? Okay, good.

Well, welcome.

That's a powerful-looking group of individuals right there. Grateful for the new members of our council, and thank you. Congratulations, everyone.

Well, we appreciate you coming in on, on short notice. Uh, we've got Representative Judkins that's trying to join also, but in the meantime, um, Brent, if you'd like to—

Yeah, so, um, at your request, we wanted to invite, uh, those representatives, um, that have a representation of districts that touch Orem and give them an opportunity to both express those items or subjects that are particularly important to them during this upcoming legislative session, and then also provide an opportunity for you to ask them any questions and/or express any subjects that you feel are especially important to the city of Orem.

Okay, well, thank you, Bren.

Uh, Kevin, maybe if you'd just like to give us, you know, kind of a high-level update of, of what your thoughts are on this upcoming session.

Thank you, Mayor and council members and Manager Bybee. I, um, am very optimistic for the state of Utah and our I think now 253 cities and towns, 29 counties. As we're looking at the economic, you know, legislature has 3 primary stewardships. One is to care for the fiscal responsibilities, put together a budget, balance it, and make sure it works. Second would be oversight. Uh, the constitutional responsibility there. Then third is to set the policy. So maybe I could just talk about those 3, and I hope, uh, Representative Jenkins and others that might be joining could add. But fiscally, uh, one of the remarkable things about our state is for 16 years, uh, we've been awarded as the most fiscally sound state. Rich states, poor states. That's remarkable. And it really goes not— I think there's good policy that we have had through the generations, but it really goes to the values of the people to be wise and provident in the way we live and the choices, decisions we make. And so that's a real compliment to the citizenry of our state. The, uh, we do have a a measure of what we would call budget surplus based on forecasts and what the revenues have coming in with the easing of interest rates, and potentially those coming down a little bit and the economic vitality that is one of Utah's, one of the most diversified economies, as well as the strongest in our nation. We're blessed in many ways. So, Some of the priorities in that regard would be, you know, we need to make sure we're properly funding, uh, education and our infrastructure needs, uh, the programs of the state. There is, uh, some— one of the areas I chair in the legislature is our Federalism Commission, which deals with policy as well as federal funds and the risk there. And, and so there's— I think we need to all be aware that the the spending of our federal government is not sustainable that we've, we've seen the last 4 or 5 years. We need to be aware of that, recognize and be taking precautions, and make sure we have, uh, plans for, for rainy day and, and things as they go. And that, that's one, one of the things that, uh, we've been able to do is really strengthen our— those emergency funds for our state.

And so We'll probably—

the budget will probably approach $24 billion this year. And, uh, federally, they're counting on spending $6.2 trillion and with revenues on $4.5 trillion. So that's a problem that we'll continue to have. I think generally the greatest risk we have as a state is, is some of the challenging policies that we're seeing at the federal level. There's a notion— Chris Stewart said what we need is ferocious federalism. And that, that's, you know, we hear the term federalism and, yeah, well, the federal government should do everything, but that's not the meaning. There's, you know, that there's just like we have, uh, independent cities and managing and directing, and there needs to be jurisdiction there for the cities. with the state, that's the same with our— that vertical separation of powers, which goes in then to perhaps our greatest economic risk is our national debt. But we don't have that as a state, but the impact. And so we need to be prepared. So that would be that area. Policy-wise, I was able to hear— Refshaim, can you speak or can we hear you? Can you hear?

Yes, I can. Thank you.

Oh, well, would, would you like to— is anything you want to say on the budget, any in that sphere?

Um, there are things I want to say, but it sounds like you were heading in a direction, and I can, I can speak after you. I don't want to—

I was just going over our constitutional stewardship of budget and fiscal and then oversight and, and then, uh, policy. Maybe I'll just share policy. There's been over 1,500 bills filed, which is not A joyful thing for me to hear. That's a record year, and I think we, we do well to restrain, be trying to restrain. But you have, have a lot of different needs. The interesting thing is we've not had the population that we have either at this time, and so there's a lot of our constituents that are wanting to see things and policies adjusted and changed and so forth. Wanting to do all we can, again, in relation— there's some pillars of priority that deal in different areas relating to making sure we're tempering the amount of regulation, that we're not interfering inappropriately with things that government shouldn't be involved in. Oversight, that's an ongoing relationship. We, we have several audits taking place right now. We asked for a legislative audit of our Attorney General. That was something that's in process. So that would be, in short, maybe that, that 50,000-foot level, Mayor and council members. I— the thing that I would say, I'm not here to tell you what my priorities are here. I want to hear what yours are. So most important to me is I want to hear what you— what, what's on your mind, what concern and that ongoing. So that's what's very most important for me.

Okay, thank you, Kevin. We appreciate that.

And, uh, we'll have, uh, Representative Judkins, if you'd like to just give us your high-level overview.

