City Council · 2024-01-23

Are we live?

Yes. Okay, welcome to our work meeting this afternoon. We're back again. That went fast.

It didn't seem like 2 weeks.

We'd like to welcome everyone here, all the council. Um, McDonald's not able to make it today. And we'll start out with, uh, we've got a presentation from our MGT group, and we've been working for them, with them for several months now. And as they can explain, uh, this is the management consulting group that we hired several months ago to go through all the different areas of the city. And help us make sure we're doing everything the optimal way based on best practices. So we'll turn the time over. Are you going to take it, Carrie, or straight to the screen?

You did a great job introducing, so I think I'm going to shoot it over to Carson and Bruce to get y'all started.

Okay, sounds good.

So we have Bruce up here on the screen. You can see from MGT Consulting, he's been the project manager lead from MGT's firm for the city. and coordinating the team that's been studying, um, our local government efficiency study, um, across the city. Um, today we're going to be covering 2 of those reports because they're so broad. Um, we only have time for that many, and so, uh, today would be police and finance. So Bruce, if you want to introduce yourself a little further.

But Carson, if you don't mind, when we're talking about finance, we're only talking about the purchasing aspect of it. We're not talking about personnel Or, or the entire finance department. We're just talking about—

yeah.

And in the introduction, you'll see that each department had its own. Not every report is going to be identical and looking at the same things. Um, because we're looking at different efficiencies in the different departments, and they're also very different. So, like Terry said, this one's not staffing.

Yes.

As far as, uh, so this will, will be going over 2 of the departments, right? How many in total of these reports do you guys know?

Yes, there are about— Bruce is at 17.

There are divisions of departments. There's, I think, about 12 unique departments.

Yeah, then there are some division-specific ones as well, in addition to departments.

Okay, so this is just a small bite of the apple. Absolutely.

To see what's going on with the study and where they're going in these particular departments.

Yes, and just to be clear that we will have the entire report published to the public once we're finished. So this is just a little piece of that.

The goal is to each, each council study session is to work little by little and chip through, answer all of your guys' questions, get, get you the information in small chunks. And then yes, there will be a complete report, and each department division will be a chapter. Of that final report.

And this, this is essentially part of our quest to make Orem the best city in the state, break down each department, each area, and focus on it to see how we're doing things and optimize wherever possible.

Absolutely. Yeah, the goal of the study is to validate current practices that are efficient and come up with new strategies and ideas of how to enhance efficiencies in the city. So, yes, Pete, you want to pull up the—

share the HDMI from your computer?

Bruce, while we're— what? Yes, Bruce, while we're pulling this up, do you want to introduce yourself and MGT, give a little bit of background?

Sure. My name is Bruce Cowens, uh, and I'm with MGT Consulting. Thank you for having me. I'm here today with Jerry Jerry Wolf, also of MGT. Jerry was the principal author of the finance chapter. I was the principal author of the police chapter. This project arises, as we understand it, from the city's earnest interest in running a tight ship, and I think we can conclude that you run a tight ship. We largely validated your practices. We have some changes to recommend. We think in the world of continuous improvement, no matter how good an organization it is, from time to time you'll find things that you could tighten up. But there's no serious problems in this. There are some opportunities for you to address the level of services you provide and their cost. So, okay, so you have a slide deck and let's go to the next slide, please. We will begin today by discussing what do we mean by efficiency. The city has titled this project an efficiency study, and so that we're not talking past each other, we will spend a couple of minutes soon talking about what does that mean and how did that affect how we did this study. And then for each department, for police and for finance, we will review what did you ask, what do we find, and what do you do next. So next slide, please.

Okay.

Dictionaries provide multiple definitions. In this case, we have put in front of you here A list of potential definitions of efficiency. The first one I think would come to everybody's mind, to do the same thing at lower cost. Is there a way to get more bang for the buck? Or alternatively, if you can do the same thing, same cost, but do it faster, that would be efficient. Or, and we're not doing this heavily, but if you spend a little more, could you get a Or could you spend much less but have only a minimal impact on service levels? That might be efficient as well. You will see flavors of these in each of the departmental reports, and today we're here only with police and finance, but we will be back in future workshop sessions to review our findings of the other departments and divisions.

Thank you, Mr.

Chair.

Next slide, please. Okay. Our understanding is that you have a culture of good government and you commissioned this study as an attempt to get some third-party insight from a firm that does a lot of management consulting to the public sector and see what we think. That does not guarantee you will agree with us in all cases, and you won't hurt our feelings if you don't. But we have tried, based on our experience in comparison to peers, a selection of cities in your area, plus our experience nationally, to give you some findings of what we think are judgments on how you are providing services. The review is not a complete review of all city government. That would be a massive scope, and that was never intended. The city provided us with a charter for each division or department that we reviewed, usually 2 or 3 specific topics that it wanted us to address. And we did this with input from both the city management and the departments. The report is MGT's report, but I will say that we've had a very active involvement from city staff in questioning our drafts, asking us to clarify, and asking us to improve not only the, the subject matter, but also to make it more visually accessible. We understand that at the end of this, you are going to put the document in front of the public, and that you know more about what the city does than the public does. So some of what's in the report will be addressed to an audience of the public. Um, so let us go to the next slide, please. Okay, this is the list of who was in the study. I'll pause for a minute and let you review it.

So, to answer your question, Mayor, these are the departments and specific divisions that were analyzed throughout this entire efficiency study process. And as Bruce said, MGT was able to meet with every single department head and division leader throughout the study to gain, gain more insight into the context of Orange City and how we operate, learn more about council priorities and objectives in those departments and divisions policy-wise, and also to gain access to various data points to help inform Okay.

All right, onward to police. And there were 2 questions here: should the department offer 24/7 lobby service, and is the supervisory structure appropriate? As to the lobby service issue, there is currently an emergency assistance button outside of the police headquarters building. But you can only get lobby service for non-emergency matters during day shift. The question here was, would it be worth establishing a 24/7 resident access to those services? There are people that work different shifts. What if you need a copy of an accident report and you get off work in the middle of the night? How do you do that? With regard to that, we looked at a couple of questions. One was whether there would be an incremental cost. We think not materially so. What the plan would be if you do this would be that day shift staff would be assigned to work night shift. So it doesn't require you to add staff. It just changes when those shifts happen. It might have a very minor amount of cost to build the lobby and the button inside, but we did not consider that a material expense. We addressed the issue of whether there would be demand for these services. What we found locally was that West Jordan has a 24/7 lobby with a button that you could press. The really— the only difference between what West Jordan does and what Orem does is your button is outside and theirs is inside, but other than that, it rings to dispatch and they will send somebody if you need them. So we concluded from that that there is not a precedent of 24/7 lobby service in this area. And we called West Jordan to ask, how much use does your button get? And they said hardly any. So part of our thinking is influenced by, uh, just something that people want. And of course, you know, when you want it, you want it. But we think for the most part, it would not be receiving much use. We are also— we considered the appeal of night shift work. Our bias was most people who have adjusted to working day shifts and have their family and personal lives organized that way probably don't want to be working at nights. We spoke with record clerks and They did. I don't want to. I don't want to phrase this too strongly, but let's say they were not enthusiastic about it. They will do it if you ask. So we are not recommending that you have a 24/7 lobby. If you want to, you know, feel free. Go ahead. We don't think there would be a great deal of demand for it. We don't think it's expensive, but. It's not worth spending much money on if people aren't going to use it much.

Okay.

On to the issue of supervisory structure. Supervisory structure is actually, in our view, several questions in one. One is you have just filled the position of Deputy Chief, and while it was already done, staff asked us, what do we think of that? Another definition of supervisory structure is Are the supervisory titles that you have industry standard, and are they common in this area? What do we think of those? And then finally, spans of control. Supervisory structure involves, for each supervisor, overseeing a certain number of people. So as to that, we find that the deputy chief position, we really like this. I know you've already done it, so if you were nervous, you can breathe a sigh of relief. But we think that having a clearly designated second in command is a good idea, and we applaud your decision to have done that. As to the use of supervisory titles, we think that the titles that you're using are common in the area and common nationally. That your structure of the divisions of the department matches your peers, and there is essentially a validation of the structure that you have. One area where we raised some questions was on the span of control, the staff-to-supervisor ratios. Um, and the chief may disagree with us, and if so, frankly, we're going to defer to the chief. Can we have the next slide, please? We looked at staff-to-supervisor ratios across the divisions of the department, and we looked at the department versus other local peers. And we found that in general, the department has a staff-to-supervisor ratio consistent with peer cities and consistent with our experience nationally. There is a difference at the division level within the department. Patrol and support services are operating essentially at the level that the peers do. In investigations, we found that supervisors have fewer people reporting to them than in the rest of the department. We don't know that that's wrong. We think that it calls for writing a policy. If, if the chief were to say, but I really need this to be this way, I, I don't think we would have a strong objection. But we note that if someone is promoted to sergeant and has supervisory duties, how much supervision they do depends which division they're in. It's pretty consistent between patrol and support services. If you are a sergeant in investigations, You have fewer people reporting to you. Now, perhaps the nature of the work done makes that appropriate, but we are calling that to your attention and would defer to the chief on his opinion of that. Next slide, please. So what do you need to do next on the lobby service? You know, we're, we're not fans, but if you are, go ahead. You need to decide what to do about that. On the span of control issue, as I mentioned earlier, if this is your intent, that to be a sergeant or a supervisor in investigations means that the nature of your work calls for you to supervise fewer people, I think for the sake of equity for the other sergeants in the department, it would help to write that into a policy document. And if you feel that that's appropriate, again, we don't argue, but if it's just something that evolved over time, our finding is that if that's your intent, then that's okay, but please say so. Next slide, please. I'm going to turn this over to Jerry Wolf now to present. In finance, we addressed only—

Bruce, one second.

Yes.

Bruce, this is Bren Bybee. Just a couple of comments, if you don't mind, and maybe a question. So, one, I, first of all, I love what you said in terms of prefacing all this with, with our why, that we have kind of a culture of continuous improvement. And one of the first things that you did specifically in looking at our public safety was review the CityGate master plan study.

Oh, yes.

And if you don't mind my putting you on the spot, could you please kind of share your assessment of that?

I thought it was an outstanding report. I don't know what you paid for it, but my sense is that the people that did that were very strong and with particular expertise that is not universal in all firms, and their understanding of the communications and technology that runs the department. I was very pleased to see that you had undertaken that. And frankly, when this study started, I thought we were going to have to dive into some of that. And my question was, won't that be very time-consuming and expensive? But having already headed that one off at the pass, that was not in our scope.

But I will—

I want to aim some praise at the authors of that report and to your internal sponsorship of that investigation.

Thank you.

I thought it was terrific.

Thank you.

So, although I agree, we didn't put you up to that assessment of that study, right? So, but that kind of leads into how do we get to what questions or what areas of work or what specific services? How do we get to the point where we are deciding what those assessments are going to be? And so, in part, it's, What have we looked at recently? What have we seen other cities do? How did the interviews go with department heads and division managers? Or what have we heard from the public? So I just wanted to make sure that our mayor and council know what's kind of gone into even coming up with these questions that we're then having you do all of this analysis for us.

That's helpful. And thank you, Brent, for that. And what I would say here is, that when we look at the efficiency of different types of municipal departments, some of them have workload that is directly proportional to population served or some kind of transactional count. Police is not really that kind of organization, particularly for patrol. You need to be able to have prompt response to emergency requests for help. And so police is about a coverage strategy that you deploy your team so that wherever help is needed, you can get somebody on the scene quickly and send backup to them in a timely manner. But we don't, we don't measure police by how many tickets written or crimes prevented. It's a question of can we provide speedy response when somebody is in crisis?

And then to Brent's point, so for finance, you know, the context behind this one, finance is a pretty internal function. So the questions of the study for the finance department were informed by feedback from, like Brent said, other departments that interact with finance, finance themselves, who know they feel the strain, the bottlenecks. And of course, from elected officials as well. So all these different perspectives, as Bryn mentioned, feed into— here's where MGT is focusing because they only have so many hours and there are a lot of things they can analyze citywide. But we had to define a scope for them to hone in those hours and use them wisely for those more important purposes that departments or city staff felt were were needed, where we needed to look at. So with that, Bruce, do you want to continue with the finance?

Thank you. Well, I'm, I'm going to, uh, turn this over to Jerry Wolf at this point, who was the principal author of this chapter. I may chime in, but this is for Jerry to present.

Good afternoon, everybody. Uh, as Bruce said, I was the principal author on the finance department. What you see on the screen here, there were 2 Primary questions for finance. One, investigating the purchasing threshold— threshold, sorry— and the approval process. And the second was looking at software, procurement software, and whether it could streamline the procurement process. We go to the next slide, please.

Our—

thank you. So looking at the purchasing thresholds, okay, we're recommending that the city increase its current threshold for use of RFPs. Right now, the city requires an RFP, a request for proposal, for any procurement over $25,000. Now, the city manager has some discretion Discretion over that. So, you know, for really large purchases, the city manager can, you know, does not necessarily need to have executed an RFP. But by and large, there is an RFP process for anything that's above $25,000. We're recommending that the city raise that cutoff from $25,000 to $50,000. And there are several reasons for that. Sandy right now, they have a cutoff of $40,000, and I'll come back to the $40,000 in a few minutes. But Sandy's cutoff is $40,000. West Valley has a cutoff of $30,000. Now, we think over— we see that over time, Communities do raise these cutoffs. The impact of inflation and so on and so forth. You know, right now the average price of a new car is probably, you know, in the 40s. Under some procurement rules right now, you'd have to go for an RFP, which really doesn't make a whole lot of sense. So, you know, there's some— been a little discussion, or really a lot of discussion, just within the last, I'd say, 72 hours. About how much this would save. How much it would save the city. The, uh, uh, the city is 41— we asked for a file, uh, of, uh, purchase orders for the last year. Uh, the city had 4,834 purchase orders. Uh, we got a great file from finance on, on this. Uh, there are 41 purchase orders. Between $25,000 and $50,000. So we were trying to estimate the level of effort involved by the city to process an RFP, something in the range of $25,000 to $50,000. We got different estimates. We think the estimates were as low as $25,000. hours of effort to as high as 80 hours of effort on average. Now, we think it's probably somewhere in the middle. And the reason it's in the middle is the— when there is a procurement and an RFP is involved, it involves the line departments for speccing out the goods and services that are being procured. Okay. So Public Works, you know, has to spec exactly what they're looking for. And then there's a trickle, then it impacts finance and budgeting and the procurement manager. But it can also involve legal. It can involve HR, possibly, a variety of other areas. So we think it's more than 20 hours and maybe less than 80 hours. But the fact— the idea of circumventing the RFP process and focusing on the larger procurements We think there could be significant savings for the city.

Yes, go ahead.

Could you just explain to help everyone understand how we're getting to this? We're saying 20 to 80 hours, we're saying 40, you know, and then multiplying that out. But I think people need to understand by moving this threshold, we're basically taking away the need to do RFPs. And the RFPs are expensive. And so maybe if you can just break down quickly, you know, what goes on tomorrow.

Yeah, Jerry, if you don't mind, I'll summarize this really quickly. Um, so just for context's sake too, the last time the thresholds were looked at was in 2013 for the city of Orem. Since then, inflation— a lot of things cost more than $25,000 nowadays. Um, the reason That there is a spectrum of the time, the time and cost allowance between RFPs, because every project, it varies how large the scope of a project it is. Some RFPs are shorter in their amount of time, some are larger. So that's why you see this large spectrum of cost savings. But when you don't have to go through RFP, when you don't have to spec out different vendors, when you don't have to create the legal agreements required for RFPs, when you don't have to go through the evaluation and interview process, that takes a long time. And we have a lot of purchases that fall in that, that threshold.

Right.

When you raise the threshold to $50,000 and eliminate all those little RFPs for little products that take a ton of time, sometimes the RFP process could cost more than the actual Um, service. Um, that is the benefit of raising a, a threshold for the finance department. Exactly.

So, I mentioned—

sorry, we have another, another question here.

So, in a— if I am— in the last couple years I've been on the council, I have noticed there have been occasions at the discretion of the city manager where we have circumvented that, and that is in our policies. where the city manager can say, we're not going to follow a formal RFP process because according to what you're saying is it's more expensive to do that. Let's just, you know, take some of these lower-cost proposals, evaluate them to some other standards. Okay, so you're saying we're kind of already doing that, but they're recommending let's bump that up just so we have a better guideline in place.

Correct.

The city relies heavily On the experience and judgment of the department managers. Okay. So if you want to trust their judgment, then you really are paying them discretion to manage more of the procurement process. And if they are satisfied with a vendor, or they've done discovery pricing through the state of Utah, or use a piggyback contract. From a nearby community that has done a similar procurement, then, you know, put trust in your department manager. I mentioned the $40,000 a few minutes ago. I want to come back to that because in the, in the $35,000 to $50,000 range, $35,000 to $50,000, the average procurement is $40,000. Okay. In the $25,000 to $35,000 range, the average is $28,500. So just taking the average of the procurements in the higher threshold, you're still well below the $50,000 average. So, and also the ones over $50,000, there were 79.

Mm-hmm.

And they averaged $329,000 per procurement. So, you know, as Willie Sutton said, you go to the bank because that's where the money is. You want to focus a more detailed analytical procurement process on the higher value.

I might also say that, again, rather emphasize that the RFP process or request Proposal process is, is more intense. Even if we raise this threshold, that doesn't mean we wouldn't go out to get multiple bids, or that— or again, like they're suggesting, we wouldn't look and see what other cities have done, or that we wouldn't go to the state procurement site and see what existing contracts and services that have already been bid out there.

So yeah, departments still have their due diligence in seeking out vendors and Getting estimates from various vendors. It just takes away all the paperwork and process, right, that costs them so much time and money.

Right.

It's just the RFP process is so defined and has so many steps to go through. It just becomes cumbersome on amounts, you know, lower than $50,000.

And we deal with MGP, we deal with RFPs from the other side of the table. And, and, and, you know, we spend a lot of time on those. Not that you're looking for us to save us time.

Okay.

But we have an appreciation for how involved it is for the city, county, or the state agency issuing the RFP. It can be months and months and months for the agency to issue and manage the procurement. So, should we go on to the next one about the procurement software?

Yeah, just one other point on this is because we were talking about this yesterday, but because we're talking about raising this number from $25,000 to $50,000, well, so is there a risk that, you know, somebody might not do it right or somebody might get sloppy or whatever? That's always a risk, right?

And so there's always— it's a cost benefit.

It's a cost benefit.

Sorry, Bruce. Bruce.

Sorry.

So what I was trying to say is, with that in mind, we want to have some kind of a system where we spot check, or during the audit, but we randomly check a few of these RFPs, and it would be completely random, but it would be just to basically do a double check and say, okay, what was the process you followed? How'd you wind up where you wound up? Why did you do this? And so that would be a random award site that would also incentivize everyone to do their best job when they're making those decisions.

Yeah, right.

And, you know, you want to make sure— and, and this would be the— I see this as a role for the procurement manager. Uh, what, what you really want to see is, you know, did the department check the state's, uh, your procurement website because they have blanket contracts. Did you check with nearby communities? They did something recent. It's just a lot easier, faster than issuing an RFP.

And to that point, wouldn't we have, you know, probably steps that a manager should follow that are the super simplified version of, you know, here's 2, 3, 4, 5 things that they should do when they do these smaller purchases.

So, sure.

Okay, so should we go on to the next question?

The, uh, any other, any final questions on the procurement thresholds? Yes, go ahead.

Okay, uh, on the bottom of the screen, would better procurement software, uh, help? You know, that's a good question. You know, there are a lot of high-powered ERPs, enterprise resource planning tools. You know, you've heard Oracle, you've heard SAP. You know, we don't advocate any software firm. There is, you know, they're sophisticated, they're powerful, they're also expensive, not just to buy and license, but also to install. Uh, we, we spoke with finance at length about this, and basically they are very pleased with, with their current systems. They said that they developed the systems internally, maintained by the city's IT department. Okay, they like what they have. Now, one thing we did do Was we compared the capabilities of the city's system relative to procurement with the capabilities of, you know, the better-known commercial off-the-shelf, you know, COTS software systems. And basically what we found was that the city system does virtually everything that the commercial systems do. The only gap was in the area of quotation management. Now, we, we can see that as being valuable for a really large organization where you have multiple departments buying similar commodities and services. You know, just so Department A is not spending twice what Department B is spending for the same thing. You know, we, we think there's value to that. We don't think that's much as much of a problem for the City of Orem. So we're not recommending that the city go out and, you know, replace its current systems.

Okay.

