City Council · 2024-02-13

Turn it on. You just like to give it a small tap. I'd like to welcome everyone and call this meeting to order. We'll start out, uh, with an invocation by Jared Churchill and then a Pledge of Allegiance by his wife Liz Churchill. Uh, these are both friends of mine. I've been friends a long time, live over in our area. And just a great family in Orem that does everything they can to make Orem the best place to be that it can be. So we appreciate you guys coming tonight. We'll start out with Jared with the invocation.

We live in and for the freedoms that we enjoy here. We're grateful that we can take part in our government. We're grateful for those who serve, and we ask Thee to bless them for their efforts. Father, we ask Thee above all to help us to have unity, to help us to have empathy, to help us to be able to see other people's points of view and to understand them even if we don't agree with them. We ask Thee to be with us and help us to have calm hearts and understanding minds. And we ask thee to bless our city and bless those who serve, and we pray for this in the name of Jesus Christ. Amen.

Please rise for the pledge.

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

Thank you. We'll now, now go to item 6.1, and, uh, Chief Sanderson, uh, will tell us about the recent event that we had with the fire department.

Mayor, councilmen, Manager Bybee, thanks for this opportunity to recap our annual award ceremony or formal event where it gives us the opportunity to recognize the accomplishments over the year and also recognize the employees for their outstanding efforts. that go above and beyond their normal call of duty, with special, um, consideration given to our, our yearly medals, which I'll touch base on. What I want to do is just play this quick video. It will introduce you to the event. This is an event that actually we're able to do and provide the opportunity to all of our even on-duty staff because it's supported through the efforts of Saratoga Springs, Lehigh, American Fork, Lone Peak, Pleasant Grove, and Provo Fire Department to send their personnel and their apparatus to staff our 4 stations and provide the 2 to 3 hours of opportunity for our on-duty members to join this award ceremony and event with their significant other or plus ones. And so this is the 2nd year that we've done it. The 1st year we did it in Library Hall, and we had a great attendance. But we filled the hall up. And so this year with the partnership— and I'm sorry, I can't remember the name of the facility— but with the city's relationship, we were able to do this event at a significant cost savings with renting a facility that actually was able to support close to 300 people. So I'll just play this video really quick and then say—

Mark, just for credit, it was Canyon Park. Oh, thank you. They donated that to us.

It's amazing. And then when you see how it's set up, it is very nice. Oh, no music.

Pause.

Gotta have the music. Thanks, Pete. You can see there was a theme to this year's event. It was white and bright. Um, the, the benefit of this event is it really provides a social Outing where we get to recognize our people. And it's amazing to see the significant others or our plus ones, I mean, spend time all year looking for the right dress because it's a formal event. They schedule their hair appointments. They— it's like, well, we joke that it's prom night for fire department. And so it really is well supported. And then I'll just— you may have all received a Copy of this, just take one, pass it around. Maybe provide this annual, um, 2023 report is actually online for the members of the communities to see all of our accomplishments. But specifically, I just want to touch base on the awards really quickly. And that's really the, the whole purpose of this event. Um, it was really an honor this year to be able to give out the Orem Fire Department's Medal of Honor. Um, it went to a recipient of the Utah Highway Patrol for his, um, actions involving a driver driving the wrong way on I-15, and he actually put himself in harm's way. Placing himself in between that vehicle approaching in the wrong direction and, and had a head-on crash where he was actually injured, fractured leg, trapped in his vehicle. Vehicle was on fire. Gave us the opportunity to interact with another agency and bringing him and the Highway Patrol leadership into our event just expanded outside of just our own local jurisdiction. Also, another member of— a couple of members outside of our fire department recognition. Chris Shields, she works for HCA Timpanogos Hospital. She's instrumental in a lot of the trainings that we do. She actually provides a monthly training hosted by Orem Fire in conjunction with Timpanogos Hospital that goes out statewide. So just that relationship alone puts us on the map in trying to increase the level of EMS that we deliver on a statewide level. And that comes through our fire department. We have Parker Swain, who's a member of the Public Works Department, who was given our Fire Service Cross Award this year. He, I mean, he's instrumental in His efforts to keep our fire apparatus and ambulances in service. I mean, I love him because he's the only guy at the party that was shorter than me. And so when I take the picture, I really appreciated that. But he drops everything when our guys pull in to get us back in service. And that was one of the benefits he was recognized for. And as you look through the book, I'm just going to read the names. So publicly, everybody's recognized, but this Meritorious Company Award for their interactions. You actually met, and they presented today from Fire Prevention, Division Chief Derek Spencer, Deputy Fire Marshal Brandon Valley, Senior Fire Inspector Brandon Byers, and Fire Inspector Scott Beardall. They were actually recognized for exactly what you saw today, implementing these new programs and bringing future programs to Orem that's going to make a difference for the communities we serve. There was also, um, a cadre of our training company. Captain Cameron Monahan, Captain Josh Lee, Captain Blake Jolly, Engineer Bryant Boehner, CCP Mike Hickman, and tiller operator Ethan Starr were recognized for their continual efforts in raising the bar in the level of service we provide. Each one of these guys have traveled on their own dime, also supported by the department outside of the state to bring specialized training back that we've implemented into our operations. That we're really the only, um, department in the state that are doing some of these things, pulled from the East Coast, pulled from the West Coast. And so it's just amazing the things they're doing. We had, I think, our most A group of our most important awards is our Fire Service Cross, which identifies our Chief Officer of the Year, and for his efforts, that was Division Chief Seth Swenson. Our Fire Officer of the Year, Captain Blake Jolly. And then the Firefighter of the Year, which is probably the award everybody wants to be awarded in the event that you're selected by your peers. That this year went to Engineer Brian Boehner. I mean, he's well supported by our organization. He's, he's one of our training cadres that everybody recognizes the efforts he's playing in increasing the level of services we provide. Ryan Garside, he's a 20-year paramedic that delivers exceptional patient care regardless of the time of night, regardless of the stress. And then again, We were able to award a Medal of Courage to Tim Hope, who honestly saved the life of one of our firefighters in a structure fire in Vineyard by remaining calm and collective and inside a structure fire where, had he not, man, we would've had a significant casualty. Terrible outcome with potentially both of those guys inside a structure fire. He just kept it together. And because of his experience and training and collective thought process, they were able to bail out of a 2nd-story window. And I mean, in hope— Tim actually received some 2nd-degree burns, neck, his face, his shoulder, his arm, but ultimately they healed. He'll be scarred. And It was an, it was an honor to be able to recognize him with that Medal of Courage. I mean, you go through this book, it shows our statistics, it shows just accomplishments and the, the amazing things that we get to project to not only the mayor and council, but within our own team, and then create an awesome annual report that we share with the communities we serve. And so with that, that's my update. It's just a pleasure. It's, it's appreciated that it's supported by so many. of our own staff as well as the communities that allow us to have this event. So thank you.