And then I think from there, uh, like Representative Stratton said, we'll, we'll just go to trying to let you know what we're concerned about. So if you'd like to go ahead.

That's perfect. Yes, thank you. I am interested to hear your concerns. When talking about the budget, say there's, you know, that there's been about $160 million set aside for tax, a tax cut. We don't know quite what that's going to look like. But I just, you know, sometimes we— lower taxes is always great, but sometimes it makes me nervous. I think we have enough money in the state budget, but then If we— when we cut taxes, income taxes, there's a couple of things to consider because there's always opportunity costs, right? And I think that we need to be very careful how we prioritize what we are spending on. And I would— the committees I serve on, you know, they kind of inform my view. And I'm on Social Services and Health and Human Services and And I, I like to see the money invested in families, in strengthening families, helping people with disabilities, helping those that have severe mental illness, things like that. And so I would like to see less spent on some of the things that I think government shouldn't be involved in. Like, I don't know if I should get so specific, but like we put a lot of money into the point. Or we put money— we just put money places that I don't know that that's exactly where I would prioritize our spending. Also, when we cut taxes, it can put more pressure on local governments and municipalities because we won't have as much money to share with our local governments. And that makes me nervous too. I hate seeing pressure put on property taxes. And sales taxes. And, and so anyway, I just think we need to look at the entire conversation, and if we do it correctly, fantastic. And I hope, I hope that's what we do. Also, I am— I just got a new committee assignment, and I will be on— oh gosh, I should have wrote it down, but it's whatever you guys are. It's political subdivisions.

Political subdivisions.

Yeah. So I'm really, I'm really excited about that, and I want to work closely with you. And, and so I am interested in hearing about what your priorities are and what you would like to see, you know, from us. So anyway, that's it.

Okay, thank you. I appreciate that.

Maybe I'll just throw out some of my concerns, and then we'll get that out there, and then different council members can kind of follow on that. As far as when I think about the legislature, um, it seems like in the last 10 years or so especially, it's really changed with an emphasis towards real estate and real estate development. And it seems like that side of the equation has a much louder voice from the legislature than they ever had before. And so with that comes different uh, bills, mandates that are kind of being pushed down on the cities. And I'm not telling you anything new, but every single city is different, and every city has different needs and has their own identity and who they are and what's important to them, and it varies drastically. And so my probably number one issue would just be that that voice that's so strong on that development real estate side be kept in check and not overwhelm what's supposed— what we're supposed to be doing at the local levels. So that, that's, that's my number one. Um, number two would just be any, any mandates that are put on the cities that are unfunded where they tell you go do this and figure it out. Uh, I, you know, be concerned about that. And then I've always been amazed. I mean, I was amazed when Geez, I think it was back when I first started paying attention, and there were like 400 bills passed. And I thought, oh my gosh, who would— what, you know, I look at bills as ways to control the citizenry. And so I saw 400 bills, and I thought, oh my gosh, and now we're up to, you know, I mean, we're—

where are we? We're—

I guess it doesn't matter. It's just a huge number. So I don't know, it would be important to me to see that we can focus our, our efforts on the bills that matter the most. But anyway, that's just me.

Maybe I could comment, and let's see if we can come up with some solutions. In 2010, the, uh, there, there's an index, it's called the, uh, the, the home prices relative household income. In 2010, it was 3.2 times the median income. Now it's 6.2. So we have an issue. We, in that 13 years, we've doubled, doubled the— so, you know, the— Oh, if the median income was $100,000, the average price home was $300,000. Now it's over $600,000. And so how do we deal with affordable housing? And, uh, I think we've tried. We recognize, uh, at least as your representative, I, I think, uh, Perhaps. Abe Judkins has done the same thing, is we, we realize that Orem, Provo, the areas I represent, uh, maybe not so much Lindon, but we are college towns and there's a lot of, uh, and, uh, rental units and so forth. And I think there's, there's been an effort to hold harmless the cities in this area a little bit and recognize that. But I recognize their frustration, you know, with unfunded mandates and affordable housing. And so what do we do with the, you know, not in my backyard, but yeah, this is a problem. Homelessness is a problem, but how do we deal with that, you know, at a macro level? And if there's, you know, one thing that, one lever that I understand might be helpful is if a city, if we're going to do some higher density, but we can maybe put a requirement on that would require owner-occupied. Maybe that's something that'd be helpful. I don't know, but it's an issue that we're wrestling with. And so I hear you. I'm not texting on my phone, I'm taking notes. I don't have a piece of paper unless someone's going to take notes and give them to me. That'd be great. But that's why I'm using my phone.

So I feel like that is key, right? So it used to be you could buy a $500,000 home Now it may be you're buying in order to get your foot in the door of homeownership. Now maybe it's to help these young families. It's a townhome, but it's owner-occupied. They have the opportunity to build that personal wealth through real estate. I do appreciate you mentioning that.