However, at some point in time, the city may find that it's necessary to replace what it has. You know, software may change, security issues may change. There could be a lot of reasons. Some of your systems analysts, IT personnel, may retire. You know, these people who are maintaining the systems may not be available anymore. It's just at some point, and maybe 2 years from now, and maybe 10 years from now, the city may be in a position where it needs to replace its current software tools. At that point, You know, it may be appropriate to revisit this whole question about procurement software. At this point, we do not recommend that it's, it's worth the city investing in this. So our recommendations are: 1, increase the dollar thresholds. And you may want to inflate those periodically, you know, every 2 or 3 years, you know, see what the CPI is and go up from there. And then formalize the procurement research to verify that staff, you know, has checked the state of Utah, coordinated with other peer organizations like West Valley, Sandy. And so on, and that we could see as a role for the procurement manager.

Any questions on those 2 items?

I just want to make the point that this is the reason we're doing this, because a lot of times when you're going along, you don't just naturally ask these questions. But when they're forced on, you know, you have to take a look, think. And so, you know, just one example there, by changing that procurement number from $25,000 to $50,000, that creates a $210,000 savings, you know, through the organization. And so by making small changes like this, we can affect those kinds of changes.

Yeah, well, this has been— seeing and working with all the departments and divisions, it's been a good, like you said, a process of self-reflection, really taking the time to reflect on current processes and practices. And, you know, putting them into question, putting them under the spotlight and seeing, oh, we are actually doing really good in this and we're leading in this. And then these other things that are really small that you probably wouldn't think about on a day-to-day basis that give the public more value for their— more bang for their buck, as this slide said.

If I can also just make a concluding remark too, that truly this process is It's been genuine. We haven't come into this with cynicism or on a witch hunt or asking baited questions, or, or me, like, you know, bullying Chief Adams to do something specific, wanting a specific result. It's truly with that attitude of continuous improvement, helping us understand and realize what we don't know, and having that self-reflection moment like Carson's talking about.

Thank you.

to see if there's just things that we can, you know, do a little better. I appreciate our consultant in helping us approach this in that spirit. Any other comments, questions, concerns, feedback?

I think it's great. I just have a quick question. Are there And maybe we don't know that yet. But are there those instances where we have lots of opportunities of piggybacking? I mean, are there opportunities to buy the same thing from different departments that we weren't aware of before and increase even better cost savings? And maybe that's something that will come out as we go through this process. But yeah, this is a big, big organization and a lot of things coming from a lot of different Yeah, just to answer your question about piggybacking, I think there is a lot of opportunity.

We look and communicate with our sister cities all the time, um, because they provide similar services to what Oregon does. Um, so we see what they do, we see what vendors they go with, and we know these cities, they go with high-quality and cost-efficient vendors. And so we can trust those if we do need to piggyback. And same with the state's procurement system.

I'd also say, Jeff, that there are a few different ways that we try to centralize purchasing of commodities that are used throughout the city. So, you know, recently we centralized our facilities maintenance and made its own internal service fund. We have our warehouse that Brandon, you could speak more to, but that our purchasing agent oversees. Warehouse is down in our public works building, and we bring in a lot of stuff that goes there that is then sort of checked out from departments from, from that area. Um, those are the 2 areas that—

And IT, not every department is not buying their own computers and tablets. IT has that centralized.

things, which, and again, those haven't always been centralized. They've really probably been things that we centralized within the last 20 years. I'd say centralizing IT was probably one of the first things I was involved in when I first got hired on. Brandon, anything else you'd add to that? No, I mean, we use the state contracts A lot already. So, so I, I think that's part of our process. Um, I think certainly figuring out maybe a more, a better way to, uh, as Carson mentioned, finding out what other cities specifically have contracts with. Um, if they're larger, of course, we do tend to look around and ask about those, especially if they were aware of a diff— another city doing a particular thing, um, in, in project-related type of situations.

Um, I'm not sure how often we do it necessarily for the purchase of other things that aren't project-based. Um, so that could be an area where we try to improve on that substantially.

Um, David mentioned a checklist. Um, for the most part, we have a checklist It's not documented. So that would be an area that we can potentially work with our IT staff as far as making sure that we are— that it's identified as we go through those steps, that that's signing off that, yes, we looked at that, and that's what we do.

That is just not documented.

Good question.

Any other questions? So, thank you, Bruce and, and Jerry, for joining today. And moving forward, again, we'll have more of these meetings in chunks again with some future departments and divisions that we'll be talking about next time. Thank you, guys.

Have a good evening.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Okay, we'll move on to item number 2. Uh, this is impact fee study, uh, reports from Trevor Bell.

Thank you, Mayor. So we—

Sorry.

Fred Philpott from LRB, our financial advisors, been heavily involved in our impact fees and moving that along. So today, the goal is to have Fred kind of just outline a little bit about what impact fees are, what the process is, and how that's moving along, and some anticipated timeline for that process.

So, oh, there's Fred.

So at this point, Fred, I'll turn the time over to you.

Great. And am I able to share my screen? Can I do that?

Yes.

All right. Are you able to see that?

Yes.

Great. Thank you for having me, and thank you for letting me present virtually. My name is Fred Philpott. I've been with LRB Public Finance for 15-plus years working on impact fees, utility rate studies, economic development feasibility studies, so all of our consulting work. You may know us as Lewis Young Robertson in Birmingham. We had a Name change a little while ago, but really just some new paint on the logo, but all the same people. Yeah, the presentation this evening is really to go through the impact fee process and give you an idea of what we're working through, allow you to ask questions relative to impact fees. And then give you an update on where we're at in the process. My understanding is there's some new council members who may or may not be familiar with the impact fee legislation and the process and what goes into that initiative. And so I'll be talking through that again. If you have questions, just let me know and happy to talk through that. The statute, the Impact Fee Act, requires that we complete an Impact Fee Facilities Plan and a proportionate share analysis or impact fee analysis. And the Impact Fee Facilities Plan is where a lot of the planning occurs relative to capital infrastructure. And because that document is heavily planning-intensive, It can often take a little bit of time to work through that. And frequently engineers or transportation planners are engaged to complete that side of the work, which is the case for Orem. We have a team working together on your impact fees that includes Bowen Collins and Associates and WCG Consulting Group focused on transportation. They work through the planning initiative, and then when those documents are complete, then I take that information and conduct the proportion share analysis and ask questions, necessary questions, and ensure that we're complying with the statute and facilitate the adoption of the impact fee ordinance and make sure that everything's wrapped up. In order to do that, there's specific— there's a specific process we need to go through. that I've highlighted here. We have to notice intent. We have to prepare those documents, the impact fee facilities plan and impact fee analysis, and those have to be certified based on language found in the statute. We also need to present that information. Typically, we have a work session with you as a legislative body and go through all the details, and then it's required that we hold a public hearing. to present information relative to the impact fees and allow public comment. And then based on any changes, there's a 90-day wait period before those become effective. The statute actually refers to any change in the impact fees taking a 90-day wait period. But in practice, it's usually if there's an increase to the fees that you wait 90 days before you assess that. For showing a decrease, the fees, most entities adopt that immediately. And that's passed on to the, to the building permit process. The city last updated impact fees in 2018, and then we were engaged to work on an update of that, that study. So it has been a couple of years. Typically, we recommend impact fees be updated every 3 to 5 years. That's just a recommendation. There's no requirement in statute that indicates the time limit that impact fees are valid. There is a 6-year expenditure requirement. So from the date you collect an impact fee, you have 6 years to expend those funds on related projects. And so based on that statutory requirement, The impact fee process is narrowed down to a 10-year planning window with updates 2 to 3 times within that, within that planning horizon. However, some communities that may not experience a lot of growth or infrastructure is substantially built out, they may not have the need to update impact fees as regularly. So when we work through an impact fee facilities plan and impact fee analysis, there are 6 steps that are really required for all studies. So understanding those 6 steps will help you as you look at the specific impact fees or services that the city provides. The 6 steps include determining demand, providing an inventory of existing facilities. Then establishing an existing and future level of service. So it's critical for the impact fee to be based on your existing level of service. Then you identify existing and future facilities necessary to serve growth. Often it's a combination of existing assets as well as new infrastructure that will benefit new development activity. 5th step is a consideration of all revenue resources, both past and future, that may be needed or have been used to fund infrastructure. For example, you may have debt, outstanding bonds that are utilized to build infrastructure, and we can include the interest cost associated with that debt. You may receive funding from alternative sources like regional transportation. Organizations, and we need to account for that when calculating the impact fee. So looking at all of those revenue streams and ensuring that the impact fee reflects the true cost that your residents should bear relative to building infrastructure. Then the 6th and final step is the proportionate share analysis, where we bring everything together as part of our study. As we look at the demand, it's important to note that you have to define a specific service area. Most entities will establish a single citywide service area for ease of administration and to ensure that the infrastructure, the system infrastructure, is allocated to all development within the community, because in most cases they benefit from that combined that combined asset. In some cases, service areas are identified based on geographic boundaries or specific service provisions. But regardless of the service area boundary, the requirements remain the same that we need to look at the demand, the specific demand within the service area and relative to the service that is being evaluated. For example, in public safety, for public safety, we typically look at calls for service. Whereas Parks and Recreation will look at population. On roads, we look at trips. So it's the specific demand relative to the service that we're looking at. And then we make projections regarding existing and future demand to evaluate the impact on the system. As we look at level of service, the statute Defines existing and proposed level of service, and the impact fee needs to ensure that the fee assessed is maintaining the existing level of service unless you identify alternative funding mechanisms that increases the level of service for your existing residents. Absent of the impact fee collection. So, for example, you could have Some regulatory impacts relative to sewer or water that impact both existing and future residents and potentially could be perceived as an increase in the level of service. As part of the impact fee process, we can identify funding mechanisms that raise that level of service for your existing residents and then use that higher level of service to determine the impact fee for future development. But we have to identify that funding mechanism to connect the dots in the impact fee facilities plan and impact fee analysis. Looking at existing facilities, this is a critical component again because often existing facilities are necessary to serve new development in addition to any proposed future facilities. When we include existing facilities in the calculation of the impact fee, this is a often called a buy-in component, meaning new development is going to buy in or pay you back for investment you've made in the past for infrastructure that they're going to benefit from. A great example of that is a defined capacity component of your system, like a storage tank, a water storage tank. Often those are oversized to handle growth, and new development can pay you back for that oversizing. until it reaches capacity, and then that's when that new facility is triggered. We take the averaging of that cost, and that's the basis for the impact fee calculation. The statute requires, though, that when we include any buy-in component, we have to use the original value of that asset. So if you constructed that in 1970, then we use the cost at that time, including any Repairs and improvements to maintain that asset on a capital basis to make it available to new development. But we don't use a replacement value, a depreciated replacement. It is the original cost of that asset that is included in the calculation of the fee. Usually what that means is when we include a buy-in component, it often has the result of averaging the impact fee towards a lower, a lower number because we're using that historic cost rather than a future cost when determining the fee. And that's not always the case, especially if you have a lot of outstanding debt where there's an interest cost associated with that buy-in. That, that can push the fee up, but in a lot of cases it results in a slightly lower average fee. Once we've identified excess capacity, then we determine the facilities necessary to serve new development, the new facilities. And in that process, the impact fee facilities plan is often a narrowing of cost. So you'll develop as part of your role as a as a government, master plans and capital improvement plans. Your master plan is that bigger picture. Your capital improvement plan puts timing and cost to and prioritizes those improvements. The impact fee facilities plan is one more step where we look at those projects and say, okay, of those projects, what do we anticipate in the next 10 years? And what percentage of those projects are necessary for growth. So that's one element that we have to consider. In addition, we have to look at and remove any projects that are repair and replacement or deficiency related, so non-growth related projects, and then also identify any projects that may be increasing the level of service and ensure that there's appropriate consideration for those types of projects. So the result that often happens when we look at the impact fee facilities plan is you often start with a much higher— at a master plan cost that then is narrowed down to your capital improvement plan. And then the impact fee facilities plan narrows those costs even further down to what is considered growth-related system improvements. So, yeah.

If I can just make a point of emphasis here, so lest anyone on the council think that we've been sitting on our hands since the last update, what Fred is talking about here is important, that it's really just a few short years after we updated our impact fees in 2018, then we essentially restart this process really at the moment that we update our master plans, our capital facilities plans. And then since we've updated those, now we're at the point of narrowing down further and going through this impact fee study process.

Yes. And that's a great point because it applies to the process we're going through right now. Often the planning process takes time to work through all of the capital needs and level of service issues. It's not a quick process, and in order for it to be defensible, we recommend that you do what, what Orem is doing, which is engage engineers and staff to go through that planning initiative so that the end product is a defensible impact fee facilities plan that focuses on the growth-related projects that can be applied to to the impact fee analysis. So yeah, it's not quick to work through that, all that planning. And often you can get through the planning process and realize there's some additional considerations, whether that be regulatory requirements that have kind of come down from the federal government or the state that have to be reconsidered. And it's an iterative process. So That planning initiative is very important. And then it's also important to remember that once it's done, as Bryn indicated, it doesn't just sit on the shelf for 6 years. Often entities will open it up and say, okay, what— it's a year later. Are those assumptions valid? Do we need to amend any of this? And so I've worked through with entities Where we'll amend specific components of a study, say transportation. We look at it and some of the assumptions are no longer holding true. We amend that specific service, open it up, go through an amendment process, and then recalculate the fees. So many entities will do that on a case-by-case basis and revise fees as needed. So once we bring all of that together again, this is the culmination of those first 5 steps into the proportionate share analysis. And this graph is designed, or illustration is designed, to show how that is evaluated. And again, the primary driver of your impact fee is demand and level of service. So we have to determine demand, and that demand determines or triggers the facilities, both existing and future, that are included in the impact fee calculation, all matching whatever the existing level of service is. So you may have a lot of cost and level of service increases that fall outside of that demand variable, and the impact fee has to exclude that. We have to keep that out of the equation and only include the new facilities and existing facilities and any financing associated with that specific demand variable. So understanding that is very beneficial as you think about impact fees and their purpose and ensuring that there's a proportionate or fair allocation of cost to your new development activity. It's also important to note that demand can look like different things for different communities. For Orem, demand can look like redevelopment where you already have existing development and you're changing the nature of that and adding, whether that's density or new commercial development overlaying existing development. So that's a different consideration than just raw ground where you're just adding new capacity. So in some regards, you're replacing existing demand with more intense demand, and you have to consider that in the proportionate share calculation. So in this process, the impact fees that are under review include water, water supply, water reuse, so your culinary water system. We're looking at wastewater, stormwater, roadways, parks and recreation, and public safety. As I mentioned, Bowen Collins and Associates is helping on the impact fee capital facility planning initiative and impact fee facilities plans for water, wastewater, and stormwater. WCG is working on the IFFPs, the IFFP for roadways. And I copied in a wrong name. So it's not a LYRB. So pretend you didn't see that and don't tell Jason or Laura that I had LYRB on this screen or— You may not see me in the next presentation. So we will be doing the Parks and Recreation and Public Safety IFFP. We will also do all of the impact fee analysis for each of the services. So we bring it all together and again ensure that the process is defensible, that we've completed all the noticing requirements, and we compiled the project transcript that includes all of the necessary information relative to this process. With regards to where we're at on those documents, Bowen Collins completed an initial draft relative to the capital facilities plan and impact fee facilities plan for water, but then further analysis was requested, is my understanding, relative to both water and sewer. So Keith Larson at Bowen Collins is working through that side to determine how to provide that additional analysis that is potentially requested. So I received an initial draft for the IFFPs, but again, Keith indicated that there was some additional analysis that is being requested. Stormwater, I have not seen an IFFP yet, so that is still in process, and there are some unique factors relative to the storm system that they're trying to work through with staff to ensure that they're accounting for the appropriate level of service and demand variables. I'll point out that storm is a tricky one because it is not typically a defined capacity system, meaning It's, it's, you don't have a storage tank, for example, that you know you're going to get a million gallons out of. Stormwater has to do with those storm events and pipe size and elevation and drainage systems. And so there's just a lot more, not uncertainty, but nuance associated with the storm category. planning. Similarly, transportation is a system like stormwater where improvements relieve pressure in the system and it frees up capacity where there may not have been capacity. But transportation, we do have a draft IFFP of the transportation system. Staff has provided a preliminary review and we'll be working through their comments to finalize that. With regards to public safety and parks, we have initial models completed on our side. And we're awaiting the engineering IFFPs to ensure that we're telling the same story across all documents. So we want to make sure that, for example, growth assumptions are consistent across all IFFPs. We don't want to tell a growth story that in one planning document that differs from another. So we typically wait until we can see all of those documents. pull it all together, and then provide feedback where there may be questions or inconsistencies. Again, our role is to quarterback some of that process to ensure defensibility. Where we go from there, once we have the IFFPs completed, again, we calculate all the impact fees, and then we will come back to you in a work session and present that information, address questions you may have, look at scenarios or alternative considerations, And then based on your input as a legislative body, we finalize the documents and prepare for the adoption phase. It's important to keep in mind there are specific noticing requirements relative to this process. And I'll work with staff to make sure all the noticing gets completed. But I thought I'd just let you know what that looks like. You have to complete a notice of intent to begin the process, which has already been done. Then there's a noticing process and requirement as it relates to the public hearing. Typically, you need a 10-day notice period, and there's specific steps you have to work through to— in preparation for the public hearing. Then you hold the public hearing, and you have the option to take action the night of the public hearing. Most entities do that. They'll take action the night of the public hearing and adopt impact fees. But that's not required. You just have to hold the public hearing, and then you can take action on a future meeting. But once you take action again, any change to that impact fee, typically an increase, there's that 90-day wait period before they become effective. It allows development to pull building permits under potential— their potential pro formas that have considered the older fee, they can get those building permits pulled, and it doesn't affect their pro formas. And then the effective date of the impact fees is 90 days after that, the adoption of the ordinance. So that's the critical piece of this process. It's the ordinance that makes the impact fees effective. And so when you adopt that, That the effective date of the impact fees is 90 days later. Alrighty, that was a pretty quick crash course on impact fees and where we're at. Questions regarding process or methodology or our timeline?

No, sounds like there aren't any, Fred. So thank you so much for both the education and the look ahead.

Yes, and I'm sure there'll be, as you think about this, questions. I'm happy to field those through staff if that's the way you want to work through that. And then as we get to the work session, I'm sure we'll have lots of discussion there on the specifics of each of the services and how it impacts your communities. Thank you for letting me present, and, uh, I hope you have a great rest of your meeting.

Thank you, Fred. All right, moving on to item number 3, CEVG background and priorities. Ken Ransom and Jessica Delora.

I'll stand here sitting. Do you have a preference? Your preference is okay. I think we do have a presentation.

Hello everyone, I know a few of you and been before you a few times, but I'm Ken Ransom. Happy to be here representing our city's CBG Advisory Commission again. I got Jessica with me. I'll let her take over.

Okay, I'm Jessica DeLora. I'm the Director of Community and Economic Development at Mountainland Association of Governments. That's a mouthful. MAG recently took on administration of OREM's CDBG program in July of this past year. And so we're here to talk about the upcoming application cycle. So, sorry, I'm just pulling this up here. And just for a little background, MAG also administers CDBG programs on behalf of Utah County, Lehi City, Eagle Mountain City, and then Summit and Wasatch Counties through the Small Cities Program. So we've got a really good experienced team. Okay, so as I mentioned, we, we call that the FY24 application cycle. Oh, I can see it here. I didn't remember that. Okay, so for— I know we have a couple of new council members. If you already know this information, then forgive me for repeating, but it's always a good refresher. Um, the purpose of the CDBG program as defined by HUD is to assist developing viable communities, providing decent housing and suitable living environments, and expanding economic opportunities predominantly for low- and moderate-income residential residents. So that is a lot of HUD speak for what this program is, but it really does provide a lot of control and opportunity at the local level. So essentially, HUD will award Orem City a chunk of money every year to carry out a program, but the decisions on how that money is spent, on what projects is made at this level. There are, of course, parameters and regulations around how the money can be used, but there is, as I said, a lot of flexibility. So it can look like funding public facilities, you know, senior centers, libraries, things like that, fire stations. It can look like infrastructure, water and sewer line upgrades. It can look like partnering with agencies to provide therapy to abused children. Or the domestic violence shelter or food banks, things like that. So lots of variety. It can also be used for economic development initiatives that provide jobs for low and moderate income residents, things of that nature. So any questions just on the general idea of CDBG?

Okay.