Thank you, Chief. We appreciate that. We appreciate all that you, you and your organization do for us. Great. Next up, we've got item 6.2, and this is a presentation from Pete Wolfley, our communication Director.

All right, well, uh, hopefully this doesn't come as a surprise to anyone, but tomorrow is Valentine's Day, so love is in the air here at the City of Orem. And each year about this time, we, uh, we go out and ask employees what they love about working at the city and what they love about Orem. And so we put a little video together. It's just about 3 minutes. I want to share it with you now.

I obviously love, love working here. I've been here since 2006 at the library, and I love it. I can't imagine working anywhere else.

I love working for Orem because of the interaction that I have with the community and their receptiveness to us, and I also love the fact that my colleagues push me to be better every day.

Orem is a place that's full It's full of some of the most earnest, honest, intelligent, friendly, and hardworking people I've ever met, and I'm proud to be a part of it.

I love that my kids also go to school in Orem, and like, I, I have this like little like network and community that I'm a part of in my personal and professional life, and it's been, it's been really rewarding. And like, I can't imagine like going anywhere else anytime soon, moving working, I want to stay in Orem.

I like working in Orem because it's full of very insightful, collaborative people. I think another reason I like working in Orem is its proximity to the outdoors and the beautiful views of the mountains that you have. Orem Orem is arguably the gateway to Provo Canyon, and so I think that sets Orem apart as well, that it's a gateway to adventure, it's a gateway to the outdoors.

I like working in Orem with the guys that I work with. That's probably the part of working in Orem that I really enjoy.

Well, I moved here in 1994, and I met my wife here. We had 5 of our We had all 5 of our children here at Orem Community Hospital. I started working here in '94, and I've been here ever since, and it's a great place to live and raise a family and, and to work. It's been good to me and to our family, so we love it here.

I love Orem. I've lived here for a couple years now. It's a great family-friendly environment that I hope to raise my family in. Being here is great. It's just a great environment that I really feel seen, I really feel heard, and I just love being here.

I love helping the patrons finding books, and especially we have a lot of new direction that's happening now that's very, very exciting. But I think more than anything else, it's those interactions with the patrons where we're able to help them them find what they need, help them realize that we have what they need.

I've been at Orem now for 4 years, and the minute I started at Orem, especially at the police department, I felt like it was a family, and that's why I came here. I moved from Michigan, and so I had tried other departments and other agencies, and no one felt like a family quite like Orem did.

So yeah, just with Valentine's Day, we love working here, we love the city, uh, appreciate all the support that you give us, and we actually have a little Valentine's Day gift for each of you to let you know our appreciation. Appreciation and support and everything that you do for us. And, uh, so yeah, thank you very much.

Thank you, Pete. We appreciate that, and we appreciate the treat. Get it— get a head start on Valentine's Day. Yeah. Thank you. All right, next up we've got item number 7. We've got personal appearances. It looks like there's just 3 people that have signed up for this. I'll just read really quickly what we've got said here. Uh, time has been set aside for the public to express their ideas, concerns, and comments on items not scheduled as public hearings on the agenda. Those wishing to speak are encouraged to show respect for those who serve the city. Comments should focus on issues concerning the city. Those wishing to speak should have signed in before the beginning of the meeting. Please limit your comments to 3, 3 minutes or less. And like I said, there are 3 tonight. The first one is Angel Willie. Just, just over here to the podium, right?

Hello, it's actually Angel and Willie, and I'm more like a translator, and the glasses are not fashion, I'm blind. Um, so, uh, Willie owns a taco truck, uh, he parks over at, uh, uh, 1600 and, uh, State by the AT&T. And he's been having a lot of concerns because there's been about about seven people that have approached him, claiming they're detectives and people from the city or neighborhood watch. And they keep—I mean, to this point, it's more like a harassment where they keep telling different things. The first two people that came that were detectives check. his license and, uh, you know, the typical paperwork, and they said everything's fine. Supposedly, OFA complained that he was operating illegally. And then some of the other concerns is that he parks there since 7 o'clock in the morning all the way to about midnight, which he doesn't. Uh, they park there typically about from 12 to 9. And one of the other issues is That they're supposed to— I guess there's a city ordinance of 5 hours, but they're on private property that belongs to AT&T, which they have their permission. And they also made him take his tent down. And one of the bigger issues is that, I don't know if you noticed, but there's a lot of trucks now. And they all pretty much have the same setup that he does. And yet he's talked to others, including his mother-in-law that owns one of them, and nobody's getting these issues. Nobody's getting these visits. And he's wondering if there's an issue or maybe a concern from somebody that maybe they're not knowing what's going on. Uh, because they all claim to be from the city, and that's why we're here now, to see if, uh, if there's an actual problem, because now he's just feeling harassed. Uh, I don't know if, uh— Yes, so it's been about 5 times that the same people come over and over and over. I don't know if you guys could, uh, Give us some answers to that.