That's the challenge. We have a whole fragment in our aging that are not able to develop that financial security and wealth because they're renting versus they're owning. And so that's a real challenge.

Yeah, because we always hear— I'm sorry, but, you know, we always hear that, well, where are our children and grandchildren going to live? And my response to that is, do you want your children and grandchildren renting? I mean, what do we want to leave as a legacy for them? And to me, it's an opportunity for that, um, homeownership. Just— and I appreciate your bringing that up and advocating for that.

So, Marsha, did you want to say something?

Oh, um, yeah, and I appreciate all that's been said, and I, I would agree, and I, I do think it is a problem that hopefully, hopefully we can work on together. But I, I feel like, um, Representative Stratton, you know, stated it very well. But I also was hope— I want to leave you with a little hope about the number of bills, because I know they're going up and up and up. But many of them are to give citizens more freedom, right? That a lot of times we, we look at the number of bills and we think, oh my gosh, these are just laws to crack down on people or something like that. A lot of them are just updating code. A lot of them are, are looking at how do we, how do we give more freedom to our citizens? How do we fix things in the past that maybe aren't so good and, and stuff like that? So I'm not saying they're all fantastic bills. I'm just saying that a lot of times you have to look at each bill individually, right? And I know that a lot of people look at that number and think, holy cow, what are they doing? But a lot of times it's just updating code and things like that. So just hopefully a little bit of hope for you that it's not all bad.

I appreciate that. Do we have any other questions?

I got a question. So good to see you, Kevin and Marcia. But my concern is If we look at the BRT that goes up down University from the Frontrunner, that was put in place, but now we have a bill, HB 462, that basically says you have a bus stop, you've got to have that density or plan half a mile in radius. And I think that's not fair. 'Cause you have a bus stop now, they're putting in place, now you're penalized because we have a bus stop and now you have to have density. With Orem being built out 95%, I really think that the legislature needs to look at those cities that don't have any density. I drove down, I drove by Alpine— zero, you know. So there has to be some kind of fairness that it brings equality to all the cities. So don't, don't knock on the door of Orem. We have 45% high density or rentals, and they've got 2. I mean, There has to be a percentage or something that brings it back to fairness for the city of Orem. Um, so that's my concern, is that we have the BRT down University, and now they're talking about maybe putting it down State Street, which that means you have a bus stop, you're going to have more density in Orem, and we don't need density on State Street in Orem. So that's my concern. Also, the legislature— don't take the power away from the cities.

Right.

We represent the citizens and we know what they want. So you need to give us our control back and not, you know, push it down our throats. You talked about housing and growth. You know, affordable housing, that's a nice buzzword, but in reality, you got to have 4 factors. You got to have a contractor, a developer, FHA financing, some kind of subsidy that's going to make it work, right? So until you can get all those 4 together, and those contractors and developers need to know they don't want to make as much money because the subsidy will help in or kick in, that's the only way I can see it's going to be really affordable housing for people to be able to buy and have homeownership. So, and I don't know where you go from there. Is it a national subsidy or is it a state subsidy? I mean, I know Governor Cox gave a first-time buyer, but— That's $20,000, but that doesn't really help on a $500,000 home. So I think if we're really serious about affordable housing, we need to have those 4 factors, and they all need to come together and make it happen. I guess that's my 2 cents.

And so I'll add something to that that concerns me about this HB 462 and the BRT spots that we have already in our city, um, it makes me feel targeted because the Parkway, University Parkway, is our retail center. And as we— as those parking lots are seen as highest and best use of, you know, high-density apartments, that takes away our ability to keep taxes low in our city through our sales tax. So we're unique. We, we do need student housing. I'd like to really work with UVU to see if we can get more student housing on their property. I saw some wonderful things up at the University of Utah. I believe Ivory partnered with them with some brand new student housing there. So just that concern, um, to see if that is— our retail corridor is protected for our residents, um, and if we can find a way to help the student population. find housing so they can go to school and have the full school experience down there at UVU.

So one, you, you jogged my memory on the— I mean, Orem, you know, we have the mall and University Parkway. That is our economic engine because we live on sales tax, right? So if we take away the commercial and put high density, we're going to defeat our, our economic engine and we're gonna we're gonna have to cut budgets and people will lose jobs. So I think in all fairness, we need to make sure that each city is so different. They're all not the same. So I think this HB 462 was more like one size fits all, and it's just that we're wiping the brush one big stroke. And I think as a legislature, you need to defend and make sure that you're doing it, you're acting on our best interests, because I know there's a lot of developers and contractors in the legislature that— You know, uh, don't think that that's right, and they can just push it down our throat. And I think we need to push back because we want to keep Orem Family City USA. And if not, we're going to have high density all up and down State Street. And I think our, our traffic and congestion is horrendous as it is now, and it's only going to get worse. So there's my 2 cents, I guess, and a little bit of—

So what are you seeing in the legislature, Marcia and Kevin, along those Lines, those concerns that we have would be my question.