So to talk about the, um, '24 cycle, we are in the pre-application and application process right now. I'll go through the timeline with you in a little bit, but we start the process in October. And we have a how-to-apply workshop where we collect anyone who's interested in CDBG, has a project in mind, and we go over the basics, make sure that what they have in mind aligns with the goals of the CDBG program and would be a viable project. We then have them submit pre-applications. Those were due in December, and then in January we meet with those applicants one-on-one to further refine their scope of work and their budget and make sure again that it would be compliant and a suitable project. So for this cycle, we have 25 pre-applications submitted by public service agencies, and proposed projects include, as I said, the food banks, senior services, substance use disorder services, healthcare, and services to victims of domestic violence. Homelessness, etc. Um, of those 25, 22 of the pre-applications were submitted by, um, organizations that are currently grantees of the CDBG program. So they have a contract for this past year and are executing projects. So a lot of experience, um, from those partners. We also this year have 3 pre-applications from new organizations. So Timpanogos Legal Center, Senior Charity Care, and Fit to Recover. So, um, it will be interesting to see what projects they have in mind and, and how it aligns with what Orem City wants to do.

Can I ask you, do you have nonprofit—

those are nonprofits, I'm guessing?

Yes. Do you have nonprofits that already cover those services?

Are these unique services? Um, they are. So as far as CDBG funding goes, um, none of these specific services are currently being funded. So Timpanogos Legal Center, um, provides legal advice at a free clinic and then document workshops, and, uh, I believe they're the only organization doing that pro bono for low and moderate income residents in the county. Centro Hispano might provide that specifically to their client base, but, um, the Senior Charity Care, they provide mobile vision and dental care for seniors. So that's also something we don't currently have. Fit to Recover is an interesting one. It's a fitness center and community center for people with substance use disorders. It's physical fitness but also community-oriented to provide them extra support as they are in the recovery process. So those are the new ones, and, and we're meeting with them to kind of talk about their vision and make sure that it's a good fit.

So do you ever get applications from nonprofits that maybe—

I don't know what's the right word to use— but would compete with the ones we're already servicing with funding? Um, we have a pretty good community of nonprofit service providers that all know each other and either work together or fill in the different gaps. There are some organizations like the County Children's Justice Center and Family Haven. They both provide therapy services to families and abused children specifically. But we do find that the need is pretty great and that both of them are working to meet that need, that they're not really competing with each other.

And I guess I'm thinking too, I mean, 501, you know, you hear nonprofit, but nonprofits make money.

Sure, they, you know, they're in business to make money too, but they do provide a service.

So I guess I'm wondering, is there opportunity for new startups of nonprofits? Are those opportunities there, or is there a barrier to entry because we already have these funding mechanisms in place?

Yeah, so the, the pre-application is open to any agency that attends that How to Apply workshop. So any new nonprofits that come along in our community They can do the pre-application. What we do is just screen to make sure that their project is eligible according to the CDBG regulations, and that they would meet those things. Once we verify that they are eligible, they'll go through the full application process, and then that gets vetted by the Citizen Commission, and then ultimately the final project list is approved by City Council. So, yeah, our view is just to make sure that they're compliant, and if they are, to help them create a good application for you to consider.

So you vet the initial qualifications and then it goes to our commission to then decide where to fund?

Yep.

Good.

Yep.

So do you—

and I think where Renee might be going with this is, do you see much movement on and off of who's getting CDBG funding and who's not? In other words, you know, the 22 that are on there, is there much chance that they would— some of those would come off and other new ones would go on?

How does that work?

What does it look like?

Yeah, it does depend. Um, we also, we have requirements from HUD that we have to spend the money in a timely fashion. And so we can't have a lot of funds sitting there in the Treasury Department. So, for example, if a nonprofit has a current award and they're not able to spend it down quickly enough, they can't apply the upcoming cycle. They have to spend down that award. So we'll have some that apply every other year, or some that have a special project that they want funded. That's a 1-time thing. Um, so we can do like capital improvement projects with nonprofits. That might be a 1-time thing. Some agencies, you know, it's a lot of work to have a federal grant. And so sometimes they have the staff capacity to do that. Sometimes they don't. So it fluctuates a little bit, but we do have a couple regulars that, that are always in the mix, and they provide really important services and know what they're doing.

So, did you say that the deadline has passed to apply for '24?

For the pre-app? Yep. So you had to have had a pre-application submitted in December.

Okay, so people that are listening to this that didn't make that, they would need to apply this year?

Yep, yep. So, um, they can reach out to us. I don't know how you want me to share that information, but, um, we'll put them on our mailing list for the how-to-apply workshops that happen in October. So that's when we start the process.

And I'm sorry, because I don't know if this is in your presentation, but I mean, personally, I'm always interested in—

because our funds are allocated per city, right? Yep.

So I'm always interested in making sure that our funds go to residents in Orem?

I know we partner, you know, there's nonprofits that serve both, but is—

are you watching that?

Do you allocate that? Yeah, yeah, that's, uh, that's something we've been working closely with HUD on because, as you know, most of our nonprofits are physically located in Provo but serve clients throughout the region. We're also working with Provo and Utah County to take a regional approach to funding so that we reduce the administrative burden on those nonprofits so that they can carry out the services and not, um, do a lot of reporting and applying and, um, drawdowns from multiple entities. So we do have a regional committee that looks at and makes recommendations about public service, but we as staff always have to balance to make sure that whatever gets funded by Orem City is serving Orem City clients. So it's regional in the decision-making, but when it comes down to the actual administration Beneficiaries and drawdowns. That's our work in administration to make sure that the dollars line up with who's receiving them. And then I watch Ken and his group.

Yep. Yep.

Fulfill that role also, right?

Right.

And our first question is always how many Orem residents do you serve? Because we know that's an important question. When we present this to the council, that, that's going to be a question.

Yeah. And there are some, you know, some balancing that has to happen. For example, the refuges are only domestic violence shelter and service provider in the region. And, um, there may be instances where their, their funder is Provo City, but for some quarter, most of their clients came from outside of Provo City. And so that can be a tricky balance, and we, we work on those on a case-by-case basis. But there is value in keeping that function there and the service available because it is the only place for Orem residents to go, even if in that quarter It didn't totally align. So we work with the subrecipients and with HUD to figure out the best way to handle that kind of situation.

So, yeah.

Okay. So along with these outside agencies that apply, there are also some ORM City projects that get funded on a year-to-year basis. So victim services, homeless services, Neighborhood revitalization, um, and code enforcement. Those are the types of activities taken on by the city that are usually funded in part, at least, with CDBG funds. Um, so it's not just nonprofits in the community, it's also the city. We also, um, in the current year, we— the Parks Department is doing a signage project in one of your target neighborhoods. So things like that. Um, it's like a one-time— I mean, that's like a one-year. Yeah, yeah. So usually it's one, one big project that they'll apply for in the year. we'll get that project done. And then we're working with Heather and the, um, department heads to identify city projects in the upcoming year, um, one-time projects that would be a good fit.

We, we had Sharon Park one year, playgrounds and whatnot, and that was one of the projects.

Oops, there we go. So just a really brief sketch of the timeline and anticipated funding. We don't have final numbers from HUD for the upcoming year, so we always base it off of last year's allocation and then make adjustments. It usually doesn't change by much, um, but we do have some— as the decisions are made, some contingency. If we receive less, then we'll take that money from this project, or we'll divide it between all the projects and reduce them by 10%, something like that. But we anticipate around $625,000. So timeline, as I mentioned, we have applications due this upcoming month in February. So we're doing the site visits right now just to provide that technical assistance to the applicants, make sure they have a good application to submit. So we will review as staff those applications in February, and then in March as when the committees and commissions meet to review and vet those. As I mentioned, we work with Provo and Utah County on a regional committee to vet public service projects, and they make funding recommendations for all of those services and agencies that benefit the entire region. After that meeting, then the city's Citizen Commission meets and looks at all the Orem City projects as well. and vets those and interviews the applicant. And then in April, Ken will be back and probably someone on my staff to make a presentation on that list of recommendations for you, for your information. And then we'll hold a public comment period in April and May, and then be back again in May to get the final approval by the council. And then that's when MAG staff will take over getting the environmental reviews prepared. Getting subrecipient agreements prepared and all that stuff. And then July 1st is the grant start date.

And if I may add as well, the Utah— the combined committee, we have some, some of our citizen commissions on that. And that process is they submit their applications and then they'll make presentations, and the ask is always significantly higher than the funding available. So it's a difficult process of saying, you know, who do you fund, who do you not fund, you give everybody this, give everybody a certain amount. And so that is, you know, where that process, to me at least, says this— these are needs that are real, and it's a very good program, and this provides funding that fills important gaps, I think, for our community. It's good, benefits our residents here in Orem. And as our, uh, as our individual city commission serves on this committee, you know, we're looking at what benefits Orem, but What I think is really cool about this is that the city and the county, the cities and counties have cooperating and collaborating. And so when I first started on this, we were— Orem was doing a couple thousand here, a couple thousand here, and Provo was doing this, the county was doing this. And now there's this cooperation and pooling the resources so that the oversight is simpler. And anyway, I think it's a good— to me, it's been fun to watch, and it's been a great process to see.

Thank you.

that this, uh, just this cooperation that people say government can't work together, but it's, I think, a great example of, uh, these organizations working together, the cities, the county, and NAGC, et cetera. So just wanted to put that in there. And then, Ed Marsh, also, we consider the cities— the city's always had asks, uh, for like neighbor preservation, uh, repaying that loan that the city council 20 years ago did on University Parkway. You know, there's that loan that's being paid back too. So some of that funding already, you know, we can't say no to that. We have— of course we're going to support that funding. But, uh, the next slide kind of gets where we're going with this is— so for the account for our commission is we'd like to know what, uh, on this, on the, uh, combined funding that we're looking at, the city— I know this, when the city brings these, these proposals, we, we know the city, that's a priority for the city because the city's applying. The city's saying we want to do this with this funding. So, but we'd like some council priorities with this combined funding that we're doing with the county and MAG and with Provo City.

Now, what are the priorities?

And what's— there's, as I mentioned earlier, there's more asks than there are funding available. And so, of course, we're going to focus on what benefits our residents. And then the question for you is, and that's, I think, what an important thing we want to get at here.

So I'd like to put each of you on the spot.

Totally kidding. But we will put you on the spot until the party starts.

But if you could, before March, I may just give you a couple of things that at least I've heard. And then, and then, of course, Jessica will take you up on getting contact information. So we'd love to hear kind of the full schedule. Then after we get through our approval process, then we want to help get the word out to other, you know, not-for-profit organizations in the city for getting to those how-to-apply meetings.

Yeah.

Um, but I, I've heard a lot of emphasis from our mayor and council in, um, supporting our Hispanic community and outreach there. And then, uh, we've been talking a lot about, uh, some, some public safety county facilities with, uh, like a training facility for, for fire And reconfiguring our public safety building. And then, and then we've talked about, as this building, as we move into our new city center, this building comes down, doing some reconfiguring with our library. So those would be at least my shoot-from-the-hip responses on that. But I don't want to get ahead of you as a councilor. Of course, they can, they reach out to you.

Yep.

directly, Jessica, and then Ken. I think we have— we have a council liaison to our CBG group as well that we can help.

So, which is—

And I had a meeting a couple hours ago with Debbie and Taylor. Yep, that was great. Good. Okay, good.

Yeah, just one, uh, Mayor, Council, anything else you would add, take away?

I'll also add, as you're thinking about your priorities or potential projects, there are a lot of little ins and outs about what you can and can't do with CDBG funds, and that's where we can help. So you don't need to dive into the regulations. If you want to just talk through some ideas with us, we'd be happy to do that with you at any point and figure out if it fits with CDBG funding or not. Because what we don't want to do is get projects that aren't a good fit, and then we're trying to meet all the compliance requirements. and we get monitored and it's a mess. So we want to make sure we have really good projects that are a good fit. Yes.

So one of the things we've talked about as well is revitalizing some of our older neighborhoods. And you guys did— I mean, the, the pickleball courts at Sharon Park are a classic example of people requesting that area. And so, I mean, any, any of those kinds of things that we can do to kind of bring And regenerate and renew some of those neighborhoods would be—

What we do with my fund right now is, uh, it's a critical home repair program in the city. And so a lot of those homes are in these neighborhoods that need help. Um, maybe say someone is elderly or disabled or just really low income and their house is— the floor is rotting through or the roof is leaking. And so we use CDBG funds, and they have to go through an application process that comes through us. And then we work to help them with the contractor to get funds. And some of those funds are a grant. If they're very low income, some of them are a loan. But it's a 0% interest deferred loan, so they can get their house to be in a livable state and improve it, you know. If it looks really bad. So we do have that, but look into other issues too, other ways we can help out.

What does that look like as far as— I mean, Brent mentioned several priorities. They're all fairly expensive capital projects. So what does CDBG look like in the context of that as far as, I mean, are we recommended to apply for 1 or 2 or focus on that? How do you put that all together?

Yeah, I think I was saying there are certain requirements, like there are very strict requirements that has to benefit, they call like LMI, the low moderate income, or at least 50, 51% of it has to benefit low moderate income. So you have to kind of shape it into that context. So the capital projects, I think, especially, correct me if I'm wrong, we would have to really look at the regulations to see if we would fit into that category so we don't get monitored.

Yeah.

And I'll speak just from my experience with CDBG. I've been doing this for about 9 years, and from my perspective, it is better to really come focused as a city to evaluate what do we really need? What's a priority? What's a good CDBG fit versus we can pay for these other projects? I think it's smart to come with 1 or 2 really great projects because the administration of it is burdensome, even for your city staff. You know, they, they're spending a lot of time complying, reporting, and we're doing as much technical assistance as we can, but it does require a lot of their time. And when you break up projects, for example, you know, water sewer lines, you do a block at a time, you're losing out on that, um, you know, that efficiency of doing a whole group of blocks at a time. So your, your construction costs are higher and things like that when you do it little by little. So we recommend big. projects focused and the city kind of being unified in that, that idea.

What would be a, a big, uh, gift from the CDBG, um, as far as out of that $625,000 going into one place?

Yeah, so again, it's up to the council ultimately, and the commission would make those recommendations. But of that $625,000, um, only 15% of that can go to public service activities. So those nonprofits, they can only take up to 15% of that, and that includes like your victim services and things like that. And then there's of course administrative cost for MAGS work. We carve out about 14%. You're allowed 20% for admin, um, and then the rest is really focused on what the city sees as priority. So it's, it's really your choice.

Could any of this go towards the heat program that you now manage?

Um, you could do utility assistance Um, I, I wouldn't see that as the best use of seed. That's just because we have adequate funding from the state for heat right now for utility assistance. Um, and that would fall into that 15%. So it kind of chips away at that while there are other resources.

One thing at the retreat, I think the council mentioned also, was neighborhoods where they may not have curb gutter sidewalk yet. there might be a ditch that is abandoned or still used or whatever, without cables about those lower-income neighborhoods too.

Yeah, that's a pretty common type of project that's used this year. So, um, our neighborhood commission is interested in finding service, uh, of being able to provide service for projects that are funded. Oh, do you— does that happen? Is that something— that's just kind of the vibe that I've heard from these people that I'm talking to. You know, they just want to serve, they want to find ways to serve. And, you know, you got to have— if you want to help someone lay sod, you got to have somebody pay for the sod, right? So, okay, do you coordinate—

is that someone—

So we're talking about kind of volunteer work on CDBG-funded projects? Yeah, in renewing a community. So yeah, so it depends on the project type. So for example, um, if you want want to do a park, you want to build a park out of nothing or revitalize a park, you can hire contractors to do that work. And if you do that, Davis Bacon wage requirements apply. Um, but you can have people also volunteer to come do some labor on that. So you could organize certainly volunteer labor as part of that. They want to come, you know, hang the swings and put the wood chips in and all that kind of stuff. volunteers that I can work.

How, how about as far as— we talked about, uh, homes that are in disrepair, and they've got programs where the churches will get together and help fix up those homes. But how about the materials for those individual homes?

Is—

could you have, could you have a pool of money that went to that?

Yeah, so if it, it was, if it was applications perhaps through the, the Critical Home Repair Program, CWG could pay for the materials and then you could use volunteer labor instead of contracted labor. Yeah, yeah, there's some organizing efforts in that and also general supervision and insurance issues, but it's certainly doable.

That's a great catalyst for what we've been talking about.

Yeah, and we, we, um, MAG also operates the weatherization program and we have other single-family rehab projects and things like that, um, and we also have a volunteer coordinator who's matches up, you know, people who are interested in doing that kind of volunteer work with the program. So we could definitely partner and organize some of that. That's something they're interested in.

Any other questions? Okay, I think we're—

okay, good.

Thank you.

Just gonna give you my email address, but Heather has it. I can disperse it. It's jdelora, J as in Jessica, B-E-L-O-R-A.

@mountainland.org.

Can you say that again?

Yep, jdellora@mountainland.org. There, I mean, that's just— Yeah, lots of people have it, but just FYI. So if you shoot me an email, I can get back to you. I can give you my cell number, um, would be happy to talk through ideas. It's much easier to do it ahead of time if you get through before we get to application stage. So please, please reach out to us. I think what we'll do is just follow up, Heather, maybe with an email to council and mayor discussing the projects that we talked about today, and then, um, all the contact information.

Yep. And also, as a council, we should keep in mind that Jen's our coordinator with the city. So anything, funnel it through her. Yeah, funnel it through her.

Aren't you coordinator?

Thank you.

Thank you.

Okay, next up we've got presentation number 4, uh, Victim Advocacy Division, and Chief Adams will lead the presentation.

Well, while they're plugging it in, uh, Mayor and Council want to Thank you for the opportunity to share a couple of things with you this afternoon regarding family issues that we, we're addressing inside of our city right now. We appreciate the emphasis the city has on families, and as we have, as a police department, been deliberating with some of the objectives you've laid out for us for Family City USA, One of the continual issues that we are perpetually— that is increasing is the amount of domestic violence that's occurring inside our city right now. It's actually on quite a sharp increase, especially over the course of the last year and years preceding that. You know, we had a— in time, we had a COVID kind of spiked it. And, and at that point we were like, okay, well, everybody's stuck at home and there's all the stress and there's all the— okay, so that's, that's now come and gone and the problem is actually continuing to increase at an alarming rate. And we— I know it's been about 2 years since we've been able to present anything on, on our domestic violence and— uh, Victim Advocate Program other than I don't think we, uh, introduced you to our dog a couple weeks ago, but, uh, she's not as busy as, uh, as some of the rest of the people who work with this stuff. So I want to introduce, uh, Lieutenant Carolyn Tracy and Sergeant Glenn Giles, who are the, uh, administrators and supervisors over our entire Domestic Violence and Victim Advocate Program.

So we've kind of— we're going to start out and it's going to be a 911 call, and it is a little bit of a warning. It's a little bit disturbing. Um, it is the reality of what we get 15 to 20 times a day. So we're just going to play just a little bit of clip of that to start, and then we'll talk about what was behind this, and then we'll go with our research stuff.

911.

Oh my God! What is the address of your emergency? 1144 South 50 East. 1144 South 50 East? 50 East? I don't know why I'm hurting. My husband got his house flattened.

Okay.

Oh my God! Listen to me. Let's get some help. What is this, a house or an apartment? It's an apartment. What's your phone number? What is your phone number?

801-369-7593.

7693. Okay, okay, I need you to take a deep breath and tell me what's going on with your husband. Tell me exactly what's happening. He just had his throat slit. He had a fight. I don't know, his throat. Oh my God, please just hurry. You're saying that your husband's throat has been slit?

Yes.

Okay, who did this? Who did this?

My son.

Your son?

So I know that 911 is, is hard to even hear and listen to, but honestly to understand. Um, it was a case that happened in November of 2021 down in the south end of our city. A, an adult male, um, went in and their family has experienced domestic violence for years. He was very violent. Our victim and suspect during the course of his life. Gentleman had enough and he took a knife and slit his own father's throat. That gentleman took off running. We encountered him several— well, probably a couple minutes, several minutes later, and ended up in an officer-involved shooting with him. And unfortunately, he succumbed to his injuries as well. Father did not. I think he was going to the hospital for a couple of hours. Um, the person making the call is the 911, or the 911 call is the mother And of the big— of the son, excuse me, and the spouse. It was her husband had his throat slit. And this was another case that occurred the same, around the same time frames as a 30-year-old female. She was a mother of 2. She was— this is up in the North End. She was one of our home sites. I think the next one occurred 2 weeks later. They're all victim of domestic violence related. This young lady with the 2 children, her children were in the home while she was brutally beaten and tortured for days before she also succumbed to her injuries. We got called to those, both those calls. I believe it was in a 2-week timeframe. Her children, young children, witnessed a lot of the violence and are currently living with family members, probably 7 houses away from where it happened. Because that's all that they can do. Luckily, they've got family to take them in. He's obviously in jail, and I don't think that— I think he fled last couple months ago.