So, so this is more of a comment section as far as a back and forth with the city council, but what I'd recommend is maybe that you talk to the police. And they're, they're here, they're here so that they can address issues like this. But if you want to go back and talk with the police and try and figure out what the issues are and try and come to an understanding on You know, what needs to be done or what's being done or all the rest. That'd be the way to handle it.

That's one of the first things that we did, and police said if, if you guys are licensed and everything and if it's private property, shouldn't be an issue. But these guys keep coming.

Right. And like I say, there's not really much we can do in this forum, but I would, I would talk with the police that are here and they can, they can help you work through that.

Uh, okay. Yeah, they also gave me information about the neighborhood watch people that came over, but they don't even pick up. Oh, and then, and pretty much all the guys that have come over, we asked for business cards and their names, like different things, and they just said, I don't have it. And they leave.

Yeah, no, that doesn't sound right. So, so go ahead and talk with the police. I, I go ahead and just file a full report of all the things that you're bringing up.

Okay, thank you so much.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Mayor and Council, I've made note as well, and I make note of these, and we, we can help follow up as well.

Perfect. Thank you. Okay, I can't really read the next name. Val— Val Lindsay, and it says housing is the, the topic. So if you were the second person to sign up, come on up. No, I, I was just signing up to come in, that's all. Oh, really? Okay. All right, well, that was an easy one. Thank you. Uh, next up we've got Mark Porter.

Yeah, sorry, I wasn't sure if, uh, 9.3 was going to be open for public forum or not.

Um, if so— it's not.

Oh, okay, because that, that's kind of what I want to talk about. Um, so, um, yeah, my name is Mark Porter. I live at, um, 1588 South 150 West. And I've kind of been following along with the, with the map amendment discussions that have happened previously. I'm just one resident. I'm not very important, not very eloquent, but I am unequivocally in favor of individual property rights and personal rights. I definitely don't like high-density housing. I don't like traffic, but that's kind of the price I pay for living in a city. And above that, I don't like telling others what to do with their stuff, as I expect others not to tell me what to do with mine, if at all possible. Thank you. That's why I find it so concerning that so much effort and time has been spent into what I view as trying to tell someone what to do with their own property. And the fact that I even have an opportunity to share my opinion about someone else's property that I haven't invested in, I haven't spent time or money to buy or maintain, is kind of concerning to me because I believe that individuals should have the right to individually conduct their lives and properties as they see fit. And, and so I feel that, um, that if, if as a municipality we truly believe in individuals and individual rights and freedoms, um, truly the, the, the only, um, the only reasonable solution, uh, for this is to amend the city plan to, um, to allow individuals to conduct their properties as they see fit and to cancel the the plans for the connections. Um, thank you so much for your time.

Thank you. All right, we'll move on to our consent items. We've got a lot of them tonight. I'm going to read through this and then we'll vote on these as a block. As far as consent items on the agenda, we've got item 8.1, which is an approval of the meeting minutes from January 23rd, 2024. Item 8.2, appointment. Yes, yes, that would be great. Okay, so we, we've got quite a few appointments, and if you're here, if you, if you could stand up, that would be great. So first we've got appointments to the Aurum Fest Advisory Commission, and that's Bill Blile. Debbie Larray, Sarah Oldsley, and Paula Pavilli. Next, we've got appointment— an appointment to the Cultural Arts Council. That's Leah Collins. Next, we've got item 8.4, an appointment to the CDBG Advisory Commission. That's Steve Heaps. Next, we've got item 8.5, an appointment to the— several appointments to the Orem Neighborhood Advisory Commission. On that commission, we're potentially adding Rob Shaw, Tammy Moore, Jenny Scribner, Kim Anderson, Amy Green, Rochelle Holmberg, Debbie Lamb, Carolyn Blossom. and Truman Van Cott. Would someone like to make a motion on the consent items?

Mayor, I move that we accept the consent items as outlined.

Second that, Mayor. Okay.

Jen? Aye.

Aye. Aye.

Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. The consent items passed, and those items are all approved. Thank you. Thank you. Our first scheduled item tonight is item 9.1, a conditional use permit. This is approval to add a family recreation exercise building located at 1024 or 1014 North 1280 East in the PD-18 zone. Jason, would you lead that discussion?

Yes, thank you, Mayor, members of the council. If I can get my This works about half the time. So sorry about that. So the first item before us is a conditional use permit in the PD-18 zone, which is a planned development zone, the old Cascade Golf Course. Was purchased by the owner several years ago, was rezoned to a PD-18. That is a residential zone. It is a zone that requires— it does allow accessory structures, but it doesn't require anything over 1,000 square feet or taller than 24 feet to come to the city council through a conditional use process. So the applicants are here tonight proposing a larger accessory structure, 15,000 square feet. It is under 35 feet. It's 33.5, I think, feet tall. It's a very large property, and so they're here to do that. It's a private structure that will house different amenities, basketball and some different activities like that. So they're here tonight to request a conditional use permit. This is the elevations that you see. It's from UHPC, which is ultra-high-performance concrete panel. So it's some kind of a— this is what it says there— a concrete-looking panel system along with some other travertine finishes and a flat roof. See the elevations there. So 33 feet 6 inches. This is their entrance into the property. So it's going to be set back quite a ways from that. It's about 17 feet from the park, the Palisade Park, which is south of this property. So there is no residential south. There's some residentials east and west, but the property is fairly substantial and really wouldn't impact them as well. So Planning Commission did make a recommendation that the council approve this conditional use. I'd be glad to address any questions.

Do we have any questions?

Ready for a motion if there are no comments? If there's no questions or comments, I move that, uh, this, this City Council approve a family recreational exercise building located at 1014 North 1280 East in the PD-18 zone.

I second that.

Aye. Aye. Aye.

Aye.

Aye. Aye. Aye.

The motion passes. Thank you, Jason. Uh, we'll move on to item 9.2, and if you'd like to, uh, outline this, and then we'll open it up for public hearing. Sure.