Well, I know that there is a lot going into housing. We haven't talked about high density as much. I mean, until we get to the session, it's hard unless somebody shares a bill with us. Most, most bills aren't right out there, right? So if there's something coming up that, that is going to affect affect you like that. I haven't heard of it. However, maybe Kevin has. But another thing I want to point out is that this kind of dialogue is really helpful, and it— and I am— I receive texts. I try to contact people. I know I've contacted the city manager different on different bills, because unless you're on a committee that's heard that bill, a lot of times you don't know the finer points of it, and you read through it, and it's long, and you're trying to figure it out. Contacting lobbyists, but it's a paste thing from you before, right? Like on something and get your perspective and point of view. I feel like, I don't know, Kevin, maybe you have something different, or—

Well, I was hoping that maybe you could have an opt-out type thing, right? Instead of everything, you're automatically in. Let's opt out if we don't really want to do 462. We won't. You can have the BRT down University, like something coming up this session, or maybe change 462. Maybe you can do an amendment to 462 and just make it a little more fair. I don't know.

Well, and just to clarify fair, I mean, where we're concerned is, you know, Orem is about around between 40 and 43, 44% rentals.

And so there's a, there's a point at which your city changes, the entire complexion of your city changes as you get more and more rentals. And we don't know what that percentage is, but we know we're hitting, you know, knocking on the door of it.

Mm-hmm.

And so if we're, as a city, forced to go in this omnibus bill that affects everybody the same, and then wherever you've got a, you know, a BRT station or, or, or like over by UVU where you've got that station, if we have to go high density in those areas and we're just forced to by like everyone else, Then do we go from, you know, 43% rentals to 50% rentals after we do that? Anyway, it's just got to be— and what Dave's saying is, why not apply that specifically to different cities? And I mean, you have one bill, and a lot of those cities that he's talking about, the ones who have no density, they don't have a BRT station. So this doesn't even apply to them, period. So anyway, it's just I don't know. We, we're trying to keep the nature of our city. We're trying to keep this Family City USA. We're trying to keep it from tipping over the edge into a lot more density and a lot more rentals. And we just need the state, the legislature's help.

Do you know there's an instinct for— you know what, 29,000 acres— would 29,000 acres help? We had 29,000 more acres. Do you know that in, in Utah County there's 29,000 acres inside The cities of Utah County, they're federally controlled public lands.

I didn't know that. No.

And you look at, you look at the housing, the housing, uh, affordability issue, it's, it is, it is a function of available property and price of land and so forth. Of course, you have to have the infrastructure there. But that's, that, that's just, that's just an interesting aspect that the challenge that we're dealing with is you look at in theory, the theory would be, uh, the Councilman Spencer's notion of, you know, if we're going to spend a lot of money on creating hubs, uh, and the cost of having those spots, it would make sense in theory to encourage higher density there that would then diminish the traffic congestion that we just talked about and other things. That's the theory, right?

Right.

But sometimes in theory, one size fits all is a tremendous failure. So, you know, I want you to know I hear what you're saying. My segue in to The whole remark was that there's— these are the challenges, and, and, and we recognize it. Orem and Provo, for example, have lifted their weight in this sphere, and that's reflected actually in the legislation that's ultimately passed. To be quite honest, the first time I heard about 462 was about 15 minutes ago, or 5 minutes ago. I don't know who the sponsor is. I haven't heard of it. I don't know who the sponsor is. I haven't heard of it. I'm imagining that's okay. I think it's not an issue not to hear at this point. It's not an issue. I, I would assume that you had the League of Cities and Towns here a minute ago and they probably briefed you on that. Is that what— I wasn't here to hear the briefing.

It was a major point during our election because it was—

462, I think, was like 2 years ago, or when was it?

You're not— I thought you were talking about 462 in the 2024 legislative session. You're going back to—

I was going back.

2022 is when it was passed.

It has been tweaked. And really, the concern when it started out, it didn't seem like a big thing because it seemed like what exactly what you're saying, higher density around the Frontrunner stations. But then the last minute they added the BRT stations, which really targeted only Orem and Provo because we were the cities that had the BRT. So that's why it just seemed like it was just thrust upon us without a lot of citizen and City Council engagement and feedback being given there. So that's why—

I mean, I'm sorry that I, I misspoke. I thought you were talking about— yeah, did you? That was—

I—

so, so we're talking about, uh, dealing with the, the 2022 Session 462, is that correct?

Right. And our understanding was it was the front runner a half a mile radius, but now we're getting told that now it's all the stations up University that you have to have.

How are you being told by that? How's that communication?

That's what our city's showing maps. We have circles all around the bus stops.

Is that the council?

Is that the—

And MAG is moving forward on that.

It's in the legislation that requires it.