So this is just a case that we took this week. We had a husband and wife got into an argument. He had several domestic-related cases in the past. one of them involving a knife, which he had an outstanding case for on an aggravated assault. Um, he fled from the home, told his wife, called her on the phone and told her, I'm going to go buy a gun, I'm going to come back and kill you and your kids. Um, so he fled up to Wyoming. We tracked his cell phone into Wyoming, and then we sat on him and watched him for a couple days. 2 days later, he returned, came down through Denver, Colorado, back into Utah through Green River, up through Price, and we were able to get a helper city police officer to make a traffic stop on him at the summit of Spanish Fork Canyon, where he was taken into custody. He had, he had some, a little bit of narcotics with him at the time. The interesting part about this one was he's, when he fled, he then in turn, because he was angry, he sent pornographic material of him and his wife to their 16-year-old daughter. Um, and so that made it an automatic felony charge, which is why we were able to, to hunt him down and work on that. Um, he was booked in the Utah County Jail, and then since then he's already violated the jail release agreement 4 times by calling his spouse. So he's already violated the protective order. Um, so the, the original team spent about— the original patrol team squad that took this case spent about 15 hours on it. Um, I got a hold of the sit the day after it occurred, and between myself and, and the Major Crimes Task Force, we spent about 84 man-hours hunting him and taking him into custody. Um, basically you sit and watch cell phone pings all day to see where they— where he's coming and where he's going. Um, And then, um, victim services were initiated right off the get-go with this case, um, and they, they've been working with her throughout the entire process. And they're very helpful for us because they're able to relay information from the victim that maybe the victim wasn't comfortable telling us, or maybe it's something that we missed in our investigation and the, the victim brings it out later. Uh, so the case— this case alone, just in manpower alone, will cost the city about $6,000 just to track this guy down.

Um, one thing on that case that Sergeant Jazz was talking about, the victim in this case didn't leave her home for 3 days because she was terrified.

I couldn't even get her to come to the PD and make a statement. She, she wouldn't come. She wouldn't leave her home. I had to send investigators and the victim's advocate up to her house to talk to her because she wouldn't go outside. So, um, this is the list of the homicides that we've had since 2014 that are just domestic related. We've had more homicides. Some of them are drug-related cases, but these are, these are family-related or intimate partner-related cases. So I think the one that stands out the most to me, and, and Chief actually worked on this case, is the one in 2015 with the boyfriend killed a 4-year-old boy and then waited for mom to come home and then killed mom, which got a whole lot of something. These are our statistics from 2014 to 2000— the end of 2023. You can see the spike in domestic cases in 2020 when COVID It, it did spike. It went up a little bit, and we kind of figured that was because of everybody being stuck indoors and can't go to work or whatever, you know, and just getting sick of each other. It kind of went down a little bit, and then it's back up on our way through. We're already in the— just in January alone, we're in the 40s of 2024.

So we're already, we're already on our way back up.

Stalking cases is something that we've We started to track as well, um, family problems, uh, protective order violations, harassment charges. Um, the patrolmen come out and take those calls, and then I go through and follow up on them. So on a, on a standard minor domestic violence case, you know, a husband gets mad and punches a hole in the wall, and she calls the police. Um, an officer will spend about 4 hours on that case. Gathering evidence, taking the suspect to jail, writing the report. Um, and then that case then comes up to me and I go through it and pick through with a fine-tooth comb to make sure we're doing everything the right way. Um, and then that's— sometimes cases can last, you know, take me an hour to go through, 20 minutes to go through, just depends on the severity of the case. And there's other cases— I'm still working a stalking case that I started in November. Um, that just is a continual drag-along case. Um, and then the case is given to victims advocates, and we offer all our victims services. Um, and it takes them about— they, on average, they're about 10 hours in phone calls and visiting and filing for protective orders and stuff on every single case. Um, and just in 2023, our victim services Served 570 new domestic violence victims. So as you can see, that doesn't meet the statistic on our graph because a lot of the victims that we help maybe were a victim outside the city of Orem. They live here, but the domestic violence occurred in Provo, or they lived out of state and they just moved here and they want to report the domestic violence. And so we take them in and try to help them.

Thank you.

help them file for the order. This is— so last year in July, uh, Utah changed the statute, um, because of— a lot of it came down because of the Gabby Petito case down in Moab, um, but they, they initiated something that we've already been doing for a couple years here, the lethality assessments, where every single officer They go on a domestic violence case between intimate partners. They have to ask a specific amount of questions. And then that victim is then categorized as either high risk or low risk. Um, every single high risk one has to be reported to the state. The state wants to know how many high risk ones we had. And then they also have to be given a chance to, to have services, whether that's hotels.

Mm-hmm.

Food, you know, childcare, whatever we can help them get, we try to help them get to get them on their feet. Um, they also require a stalking— or sorry, a strangulation form now. Strangulation cases are probably the most severe ones that we deal with, because if they strangled them, the next time they're probably gonna. And so as it rises up through the matrix of Violence. Um, so a domestic violence investigation follow-up, uh, not only reviews the cases, makes sure they're handled properly, but also serves as a point of contact with a victim. Um, a lot of times these victims need information, and the patrolman that may have taken their case may work weekend graveyards, and maybe he's not working on a Tuesday morning. And so how do they get access to that information? So it's kind of one of the things that I do a lot of. I do a lot of contact with victims and follow-up and making sure they have what they need. So along with the victims' advocates. And then the liability involved in these cases is huge. You know, if we, if we respond on these domestic cases and we don't take action, and then someone does end up Getting killed, then everybody wants to know, why didn't you do something? And families will come back and sue the city and officers and stuff.

So this is also where you're often put at the greatest risk, right?

Yes, as officers. Yeah, they're some of the most dangerous cases for officers to go on. This is our, our current victims advocate team, um, with HOKU. And then these are their statistics. So You can see that they've doubled as well, um, from 2017 to 2023. Um, our advocates, we have 3 of them, they average over 100 cases a year that they work. Um, comparison to other cities that are our size, they have— Provo, for instance, has 7 full-time advocates and 1 part-time. And so they only average about 50 cases a year, which gives them a little bit more time to focus on each individual victim and make sure that they're getting the care that they need. Um, and this is, this is the, the VOCA grant. So we've been using the VOCA grant for quite a few years now. Um, I know, I know that the city really wants to go with grants, and it's a great idea. VOCA has been reduced so immensely Well, we started about, about $160,000 per year is what we were getting initially with it. They just cut us down in 2024. We got $56,000. And so, um, they also increased the amount of care and maintenance to the grant. It's constantly changing and, and evolving. Um, I know Renee had to do some stuff all day yesterday because she had to go back and prorate some things that were involved in that grant, um, and it took her a full day. So it takes about— Renee's the one that services that grant. It takes her about 50% of her time, um, to, to maintain that grant, do the quarterly reports, do the audit at the end of the year. Every other year they do a— one year they'll do a desk audit, the next year they do an in-person audit, um, and then, um, it only provides $3,000 of that money goes towards actual supplies or hotels or whatever for the victims. The rest of that money goes to pay our salary, her salaries, a percentage of Renee's salary and a percentage of one of our other advocates' salary get paid out of this grant. And so if you add up all the time and effort that's put into it, she spends about 20 weeks a year, um, taking care of 20 working weeks—

um, sorry, I'm down—

20 weeks of working time in order to take care of that grant. And so with— if you compare that with what we're spending in wages to pay her to take care of that grant, we're basically breaking even just to maintain the grant.

Yes.

So we're not really making anything out of it. Um, it's not like CDBG.

We have—

we do use CDBG. Uh, we've had a portion of that, um, as part of our victim services. Some of victim services comes out of that.

It's very—

CDBG is a lot easier to maintain. It's a lot easier to do the quarterly reports. It's a lot less high maintenance. Um, and so the big part for us is we were, we were going to try to put in a— we wanted to try to put in another advocate, 'cause we need another advocate. But if we could reduce the amount of time that Renee's spending servicing the grant, it gives her more time to become an advocate, which, and with adding a domestic and violence investigator on top of that, would be able to basically drop VOCA and not have to maintain that grant and get an extra advocate out of it.

Thank you.

How about Chief? Uh, I, I appreciate the, the preparation that have gone into this and, and, and with Renee. It's, it's a situation where, you know, in— there's, there's crime trends and so forth in, in, in policing and things that come sometimes come and go. And for me, I would speak to— this is the, this is the number one thing on my concern list right now. This is not showing it.

This is is proliferating.

And the magnitude and the complexity of the cases where our officers do a very good job, but with legislative changes, I mean, really what it boils down to for me to, you know, keep it simple is one of the pieces in the domestic violence statute is a mandate that we prevent further violence from occurring. And right now, frankly, we don't have the ability to do that.

Mm-hmm.

We're doing the best we can. Sergeant John, these, these 2 folks are also in, they're in charge of our community-oriented policing stuff. So what we're doing right now is we're actually taking officers away from the community outreach program we have to try and deal with the long range, the complexities and so forth that are going with it. And where, you know, the, the grant system that helped establish our victim assistance office back in the day, And we relied on very heavily has been more than halved to where, frankly, we're— as we crunch numbers, it's like, is it even worth trying to work this grant anymore as it continues to trickle down to where we're essentially at a break-even point right now? You know, where to abandon it at all would actually give us another half of the domestic violence assistance in that. Um, one of the things that will be, uh, just as a, as a, as a forecast, one of the only things that we really, as far as an expansion of our, of our roster, of our personnel stuff, is we believe that we need to have a, uh, a detective that's assigned exclusively and individually to follow these cases, not somebody who's supposed to be running our community-oriented policing and trying to chase down guys and everything else that we do. We enjoy the fact we're nimble and lean, and that's kind of been our mantra for a long time. But this is something, like I said, frankly, my concern is I don't know how we can fulfill that mandate to prevent further violence from occurring outside of having— being able to really put our stamp and our thumb on, on this. And it's not our intent to bring it as, you know, the soft, quiet underbelly of Family City, USA, or anything like that. That's not what we're talking about. But these, these are, these are our people too. And this is our community. And it's not— I can attest that we've, we've, I mean, I've stood over victims of domestic violence in homes worth millions of dollars and in trailers. It doesn't matter where they live. It doesn't matter all those things that you think would prevent it or make it less susceptible.

I don't—

I haven't seen where any of those things— it's pervasive. It's a problem. And as we demonstrate in those statistics, I mean, realistically, in the last 10 years, it's more than doubled the number of calls. And those are the ones that we're able to make a criminal case out of. Uh, that, like I said, there's, there's a huge influx of people that come in seeking assistance where it's not necessarily a criminal case, or it doesn't, you know, the, the threshold of violence isn't, uh, isn't there, but they're definitely abusive family problems, emotional abuse, uh, financial abuse, all, all those types of things that, that, that office works on. And those aren't any part of the statistics that we'll present to you today. So, Chief, I got a question. Yeah, so with that 0.5 person, if you took the Boca grant away, um, is that enough?

As far as—

well, I mean, I mean, the bottom line is you come up— never ask me if I have enough.

We're coming up on a budget, right?

We're coming up on a budget. Yes. And so if that's a need, we need to look at it and see if we can fund that. Well, that's Yeah, I mean, as far as without adding staff, uh, the funding that, that, that where we were, if we are to abandon the VOCA grant, yeah, there's that piece of— there's those dollars. Could, could the city look at that VOCA grant and, and take that ownership away from them so they have that money? But, you know, if we need another person or whatever, we need to keep our citizens safe, right?

Or is there someone that could do the administrative end of that grant.

Well, and that's the problem is we have somebody that's doing the administrative and it's a part-time job. Um, for some, I mean, it's taking one of them to do it. And it's just, it's some of these federal grants that come from the Department of Justice are so— there's absolutely no such thing as free money from them. And the, the strings attached, which is basically this, where, you know, back in the late '90s when this was a, hey, let's, let's do this. America thing has been rolled back significantly administration by administration to where, you know, the—

it's— saw there initially we were getting about 3 times the amount of the grant over what we get, you know.

Yeah.

So would that be something that, because we have the grant, you know—

Yeah.

So does it—

maybe, maybe give— let me give a little bit of context here first. So first of all, we, we have our victims advocate team come and we turn in the reports so to speak, about every other year. So I think the last time was in 2021. And as recently as this last year, you as a council approved a women's shelter to come into the city. And I actually got confirmation today that they have in fact closed on moving forward, consistent with The, I guess, the site plan they submitted, they approved last year. So that'll be moving forward. Once that comes in, that actually, we actually get access to some funds that then help us to be able to support it from a public safety perspective. So there is, but that won't actually come in until the building is actually operational. So there is a period of time where we've got this gap. Now you're getting a little bit of a pre-budget preview, but yeah, of course we want to make sure you know that this is important. It is happening. It is real. And that we always want you to know that our— not only our staff in general, but our police department specifically if the fleet is showing that they're doing everything they can already, before then we come with an ask to improve a certain spread from here.

So, so the ask would be to essentially get rid of the grant, just have the city fund those $6,000 or whatever?

Yeah, my forecast is— I mean, it could be as soon as next year where we're actually losing money on trying to keep it brand new.

Yeah, it seems to make just sense that you would get rid of the grant, and you would keep your eyes open for other or lose other grants, right?

And then, and that's the first step, I'd say. And then we'll try to include in our budget process a review of adding a person as well.

Is this the domestic violence investigator?

Yeah, that's the additional—

that would be an LEO position.

So I'll throw one quick stat at you guys. So If, if you look at our domestic violence stat, that was 390 cases or something for this year, for 2023. I took this position in March of 2023. I came upstairs and started working this position. Since March of 2023, I've reviewed 1,800 cases. That's including domestic violence cases, stalking cases, protective order violations, family problems, harassments. Um, the only thing I don't cover on my end is sex crimes. If it's sex crimes, I hand it over to someone else. Um, so all of these, like the chief was saying, you know, a lot of people walk in and they just, they just need advice. You know, where do I go? Maybe they're, they've got a problem with a family member or something. That initially starts with the victims' advocates, but then it ends up on my plate. And so it would really be nice to have a full-time investigator that could tend to those needs.

The sheer violence that these cases are coming in is something that I just— SPU for 6 years, Chief Adams did it for multiple years, and the amount of violent cases we're getting now is, is exponential.

So, so as far as the why goes, what does the research show? What are people saying? Why, why is it going up so much, domestic violence?

I don't think we'll ever have an answer to that.

I don't know why it ever happens. Like, I don't get it.

But yeah, there must be some forces in society coming together when they create this.

There are.

There's different things. But one of the unfortunate things about this too is it gets politically hijacked all the time. Even in our own legislature and stuff, this issue can get hijacked, become a political issue versus a social problem. And that's where we Part of what I look at is, you know, maybe, maybe the more Orem-centric we are in our versus dependent on the grant funding and things like that, it helps us to try and answer that question ourselves as well. And, and, you know, one of the number one things that, that I believe can make an impact in Orem is being able to continue to essentially have our thumb on some of these repeat offender type people that are prone to this type of stuff. And, and that we're actually able to continue to maintain a good relationship with victims because so often they'll come in, they'll get some assistance, they'll go home, and, you know, within the matter of the next weeks and months, oftentimes there's some sort of a reunification. I mean, they are family. And our objective isn't to blow up families. Our objective is the family lives together in peace without violence. And, and so it's part of that is that we're able to continue to maintain and monitor that, that those things are being taken care of the right way, that, you know, classes, courses, you know, we got your— we got our eye on you kind of stuff is, is happening with, with both the victims and the perpetrators of violence inside our community.

How are our numbers comparing to national?

They're pretty close. I mean, we, per, per family capita, one of the, one of the— we have a lot of families, so our, our family density is actually more dense than a lot of communities who we want to compare ourselves to. Um, so yeah, I mean, our interpersonal violence and family violence statistics are, are very closely associated with, with other like-sized communities. Across the country.

So this seems like a 2-pronged thing to me. So you need another investigator to assist, but we also need some additional time for you for community outreach.

I mean, we need to get this upstream. We need to help women feel valuable so they will stand up to men who treat them like that. And we need to teach young boys, you don't do that, you don't hit a woman.

You don't treat a woman that way.

And women to men.

Exactly.

I get your point.

Thank you, Chief. I'm looking at your size compared to my size, but you're exactly right. There might be some strength in my size, Chief, woman. But, um, yes, I mean, I, I'd like to explore that too because I really feel there needs— it needs to be a two-pronged approach. I mean, I was on a jury once for a protection order that was, you know, violated.

And I saw a man throw his 8-month-old girlfriend across the room, or 8-month pregnant girlfriend across the room.

And there's just—

there's—

it's just so— there's so much that education and outreach—

oh, I wish we could figure out how to really help on all ends, right? Because they go back to the men.

The women often go back to the men.

That's our desire, to be more proactive versus just catching.

Yeah, but you're just playing catch-up all the time.

So I think that that's where— I think that's where our victims' advocates honestly have the greatest effect. It's not necessarily the initial contact or reach out. Every victim, when these guys, when these ladies reach out to them, every victim is happy.

They're—

I mean, they may not want services, but they're— it's nice that someone reached out to them to check on them. Where we find the changes, if these guys can have the time to do follow-up care with them— hey, can we get you into counseling? Hey, can we do this? Hey, can we do that? Then we actually see a change. Then the woman starts to get— The victim, I should say, starts to get on their feet and starts to understand that, hey, I can do this by myself. I don't, I don't need to be abused. And then, but, but really, it's those 3 ladies that have the biggest effect. I can try all I want, but it's like, you know, talking till I'm blue in the face. But it's for some reason they connect with them and they do a really good job.

So, so, so, doing some more. So, if I can emphasize what we're talking about, we're kind of looking ahead budgetarily. Talking about freeing up time for victims' advocates and having investigators investigate.

Okay, and that should do it for start.

Well, and then, I mean, right now there's been sort of splitting of efforts in terms of community outreach, but adding those— adding that time will allow us to put more effort into community outreach. So, as an example, this last year, our police department teamed up with United Way and our library to get out and, you know, read books in our schools and in neighborhoods and stuff. And so, we'll want to continue to expand those things so that we'll get now in our offices, you're seen as humans that are developing those relationships so that then people feel safe to come to us for help.

Well, that's also the big take of the Yeah, Cookies with Cops. What do the qualifications of an advocate look like?

Is that—

is there at least training? Is it education? Do they need a master's degree?

And of course, no, they used to have victims advocate because they do go through a small course that they do, but a lot of it's on hands or on-the-job learning. Like, they don't have an academy. We go to a police academy and then we do 12 weeks of FTO. So we're with somebody for 12 weeks. They don't do it the same, but they have a lot of different training that we don't attend that they go to.

And they're gifted people. It's, it's, they're empathetic. There are a lot of things that we're not very good at.

They fill in.

It's true.

I know you.

I'll go back.

Renee and I just got accredited. by the state of Utah to do court. They're, what do they call them, a friend of the court. And so they're actually allowed to sit. They've always been allowed to sit in court, but now they can actually speak on behalf of the victim if the judge will allow it.

That's awesome.

Which is huge for us because a lot of those victims don't want to speak out. And so by them getting that accreditation is huge for us.

So, so do we need more advocates as well? Are advocates overworked?

You know, I, I compared our case— I, I compared our advocates to Provo because we are a similar size city somewhat. Um, and, you know, when you've got 3 advocates working, we have the— if you compare our domestic violence numbers to Provo, we are neck and neck. And so our 3 advocates are doing the job of what 7.5 advocates are doing in Provo. So there's— they are tasked with more work. I don't think they're— I think they're happy with it, but they are. If we could free up Renee, that'd be huge because she's the supervisor over them, but she also works cases constantly.

So Chief, even if it's indirect, is there correlation with like our mental health unit as well? Because maybe you could speak to the grant we were awarded recently to, uh, to make one of our mental health personnel part-time.

Yeah, so we have a mental health coordinator that's more along the social work side of things. It's a non-sworn position. Her background is in mental health. So we have a— not, not a clinician level, but a social worker level person that works alongside our mental health unit. And again, the whole point being to— recidivism is what that's all about. It's okay, let's— instead of having the same person having the same mental health crisis all the time, let's get them— let's get the proper level of care, education, support, et cetera. And that's essentially what we try to do on this side too, on the victim side, is that they have the proper level of care, support, and stuff to move forward in their life without, you know, in a more, uh, more province, more freedom, more ability to be an independent person inside of our community versus continually dealing with us.

They actually— those 2 positions, I'm over mental health as well, so those 2 positions actually cross over a lot. Um, we had a, we had a domestic violence last week with a male that lives with mom and dad, adult male, has mental health issues. And we were able to not only tend to the victims of the domestic, the family, but we brought Cameron in and dealt with the mental health side of that as well.

So they do cross over quite a bit.

She's also attending all of our suicides, the families, to hopefully prevent further suicides happening.

Realistically, in Utah County, I think we're one, we are the trendsetters in mental health. Completely no other agencies here have that. And no other agencies in Utah County have domestic violence investigators either. Now, they do have some up in Salt Lake County, the big agencies, Salt Lake City PD, Unified PD, they do have them.