So this one is a request for a sign zone. The city not only has zones that you typically understand that have building code requirements, but we also have a sign zone Uh, that's also, uh, organized and implemented over time. And this property that we see here, that's a Maverick, is going to be proposed, which is along University— or excuse me, Geneva Road, just south of University Parkway. It's an old barn that's been torn down and going to be developed as a Maverick. Right now, there is no sign zone on that property. It was agriculture for many years, and so now it's being developed. And what they're proposing is to change that sign zone. You can see the, the Property to the north is in the sign zone C. Let me get my pointer out. So this property, which is the Chevron gas station, currently has sign zone C. They— so they have a pole sign along the parkway or Geneva Road. What this applicant is requesting is they have that same sign zone, same opportunity to have a pole sign. And so the staff has supported that. It went to Planning Commission. They made a recommendation that the council approve that as well. So simply matching what other Other businesses have in the area. It does allow signs up to 200 square feet, but it is based on the distance from the right-of-way. So, as you can see, if it's 10 feet from the right-of-way, they can have 36 square feet. Up to a 40-foot setback, they can have 200 square feet. So it does stipulate how tall it can be, but also how far from the right-of-way. That is currently in Sign Zone C. Some replicas— we've all seen Maverick signs before. We have a few in the city. So, They basically are going to do similar to what is done in other Maverick stores. This is a site plan that was approved by the Planning Commission many months ago. This is simply dealing with the sign. Like I say, the Planning Commission did make a recommendation and be glad to address any questions.

Would you go back to— and where are they putting the sign on their site plan?

We have not got an application at this point, so it'll depend on if they meet the setbacks of the 40 feet and where they want to place that, or if they decide to go smaller.

Okay, so, and then maybe go to your first one where those condos are. Are we, are, are we worried about— is there any chance there would be some lighting issues with those homes that are there? Are the setbacks sufficient to protect them from—

So my guess is they're wanting that either along the Parkway or along Geneva Road, so there will be no signs in this area. We could modify that sign zone and not Put it there if that's—

I would like to maybe add that in there if we could. We could do that to kind of protect those residents. Sure.

Mayor, if I may. Yes, Tom.

I know we can see that that's 3-point-some-odd acres. I think you showed that on a later slide. How big is the Chevron across the street? Just to— it looks smaller, but I don't know how much smaller. Do you know that, Jason?

I don't off the top of my head. I would imagine it's probably closer to 2.

It's probably an acre bigger, one would think, right? 2.5 to 3.5. So they're going to do— they're developing that whole partial. As a gas station convenience store, correct?

Yep. So if we go to the site plan, you can see there's, there's quite a few, you know, fueling stations.

What are those things in the back?

So these are fueling stations. So when you drive in, your car is going to be right here. Gotcha. Got tanks, fueling tanks there. But this will all be—

A lot of— and there's a lot of stations, a lot of fueling stations.

Sorry. Yes, but this will be grass, and I don't know if that's part of the detention. So right next to the residential will be Landscaping.

Thank you. Any other questions?

So I don't— I mean, to Miss Millett's point, I guess we could do a— maybe do the frontage 100 feet or something like that on both. University and Geneva.

Yeah. The nice thing I saw, like, next to the residential area, so they have that green space, it's grass, and it's for more picnicking and not signage or other things. Yeah.

Yeah, in common sense, I don't think they would put it there, but if it's available, you never know, right? So, so we could, we could definitely do the frontage so it makes that. So whatever number you want to come up, we could redo the map to make that work.

I don't know, what do you recommend?

Well, it's, it's going to be probably within 40 feet because that's the maximum setback and the maximum square footage they can have. So I would imagine if you do 50 feet along both those frontages, that would Now, that would not— that still would allow them to do the canopies. We'd probably want to have the ability for them to have canopy signs, you know, the little small logos that they have, or the— on the actual canopy in the building itself. This would simply allow them to do the pole signs.

And do you think you need to set back a little more of a setback on 1260 for the condos that are over there to the east? Or would they ever, you know, if they put the sign in that corner right there, right here? Yeah, or even closer to University Parkway, but anywhere along that you've got those condos right next door. Is that the parking lot of the condos that you're showing?

So this is the parking lot. Yeah, if I go back to the aerial— well, yeah, the parking lot's here. So you're— so this is the thing we're looking at.

Just a little more of a setback there on University.

Yeah, so you're looking at least 200+ feet probably to a condo window.

Okay. At that point. Okay. Because your road.

Yeah.

So you feel that's a good enough buffer? Yeah. Okay.

So, and that, that is the main issue, right? To just protect those neighborhoods. Right. While allowing a similar sign to their competitors. Right. Yep. Yep. So as long as we can accomplish that.

We've just had some sign issues. Right. With some other— not this type of sign, but others.

We just want to make sure that the lighting is not an issue for Yeah, we, we have, uh, not to get off this topic, but we have had some discussion with some of the sign owners, and they have dimmed some of their lights because they were— they didn't know how to control the, the brightness. And so in talking to them, they've— the one on the I-15, if you're 1600 or 2000 North, they've dimmed it about 50%. If you drive by it now, it's not as obnoxious as it was. So there is an ordinance in place. We just sometimes we have to have conversations with property owners say we— that's a little too bright. And so, yeah.

Any other questions? Would someone like to make a motion? What? Sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry. We won't do a motion. Uh, we'll open this up for a public hearing in case there's anyone that wants to add anything.

Actually, Mayor, it might be helpful to see if the applicant is here. They might be able to answer some of the questions that were raised about placement of the sign.

Okay.

And if modifying the application The area the new signs on would, would work for them if they're here.

Is the applicant here? They must be good with whatever we do. Okay, okay. So if the applicant's not here, we'll open this up for the public hearing. Are there any comments on this sign issue? Okay, we'll close the public hearing. Bring this back to the council. Would someone like to make a motion?

I'll make a motion that we amend the sign zone for Maverick located at 1249 South Geneva Road in the C-2 zone to a sign zone C.