Okay. Yeah, so I think we need to look at that and tweak it or something because Well, my point is, is that the, the segue into that is, is there is a lot of legislation that we need to be aware of coming, coming in. And as you look at issues like that, I would recommend that you say this is problematic for us and, and notify your representatives. I mean, that's— it does— the theory is, is good, sound, but There needs to be some offsetting, uh, certainly some offsetting safety valves that we're talking about. And I, I think that's entirely reasonable. It's not— I don't see it as an issue. So, you know, just articulate it and communicate it, and we'll, we'll go to work on it.

Okay. And so that, that is what we're talking about, is that bill from a couple years ago that changed the whole dynamic of density assigned from the legislature in the cities.

And, you know, and so that was what Council Member Spencer was talking about, ramming it down our throats. Is that the ram down your throat one?

Yes.

Yeah, I mean, the, the bottom line was it was like, hey, it's a great thing, Frontrunner, you know, you have the half mile, but then all of a sudden now it's encroached down University to every bus stop. And we have— how many do we have? 4?

3 or 4?

3 or 4.

So we have to have density in that The only one it doesn't apply to is the UVU station because it only applies to a station that has dedicated lanes for BRT. So it would be the 3 on the Parkway.

So we got 3. Yeah. So I mean, and that could change the whole, you know, vision of University and Forum with—

So we would be replacing— okay, I understand what you're saying. We're replacing the commercial, which was at the time that went in under RDA funds, interestingly enough, how Orchard was a redevelopment need. But anyway, that's— I remember what used to be cherries and peaches. Sure.

So Mag is telling you that their interpretation of 462 is that you have to take out your commercial development around each of these bus stations and replace it with high density.

No, that we have to— we have to have a zoning overlay for high density. Am I saying this right? Which then makes that— I mean, really, by ordinance, we just heard a presentation in our work meeting today that we will need to change our ordinances to allow those projects to just go through without being reviewed through a zoning change, without being reviewed through the city council in those areas. So we are— they are essentially telling us, taking away our zoning authority, our land use authority. It's, it's on the MAG checklist. I just attended a meeting back in December So I don't know. The question is, is that Mag's interpretation of the bill? That's my question, really. And, um, if so, let's see what we can do. If there's anything you can do to help those of us— I mean, really, it's Orem and Provo, those of us who have these BRT stations.

You know, because it does—

it is pretty much, when you look at these, these stops, these BRT stops, it's University Parkway. They, they actually even overlap because those stops are— the location of those stops and the proximity of those stops.

Well, let me ask, is there a, is there a sense of this council that you oppose that?

We absolutely oppose that.

Well, that's the mayor.

That is the mayor.

Is that everybody nodding? We oppose that. Well, you are the legislative body of this city, and you have the authority and, and the duty to make that known. And, and, uh, certainly you've done it by talking to your 2 representatives. But I don't— if, if and when things like this come up, it's important we have the dialogue and the perspective to properly advocate and represent. You're making a great argument that I It's problematic if you're not unified, but if you're unified—

Yeah. Now, this was one of those bills that started very late and got going and got a head of steam. And I mean, I was told the week before the bill passed that it wouldn't affect Orem significantly, and then got tweaked and changed and rammed through.

And then magically, now it is what it is.

Completely different than what we understood.

Would you, would you recommend a different course, or does that, does that sound like—

I, and I, I think what you're asking too is that you're hoping that we can do something this session to change this bill. I'm not sure how feasible that is. Kevin, I don't know what your load is, if you feel like you can do that, but I'm willing to I mean, I, I'll meet with Mag with you and we can talk about it because I don't— yeah, I don't feel like I know enough about this bill yet. And, and I completely understand why you would be opposed to this. I mean, I, I completely understand that.

So what is the— what is the— how do you— like, if a bill is HB 462, do you go to the author or the person that wrote it?

Or you could just go to any legislator, but it probably needs to be a bit more before the session because at this point there, it would be very hard to get a bill drafted and through kind of a thing. And anybody can change anything. I could propose changes to this. Yeah.

The other bill that was, so that was the 2022 legislative session, HB 462. The other one that also needs to be reviewed is Senate Bill 174. That was the 2023 2023 legislative session. Um, and I think, Steve, did you want to speak to some of that?

Well, I just had a question, you know, with regards to this bill that we were talking about and the station area plans and so forth. I was just wondering if our representatives would find it helpful if we maybe took that language as it exists in the statute right now and, and basically showed you some redline changes of how we'd like that language to be amended.