Mm-hmm.

Um, and so we do have kind of a, a roadmap of how to do it and where to take it. And so that's kind of, you know, that's where we want to head so that we can offer services to the victims.

But that's kind of where I see you're going is you've got your, your regular domestic violence advocates, but by adding this investigative activity, it kind of makes the whole system work more effectively, right?

It's more continuity of care.

Yeah, ties it all together.

Yeah, it's homicide prevention.

Right.

Basically is what we're trying to do is have one point of contact for all of those victims to just contact a person specifically, not have to call 5 officers on graveyards on their days off that they're not getting their calls for help.

Right. So it just makes your whole operation more effective.

Correct.

So you don't necessarily have to have multiple advocates.

So do we do anything with the county?

Does the county ask for our help at all?

Where? Like, say, Lake Vineyard, because they're— No, they have their own. Like sheriffs?

They have their own.

They have their own.

The only thing that we assist with, if you will, is we have an MOU with Lyndon, um, because the, the relatively small city that it is. So they actually are actually quite generous in financial support of our Victim Advocate Department, in contrast to what the draw is, if you will, on the service. Uh, we have a great working relationship with them, but that's—

Okay, any other questions?

All right, appreciate what you guys do. Thank you. Appreciate it.

Well, we're 911s, just call us. We'll send you—

if you have a strong stomach, I'll bring you some videos.

Okay, well, thank you.

We're good.

Why don't we go ahead and, uh, just run through this agenda?

Well, we've got some time. This one's for this agenda, then we'll drop some for after.

So, and review, uh, number 2, City Council reports. Nothing to report today, right? There's nothing on the agenda?

No, because we only do it once a month.

We did it last time.

Okay, and then we'll go to 6 o'clock. We'll have a call to order, invocation, and inspirational thought. Dave Schonberger and Bud Leavens, Conrad Gaiman, who I invite.

Jen, so would you like to just welcome them and introduce them when he comes?

And we've got, uh, as far as item 6.1, uh, we're going to talk about the Cheesecake Factory.

Uh, this is a big—

we've been hearing about this for a long time, so this is a big deal.

I can finally talk about it.

Mayor, it would not be without a little change of plans. Uh, the regional manager Carrie is here right now setting out cheesecake from the Cheesecake Factory, individual slices, and Please get one with your meal or one in the fridge.

If you leave them out, they might not go back—

they might go bad.

But there's enough for the audience members as well.

Oh really?

There's 65 pieces of green, so— Stop everyone.

You shouldn't have announced that.

Um, you have to be in the building right now.

It'll be gone. And we got item 6.2, uh, the People's Choice accomplishments. Hopefully you'll share that with us. And then we'll go to item 7, personal appearances. And we should make sure we clarify, because I think there's going to be a lot of interest in, uh, in the project that's been proposed. And so I— yeah, we just want to make sure that we get everyone over to public hearing.

In as far as personal appearances.

Yeah, we want the personal appearances to be not people who are interested in the forest.

Okay.

Yes.

We've got, let's see, consent items, approval of meeting minutes, and a reappointment to the Transportation Advisory Commission. This would be Russ Verhofstadt and Becky Buxton. Then we go to 9.1. Uh, we're, we're going to have this ordinance, uh, modifying the common boundary between the City of Orem and Provo City, located at the intersection of 1030 East, 1630 South. Uh, and there's 3 of these. Um, 9.2, which is an ordinance, uh, by Orem City modifying its common boundary. at 2000 South Ann Columbia Lane. And 9.3, uh, an ordinance modifying common boundary between the City of Longmont and Provo City at 700 North, 1550 East. And for the new council members, this is not something that hardly ever happens, is modifying boundaries between cities, but we decided to essentially— we had a reason to do it, and so we went ahead and did 3 different locations.

Right.

All at once, just make it nice and clean.

Clean up the map.

Right.

So, Mayor, can I just jump in on that?

9.13, we do have, uh, basically a boundary adjustment agreement, and I think we've talked to you a little bit about some of the things that we wanted included as part of that. Um, you know, as you probably know, there's a bridge just a little bit north of that property that crosses the Provo River, and so we were asking them as part of this to improve their portion of the bridge that lies on their property.

I mean, that may be—

and we, and we've timed it to development of it, uh, an additional piece of their property. And so it may be 5 or 6 or 7 years down the road, but ultimately we want that bridge to be improved. And then they will dedicate that to the, the public, for the public use, as well as basically they'll dedicate, uh, public street that goes from the bridge to 1550 East.

Mm-hmm.

So that there can be public access from 1550 East going across the bridge and then ultimately hopefully connecting the university happening.

So yeah, right. So we essentially—

are there any other issues, Steve?

I know we talked that we're doing this, uh, anything that we needed on our side? I mean, we're kind of give and take with Provo on this, or is there any other issues with Provo?

There, there were no other issues on the other boundary adjustments.

Uh, they were You know, pretty straightforward, just kind of cleaning up. Um, they, they were more cleanup items, whereas this one involved a little bit larger parcel. I wouldn't necessarily call it cleanup as much as just makes more sense for it to be in Provo potentially than in Farmington.

Okay, that's why Provo's agreeing to deal with it, which—

well, it's been—

that's what the owner— sorry, it's historically been there. People use it all the The bridge? The old bridge? Well, I, I don't know to what extent it's been used so far. It's not public right now, so— but maybe people have used it, you know, but it's not necessarily—

yeah, right.

And so they may not be objecting to people using it, but I don't think it's actually— so that's interesting.

Perfect.

Yeah, yeah.

And then we've got item 9.4, the public hearing amendment, uh, to street connection master plan to eliminate the street connection between 1430 South and 400 West. And a lot of you have heard things about that. That's where I think, uh, some people will be coming to talk about that. Um, and as far as that 9.4, as far as this process goes, just having public hearing, or will we be voting on Tonight too?

Yeah, you potentially vote on that if you feel like you're at a point where you can vote on it. Okay, you're ready to make a decision.

So we, we would either vote on it or we wouldn't continue it until you needed more time.

Yeah.

Okay, then we got item number 10, communication items. Item 11, city manager information items.

Brent, and then we'll adjourn after that. So Any questions?

Yes.

Okay, so it's Chrissy's birthday, and so we're gonna have pie.

Um, Chrissy's birthday, turns 29 on Sunday.

Congratulations. Well, that makes me 27. So as far as the cookies, we'll come back over here.

What are we doing?

So the cookies will just be part of the meal.

Okay, so the cookie looks part of the meal.

Everyone wishes Chris happy birthday. Thank you.

Can we sing now?

No, Jen, start it off. Happy birthday to you, happy birthday to you, happy birthday, dear Chris, happy birthday to you.

Thank you.

There you go. You're blessed with love, actually, a lot.

All right, so we'll, we'll have a prayer to bless the food. And then I guess we'll— should we just officially adjourn now and then we'll— we're done with everything?

Yeah.

Okay, so we'll officially adjourn now, but then we'll have a prayer and have the food. We have a volunteer for the prayer?

No one? Chris? Father in heaven, we're grateful for the opportunity we've had to meet and to discuss these important items concerning the city and the citizens that reside herein. Father, we're thankful for our many blessings in this part of the vineyard. Thankful for the food that we'll partake of and ask thee to bless it and provide energy to us as we continue on through our meetings. May we find and feel of thy spirit in helping us accomplish the purposes of our city and of all those who reside herein. Thankful again for those who Serve and lead and lift and bless as employees and those who volunteer and elected officials. We ask thy care upon us in the name of Jesus Christ.

Amen.

Amen. Test, test, test.

He—

I lied. So today they're going to try it in there, and that's the only way they can do it. But they want to So I guess I didn't— so he's got one of them, you know, constructed. He's got one and he's going to try it there. I'll run this one. And then of course we have the So what's his name? Ammon came today. You were easy to find.

Oh, really?

He put on some battery saver thing. He's like, I'm having trouble. I was like, what? Then bring my— I know. So we'll see. I told Carson, Carson, he says he has a problem with time. You're probably— he may get hungry, runs out often. Like, have him put CD like our concept.

All right, here we go.

1, 2, 3. Thank you for trying to be here.

You're David Feldberg?

Yes.

Just—

were you requesting hearing assistance?

Oh, probably.

It's probably from Planning Commission.

Well, yeah, but he has to send samples.

This one is really—

okay. Jason Bench Show. I did learn something new.

Apparently these are Dallas Cowboys. There's something wrong with that laptop.

Finally found If I stream the BYU game like this, do you think anyone will notice? Well, here's 2.

I'm fine.

Yeah, right. I agree, because I used to follow the Eagles when Andy Reid was there. Then I kind of Lamar Jackson. Test, test, test, test.

Is that working?

I think they do. Don't ever bet against Andy Reid. That's my— Kelce just got warmed up last week in the 2-touchdown game.

Test, test. Is that is that working? Can you hear me through the mic?

Is it working?

Now you got to work out a few more times, Jeff.

I gave my ticket to my nephew. I was like, oh, this is horrible.

My son's.

What do you do though?

Like, really, when I bought them, I'm like, Big 12's playing Tuesday nights?

What are the odds?

I didn't even think about it.

Yeah, because we got another one. I think the Central Florida—

or the—

yeah, Central Florida home games on a council night too in February. Yeah, I know. I do too. I was just asking Jason if I streamed it on my phone right here. I can extend the audio for you to watch the screen. I didn't look. How do I— how do I do it again?

All you have to do is just—

it's on. All you have to do Yeah, if you don't want it on, you can mute. Yeah, the green light is on. So you should be— good luck.

For 6 months.

Beautiful.

Oh, Tom's gonna give it. He says he didn't want it. We don't make council meetings this fun every time.

We could.

Let's just get every new restaurant, every new—

that's so cool. Yeah, I just leave it in case somebody ever uses it. Yeah, us too. This is fun.

Cheesecake Factory has one bad thing. It's the one place my oldest son has thrown up twice because he eats so fast. It's so good, he just like shovels it down.

How fun is that? Small world.

I'd like to welcome everyone and call this meeting to order. Tonight we'll have our invocation and inspirational thought by Dave Schellenberger and our Pledge of Allegiance by Conrad Guymon. And Jen has asked them to come, so if you'd like to introduce them.

Yes, uh, thank you, Dave and Conrad, for coming. Dave and Conrad are both business owners here in And they're both highly involved in the community with both Boy Scouts and with the bike team in Horam. They've rendered thousands and thousands of hours of community service. So welcome to them, and thanks for being willing to do this with us.

Thank you. So if we can start out with Dave Schallenberger with the prayer, and then Conrad with the pledge.

Our dear Heavenly Father, we're grateful that we can gather here this evening. Uh, we're grateful for our civic leaders, and we ask that, uh, they may be guided tonight and in general, uh, with clarity and wisdom as they make decisions for our city. And we're grateful for our, uh, citizens that are also here. And, um, we say these things in the name of Jesus Christ.

Amen.

Thank you. And now we'll have the pledge. Would the audience please rise?

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

Thank you. Now we'll move on to item 6.1, and Kathy Lewis would like to Tell us about this.

Good evening, council members. Today marks a really exciting occasion as we extend an enthusiastic welcome to a long sought-after addition to our city, the Cheesecake Factory at University place here in Orem. This achievement has been a long journey spanning over a decade.

Can you believe that?

In 2014, our Economic Development Division turned to the power of social media and asked our residents to share their wish list for businesses that they wanted to see come to Orem. The response was resounding, and one name echoed louder than the rest: The Cheesecake Factory. The residents' voices were heard, and it sparked the beginning of a tenacious pursuit. Now fast forward to 2017 when the city conducted a citywide survey seeking the residents' preferences for new businesses. The overwhelming consensus? You guessed it, the Cheesecake Factory claimed the top spot. Then hundreds of residents reached out to the Cheesecake Factory and extended invitations Making it clear that Orem was ready for a cheesecake slice of heaven. In 2018, KUTV played an unforgettable April Fool's Day prank, announcing that The Cheesecake Factory was finally coming to Orem. Well, the prank worked its magic because deep down we all longed for it to be true. Little did we know that our collective wish was steadily becoming a reality. As we ushered in 2020 with hope and aspirations, the city once again turned to social media, this time on New Year's Day, to poll residents on what the city should have achieved by the year 2020. The resounding answer was— you probably guessed it again— to bring a Cheesecake Factory to the city of Orem. Now, to the Cheesecake Factory, we extend a warm welcome from the entire city of Orem and its residents. Your presence adds a sweet touch to the vibrant group of businesses in Orem, and we look forward to savoring the delicious offerings that the Cheesecake Factory has to bring to University Place. Here's to the exciting journey ahead, filled with cheesecake smiles, community celebrations, and a flourishing partnership between the city of Orem and the Cheesecake Factory. Now, before we hear a few words from Carrie Kaya, the area director of operations for the Cheesecake Factory, and possibly Patrick Clowers, the general manager of the City Creek Cheesecake Factory, first I'd like to present Carrie with a gift of appreciation. It's a bag filled with Orem-logoed items that will carry the spirit of our community with him and just help to give a warm welcome to the Cheesecake Factory.

Oh, thank you so much.

So now we'll give Kerry a moment to share a few words.

Thank you, Kathy. One of the things that is determined for when we open one of our restaurants is we design a pin. And they're, they're favorites with a lot of our staff, and they trade them online. And you're going to give me a lot of ideas on what I should present to our group of leaders when it comes to presenting a pin. So thank you. Mr. Mayor, council members, City of Orem, it is an absolute pleasure to be sitting here with you all today. Next to me is my colleague Patrick Clowers, as mentioned, and I also have with us Elena Sillsby. sitting behind me. She's the general manager of The Cheesecake Factory Murray, and also Jordan sitting next to her, who is a staff member with Patrick at City Creek. She's also Elena's daughter. We really are a family inside of a family with The Cheesecake Factory. We're here today because of the incredible partnership and amazing fortitude, be it with Rob and the Woodbury Corporation, to get The Cheesecake Factory to here in Orem. And I hope you're ready for a lot of cheesecake. We did bring some with us, as some of you have already noticed. And for the ladies and gentlemen joining us, there is some treats for you in the back later if you weren't able to get one on your way in. One of those flavors— we brought some of our favorites— is the Cookie Dough Lovers cheesecake with pecans, if you're not allergic. What's special about this cheesecake is for every slice we sell, we donate 25 cents To feeding America and all of its network of food banks, including the Utah Food Bank right here locally. We opened our first Cheesecake Factory back in 2007, and since then we've donated over $6 million to feeding hungry Americans in local communities. It's something I'm proud of, Patrick, and all of our teams are very proud of. Our restaurants are— yes, they're great places to take your family to eat. We have a 23 3-page menu, so start now. We have over 30 different cheesecake flavors to choose from. We like to say we have something for everyone. But we're also a great employer. But I think the thing that we're most proud of is we're a great business partner as well as a community member. We have a lot of outreach with harvest programs and community things that we like to do. So thank you for allowing us to be here. We're super excited. We plan on opening our doors fall, and we look to employ over 200 local staff from the Orem community. Thank you.

Thank you. And, uh, now we're all very excited about this. I, I heard about this before I ran for mayor, uh, that it was coming, it was coming. It's like this program that's always been coming, but you're here and we're very excited about it. I don't think we've had anyone bring treats for us in the back of the room before. So that's a first as long as I've been here. And those are for the audience and everyone who is lucky enough to come tonight. And so if any of you are upset, this will hopefully sweeten you right up.

It's a good way to start. Can I also add, part of our opening is we do practice services or mock services. I'll give that information to Kathy so she can give it to the community represented here this evening. Come down and join us, and we're going to be practicing. So if you're— if you can allow us to make a couple of mistakes here and there as we iron out and get ready for the public, we'd love to have you.

That'd be awesome. And, and I just want— I was just thinking as you were talking too, I mean, if you were going to make a movie, it'd be Family City USA and the Cheesecake Factory.

Right?

So it doesn't get much better than that. But we, we appreciate everything that you're going to do, and, and we're all excited about it.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you. Okay, uh, up next, item 6.2. More good news from our Communications Director, Pete Wolfley.

All right.

Thank you, Council and Mayor, for having me today. Um, you've seen some of this information before, but it's, uh, what we've titled it is the 2023 People's Choice Review, or People's Choice Social Media Review. And it's basically just a look back at 2023, how things went on social media, and then a look forward on where we're going in 2024. So, to share just some quick stats from this last year, uh, on Facebook, we reached almost 1 million people, or our stuff was served up 1 million, almost 1 million times. And that's 180% increase from where we were this time last year. So compared to 2022, we've had huge, huge gains. And you can see our interactions are up 17%. Our overall followers and audience is bigger by 22%. And so it was just a great year on Facebook. This is the Instagram stats. We were up 128% compared to last year, 100% more interactions. So this is people liking, hearting, commenting, laughing, Hugging, sharing, doing any type of interaction with us. And so all these numbers are up, and there's been huge, huge increases. And I spent some time thinking about why this is, and I came up with three reasons. And the first one is the Bybee Law of Positivity. So one of Brand's mantras in life is to look at the positive and stay as positive as you possibly can in every situation. And that has paid huge dividends for us on social media. As you all know, social media can be just a cesspool of, you know, toxic behavior. But, you know, this year we really, really strive to, you know, kind of stay above that and be positive and celebrate the wins and all the good things that are happening in Orem. And you can see it in the results. It really paid off.

Mayor and Council, if I can interject, I was told it would be cheesy, too cheesy to have Cheesecake Factory come in and welcome them, but I don't care. We're gonna do it, and it turned out to be really positive.

That's right.

Bring on the cheese.

That's the 2nd law of the Bybee family.

Bring on the cheese.

Um, the 2nd thing I was thinking about is great content, and this is a lot that has to do with you as the mayor and council. The initiatives that you support, the things you want to do in this community are resonating with our public, our residents. All the ribbon cuttings that we've had, all the new businesses, the new parks, the new amenities. uh, just all the great stuff that's happened. Um, people just are, are flocking to it, and it's, it's been really fun this past year. And then the third, I've got to give, um, credit to my team. This is, uh, they're some of the most creative people I've ever worked with. This is Melanie, Alicia, and Dorelli. They're, they're students, uh, in communications and marketing, and they've really helped make a huge difference. Uh, the amount of stuff we're able to do, the creativity that we're able to bring to everything that the city does now on social media is at least triple what it used to be. So I really appreciate working with them.

They're great.

And then this you saw at the council retreat. These are just the top 25 posts that we had over the year. And you've had that in a handout, but here it is again just for the public. These were all the things that people liked the best from 2023. I put the Orem Express in here. That showed up several times on the top 25. That was a huge hit. Of course, all the small businesses that have come in and the businesses that we've highlighted. Service in the community, it's a huge thing. And then of course, all of the lights on stuff, all the Christmas lights and everything surrounding that was huge hits this year. Thousands and thousands of views on that. This is just a summary of the things that people seem to like the most in 2023. I tried to just summarize it the best I could, but these are the kind of things that have worked and we'll continue to do this kind of thing. going forward. But as far as specifics in 2024, our goals are kind of continue to expand the reach. So, you know, we reached almost a million users. We just want to keep pushing that and, you know, getting it further out there so we can reach more and more of our residents and beyond and attract businesses and people to move to Orem. As we talked about in the retreat, you know, we're going to really buckle down and strive hard to work with our Hispanic community outreach. Dorelli, who you saw She's a Spanish speaker. Her parents are Hispanic business owners here in the community. And so we're hoping that she can help us kind of make inroads with that community, which they're super important to our community. And then we have several new series that we're excited about. So we're going to do the Faces of Orem, which is just, if you've seen the People of New York, it's kind of that way where you just meet random people from Orem and learn about them and what makes them unique. The Wisdom of Orem is one I'm really looking forward to. This is, we're going to go over to the senior center and interview the people that are there and, you know, just ask them for their wisdom. You know, we have a huge treasure trove of knowledge and wisdom and experience over there, and we want to get that out to the public. We're gonna do lots of Orem trivia. This is another thing I'm super excited about, is the Art Ambassador Program. This comes from our Arts Council. They're going to be helping promote all of the great artistic nonprofits we have. You know, we have great choirs and dance groups and artistic groups in the Sierra, so we're going to work with all those groups to kind of put that out more to the citizens. We have this behind-the-scenes day-in-the-life series where you'll get to kind of ride along with a city employee and see what, you know, what it is that makes up their job and what they do to build a better Orem. Uh, for February, we're doing date nights in Orem. So if you're running out of ideas for Valentine's Day or anything like that, you'll have at least 4 good options. Um, then we're going to do CARE highlights. We have this amazing CARE program that was renewed for another 10 years, and we want to highlight everything that the CARE program does because it's incredible. Not every community has it. And then we're gonna do a lot of historic stuff too this year, because Orem does have a great history that's kind of unknown. And so we want to get— do our best to kind of let people know that they live in an amazing place with interesting history, and there's some really fun stuff ahead. So do you have any questions or suggestions? We're totally open to anything you want to do on this front.