Within— I would say 50 would probably be sufficient. Okay, within 50 feet. Well, from the right-of-way into the property on both frontages of Geneva Road and University Park.

So, so you're talking about keeping that or making the new sign zone applicable along the entire length of both frontages to a depth of 50 feet into the property? Is that right?

So, So this is not to scale, but if, if we were to take— you can't really see that, but basically this area here is the sign zone. That would be 50 feet back. That would be the sign zone. So they can do it. It doesn't matter if it's more.

Is that what you meant? Yep. I'll second Mr. Lampson's motion.

Aye. Aye. Aye.

Aye. Aye. Aye. Motion carries. Thank you. Okay, now we'll move on. Thank you, Jason. You're welcome. Uh, we'll move on to item 9.3, a map amendment. And this is amending the Lakeview Area Street Connection Master Plan to eliminate the street connections between 1430 South and 400 West. And as many of you know who are here, this is a continuation basically of a conversation we started last City Council meeting, and, uh, we had a major discussion. And before that, we had a number of meetings with residents. After that, we've had meetings with residents, and a number of the City Council members have gone out and met with— in the neighborhoods, drove the area, gathered as much information as they could. So I think we're much more informed than we were a month ago. But Jason, if you'd like to take this.

You bet. Thanks, Mayor. So just to reiterate, the application before you tonight is to eliminate the street connection between 1430 and 400 West. And if I can just put on this— so in this general area here, this, the city street connection master plan requires that there would be a public access here and a public access into this dead-end street here. So somewhere in between there, based on the current standards, that street needs to be connected with a public street. The applicant, as was discussed last meeting, wants to eliminate those connections. And currently the zone R-12 and R-8. And this represents the 2 connections on the street connection master plan. And that's basically just a reminder of what— why we're here. And that's— I'd be glad to address any questions. The applicant's here to address. Thank you. Questions as well.

Do we have any questions by the council? Is there anything that the applicant would like to add from the last time you were here?

Um, well, there's a lot that could be said, but, um, the postcard mailer, as you all know, that went out last time said it wasn't a public hearing. So the people who are here now to speak in favor of it, um, didn't know to come. And, um, but my sincere, um, goal from this is to protect the neighborhoods, keep family, City USA safe. Um, our neighborhoods have the recipe for that, where we, we don't have busy streets, we don't have the risk of, um, parking and traffic problems and children being endangered. And, um, that's been our— my goal ever since I moved in the area, to, to preserve that in whatever form it would be. And this is one step. Thank you. to help, help, um, with that. It gives us the opportunity to, um, protect our neighborhoods. So, I mean, I could go on and on and on, but I know we have a whole presentation prepared. But I, I don't know what, what you're willing to— wanting to hear or willing to hear.

So, but yeah, it's really up to you as far as If there's information you'd like to present, we're happy to hear it. And, or if you're done, that's fine too.

You know, we, uh, I just want to add to, uh, to thank the city council members that were able to go out and visit the site and to actually see in person, uh, as a result of our last meeting and knowing how it was, uh, to come in and to basically indecisive on, on whether to make an action to remove or to keep the 2 red circle connection points to connect 1430 South to 400 West. And, uh, and it sounds to me like that the council members were able to go and do that and get their, their opinion there as well. So we're grateful for that opportunity that you've had to go in and see what was presented, and, and we're anxious to To also, we knowing that this is a multiple-step process, that the outcome of tonight's meeting moving forward. So we're excited to see that. So, and we're here if through your discussion, if you have any other questions or concerns.

Okay, thank you. Do any members of council have any questions or comments or?

The only comment I would make, Mayor, is the amount of emails and information we received that was polite, kind, and thoughtful has been overwhelming on this. I've been grateful for the spirit in which the neighbors have addressed their concerns, even when they're on opposite sides of the view. It's been very civil and kind as they've approached us, and I think— I'm guessing many of you who are here for that issue Thank you for the approach you've taken. It's been well received by me and I think by my colleagues.

I'd like to make a motion.

Are there any other comments?

I'd like to say one thing, um, just along that note. Um, I've responded to some of you, and I just— in my responses, um, I'm really appreciative when neighborhoods can disagree on something and yet still remain friends. And still appreciate different perspectives and ideas. And I just feel that the people who— I've just felt the love of this area from all of you there and the passion connected with that. And I really hope that we do have something beautiful here in the near future, because I did go walk through the forest and And boy, it'd be sure nice to have that area, something really nice in that area. So thank you for you guys for being good neighbors and for your sincerity and passion for your area.

And I just want to say, um, there— this is a, is a complicated issue. And, uh, as the gentleman that spoke at the podium mentioned, property rights. And property rights go a lot of different directions. So that's always a complicated issue. Um, I think we've gotten different responses depending on the timeframe, whether it's a few years ago or whether it's currently. And there's been a lot of— there's very different opinions from, like everyone said, the amount of emails that we've gotten. people reaching out to us. Uh, there's just a lot of different opinions on what should be done, and, uh, I just, I just want to let you know that I'll make my vote based on doing what I believe is best for the overall city and, and based on all the information that I've been able to take in.

So, thanks, Mayor. I mean, I, I went to all the, the neighborhood meetings at, at Jay's house, and I appreciate, uh, All the citizens that have come out and, you know, voiced their opinion. And I'd like to make a motion now, Mayor, that the City Council deny amending Lakeview Area Street Connection Master Plan to eliminate the street connection between 1430 and 400 West. So I'm denying this amendment.

You're basically leaving the master plan as is, correct? No changes?

Correct. Not taking them off.

Yeah, just that his motion would be leaving everything as is according to the master plan.

Because this was to change, eliminate the connections, and I'm not— I don't want to eliminate them.

I, I second Mr. Spencer's, uh, denial motion. I don't know if I worded that right, Steve.

Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye.

Aye. Aye. Aye.

The motion is denied. Okay, moving on, uh, item number 11. Uh, Brenn Bybee.