Yes, what— and again, let me be clear. I think the first thing we need to do is make sure we have the proper interpretation, and maybe it can be solved there. Uh, if that was the mayor's understanding, it's likely that was my understanding as well. I have, through my time of service, I've tried to be sensitive to the realities and the uniqueness of Orem and Provo. Orem and Provo is different than Salem or Woodland Hills, you know, because of the college towns and what we've already done and where we are in our, our maturing and our development. And so there needs to be that. The one-size-fits-all never works. And so the best thing you can do, uh, for your representatives is to take that language and say, you know, if, if we were king— we don't have kings— but if I was king and we want to be fair and I want to represent my council and the, the, the body, this would be good language. That's a very powerful tool. And candidly, there may be a piece of legislation coming through that we could— that subject matter consistency is, is there, and we can add that language and have that discussion. But I would res— I will ask, you know, I wouldn't— I, I don't know, I, I would invite you to resist doing that until we have clarification on this. That's what I would say as a citizen. I'll take off my legislative hat. I would expect you to resist doing that if you're unified. Doing that until we have further clarification. I'll put my legislative hat on, say I will support in getting that clarification and making— having that discussion, because it's, it's really surprising when we have a discussion that common sense and good policy will prevail, you know, as we understand.

So, yeah. And we can get that clarification. And I actually would be kind of shocked if it's not the way that we think it is. Because it's gone pretty far down the pike, but we can get that clarification. Should we?

Let's look at the language. I mean, we need to look at— we need to do it duly. I, I'm just— it wasn't legislative intent to have you change your zoning and take out the commercial and put in high density. That was not the intent.

So, so to clarify that, yeah, they're not saying—

Some of those that may have voted for it, they're not—

They're not saying take out existing commercial. They're saying in areas where there is a parking lot or whatever, that's where the high density would go. Ryan?

Yeah, our team's delved into this quite a bit, and Representative Stratton is correct. It does say if there's something— if the city doesn't want to do something, they don't have to. If there's something that makes sense at that location and we, we don't want to take out commercial, we don't have to. We just have to go through a process. We have to do a plan and see if there's an opportunity to do affordable housing or more housing. The challenge is, it's a subjective process. What we submit gets reviewed by MAG, and if MAG doesn't like it, then that is where we run up against, you know, possible resistance. So, for example, One of the stations is University Place. Our argument would be we've already put density at University Place. Look at how much has been built. We have a brand new park across the street. We have the new Kimball Smith project coming that's mixed use. We don't have any vacant land around that station. So our efforts would be, hey, we've already done this. We have a station area plan before you made us do one. And we that would be kind of our approach to that. specific station, and then MAG would have to decide. And I believe, Mayor, you're on a committee with other mayors that has a final say on this, and you vote whether our plan is accepted or not, right, once it gets to your level. So there are some outs, but whether we'll actually get to that point or not remains to be seen.

Right.

So my, my issue with that is— and I could be wrong, so I, you know, I'm Please correct me, but, um, the MAG process is my vote in the same room as all the other votes. So if I vote against and all these other mayors vote in favor of forcing Orem to put this optional zoning in place, I'm not controlling the land use of my city.

Is that—

you're shaking your head yes. Ryan, am I correct there?

Yeah, we don't have the final say as a city.

And that's the concern I think that we're trying to voice here is please help us maintain our legislative land use authority. And we are— we're open to assisting with the housing crisis, but let us be in the box that fits best for us. Let us look at the whole picture of our infrastructure. of our need, of our college town. As you said, Representative Stratton, thank you so much for recognizing those challenges. And I think that's— if from what I'm seeing and hearing tonight, it's, it's kind of like, thank you so much for letting us voice these concerns to you. And I'm very encouraged after this conversation with you and Representative Judkins. This sounds like we just need to— communicate better with y'all and maybe pull MAG into those communications too.

Well, Representative Judkins' point is so healthy to have the discussion, and generally it's a breakdown in the communication that creates that and the misunderstandings. But it sounds like it's— if I'm interested, I want to get with your good counsel and, and, and, and, and staff managers and see how in the world did you delegate the authority of your zoning to this MAG organ, you know, what is it, Mountain Land Associative Governments? How did that happen? I mean, if, if you've lost the authority, it's your own making. Not yours, but there's, there's been a— and so maybe we need to look at also amending that because you need to have that authority to have self-determination and, uh, meet the needs that you have, as you meet to address your constituency. I don't— that—

I didn't know MAG had that So, bottom line, if I may summarize, uh, sounds like you as representatives— and, and, uh, I would imagine there's probably other, uh, representatives and senators that represent Orem— you'd be open to at least, uh, hearing out what potential unintended consequences we, we think may have come from HB 462 and SB 174 and potentially help us look into possible clarifications and/or improving the implementation and application of those bills?

Well, yes, and I can see— I'll let Representative Judkins, but what I would say to that is sometimes you don't know the unintended consequences until they've arrived. So we need to— that needs to be ongoing. But again, I can— I, I see 2 prongs. We need to look at the jurisdiction and authority of MAG itself and why that's the case, and also see what we can do to adjust, uh, uh, 462 given what we know today. Yes, thank you. Let's do it. That's why we're here.