I just want to say thank you. You've done an amazing job. And I'm excited to see what you're doing for 2024. I think those are some, some marvelous ideas. And, you know, one of my, one of my favorites has been watching the new business highlights on Saturdays to see those pop up and, and to see these, these businesses, Norm, that we may or may not have ever heard of has been so much fun and such a great way to highlight those businesses. And I'm excited. I thank you for the marvelous job that you're doing.

Oh, thank you.

I appreciate that.

It's fun seeing your team around town and doing their thing, and they're just so creative. So thank you.

Thank you so much.

I just want to say, as far as Pete, because I work with Pete a lot, so to really understand the context of what's happening, I mean, how long did you work in the city, Pete?

I'm about to start my 9th year.

He's about to start his 9th year. So, but if you go back to a year ago when you were put in place as the communications director and basically overall the city communications, that's from a year ago to now is when we've had an amazing transformation in our numbers on Facebook, our numbers on Instagram, and then with the interns just being able to take the message of Orem so much further. So I just want to congratulate you. And we had some major conversations about a year ago, and you've executed on them perfectly. So I appreciate that.

Thank you very much. Yeah, shout out to my team too. Like, couldn't have done it without them.

Right.

Yeah.

Okay.

Thank you.

Thank you, Pete.

Okay, next up, we've got Personal appearances. And, uh, you're supposed to say kind things is the short version of this, but I know Carol Walker and she'll only say kind things. So would you please come up, Carol, and, uh, say whatever you'd like, as long as it's nice.

Um, first of all, I just want to thank you. I know being a city council member, running for office is really tough, and I appreciate all your willingness to serve because we live in a great city and all of you help make that a better city. All the neat things are happening. But specifically, I want to thank you for the fabulous Christmas lights. We have enjoyed those so much, and I just publicly want to say how much everyone I've talked to and everyone I see has just loved the lights. So I know it takes a lot of being involved with the creation of Putting them in place and getting people to do it. I know it costs a lot of money and a lot of time, and we really appreciate it.

Thank you.

Thank you, Carol. All right, moving on to item number 8. We've got our consent items. For consent items, we got item 8.1, approval of the meeting minutes for January 9th, 2024, and item number 8.2, the reappointment of 2 individuals to the Transportation Advisory Commission, Russ Verhofstadt and Becky Buxton. Can we have a motion?

I'll make a motion.

Um, Mayor, I move that we approve the consent items as listed.

I second.

Aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Aye.

The consent items pass, or they're approved. Okay, we'll go to item 9, scheduled items. And item 9.1, we have an ordinance, uh, by the Orem City Council modifying a common boundary between the City of Orem And Provo City located near the intersection of 1030 East and 1630 South. And Jason, Jason Bench will present that.

Thank you, Mayor. Tonight we have 3 boundary line discussions with Provo City. Over the years, we've been looking at several different issues that we've had, and Provo and Orem has finally got together and, and at least got 2 of them, and hopefully we can get those resolved, and then the 3rd one will discuss as well. This one is as you head down into Provo on University Parkway, Carterville Road, you can see going over the parkway right there. Years ago, this was— if you can see my pointer really quick— Orem City has a lift station or well house, well, right here. Years ago when it was built, the boundary was modified to keep that in Orem. But for some reason, the kind of the crazy line right there continued until now. We've kind of come to consensus with Orem and Provo. The county already taxes those properties that will be in Orem or Provo. They already tax them in Orem or Provo, so it's already been resolved years ago. The boundary, for some reason, just has not been changed. And so tonight we are here in connection with Provo agreeing on the common boundary You can see there. And so we're just making a recommendation that the council approve this modification to make the boundary a little more consistent in this area. Any questions that I can address?

Yeah, just to clarify for the audience watching this, this is something that happens very rarely to modify boundaries between cities, but we've just gone through a process where we were looking to clean up some things that just didn't make any sense and have just kind of been there forever. And so that's what these first 2 are about. Any questions?

We—

and we have discussed these pretty exhaustively in, in our prior meetings. Oh, wait a sec. Um, yeah, it's not really a public comment.

It is a public hearing, Mayor.

Okay.

All right, if you'd like to say something. Yeah, we'll, we'll just open this as a public hearing for anyone that would like to, to speak.

Thank you, uh, Mr. Mayor. My name is Paul Riddle. I'm the local, uh, property owner in the area, and I've spoken with most of the neighbors around. We support the concept and the idea with the understanding that there'd be no intent. And further, we'd like to make public record that, you know, our request is that this never be allowed to have a new road there or access to the development approval, making sure that we keep the dead-end road there a dead-end road and that we don't incur any additional traffic in through the area. That's never been part of a design, but it's always a concern for, for us as the local residents. So we appreciate your consideration in allowing that and entering this information to the public record. We also, uh, while we're at it here, like the idea of the rural Carterville Road feel. And additionally, um, most of the— every of the neighbor that I've spoken to in the area in what we call South Carterville, Orem, SOBs— that's south of Berkshires, so just a little limited, little limited area there— That, that, that for a few hundred yards where, where even though when you paved last year you stopped right at the Berkshire entrance and didn't continue to the bridge there where Provo is, if you can imagine that picture. I understand that that's happened more than once and we've watched it and chuckled. Um, those of us who are south of Berkshires would like to thank the, the, uh, the city services area for patching the potholes that are there. Even though it didn't get asphalted, the potholes are there.

Thank you.

Regularly, and they've been patched, but they're back again, and they come quickly. So we appreciate you looking for us. And one more item we'd like to consider that I brought up before here years and years ago, and that is we'd like to see one more speed bump go in there at that intersection here of 1030 South and Carterville, where the last speed bump is a long ways away, and it seems like everybody wants to hit The bridge there going about 50 or 60 miles an hour, and our little area in Carterville wants to continue a 25-mile-per-hour speed limit there for the safety of our residents. Thank you very much.

Okay, thank you. Jason, could you address those?

Could you pull the picture up?

Yeah, pull the picture up again.

Yeah, so there is no access into the Provo development, nor is there any plans that I'm aware of to have any direct access into that.

do you know where we paved? We stopped paving.

I don't. Well, I don't have it on the map here. Brookshire should be further north.

Where did they stop?

Don't know.

Where'd he—

We, we could have Chris Shirkey probably address that or listen to it for us and get back to him.

Okay.

Okay. But Jason, as far as what we're talking about, what their concern was, is that we Tap into— I mean, you basically would have to be tapping into University Parkway, right? I mean, that's the only—

I think what he's referring to is going into the Provo development where the new development is going, the LDS Studios and things like that. There's— right now there's no access into that shopping development, and I don't think there's any intent to have that connection.

Is there any way to guarantee that?

I can never say never, but right now there's no, there's no plans to connect that into that as far as the city is concerned.

Mayor, if I could add to that, when the River's Edge development was being planned, there were some discussions between Provo and our engineering on making a connection, and we told them we were not interested in having that connect into Orem.

So our stance as staff has been that's not going to happen.

Okay, I guess the only concern is 5 years from now, 10 years from now, different people have different conversations. Is there anything we can do to make sure that doesn't happen?

I mean, really what you can do is state your current intent of this council, but you can't bind what future councils might decide to do. So, you know, the best you can do is say it's not our current intent or, you know, ever right now as far as you're concerned to ever connect that.

So Okay, and I think, I mean, I think that is our intent, always to go to protect the neighborhoods, right?

Yeah, and, and like Ryan has said, I don't know that there's why staff would ever, or the city council would ever want to do that. But I mean, you just never know in the future.

So, right.

Okay.

Yes.

Um, I think that's very accurately stated. Um, just as a follow-up, I attended the Provo City Council when they were approving the development for this new development that, again, it's in Provo City, and we're looking at it on the map, and the map's not 3-dimensional, but, you know, they approved 4-story apartments there right next to the boundary, and the climbing wall is 3 stories and looked right down on some of the houses there. So, um, You know, what's happened has happened there. But additionally, part of, part of the record that why I went to Provo City when they were approving the development was when they pushed— put out their little index card, they adopted a Google Maps. And Google Maps shows— and, and I know it's not a— it's not an official public record, but people would think so if they looked at it. And, and when Provo City did that, the road 1030 South or 1630 South, they showed as an open road. In fact, it's not. It's a dead end, and there's a— there's no gate there. Well, there is a gate where Brigham Young University has some private property there and the motion picture studio. But when Provo put that out for public comment, all of that private road— and, and the reason I was there is because I'm adjacent property holder with BYU, and together we identified that and saw that there's a need to make sure and understand, make sure that's part of the public record that that road is a private road from Brigham Young University. There is a gate allowing access to Orem. It's been closed off. It's been closed for 20 years or more that I know of. Also, there's a gate on the other end where you enter from Provo where their official entrance is, where there's a guard gate to the motion picture studio. And my point in all this is only just We're sure that— we think everybody agrees in this concept, but other than let's be aware and know that, that Provo City was made aware of this as well when they approved the development. When they advertised for the development, they showed that road as a public road, and that could have been a real problem. So we made the point there, and we're making the point today just as an assurance and follow-up for us. Thank you.

Okay, um, regarding the other point, as far as a speed bump in that particular spot, Would that be an initial conversation at a later time, or where do we go with that?

Yeah, probably Sam Kelly or Chris Shirkey can look into that as part of the Transportation Committee.

Okay. And that may require some petitions from the citizens in that location.

Most likely that would be the case.

But so if you could, if you could reach out to us, if you, if that's a path that you want to go down, to the gentleman that just spoke Uh, Paul, if that's a path you'd like to go down, then come back to the city and we— I'm sure we can look at that.

Yep.

Okay, any other questions? Any other public hearing? All right, well, let's close the public hearing and, um, let's go ahead and make a motion. But I would encourage whoever makes a motion— Steve, you could talk to this. As far as— I'm losing my voice. Um, but as, as far as the idea that we want this road to stay closed and that's our, our absolute intent, if we could have some wording to that in this resolution.

Yeah, you could, you could state that that's the council's desire and intent in the motion. But, you know, it's not— like I said, it's not going to be binding on a future council potentially, right?

But it would give them a place to go back to.

Yeah.

Um, so yeah, so I propose that whoever makes motion says that, unless there's anyone on the council who's against that.

I'll make a motion.

Okay.

I'll make a motion. The city council, by ordinance, um, by the Orem City Council, modifying a common boundary between the city of Orem and Provo, located near the intersection of 1030 East, 1630 South, and that that road stays closed and that no No connectivity to Provo. Is that good enough? That's our, our desire.

I second that. Okay, Jen.

Aye.

Aye.

Aye. Aye.

Aye.

Aye. The ordinance passes. Okay, thank you. Uh, we'll move on to item 9.2.

Okay, uh, this one is a 2000 South Columbia Lane intersection. There's a The portion of property— let me turn it— this portion here that's currently used as part of the detention system for Orem, it's currently located within the city limits of Provo. What Provo has agreed to do is, you can see the boundary of the street, 2000 South, actually half is in Provo, half is in Orem. Provo City residential developments are along this street. There's no access currently on 2000 South into— from Provo into Orem.

So Orem—

or Provo has agreed to just move the common boundary to that property line, take in the detention basin, and this will just be a boundary switch or shift south. No residential properties are coming in, it's simply street and the detention area that you see here. So be glad to address any questions.

We have any questions? We can open this to a public hearing. There's no comments from the public. We'll close the public hearing. And would somebody like to call for a vote?

I can listen.

I just make a motion if you want.

Um, I move that by ordinance the Orem City Council modify a common boundary between the City of Orem and Provo City located near the intersection of 2000 South and Columbia Lane.

Do we have a second?

I second.

Aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Aye.

The ordinance passes. Thank you. Okay, moving on to our 3rd ordinance.

Jason, the 3rd and final boundary adjustment here. So this is River District. It came before the council several months ago when the PD— a PD was created in Orem for a development there. They're coming back and requesting that that portion of the property be taken into Provo. So you can see the The pink line is the proportion of this development that they want to put into Provo. The blue line is the current common boundary. You can see the red line in the picture. That's the current boundary. What they're proposing— this map shows the development that was approved in Orem. They simply want to take that boundary and take it into Provo. And basically, their reasoning behind that is that this is their development. in Provo. And so this is all going to be part of that ownership agreement development. And so what they want to do is provide all the services and zip code and all that into school district, all that into one location, rather than having 2 different jurisdictions for fire calls or police calls, things like that. And then all the sewer, water, and all that will gravity feed into Provo. So that is their request as part of this agreement, because this is actual property that's— other than the other 2 were just simply boundary adjustments— this has actually taken property that is in Orem and into Provo. And so there, there has been a development agreement. Mr. Earl talked about it briefly in the pre-meeting. There's a couple of— there's 3 different agreements that they— that's in the agreement, the terms. One is that the bridge will be improved once Phase 3 is And I'll show you a map here briefly where Phase 3 is. Once that comes in, before a certificate of occupancy is granted to any of those buildings, that bridge, their half that they own, will be improved. And also, that would grant a public utility easement on behalf of the city so that the property owner to the east side of the river can develop and actually have sewer and water and other things, services come across and feed into Orem. They are in Orem, but the services would be across the river. And then the future dedication, that street then would— and part of the bridge, their half would be dedicated so that it would be a future connection from 1550 over to University Avenue. So this is the map that they're proposing. So this is the portion right now that is under recommendation to go into Provo. The blue is all of their development. The green is what they're calling Phase 2, and then the yellow is 3B. So that's what the development agreement is tied to. Any permit before it's finalized in the Area 3B next to 800 North would be required that those improvements, the PWE bridge improvements and possible dedication, would be completed at that time based on the agreement. Anything to add on that, Steve?

Yeah, if I could, just to point out where in that area that you see as Phase 2, That shows a little street there that connects to the bridge. That's the area that would be the street that would be dedicated at some point in the future so that potentially also when the property to the east of the river gets developed, we can get that portion of the street dedicated also and then hopefully have that public access from 1550 East where that red dot is out to University Avenue there.

Yep.

And like Jason said, those public utilities would likely go in that same area. So as Jason kind of indicated, we feel like with these provisions in this agreement that mitigates any negative aspect of this boundary adjustment and allows staff, and we do recommend approval of this boundary adjustment based on those provisions in the agreement.

Thank you.

Do you have anything else?

No, I don't. Any questions, I'll be glad to address.

Okay, do we have any questions? And this is the first that we talked about, were, um, pretty unobtrusive types of adjustments. This is a little bit more significant. So any questions?

Oh, Mayor, sorry, I just thought of one other thing. If I can go back to that map.

Yeah.

And just to point out that Phase 3A, the restaurant village, the yellow, so that's the area of development that is tied to the obligations to dedicate the street and improve the bridge. So they would have to complete those improvements before they got any certificate of occupancy for any building in that Phase 3A. So that might be several years down the road, because I think their plan is obviously to build Phase 1 first and then Phase 2, and then, and then lastly Phase 3A.

So, um, Jason, will you just show on here where Phase 1 will— where the traffic will go for that?

Yes, so you can see, follow the red cursor, this is the main access that will tie into the Provo River Bottoms. And they will have access out to 8th North as well. So this, at this point, is a public street. This point is a public access, so it's not a public street, but it does allow permanent access through their development through this, and it ties down into Center Street, ties into 1550, I believe, or 5200, I believe, that has a light on University Avenue. So those are the access points for this development. Eventually, I believe Provo will be working on a bridge here that this will be connected. But that's— I don't know if that actually has access there, but eventually there will be some other interconnectivity.

And Jason, can you go back to— because Phase 1 is a mix between Orem and Provo, can you just go back to the slide that would show the parcel land that we're talking about moving to Provo?

So yeah, this portion here, it's outlined in red, is what's going to Provo.

Okay, so it's— so just to be clear with everyone, it's just those, those groups of buildings right at the very front of the project?

Correct.

So it's, it's not that whole giant—

So this, what's referred to as Phase 2, is all in Orem. The bridge itself is also located fully in Orem, so it would be under the control of Orem as well.

And this— and just to clarify for everyone, we've got some new council members here, but this is kind of the final part of the puzzle. We've gone through this in depth previous times to get to this point, but this land swap is the final part of the puzzle.

Any questions?

Okay, someone like to make a— oh yeah, I'm sorry, uh, we'll open that for a public hearing. See, I knew no one wanted to talk.

I'll make a motion.

Okay, well, I'll close the public hearing.

I'll make a motion, uh, an ordinance by the Orem City Council modifying a common boundary Between the City of Orem and Provo City, located at approximately 700 North, 1550 East.

Second.

Aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Aye.

The ordinance passes.

Thank you.

All right, now we're up to item 9.4. And, uh, this amendment to Street Connection Master Plan to eliminate the street connections between 1430 South and 400 West. Uh, Jason, would you like to present that?

If I can give just a little bit of background, uh, this is the property. So what we're talking about is a connection to 1430 South, and then this is the stub street, 400 West. So this property here, the applicant, Mr. Lichty, is here to to consider a development. That's a future meeting. We're not here to discuss the development going forward. We're simply here to discuss the street connection. And if I can, I'll fast forward just to show the zone. It's currently R-12 with some R-8 mixed in. Let me just go to this map here. So the red circles indicate, over time, the Lakeview Street Connection Master Plan. There are streets that are developed that aren't necessarily completed at the time that certain portions of property are developed. So there's left with dead ends, there's left with connections that potentially will connect when that property is ready to develop, but it's not. And so the city identifies those streets that need to be sometime, or sometime in the future, connected to other streets to help with the grid system, to help with interconnectivity of neighborhoods up to major corridors, things like that. So this map, the Lakeview area, identifies these red circles as being— needing to be connected sometime in the future when the properties are ready to develop. The subject property tonight and the 2 circles that we're looking at that the applicant has come forward to request is that this connection be eliminated and this connection be eliminated. Right now, this this plan, because it's adopted by ordinance or by the general plan, requires them to be connected. So when a developer comes in, we're basically going to say, whatever you do in this development, these 2 streets need to be connected and it needs to be a public street. There's no question. So with those being on the map between 1430 and 400 West, there needs to be a public street unless the council takes those off the map. So tonight the applicant is here to request that the council consider eliminating those 2 off of the map. So this is what his application consists— circle those 2, and that's what he's proposing. The staff, in talking with the applicant, agrees that we're comfortable with 1430 being eliminated, but I think 400 West needs to be maintained, and we'll get back to the concept plan. For the main purpose that Mr. Peterson's property here would not be able to be developed in this location without having some type of street connection going west. And so you can see the line that Mr. Lichty provided with a potential future. He's not developing Mr. Peterson's property, but gives him an idea of what could be developed in the future. So what we would propose is that this remain active on the street connection plan that it would then would have to Go west and have that ability for Mr. Peterson to tie in to develop if and when he ever wants to develop his property. What we are supportive of is eliminating this connection so that anything that's developed in this portion could connect to the north on 1430, would not have to be a public hearing or public street, and would not be required to connect into 400 West. So this would be a public street with no connection into Mr. Lichty's property except for potential fire access or emergency access, which should be gated, that the, you know, ambulance or fire could unlock access if they need to, to get south for whatever reason or north for whatever reason. But as far as the general public, there would be no through traffic through the development. It would simply be required to exit out on 1430, go either to Sand Hill Road Or go east up to University Parkway. So the 2 issues that are before the council tonight, this is his, you know, proposed concept plan. It's simply just a drawing that shows what he may want to do. There's nothing before you tonight that you're voting on. It's simply just a concept that he will, if the council chooses to eliminate one or both of these access points, he then would have the ability to develop this plan. Without a public street access. Right now, this plan does not work because we're requiring him to have that public street between. So if the council takes action to keep the street, then whatever development he proposes would have to be a public street. If the council chooses to eliminate the 1430, for example, then he can propose something like this that would be a private development, private streets, and would be able to access out directly to 1430. This is his latest rendition. These are 26-foot-wide access points. The fire marshal has looked at it, and ambulance and fire apparatus could use that. You can see the only connection right there would be the gated portion. There would not be a public access. And then this would stub over to the west and eventually would develop into that. You can see that there's potential for some single-family homes. The idea behind connecting that back around and then back to the south would be— this would develop as residential, which would tie into what is currently to the south, which is single-family residential lots. The street— eliminating street connection would not do anything for any type of development. The council still has the ability to dictate what goes on this property. Right now it's R-12, which is 12,000-square-foot single-family lots. So the only way to do something different, including what Mr. Lichty proposes is to have the council change the ordinance to something other than what's there. So any, any discussion with high density or anything like that is not being considered without further discussion and approval by the city council. So staff nor the applicant has the ability to put any density there other than single-family homes at this, at this point in time. So So the question before you tonight, again, not to beat a dead horse, but is simply just the street connections, right? That's all we're dealing— we're not dealing with site plan, we're not dealing with any zoning. It's simply, does the council support eliminating one or both of those street accesses so that he does not have to put a public street through his property? So be glad to address any questions.