Thank you, Mayor. Just, uh, just a couple of quick announcements for you. Uh, we recently found out, uh, from the Milken Institute, um, that does a ranking of all the cities in the country, and they have rankings for those metropolitan service areas, MSAs, that have a population of over 90,000. In that category, there are 200 cities across the country that fit that category. And for the 4th year in a row, the City of Orem is top 5 in that ranking. And a couple of the specific areas that were highlighted was that we were ranked number 1 in community resilience, number 2 in job growth, number 3 in GDP and wage growth, and then top 15% in housing affordability. So as we get these awards, we like to announce them and celebrate a little bit. bit and recognize the city for being such a wonderful city. So we'll be doing that, and you'll be seeing that in some of our communications efforts. The other quick announcement I wanted to let you know of— that— so we did some statistics, and we found that over the last 2 years, Orem has had 880 new businesses come into the city. 880. These are new business license applications over the last 2 years. Many of you attended the, the grand opening for Bundt Cakes this, this last weekend, and that was well attended and a fun win. And we actually just found out we'll have a ribbon cutting on the 28th for a company called Just Ingredients, which has 1.1 million followers on Instagram.

So, and that's my Redline Racing Dave, right?

Yeah, can we do some go-kart races after that ribbon cutting?

So our, our business family is, uh, growing strong here, here in Norum. So that's all I have.

Thank you, Brent. That's awesome. Would someone like to make a motion to adjourn?

I will make a motion that we adjourn. I'll second that.

Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye.

We're adjourned. Thank you for attending tonight.

Subtle. Yeah, yeah, yeah. What's wrong? Your chair.

There, you want that one?

The first one?

He has a broken chair.

All right, are we ready to go?

Ready? All right, welcome to our City Council work meeting. We've got all the chairs. You're very tall all of a sudden.

I think I might try that.

Do we all raise them up?

You're a scholarship family.

We're going to start out with item number 1.

Brennan's got an introduction to make.

Yes, so, uh, Mayor and Council, um, I want to introduce to you McKenna Thompson. McKenna is our new, uh, office administrator that will help you and I with our calendars and, and coordination and calls and mail, etc. With the retirement of a 33-year veteran in our HR division, that created an opening that resulted in the promotion of Tess Jones into that position. And so she, of course, sets a high standard of positivity and energy that will, that will be used for our employee benefits and our BABO training.

Thank you.

So since HR stole Tess from us, I stole McKenna from our 311 help desk.

It's a vicious cycle.

I didn't start it.

Sorry.

But McKenna came to us very highly recommended, and we heard in advance a lot of positive uh, interactions that employees and the public have with me. And so, um, still, she can kind of continue on that energetic and positive trend that also started when Tess, uh, began.

Sorry. Thanks.

Is there anything else you want to say to introduce yourself?

Well, I've lived in Auburn my whole life. I love it here. I love the city. So I'm really grateful to be here, really grateful for the opportunity to meet with all of you and work with all of you and hopefully learn a lot from all of you.

In addition to that, we also— well, of course, you know, Theresa McKittrick is our senior coordinator, and she will also take on some of the duties of executive assistant so that we can have her mentoring and organization skills kind of up to par. And so between, between the two of them, they will be able to herd us cats. My wife is really excited. So yeah, I'm super appreciative of your help and your skills. Please feel free to use them now that you know me.

Awesome, we're excited to have you, and, uh, I've heard good things about you from sources outside the city.

Thank you.

Looking forward to it.

Thank you.

I will move to item number 2, and I'll have Carrie and Carson introduce this next part.

Yeah, so I'll just start. Carson, go to you. So this is, um, the, the 2nd installment of the MGT study.

If you—

as you recall, we started this about 6 months ago. Um, we'll be going over 3 sections today. But as a reminder, like, we won't— well, on this one we've got developments, a portion of development services today, but we're only focusing on facilities maintenance. So that's the building maintenance and custodial when it gets to the development services side. So some of our departments were divided into multiple sections. So this is a piece of development services.

Yeah, and as another reminder, especially for any residents who are tuning in today, This is part of an effort for the city who seeks to implement best practices in the industry and also pioneer with innovative solutions to improve public services. We commissioned MGT to do a deep dive across the city to look at what we're currently doing and validate whether those are efficient and most effective, as well as generate recommendations to improve our services to our residents. So we have with us Bruce Cowens and Ricardo Siepen with MGT. As you can see on the screen, they'll be presenting on management services, legal services, and facility maintenance, like Carrie has just mentioned. Ricardo and Bruce, we'll turn it over to you if you'd share your screen.

And you're muted.

Oops.

Wait, hang on.

It did show up for just a minute.

Well, that's a victory. Are you able to see the slide deck now?

No.

Well, pardon me while we sort that out. And while we do that, I will begin with my remarks. In case you missed the last meeting, what the city has told us it wants to do is to be the best managed city, to provide top quality quality services and to do so efficiently. The city selected departments and divisions for review and gave us a charter of specific questions in each department. The charter was not look at everything in all the departments. It was look at specific issues in the departments or divisions selected. I think that was wise. Because if you spread yourself across everything, you don't get enough focus on specific issues. So let me— I had some discussion with Carson about sharing the screen. He said, no, you will run the screen. And now he's probably regretting that he ever agreed to that.

So I'm going to go ahead and share my screen.

How are we doing now?

There it is.

Hooray. Okay. Um. What does it mean to be efficient? Well, there can be more than one definition, and obviously getting that definition right is important for this study. Spending more to get more may be a good move sometimes, but that would not be efficient. We all know if we spend more money, we can buy more things. What we mean in this study is one of the things on the slide here, either more bang for the buck or same cost but faster or more reliable. It could mean spending a little more but getting a lot more, and we'll talk about that in a minute. You've authorized one change that we endorse. We'll discuss that in this, in this presentation. And you may also find efficiency could be dropping some level of service to save a lot of money without having much impact on what residents receive. The city asked us—

Your briefs, your slides are not advancing. Yeah, they're not advancing. I don't know if when you hit present, it opened a new window or not.