You want another bill to add to those, uh, Only if it's one of the good ones that you talked about.

I don't even think there's—

Just an adjustment to the existing one.

Mayor, I want to thank these 2 representatives for their many years, or a few years of service, and in their final year of service for both of you in the House of Representatives. And perhaps other things will yet come of one or both of you, and we wish you well in the future. But it's been a privilege for the— Marcia, I think you've been in 5 or 6 years, and Kevin, I think a dozen years. So thank you for your service, and I've had the opportunity to interact with both of you prior to those times. So thank you for your service.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you, Council Member. It's an honor to serve. It is. We— and I think when we get, uh, in sometimes the details, we forget what a privilege and blessing the shoulders we stand on, the gifts from Divine Providence that we have to live where we live and be able to have the opportunity to stand up. But every generation, every moment needs Uh, needs good sound minds and willing to be, uh, listen to one another. And I, you know, I will tell you that I think having different perspectives is actually vital to the process to come up with the best solution.

You—

we've got to have them, but let's be respectful and dignified and honorable as we interact and allow enough humility that we don't have all the best answers. I don't I know that's certainly not the case for me anywhere close to that. I sense that. And so I think that's— thank you. Thank you so much.

Let me just throw out one quick thought too, as far as, you know, a lot of what we hear about affordable housing is in these big projects that have a lot of density and all the rest. And there's a whole debate there if that's really affordable by the time, you know, everybody's involved and the free market gets involved. But the one thing I have, I've never really heard from the legislature is a conversation about renewal of neighborhoods and going into older neighborhoods that have kind of, you know, lost their luster and the housing's, you know, not as nice as it, it could be. But there's got to be something there that renewing those neighborhoods, if it had the same kind of push and, and impact from the legislature, Could be a way for a city like Orem, where we're over 100 years old, to start coming back in. And that would be a way to create affordable housing and doing it in a meaningful way, and it wouldn't change the whole nature and dynamic of the city. So anyway, that's something that, you know, we've been talking about that we think could use some attention.

I just, um, to add on to that, um, we do have as part of our affordable housing, you know, Investments that we— there are home renewal grants. I think last year we— oh, I can't— please don't quote me on this, but maybe it was $10 to $15 million. And they— and the purpose is so that, for example, when someone who's lived in a house for a really long time, they're on a fixed income and the house is falling apart and they, you know, it's going to be whatever they can't— it's unlivable, and someone's gonna have to— anyway, they can go in and fix up that home. And I don't know, I can find out for you if someone reminds me, please. I'll put it in my notes, but I can find out for you how those grants are applied or who can apply for them. I'm not sure. But I know that there is money out there for that very thing, and I'm not sure how much or how to get it.

Yeah.

And that sounds great. So we'd like to get that information, and then we'd like to have a broader conversation about just in a big picture. This is a possible solution path for, you know, creating the affordability and, uh, while maintaining the nature of the city.

People in their homes in a safe place.

Right. You know, as we talk about affordable housing and deal with these issues, you really— I think we need to ask ourselves really how much can we appropriately do and maintain proper principles of the free market, right? You know, what, what is appropriate in that regard? And we have to be careful there. Uh, I think the, the— a perspective, a legislative perspective, would say, how can we support a city and what they're doing with zoning and so forth to create it, create, create a, a an environment that encourages that. I don't think— would we want to find some money from someone else, from other— someone else's pocket to then put— give $50,000, for example? Just— is it $50,000 each homeowner to spruce up their home and make it viable? I don't— I don't know that— I'm not even suggesting that you're suggesting that, right? That's, that's where those unintended consequences and discussions can go. And how do you protect, you know, the notion of taking ownership and being a wise steward and caring and maintaining and self-reliance and self, you know, all those key aspects?

So what I'm saying is definitely not that. And I understand the complexities of trying to come up with affordable housing in a market that's driven as a free market. I mean, it's almost impossible. But what I'm saying is all this push from the developers to do these big housing complexes and all this high density and all the impact they've got pushing towards legislatures to make that happen, if some of that impact could be pushed towards renewal of neighborhoods, and maintaining, you know, the consistency of a community.

And so I don't know what the answer is.

Reallocation of brain trust and emphasis and energy. Yeah, yeah.

So I, so I don't know what the answer is.

I just know there, there is an answer out there.

Um, as far as—

and when I look at, you know, I mean, we're 95% built out, so where does that take us? Well, that takes us to renewing our, our, our cities, you know, where they need to be renewed to To opt, and if we can help affordability in that process, and all the better.

So I don't know the answer, but I'd just like to see some, rather than everything pushed towards, you know, the high-density models, have some pushed towards neighborhoods and homes and renewing those.

So.