Jason, I have a question. If you can go to the Um, the street on 400 West. Who owns the property on 400 West that makes the curb?

The curve this way?

Yeah.

So Mr. Lickley is proposing to buy this portion.

Who owns it now?

I believe one of the Peterson brothers.

Larry, do you own it? No, he doesn't own it.

I think one of his relatives.

Brother, or— so, so they would, so they would stub it right to Larry's property?

Yes.

I have a question. So I remember 2 years ago going to a neighborhood meeting for another development that was proposed in this area, and it had a connection between 4th West and 1430 North. It was a street that went right down there through the land, right?

Connect—

correct.

There was a PRD, increased density, narrow streets. And it seemed to me at that point the residents just did not want to be connected to 1430. They were afraid there would be parking coming from those townhomes along that street, and there was sufficient parking in that development. So, um, I guess what— so this would prohibit taking out what you said, the farthest north one would then prohibit that from another developer from coming with that same type of connection.

So it wouldn't prohibit a developer from proposing a street connection. The city would not require That be connected with a public street. So it wouldn't prohibit somebody from coming and proposing to the council, we want this street. So it's still an option, but it's not a requirement by the city.

Okay, thank you for clarifying that.

Any other questions?

Can I ask another one?

Sure.

So this red line going to Peterson's— Mr. Peterson's property It has to curve how far? I think this is what Dave was going to ask. It has to go how far? And then it doesn't have to look like that, right? It does not have to be configured in that—

Doesn't necessarily have to do that, but in order to get more property here, he's probably wanting to have it as, you know, meets whatever curve requirements we would have for a public street, and then probably deep enough to at least develop these, you know, into some type of single-family.

And then show me where that would stop.

So it would end, you know, unless he, you know, purchased this property, it would need to end and stub into Mr. Peterson's property.

So if Mr. Peterson wanted to configure that in some other way, he doesn't have to go straight west with that, right?

He could do another way, but that would be his access point, you know, connecting into that public system would be at that location.

Okay, and that would be provided by—

It would be stubbed in By whoever develops this property.

Okay, thank you.

Yep.

But Jason, this, this drawing is not by Larry Peterson, so this, this has nothing to do with his property, meaning he—

No, staff, staff required him, Mr. Lichty, the applicant, to at least show how a potential develop— or layout could work on this property. He also came in with an option B, which basically would come in and do 2 cul-de-sacs off of 1600 South. What this doesn't do is provide access to this property because the maximum length of a cul-de-sac is 600 feet, and that doesn't get this property. So this property basically with this option would be landlocked, which we're not going to encourage. So Option A really is the one that doesn't— obviously from this point, Mr. Peters can come up with a different scheme if he wants to. But this would be the connection point to connecting into a public street.

And so there's only one entrance into this proposed unit.

So this development up here would only have one access on 1430, other except for the emergency access.

Yep.

Okay, so as far as I mean, some of the things I've heard concerns about are that if this layout happens, then it's going to be high density. Can you— potentially high density. Can you speak to that?

So, and we've talked to Mr. Lichty. His original application is to rezone it Highway Services, HS, and then limit the uses within that zone by a development agreement. We've talked to Mr. Lichty about potentially coming through a PD zone, Planned Development Zone, which then we can negotiate and put in the PD zone specific uses that are allowed and limit it to a certain number of uses that are allowed. Then we can address parking, we can address all those things. So it'd be limited based on a PD zone that's approved by the council on whether or not uses can be allowed. What he's proposing now is a— not a convention center, but a—

A hotel.

um, event center. Thank you. Some retail and wedding reception center. So this would be the commercial component. So we could limit the uses in that PD zone to only those uses, and then we would limit it to, uh, you know, Airbnb or whatever those units that are called. So we would not allow high-density housing, we wouldn't allow apartments, you know, those type of things would be excluded out of the PD zone and not be allowed. So it'd be really up to the council whatever is adopted as far as the text of the PD, and then rezoning it would be based on what's in the code itself. And that's the advantage of a PD zone, is we can limit the uses, but then we can also require certain things within that PD zone. Our intent is not to encourage high-density housing here. It's simply to, you know, if this is the direction that the council wants to go, is to make a PD zone that would work, but limit him to the uses that he wants to use and not leave it wide open that in the future they— somebody could change their mind and come in and do apartments. That's not the intent, and we would not encourage that, nor would we support that.

So our vote tonight does not influence whether this gets approved or not? We're not voting on this at all?

It's simply allowing him to move forward with something like this, not having to have a street connection that's a public street. That's really the intent now, is, is the council wanting to eliminate the public street component. And if they do, let's say you take off 1430, then you can do something like this and not be required to connect with a public street. That's really the only thing before you tonight. We wanted to split them out so it doesn't get bogged down in, in all the different things going on. If this is decided tonight, then we can focus on the site plan, we can focus on the ordinance, and move that forward rather than— everybody, you know, up in arms about connection and streets and all that stuff. So we can decide one item now and then bring the other one forward another time.

And if this project doesn't happen, what are we left with?

So right now you can't do this project because the zoning is single-family. So it's going to take a zone change, create a PD or whatever the council decides. And so it would have to go through that whole process. Planning Commission makes a recommendation, City Council ultimately approves the text and the zone. Once it's approved, then he's allowed to do whatever is within that zone. If he chooses not to, or he sells it and somebody else wants to come do something different, then they would have to go through the whole process again. Text amendment, come back with a council, show a concept plan, because we're going to tie whatever concept, whatever elevations, whatever he wants to do, it's all going to be required by ordinance in the PD zone. So if he shows us an elevation, we're going to expect him to build that elevation. If he wants to change it, he's going to have to come back and get that approved through the council.

So we're basically just approving— I mean, we're, we're closing one access point and we're keeping one open.

That would be our recommendation.

That's what you're recommending right now. And so let's say we do that. So if we do that and then say this doesn't happen because there's several steps after this that happen, have to happen, but you, you want to go back to it being single-family homes, is that still possible through this, or do you just change?

It is possible. So a developer could come in if somebody, you know, whoever comes in and says, we just want to do an R-8 subdivision, we want to connect for, you know, whatever.

It would—

it could be possible. It's not required, but a developer could propose it, the Planning Commission could approve it and go forward. So it doesn't eliminate The street will never be connected, but it doesn't— it does eliminate the obligation for developers to be forced to put in the public street.

So this is just all we would be doing if we did what you're talking about. We'd be defining that Mr. Lichty could go keep going with his project potentially, because, because now he understands what the access points are, what the roads look like, and what he's working with. Correct. We're also ensuring the person where we are keeping the road connected, that they can develop that property back in there into single-family homes, right?

Yes.

So that's, that's kind of what's before us right now. There's no— I mean, there's a whole process that has to continue for this to ultimately go to this place, but this is kind of the first step. Am I understanding that right?

Correct. There'll be at least 2 public hearings, one of the Planning Commission one of the City Council for any proposed rezone, any proposed PD text, any of that kind of stuff coming forward will have to come through this same process.

And as far as the concern that this is just a pathway to high-density housing, not, not factual. I mean, because it would have— I mean, it would be a heavy lift, it seems like.

Now, I know you guys are all proponents of high density, so I'm not saying you won't, but the answer would be no. Yeah.

Okay.

Dave? I just think, Jason, the concern I had was the emails that we received from the citizens. A lot of them said that we want— we don't want the road to go through, we want this project to go through, because if not, we're going to get high density. And I, I— it concerns me that, that people are scaring people into liking this project or not. And I just think, I mean, tonight we're just doing 2. Yeah, it has nothing to do with it. So I think maybe they put the cart before the horse, but this is just accesses on 1430 and 400 West.

It simply just gives the developer the ability to understand now that he, he can come up with a concept that doesn't have to force him to put a public street in. That's basically tonight, just gives him some direction of whether the council— doesn't mean you're giving him direction on you're liking the PD or you're liking what he's proposing, because that's another meeting. Tonight is simply just saying, yeah, we're okay with that being closed, but it doesn't eliminate the option, to your point, Mayor, that somebody could still come in and propose a street, whether it's a single-family development or whatever, right?

So we're not really losing any options, we're just defining this at this point in time, and then we continue down the path and see where we wind up.

Correct.

Any other questions from the council? Okay, we'll open this to the public for a public hearing.

Hello, my name is Gloria Peterson. Uh, my husband Larry and I own the property just west of this. Um, in clarification of Councilwoman Millet, a couple years ago when they proposed that, the reason this— the neighborhood did not want that to go through was because, uh, Bach Homes was trying to make it a higher density. Our whole concern is the density that is trying to go into there. And I understand this isn't the time or place for that, but just for your information, the neighborhood would like it to be kept what it is, the residential zoning. As far as 4th West going through, uh, the, the plat that Mr. Licktey has engineered to put down through our property. Uh, that road goes directly behind my house and also out by the side of my house, which is not going to happen. And so the only access out of that upper property is actually out onto 4th, uh, 4th West, which would continue out onto 1600 South. Um, my concern is, is I— we are not interested in developing our property right now, but sooner or later I won't be here, and it will be developed. So my concern is 4th West, I think, is imperative to go through because all that access will come down 1600 South and it will go down on Sand Hill Road. Any of you who are aware of Sand Hill Road knows that it is the frontage road to Grandview. Orem has— or Provo has no freeway exit other than Center Street. And so So all of that feeds down through Sand Hill Road, even though they don't live there. There is a tremendous amount of traffic on Sand Hill Road, and it really can't handle a whole lot more traffic. So I would just ask for your consideration in— for future development that 4th West needs to go through just to alleviate the traffic that will come through that neighborhood. And that is what the neighbors are concerned about. And so that is just my recommendation, that you allow 4th West to go through for that reason. Thank you.

Could, could you, just to clarify for everyone, can you point out the access point she's talking about?

So I believe it's— her house is right here.

If I—

yes.

And so this road just represents the potential redevelopment.

So that's Yeah, so would that, would that work with what we're talking about tonight?

No.

Yeah, only if they were to redevelop. So let's say, you know, they move on and somebody develops a property, the house may be torn down, redeveloped. This is only, this is only a potential. This is only if and when they're ready to develop. The city or anybody's not forcing the street. It's just a concept that this is a way to develop the Are you saying then—

so 400 West is where the curve is?

So this is what— yeah, she— I think her comment is that this needs to be connected.

That's what you're saying, right, is we need to have that?

Yes, and I say that just because all that— if it's currently the way it is there, it will all go down onto Sand Hill Road, and I think there needs to be another access other than Sand Hill Road.

Yeah, right now, Mayor, the— or, and Council, this, this is the road that comes down Hidden Hollow, you know, from Main Street. It comes down here, and this is the, this is the direct route to Sand Hill Road. So this is the main thoroughfare through that.

So, Gloria, you're talking about you, you, you want 1430 South open and that connected to 400 West, both of them?

Right.

Right, because that ultimately goes on out to University Parkway, and it makes access from the neighborhood as well as any future developments to go out that way instead of come down onto Sand Hill.

Okay.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Hi, my name is Stephen Strong. I live in the neighborhood just adjacent off of 1600 South from Peterson's property. Excuse me. When Bach Homes came through and proposed there—

Jason, if you can, when they come up, if you could just tell us, put the dot where they're talking about.

So I live at 1664 South, 500 West, down just a little bit, right there on the edge, right down right there. It's not on that map. It's right behind there. Um, so when Bach Homes came through, we weren't opposed to the layout they had of the roads. It was opposed to the high-density housing that they wanted to put in there.

Sure.

We loved the flow that the 10 acres of Peterson property pushed out onto 1430. We're for 400 going to 1430 for that proposed, um, closing off 1430 does have future ramifications in changing the development of this property. We want to see it residential and stayed residential, um, by having the road and stuff just stay status quo, um, that encourages developers to keep that as, uh, residential zoning. Um, the other piece of property that needs to be taken into consideration in the future development is Hershey's property right next to the stake center. There's 8 acres right there that will be developed in the future, hopefully into residential homes, and the flow of that traffic, instead of coming right past my house off the 1600 would need to flow and have a better flow out to 1430. The 3rd piece of property I'm concerned about is the city owns the property right to the east of the proposed development. Um, that is on the master plan slated to be a city park. By closing off that road and allowing this development, we've now closed off our whole neighborhood to a future potential park that this— that the city could put in. Um, and that limits the— that limits the use that the city has for that property. It devalues that property. Um, so I, I want to maintain this. We all do. A residential neighborhood, and keeping this road ensures that, because once, once we close off 1430, if you propose that, then the next thing is now we have to fight an Airbnb 84-unit development that's in our backyard. So that's the next fight. It shouldn't be this hard.

Uh, developers—

neighbors were getting text messages last night from Jay Lichty saying, hey, email the city council, tell them that 2 residential developers have, have tried to build stuff there, um, but they, but they can't and they won't. That's not true. They weren't residential developers, they were high-density developers. We are not opposed to a residential developer coming in and making beautiful homes maintaining the feel of our neighborhood.

We won't—

that's what we want. Um, I've lived on that same street for 44 years. Uh, my great-grandpa was the first person to live in Orem on that street, and all my aunts and uncles, we all live in that same area. We want to maintain a nice neighborhood. I plan on living there the rest of my life. And, you know, seeing an Airbnb development going on my backyard, I don't like. Um, but maintaining the future development and thinking about the pieces of property that are around there, that has great ramifications if we close that road.

Thank you.

Um, my name is Larry Peterson, and my wife just talked a few minutes ago, and A few years ago, when Ed Gifford was on the planning, he came down to my place down there, and we were talking about Sand Hill Road, about widening Sand Hill Road and what we were gonna do, what they wanted, the city wanted to do. Down here on the corner, I have an old house, and Ed talked to me about—

I know.

Was taking that house out, widening the road, and then he wanted a right-of-way for the power line to go up to the power company pole, about 50 feet up, and then a power line across the front of the property. The 2 power lines got put in, but the house never got tore down. Right there on the corner, there's at least 3 to 5 accidents every year. Every year on Sand Hill Road. That corner alone, there's that many accidents. Now, that in red is where Jay put a dividing line of my property with a little blue line up above where it ends. But all that above, those are all his lots, and they're all designed to come out northwest, out into the subdivision that we live in. Now, the little red line is designed to take— go all the way up and come out and come this way. And in our last meeting, the council told Jay and I to get together and, and come up with something. Jay come by, presented that, and I told him That is no good. That's not taking and going out to the north. You're suddening everything in the future, everything right down into the subdivision right there. And on Sand Hill Road, you already got plenty of accidents on Sand Hill Road. Now you're going to put in a whole 2 subdivisions worth of people. I'm against it. I would definitely want the road to go to the north, and there's plenty of people that will build on that property and will not put high density. And my property doesn't need to be high density either. Some people are saying, well, Governor Cox wants Jay's piece and my piece for high density. I haven't had Brother Cox come and talk to me yet. It's just residential. Thank you.

Yeah, my name is Jeff Mon. I also live in that neighborhood just right south of the That, you know, I would love to block the road, keep less cars in my neighborhood. Yeah, that sounds like the ideal thing. So if you guys could do that, that'd be great. And then just put houses in there, that'd be great too. But I know I'm wishing for too much. So I say to myself, well, I— what's the worst evil here? Is it having the road through or having high density or having this thing, this 82 unit Airbnb right up against my house, and it's that. So I'd much rather have the road go through and allow us to keep it as R-8 or R-12, just like it is today. I don't understand why, as a council, you would carve out— you're putting the horse, you know, the cart before the horse. Let's, let's have Brother Lichty come in and tell us exactly what he's going to do and propose at that time to close off the roads. So we know what's going to happen instead of piecemealing this. That's what I'd prefer. But again, everybody in my neighborhood, everybody that I've talked to, all they want is just the zones that are there currently. That's what would be good for my neighborhood, for my ward, for my kids.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Good evening, I'm Marion Baxter. We raised our family in this area at 466 West, 1600 South, or 1640 South, for 33 years. We then moved a whole block and a half east onto 1600 South at 325 West, and just literally, we know this area And I will tell you that the road connection is on the master transportation plan for a reason. And I really wanted to give gratitude to several of the council members. Dave Spencer and Lenay Millett came to a neighborhood meeting. We actually have had some Planning Commission members come, and we would invite any of the council members that have never come and driven that area. We'll give you personal tours. Because the— this piece and parcel is beautiful view lots of the Orem Temple and the lake, and they are gorgeous. And the other thing that happens with the master points of 1430 South to the north of this parcel, one of the things my concern has been, and you can check the records in the Planning Commission presentation, the applicant, who is my very west next-door neighbor, made the statement, who's going to pay me for the road of 400 West coming through? That is a major connection point, and it does not go all the way like Sand Hill and Main Street. It literally goes from 1430, and the farthest south it can go is Nielsen's Grove. So you're not going to get— it's not the exhaust pipe for Grandview Hill. It serves the residential stabilizing area there. So if you're going to shift the valuation of the land by taking out major connection roads, I totally disagree. I have never gotten Mr. Lichty to show me. I have asked for this, and I've said, why can't you do your development with both connections of 400 West staying in place? And he never will consider that. And I'm going, you don't want to carve your land off, but literally you want to shift all of the access and that responsibility to Larry and Gloria Peterson's land. That's a shifting that I don't think is reasonable.

Thank you.

So we would like to keep that in place, and I'm on 1600 South to the east. If there is ever any connecting points above, we've talked with Sam Kelly and we will help support that also. You've got sewer lines, you've got water and infrastructure lines that are dead-ended right now. So when any future connections come through, we will support it. So thank you for your consideration and come visit us. We'll show you how beautiful that area is, and we want to stabilize the residential. We've taken a lot of density housing to, to support UVU, but we will support stabilizing residential development and not shifting the zone. Keep the road connections.

Thank you.

Can I borrow your red pointer?

I don't know if you got a red pointer or not. Maybe I could just go ahead and explain.

That's okay.

Hi, my name is Doug Vertell, and I live at, uh, 450 West 1600 South. I've lived there for 47 years, and so I'm very familiar with this area. Love this area. I'm— my backyard goes into the Peterson property. My big concern in this whole thing is I do not want a zone change, and I've talked to very most of my neighbors that do not want a zone change at all. R-8 and R-12 for residential. We don't want this, you know, to become anything else. But that road needs to go through, and I'll let you know my fears and my concerns if the road does not go through. First of all, down at 400 there on 1600, between there, that is designated as a through street right now. Mr. Lichty does not own that property yet. From about where that red line is all the way up to 1430, he does not own. He wants to buy it, but he doesn't own it. There's also a lower section below 1600 that he does not own, but he wants to purchase it. So all that area right there where this road would not go through is not on his property. He does not own it. I want to make that clear. Okay, with that road right there If you look at that development, you close off that access between 1430 and 400, you've got 84 units in there, you've got all these businesses, and all that traffic would then have to dump onto 1430. If you've been on 1430 in the middle of that road that starts up where he would have his access point that goes up by Krispy Kreme, that's a steep road. Wintertime traffic, nothing but a disaster. You have that much traffic trying to come out one access point onto 1430 and then go down to Sand Hill Road. You come by there at night, and right where he wants to access off onto 1430, from there down by the Lexington all the way to Sand Hill Road, all the way to 1600 South, there are over 120 cars that park there now because of Lexington. He wants to close 400 off at the bottom and have a key To designate if he can open up or he can close. He could open it up at any time, and all that traffic would then come down 1600. But let me ask you this question: you have 2 access points for that much traffic going in and out. You have to have it. We know what happened down in Palisades, California, and in Maui. This is a forested area. He wants to put fire pits in there. there, but he doesn't want any access for the fire trucks or anything to come in. If there's accidents, congestion, anything up on 1430, and that's where the emergency vehicles come, where are they going to have to come? They're going to have to come all the way down Sand Hill, come around 1600, and try to get through on 400. He wants to control that. He wants to have a key. So do all the fire departments, all the, all of the trucks, all of the police, all of their cars have access to come into that location or not? I don't think so. If we close 400 off and not make access up to 1430 and you develop something like that, there's going to be nothing but death and destruction. And I don't think that Warren City or the council wants to see anybody killed on 1430 because of traffic issues, problems, or because the emergency vehicles can't get into that area. They tried to get in on 1430, they don't have a key to get in. Time is of the essence. If you have a shooting, a murder, a fire, anything else, a heart attack, anything else that could take place in that complex, and you can't get emergency vehicles in, it's on you, because somebody's going to die, and it'll happen if they don't have access.