Well, You know, Carson, I hate to glitch this. Would it be better for you to share the deck?

I can.

I apologize for that, but out of respect for everybody's time, I think maybe that would be the best thing to do.

I have it up. I can share as well if you need me to, Bruce.

Well, that's up to Carson. Do you, do you want to start sharing the deck, or would you like to— Okay, thank you.

Go ahead.

We've got it up.

All right. Um, so the city asked us to review a majority of the departments and divisions. And within each one gave us a list of specific questions to answer. We did research of documents, we spoke to your staff, we researched local peer cities and, and spoke with them, and we relied on our experience in doing similar studies nationally. In the previous meeting on January 23rd, we reviewed police and the procurement efforts in finance. Today there are 3 units being discussed: management services, legal services, and facilities maintenance. We'll get to the rest in future meetings. I'm going to turn this over to Ricardo to discuss management services.

Hi, everyone. For management services, the city asked us to answer 2 questions. The first question was, look at, analyze this structure for Human Resources Division and for the Communications Division. The second question was to comment on the recently approved creation— created divisional strategy and innovation. Okay, over to the next slide, if you can, Carson. Slide here presents a summary of our findings and our conclusions as it relates to each of those questions. The first, like I said, the first question was to look at the structure and the staffing of the HR division and the communications division. What we found is that whenever possible, the HR division should hire an HR specialist at about $85,000 a year will be the total cost. And the communication division should hire a deputy public information officer at about $95,000 a year. Why do we make those recommendations? We believe that hiring an HR specialist will solve the workload to capacity issue within the department. What we found based on our study is that the human Resources manager's workload exceeds her capacity by about 1,500 hours a year. Okay, forcing— forcing other staff members from other departments to help the HR division and keeping them away from some other duties. Okay. As it relates to the communication division, we found out that bringing in a deputy Public information officer will help whenever the director of communications is not available, as he is the only full-time employee currently in the department. All right. Now, the second question was to answer whether there should be a divisional strategy. What we found out is that the answer should be yes. Was the study refrained from recommending new spending? This is an investment in innovation and efficiency. Additionally, the fiscal impact of this recommendation is minimum, as the department can reorganize existing staff to establish a new division. We don't believe there's a need to hire anyone to establish a new— this new division. Okay, Carson, next slide when you get a chance, please.

And yeah, before we move on, I just wanted to hit on these 2 items just to show how eager the city is to act on this study. We're eager to start implementing these changes already. So we've seen some of these come in. And we've actually increased the staffing in HR with savings to the city. I don't know if, Carrie, you'd like to speak to that a little bit.

Yeah, so with the retirement of Shirley Paws after 35 years at the city, we were able to take her earnings and divide it into 2 positions without an increased cost. to the city. So it's a net neutral change, but bringing in a whole other personnel into the, into the division. So that was a big win for us. And then, um, as far as the, the communications deputy PIO, we'll be bringing in a full-time person, but those savings will be from, um, the deputy city manager position that, that's been, um, reserved. We'll use part of the funding from that to, to fund this from an intern to a full-time position. Again, at no additional cost to the city.

Yeah, and it is pretty impressive as far as— I mean, you're— you were exceeding capacity by 1,500 hours. So I mean, that shows that Pete and his counterpart on the HR side were putting in a ton of extra effort and work.

Yeah, yeah, and they're, they're very grateful. I don't want to speak for Pete or for Amy, but they're very grateful for you guys doing this. this study because now they can catch their breath once we make all these changes.

They're getting sick.

They're sleeping.

Peak until vacation time.

And it has— it doesn't only impact those divisions per se, but the city as a whole has seen the benefit of these changes with enhanced services through human resources and the ability of communications to create more content for departments across the city. So everyone has seen a huge benefit from, from this study and from these, these changes that have been made.

We have seen a very visible major improvement in our PR efforts and communication efforts inside the city and outside the city. So he's done a great job with that.

Thank you.

And I wanted to mention too, this new Division of Innovation and Strategy has already been implemented, but that was at very minimal cost to the city. We used some savings from the Matthews position. Um, to fund the, the new division manager. That's Jenica Jones. So she's already working here. She was just promoted to a division manager position at, again, no, no additional cost to the city.

All right, great. Thank you. Uh, all right, Carson, are you in the management services next step slide? I can't see this. Yeah, but Yeah, we already discussed that. That's what I wanted to talk about.

All right.

So we had next steps, but Karen Carson pretty much discussed what our next steps were, and they have already been implemented. Any questions regarding the management services presentation?

All right.

Very good. Seeing that, we'll move on to the next slide.

The only other point of emphasis I'll make is just that that strategy and innovation division really kind of takes the intent of what we've been doing with this, with this MGT study, with this efficiency study, and kind of incorporates it as part of our culture here in the city to be in a constant mode of looking at things and improving and finding better ways to do things and vetting out ideas. That's why I think about a month ago, we had Jenica come in and kind of show some of the things that they Have been working on.

All right, perfect. All right, we'll move over to the Legal Services Department questions. As it relates to Legal Services, the city asked us to answer 3 questions. One, if there were opportunity to delegate work that is currently being performed by the attorneys to non-attorney staff such as paralegals, law clerks, kind of to leverage the time of the attorneys. The second question is, was— is the prosecution caseload for staff reasonable? And the third question is whether the civil attorney caseload for staff is reasonable. And the next slide is going to give you a summary of what we found. As it relates to the delegation of work, To non-attorney staff, we recommend hiring 2 part-time law clerks at a total cost of about $56,000 to expand the capacity for attorneys at a lower cost than adding another attorney. This recommendation was made because the current non-attorney staff lacks the training to provide efficient leverage of attorney time. The law clerks can meet this efficiently.

Okay.