Can I ask a quick question? Just because I'm curious. I, I'm wondering, you know, when we talk about affordable housing, Something that makes houses, housing, and housing developments less affordable are the HOAs. And a lot of HOAs are extremely aggressive, and I feel like they, they take away homeowners' property rights, actually, you know, when they get into what kind of fences, what kind of trees, what kind of landscaping, what kind of everything like that. I don't know what I would love to hear just super quick. Because I know we're running out of time, and I really appreciate all your time, and I appreciate the dialogue. But what do you think about HOAs as creating less affordable housing?

Yeah, no, I think that's, that's another piece of the puzzle. HOAs are like any other controlling entity. They can be good, or they can be really, really bad, just depending on who's running them and who's in charge of them.

But That's, that's my take.

But that, but that is another piece of the puzzle, and it really is a puzzle if you're going to answer it.

I'll offer a thought on that, if that's okay. I think that most HOAs that have those kinds of severe restrictions that you're talking about, whether it be architectural features, you know, a minimum size, things like that, they're, they're going to tend to be the higher-end, more expensive type developments, more expensive type homes. as opposed to the smaller, more affordable homes. The other thing about that is that people who live in those areas with those kind of covenants, conditions, and restrictions, or CC&Rs, people go into those knowing or having the opportunity to know that those restrictions are there. So they're voluntarily agreeing to it. And if ultimately later they don't like it or don't agree to it, typically the bylaws of an HOA will allow for rescission of those rules or modification of the rules. So they, you know, if the majority or a supermajority of the people who live within an HOA don't like those rules, they can vote to eliminate them, essentially.

Thank you.

Yeah, and to your question on affordability, that's where HOAs a lot of times can be a ticking time bomb. Somebody moves into an HOA, the roofs, you know, in the complex are needing to be replaced. There's the balconies are falling off, who knows what's happening, and there's some huge liability, and, uh, the people moving in aren't aware of that. And so it's just a financial mess. But anyway, um, yes, but, but I think it goes back to individual HOAs.

So the one plus I do see, and that I have heard of, because I, I know what the mayor's talking about, these assessments when you're age— when you're the association, the housing complex is in disrepair. So then you have these assessments that a new buyer could have inherited. But the one positive that I would like to figure out how to keep in an HOA is like I had a friend who they had 85% of their units had to be owner occupied. Only 15% could be rented. If you wanted to rent yours, you had to get on a list. And as people dropped off, you would move up the list and you would then have the opportunity to rent your unit. So that preserved the environment that the people bought into, right? They bought into a community of homeowners in an effort to create, to establish their home and their neighbors. And to me, that one seems doable. That one seems something that keeps the value of that development and helps it to appreciate. So that's my take on HOAs. All of these other restrictive things, I understand how that could be prohibitive.

Okay, we probably better wrap up. Do we have any other questions or comments?

Mayor and Council, I'll just say that, you know, it's difficult to get some of our state elected officials to take the time out of their busy schedules to meet with us, especially as they're preparing for a new legislative session. So big thanks to Representatives Judkins and Stratton for coming and meeting with us. It definitely is real evidence that they are genuinely interested in working with us and are genuinely open to our input and feedback.

Yeah, I agree with that and second it enthusiastically. We really appreciate taking the time to listen.

Yeah, we appreciate your service. You guys, you're awesome. Thanks, Kevin.

Appreciate your service too.

So enjoy your next 52 days, friends.

Thank you. That's very kind. Well, we're, you know, we're in this together. I've always said that what will impact me and my family most will be in— because I'm a citizen of Orem— will be what you do, not That's what I do with my colleagues, and so grateful for your willing service. I have 10 bullet points here that we've talked about, and I'll be grateful to work with council and, you know, our manager Bybee and Clark and Council Earl. You're well represented in that way, and each of you certainly as well. And see if we can, uh, make, uh, make the inroads and, and do the things we need to do here to, to, uh, represent the needs of this city. Thank you. Okay, thank you so much.

Thank you. Thank you. We appreciate you both.

Okay, thanks.

Bye.

Mayor, I'd like to make a motion.

Yes.

I'd like to move that we skip the closed-door session and that we ask Mr. Earl to send us a Uh, client privilege information on a few legal issues.

Sure, happy to do that.

If I can get a second, then a vote first.

I'll second that.

Okay.

Aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Okay, the motion passes. Well, I think that takes us to— find my agenda. Where'd my agenda go?

City Manager items and then an adjournment.

Okay. Uh, yes, Brent, do you have any city manager items?

Just, just one little— one thing. I just want to publicly acknowledge that, uh, um, you as, as mayor and council during the retreat, you were super appreciative and complimentary of our staff. And so I just want to make that publicly known and, and express my thanks in particular to Tess Jones and our executive team and you for helping make sure that the retreat was super, uh, successful and, and frankly inspiring and motivating to, to, to me and, and, uh, to our staff. And, and so thank you.

Thank you, Brent.

We appreciate that. Would someone like to make a motion to adjourn?

I'll move that we adjourn this meeting.

Second.

Aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Aye.