Thank you.

Leave it residential. Put that through street in. Don't cause more issues or problems. There's nothing wrong with residential in that area. Leave it that way. But don't give one individual a key to open up the gates if the emergency vehicles can't come in, because if they can't come in one area, they're going to go after the other area. Time is of an essence. People's lives depend on it.

Thank you.

And people's lives depend on 1430. You got 300 apartments that use that roadway all the time. And if you try to get that much more traffic onto 1430 in the middle of a hill— look at it in the wintertime. Nobody can get up and down that hill in the wintertime with 3 or 4 inches of snow. But you're trying to bring out 84 units, and you're trying to bring all that traffic from those businesses.

Thank you.

onto one access. Let the road go through, please. Don't even consider closing that road. It has to be an access point. Gives Larry access off his property. It gives roadway through, and then you got that park developed and everything won't have to come off 1450. Because if they develop that park up there like they want to, that's one road to get in and out of the park. So please consider that. That road needs to go through. It needs to be left residential. Thank you.

Thank you for your time. My name is Don Mon. I'll keep it short. I live about 2 blocks south of where they want to close off 400 West. I am— I agree with everything that's already been said. I am in favor of it. I mean, tonight, all the and that you guys have said about Family City USA, the beautiful parks we have, Family City USA, everything's been advertising Family City USA. And changing the res— the zoning, that's not promoting Family City USA. Um, we love our neighborhood. We want to see the growth. We want to see other families come in. We don't want to be scared by threats of— we've had, um, people at other meetings threatening us that we have to accept this, or we would get high density. Um, we just want to keep the zone the way it is. Thank you.

Hi, um, my name is John Masalia. I live at 1552 South 300 West, just to the east of the red line on there.

I am in—

I'm unlike everyone else that's spoken today. I am in favor of getting rid of the 400 West Road requirement. I feel that Mr.

Lichty is trying to preserve all those trees.

that are in that area, and putting in a road would require the plowing down a ton of the trees in that area. People have been saying the words Airbnb a lot, that his plan isn't an Airbnb, so I don't know why they keep saying that. It's managed, actively managed, and stuff like that.

Thank you.

I also feel that it's good that to keep the, all the high-density housing that's above separated from the low-density that's down below. If we put 400 West in, then all that traffic will start getting down into the low-density neighborhood and people will start parking further south. and crowding it up. I also believe Mr. Lichty's property plans provide a unique service that's unavailable elsewhere in the area. It also would provide jobs to local youth, and, and it would help keep the traffic low. So that's why I'm in favor.

Thank you.

Is there anyone else like to comment? Okay, so we'll, we'll close. Oh, you got one more. Okay.

Hi, my name is Linda Vertell and I live at 450 West 1600 South, right by that property. Um, I would like to see 4th West go through. I don't care if they tear the trees down. It's not a forest. They're Russian olives and Chinese elms, and those Chinese elms have brought nothing but these elm seed bugs. If you see them, they're tiny little bugs. We've had them for the last several years.

Thank you.

several years, gobs of them, because of those trees. And I would be happy if they were torn down. Like to see it stay residential. We want some more homes in the area. We need the homes in the area. So I'd like to see Fourth West go through. Drive up and down 1430 all the time. Cars are up there parked out, people trying to drive out. You can't see because the cars are parked on the street, and people pull right out in front of you. And along Sand Hill, driving that in the morning, the cars are parked out even on the curve, and you have to go all the way around them to get by them. So we, like someone else mentioned, we are surrounded by high density. We don't need any more. We'd like to keep it residential and keep it Family City, USA. Thank you.

Thank you. Well, we'll go ahead and close the public hearing. Um, before we vote, Jason, is there anything— oh, Steve?

Uh, Mayor, yeah, I just, uh, want to point out, I think Mr. Lichty is here, who's actually the applicant on this, and, um, I don't think he had a chance to speak at the outset, and maybe want to afford him an opportunity now if he'd like to come up and address the council on his application.

Kyle Spencer with Northern Engineering. Uh, Jay's asked to make— that I, uh, act as voice here and, and answer any questions and concerns that you might have. And I know there was a concern by a citizen here mentioning that we'd like to bundle all this up and propose The rezone, the site plan, and this traffic, uh, uh, transportation element revision all in one bundle. So we know what we're getting, and we understand that, and we're trying to— we're trying to be as transparent as possible to see what Jay would like to propose in the future. But currently we cannot because of the requirement of the connectivity of the public roadway. Um, I, I love coming to public comment meetings because I can hear as an engineer, uh, the concerns and direct comments from the, the residents, the current, uh, people that's lived here longer than I, than I have, and can see that the, um, if we can then impact or implement in our design. Their concerns and their direct concerns. And with this, what we have before us tonight, we're showing what Jay would like to have, uh, would like to propose coming on in the future, which would require dissecting this up into, um, a rezone, um, to the, the PD overlay zone. And then also then the, the initial site plan that, that would then go through staff and Planning Commission and Council through, uh, you know, detailed, uh, public comments. And, and, uh, but we feel that this is the first step. If, if the council is not in favor of, of at least eliminating the red dot on 1430, then clearly the site plan and plan that Jay is proposing Would not— can't, can't come to fruition. So, you know, obviously that is the very first step. Um, I know that there's a concern that the access points to— from this, um, this site plan would have exclusive access to 400 West, as shown here on that red line. Um, that is clearly not the case. The whole point to having a gate access off of 14 or off to 400 from this plan would be for specifically emergency access purposes. And, and with that, yes, the fire trucks and police officers would have access through what we call a Knox box and pretty much any other high-density structure or gated, gated access throughout.

Orem City.

So I just wanted to make sure that that was addressed. Also, with this plan, this— I hope I'm not going stretching out here, but the first item on the agenda today was a concern of a public road or a private road connecting high-density Development from an adjacent developer, or even adjacent municipality, onto single-family detached homes. Um, in this— in that case, you know, the concern there is we don't want that connectivity. We don't want that connection. We don't want to discharge high-density development onto single-family detached homes in the neighborhood. It ruins that neighborhood. Um, I look at it From, and I might, uh, from this plan, all of the site plan and access from this proposed plan, knowing that that's really not what's before you today, but all that access from this future development would in fact connect onto 1430 and not connect to 400 West. And thus the, the residential neighborhood would remain single-family residential without having that added impact of traffic coming off of 1430 penetrating into this existing single-family detached residential development. Now, I know that's specifically coming, pulling traffic from the north to the south. I know what that doesn't address is the potential connectivity from the existing single-family residential homes traveling Yes, without that connection, the traffic then would— from the existing homes, it would be basically like what it is today. Today, there's not a road that connects 400 to 1430. In the future, what we're proposing is to eliminate that north circle that then would basically preserve what that access that we have today, allowing that connection for that residential development to connect to Sand Hill Road the way it currently is without adding multiple developments.

So I heard something.

I've got a question.

Yeah.

So, um, with this project, it's not feasible to put the road in from 1430 and connect 400 West on this specific plan?

No.

Why?

Mainly primarily because of the exclusivity that That it's wanting to establish with the cabin lots. I know JJ can address that.

Yeah, so briefly, the whole purpose of this was to keep the neighborhoods that exist, and the future ones will be built around there, to have low traffic and to be family-friendly and be peaceful. So as soon as you let the road go through, then you open up to having more traffic.

So it couldn't curve down around your property and then hook into the 400 West, like just sort of mirrors your property, or no?

It could possibly, but then you have to shift everything over. I was just thinking our neighborhood, for years they've had this fight about the streets coming through to the east. Nobody wants that. And because the trees act like a natural barrier right now, just like the Golden Crown and the Target areas do up on Centre Street and University Parkway. And so we were just thinking for the neighbors to the south there that they wouldn't want all that overflow traffic coming through either. So the purpose of this was to keep the buffer, keep the barrier that's there. So we don't have the increased traffic. Because, you know, UVU, largest university in the state, University Parkway is the largest exit off of I-15 in the county.

There's—

it's a lot that goes on right there. And if we don't keep the buffer that's there, which the forest acts as a buffer right now, if we don't keep that buffer, then we, we just open the door for a, a lot of traffic and parking. Because like the home association president from Lexington called and said that they just have a massive problem with all the parking. I mean, you can see that on the street there's a lot of cars. They let a lot more residents come in and then more occupants in that, that allows. So, so once again, this was just designed to maintain the buffer and provide a place for peaceful neighborhoods and services for the city.

Any other questions? Anything else you guys would like to add?

I just want to add just one quick thing. Um, when, when Jay came into our office Um, I didn't know that Jay lived just a stone's throw away, and as, as an engineer, that doesn't happen very often. Oftentimes my clients live multiple municipalities away, um, and I feel that, uh, you know, I, I gave Jay definitely a listening ear, wanted to see his vision and view of what he wants to preserve. Um, not only with this buffer, but also with his neighborhood and community. I give a lot of credit to that, um, and I, I compliment Jay on that. I know he's, he's now wearing that developer hat within all of his, you know, his, his neighbors, and, and oftentimes that carries with that a negative annotation. And, but I, I look at it Is there's an opportunity here that Jay's trying to accomplish is, is to preserve a buffer that can preserve that, that neighborhood feel in that community. And I would be the first one to tell Jay that if this proposal that he's doing would, would hinder that, um, I, I believe that the site plan that Jay's proposing, the vision that he has here for this, uh, in essence, especially with the transportation element, would in essence preserve that, that neighborhood feel on the existing single-family residential neighborhood to the south and also to the east of here. So, I just wanted to say that.

What's the density of this?

Um, density, a good question, because oftentimes when I see density, it equates to a Tax ID number, a parcel number, right? Something that you can sell an individual unit to. I look at this the way that it's been explained to me is it's kind of a horizontal hotel. It's going to be owned by a single entity, managed by a single entity. If there is the negative annotations of Airbnbs, if we get a, a rowdy room or a rowdy unit, they're, they're asked to, to leave just like you would would have a hotel room. If, uh, if you have a rowdy neighbor next door, you can call the office and say, can they cool it down?

Or—

and they typically defuse the situation. Unlike an Airbnb, who do you call if you're, if you're in an Airbnb situation? Because in that case, there's typically not a property management on site. And, uh, but with that, that's this, uh, the way I have envisioned this for what Jay's tried to explain it to me. Granted, I know that's not part of the item on the agenda. This will come up in future, but it's more of a quaint, quiet cabin sites that'll have 2 units per cabin, or 2 rooms basically, where they can— the, the future tenants can come in and stay for a short stay, 1, 2, 3 nights, similar to a hotel, and still have that Ambiance of kind of a forest, or you know you're within the trees. Something similar like what you would experience like in a Sundance without going up clear up to Sundance. And with this, trying to preserve the the trees and and also we we've heard today that you know they they are the the elm trees and elm trees have a have a a negative connotation to them. And but with that there that They'd still provide that forest-type buffer and shade and that mature tree atmosphere that then, while they're there, we can also introduce new trees to still preserve that ambiance that this site plan is proposing. So, anyways, that's— I hope that answers your question. It was simply, what's the density here? But, but I feel that this is more of a, a spread-out, um, hotel versus a vertical hotel.

Mayor, I'd like to make a motion. Oh, you're not done yet?

I don't know.

I mean, I mean, technically you make a motion anytime, but did you have some other questions? Because we should let everyone just finish and—

I can't— I'll wait.

Okay.

Yeah, I just was sitting here and, um, I don't know, I feel very uncomfortable voting on this. I feel like the, the comments were related to voting on a project that I haven't seen. Um, I— that seems very like I'm not doing my due diligence here. Um, we want to be able to Allow options to be seen. I don't know that I agree with this project. That's not what was on my agenda tonight though, whether I agree with this project or not. Um, and I don't— I'm not saying either way. I know, um, I just feel like that it's centered around whether we're like— I feel like this is the site plan that we're voting on tonight, and I don't think that's what was presented to us.

So we—

I'm fine with what—

So I guess I'm just saying, um, am I right, Steve? I mean, where are we? This is not for the project.

That's correct. Yeah, this, you know, um, if you were to approve this application to eliminate The connection on 1430 South, it doesn't commit you to any kind of a project. I mean, the property, most of the property that we're talking about is still zoned R-12, and it stays R-12 until the council decides to change that or decides not to change that. You know, it may be that— I mean, whoever wants to develop it will have to develop it as R-12 unless the council decides to rezone it, whether that's next month. next year or 10 years from now. So yeah, it doesn't commit you to any project if you were to change these required connections.

So, okay, I'll just tell you what I think. And I know Jay. I think Jay's a good guy. I mean, we're not like best friends or anything, but he sells cool broadheads and I bought them before. But yeah, my understanding was that we were voting just on the street issue, which is what we're doing. Um, but then I fast forward and I think, okay, so if we're voting on the street issue, we're kind of like just saying, you know, let's keep going. And I'm, I'm not sure that I'm sold on the concept. I mean, I, you know, it's a nice concept and all that. I think it's a great concept. that, but from a standpoint of how it affects the neighbors and what the neighbors want. And so if the neighbors want R-8 and R-12, and to make that all happen, we need to keep the connections. And we can go back and do it later, I understand. But I don't know, I kind of hate to walk Jay down a path where, when in the end, I would probably vote against this project just because I would— I'd vote to just maintain the single-family status of neighborhoods. So I don't want to— so that's where my concern is, uh, as far as— yeah, and I would probably just punt and say let's just keep the access points the way they are and, and see where this goes. But anyway, that's just my opinion.

And I agree with you, Mayor, but, uh, my whole thing is I think what is the compelling reason to amend the State Street Connection Master Plan and to eliminate the connection? What— is there a compelling reason? And I don't think there is. So I'd like to make a motion. I'd like to make a motion that the City Council—

All right, does anyone else have something they want to say before— because we'll get swept on this motion. Does anybody have anything else they'd like to add?

I guess that's Jay. So is this your option? Is this what you would bring forward to us.

That's your plan, is what the— this development, the concept?

Yeah. Are you sold on this? Is this kind of where you are?

Well, we're flexible. I mean, I've compromised a lot. I just wanted to say that, um, eliminating the one circle on the top left, 1430, does give the option to put in something that would, would not have a lot of traffic flow through and keep, um, keep the neighbors on the south and on the east, um, from having problems with traffic. But—

Okay, thank you.

But yeah, I've—

we've—

I've compromised a lot since we came up with this. And it was my original goal just to preserve the neighborhood peacefulness, and this was an idea of a way that Produced money revenue for the city, and it would pay for itself and be permanent. So I'm not 100% set on it.

So I just feel, just for those of you that are here, we've received— this is such a troublesome thing for me. I don't know about the rest of you, but we've received emails to the contrary of the comments that were heard tonight, a large majority of emails that supported this project. I think, well, probably half and half. Um, I, I don't know, I was keeping track. So it's kind of hard to come here tonight and then hear all anti, where just before I came to this meeting I read emails that were in favor of keeping the— I mean, that actually said we don't want that to connect because we don't want the students coming down through our neighborhood. Um, so I'm just kind of— so you know where we're coming from, there's oftentimes more than what happens in this meeting that we have before us. So I appreciate your patience and your coming tonight to tell us these things, because there's been some new information brought to light too. So thank you for your involvement. But I also feel like I need to disclose that so y'all know kind of what we see behind the scenes too, right?

Yeah.

And Amen to, to what you're— excuse me, Mayor.

I just— let me say this real quick. But my concern with the emails, because I received the emails also, and on the surface I would just say, yeah, there's all this evidence, you know, that this— to shut these access points. But the theme on a lot of the emails was because we don't want high density, we want to stop high density. It wasn't necessarily we love the project, it was we don't want And that's my concern, because I, I think we have an option to not have high density.

So I think they were also, though, they didn't want the traffic as well. I think there was more to it than just density, although I do think that was part of it.

Yeah.

Jeff, and I was just going to add, um, to what Lynette said. I, I thought that I knew what I wanted to do tonight, but it feels like everything that we've heard tonight is 180 degrees from from the emails that I've read throughout the week. So I'm, I'm a little unprepared, I feel.

Uh, so, yeah, and I, I agree with Jeff on that one. I think coming in, I felt like I knew what I wanted to do based on the feedback I've gotten, and I've gotten a lot of feedback like all of us have. Um, and it's— land use issues are hard, you know. I hear one person wants this and then somebody else wants exactly the opposite, and we get to be the arbiters and decide that. It's a hard So we really appreciate your engagement. We appreciate you coming and sharing your opinions. I feel at this point this is a tricky one. I, I don't— maybe we need to rethink it. I don't want to say a tacit no, but I don't want to say a yes either. I feel like maybe we need some time.

We're back to Mr. Motion.

No, I mean, my— I think my thing is on, on the emails. If you really drill down, it was an email from Jay Lechty to the neighbors Telling them what to say, and that, that it sort of turned me off. But that, I mean, the gist of the emails were the same. But I'd like to make a motion that the, the City Council deny the amendment of the State Street Connection Master Plan to eliminate the State Street connections between 1430 South and 400 West.

Okay, trying to Okay, we don't have a second, but I don't think anyone's that enthusiastic about the whole thing.

Um, can we punt it?

Yeah, we can continue it if we want.

Jay, how do you feel about our continuing this till we get a little more information?

I was just gonna—

do you want a decision tonight? Because I don't know that you're going to get what you want, but do you want to—

I was just going to make a comment too on, on the Planning Commission. You know, the Planning Commission and staff presented this to the Planning Commission to send a recommendation to the council, and it was interesting to see how it, it was— there were several motions that were proposed and not seconded, and And it went through, but at the Planning Commission, there were 4 red circles rather than just 2. And it was interesting that how just how it evolved into that meeting, having similar public hearing with a lot of negative comments here that were shared in the public hearing at the Planning Commission as well. And sadly, at that meeting, they pass this meeting, this, this item on to the city council with a no recommendation because it was split 2-2. So I really, I understand it. These are hard things. And, and with that, I compliment you as council members to, to be in your seats because they are hard things. And if we feel that this needs to stew and to really Uh, marinate in the comments from the plan, from the public hearings today, as well as the emails that came through that are really part of the public hearing as well. Um, I think that you welcome that because oftentimes then you can, you can look at this and take out the emotion and really go out as the, the invitation was presented here. Go out and drive it. Go out and see. Say if, if this were to connect, how much traffic are we going to see migrating from the north into the south, if any? I might be up in the night. Maybe we might not see any migration of the, this, the higher density, uh, traffic and parking to migrate in here, but there may, there, there may be. So I, I, I would be in, on behalf of Jay, be in recommendation to to maybe table it and continue it and let, let you go out there and, and, and experience this little neighborhood and see what they, they have here that they're trying to preserve.

Well, with that, I'm ready to make a motion. I move that we postpone this or continue this until— do I have to give a date?

Our next—

So you can continue it to a, a date certain or to without date and And then if there's no dates specified to when you continue to, then we'll just have to re-notice it when you're ready to hear it.

So, um, I would, I would make a motion that we continue it to our next meeting. I don't think we want to push it out too far, which is— do you have a date? I don't have the date. February 13th.

13th of February.

13th of February. That's my motion. I second.

I, I, I, nay, I, I. Motion passes. So we'll keep going.

Thank you.

Thank you for coming. We're, we're not adjourned yet, but thank you to you guys for coming. All right, item number 11, City Manager information items. Bren?

Thank you.

Just Quickly wanted to let you know, of course, the legislative session is in full swing, and last time we had some interaction with some of our local legislators and Utah League of Cities and Towns. So just wanted to make you aware that we have been following up on the different subjects that came up in that last discussion and been reaching out to Both the legislators that came, but also other legislators with— that represent Orem and have their districts here. So, namely following up on items related to homeownership, to—

Hang on just 1 sec. Could you guys please be quiet? Excuse me. Let us continue the meeting. Thank you.

So, yeah, so trying to speak with legislators that are state legislators that represent Orem, have districts here, about homeownership initiatives, about our concerns with how station area plans are approved, and then finally reaching out to them about appropriations requests for Center Street between I-15 and Geneva Road. So just want to make sure you know that we're, we're in the thick of it and moving forward with that. So that was the only update I wanted to provide, Mayor.

Okay, thank you, Brent. I appreciate what you're doing. I've seen those emails going back and forth between you and the representatives, and I think that's exactly what we need because there's a lot of unknowns about stationary air master plans. that needs to be defined. And so I appreciate you working on that. All right, would someone like to make a motion to adjourn?

Like to make a motion that we adjourn.

I second.

Aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Aye.

We adjourn. Thank you for coming.

Please, in the future, when you call an applicant back up and you allow their engineer and them to speak again.

Everyone tonight left saying, why did we not get to respond to the applicant input? That needs to change, please, because he brought up issues and assets—

aspects that we did not get to address, meaning this changing of the zone and the cutoff. The question of why can't 400 West go around that