The second question regarding the prosecution caseload and whether it's reasonable, based on peer comparisons, it shows that reference per prosecutor is significantly higher in Orem at 48,000, almost 49,000 to 1 compared to the peer average at 28,000 to 1. This suggests that a need for more staff. However, we are deferring that this decision is pending development of caseload data. As it relates to civil attorney caseload and whether it's reasonable, MDTE recommends deferring any decision on staffing changes pending the development of caseload data, which the department intends to do so. The department is currently looking at software systems that will enable it to track caseload data more efficiently. All right, next.

Can you go back to that?

Yes.

So that— I mean, okay, so the, the, uh, residents per prosecutor is significantly higher, but that translates into we have significantly less cases, doesn't it? Or does it?

No, no, not necessarily. And I don't know if that comparison— maybe the MGT can explain whether that comparison is nationwide or statewide.

That comparison was based on the peer cities that were provided by the city. We looked at, I think it was 5 or 6 cities that were provided by Orem as peer cities, and those were the cities that we compared to Orem.

The peer cities are Provo, Sandy, West Valley, West Jordan, Lehigh.

Ogden was not included.

Yeah, that's telling us we have 28,000— the other cities have 28,000 residents per prosecutor, we have 49,000. So we have almost half the number of prosecutors, right?

Yeah.

But what does that mean? Does that mean we have less crime and less cases or not?

I, I don't think so.

I think it just means our, our prosecutors are shouldering a heavier caseload than prosecutors in other cities.

So it's not a COVID catch-up thing?

No.

I mean, if you were, if you were comparing these numbers with cities outside of Utah, I would say that there might be an argument there. But the fact that your cities are other Utah cities, I think the numbers are going to be—

the caseloads are going to be, or the cases per resident are going to be pretty much similar.

That's, I guess that's what they're referring to, right? But that top-line data is kind of interesting.

I mean, our prosecutors would tell you, and they have been telling us for several years, that they need help.

And how do you feel about the law clerk angle?

I think that they can help if we can actually find law clerks who are willing to come here. I think that like any other position, it's hard to find good law clerks to come here because they have other opportunities too, and so we're competing on Or, you know, usually these are typically 2nd or 3rd-year law students, and some of them may not want to work during the school year.

You know, lots of law schools—

law students don't want to work during the year, so, in school. So I think it's something we're willing to try and see if it works, but I think it will just be dependent on whether we can actually hire the law clerks, so, and that's unknown at this point.

And if the presenter could clarify, because I think you said $56,000 would that cost. The slide says $92,000, unless I'm—

I think that's for 2.

2 part-time law clerks are $92,000.

$92,000 total.

Yeah, $92,000 total.

Yeah, that is $92,000 total.

Yeah, so $56,000 each, and you hire 2.

No, no, no, we have $56,000 total.

Oh.

Because they're part-time, part-time law clerks.

Oh, you have $92,000 on that first part of the slide.

The slide is—

This was $56,000 total.

Yes.

All right, thank you for clarifying.

All right, perfect. And the next slide, um, Carson, please. Well, the next slide talks about next steps, which is, um, Deciding whether to hire 2 part-time locutors to provide leverage for attorney time. Is that way feasible? And whether the city wants to attempt that recommendation. The other step would be to confirm whether the department's plan to acquire case management software should move forward. If so, that system should create the data which we need to make the the staffing decisions for the prosecution division, which seems to need— which seems to need staff, and the civil division, which may not need more staff. Any questions regarding the legal services department? Additional questions?

I just wanted to make it clear that, and Steve, in the legal department, they are already starting to implement this software so that they can track their caseloads. Because I think that will give us a better example on whether or not we need to bring more into it.

We've actually signed a contract with a software provider and we're just waiting to get it implemented.

So what's the timeline on that?

That's a good question.

Um, it was supposed to be right away, but you're just kind of—

They're so understaffed they can't do the agreement.

The agreement is done.

It's on their side, right?

Just waiting for them to find the staff to get it. And once they get implemented, how long do you think it'll be before you have a reasonable idea of the use flow?

I don't know, maybe several months, guessing. It's hard to know without ever having used it and knowing what it can really do.

I think you want a full cycle year so that you can see.

Yeah, I understand.

We might get some idea after a few months, but yeah, so we'll see.

Bruce, are you ready to move on?

I am. We mentioned earlier that Development Services would have a separate presentation. That will not be today. Today we will discuss the Facilities Maintenance Division. That division does 2 things. It cleans city properties and it repairs and maintains them, and those are really separate work streams. So the questions that we were asked are: number one, do you have the right number of people? Number two, are the hours or shifts they're assigned appropriate? And number three, do you have the tools to allow management to track trends and productivity and have insights into how staff are used to solve problems. Let's go to the division findings, please. In terms of staffing levels, we did not note any problems. We did say that some of the data that we would need are not logged currently, and we're making a recommendation to create new activity codes and have staff record a more comprehensive summary of what they do. That will allow management to determine, are there emerging trends? Are we getting appropriate work out of each person? Are there— areas of city property that might need more attention. In terms of shift schedules, the challenge is that the breadth of what the city does means that city facilities are open in some cases for long hours, multiple shifts, and for cleaning and for repair and maintenance, that's, that's a factor when best to do the time. Um, we believe that the current shift schedules work very nicely. They are consistent with what we found in your local peer cities, and we would recommend keeping the current shift schedules. For software support, obviously there's so many moving parts that they have to track that there has to be software to identify how long work orders have been open, how long it has been since particular repair or maintenance tasks were done, etc. We looked at a couple of options, and the one that we are recommending is to extend your current license that Public Works has for Elements XS software and configure it for use as well by Facilities Maintenance. That costs an estimated $10,000, which is roughly the same cost as buying another competitor package. But the advantage here is that if you buy the competitor package, your tech support needs apply to 2 platforms. We'd rather see a consolidation of what you use in one kind of platform. We think that'll be a little more efficient. We would like to have it configured so that you can track more efforts, um, and not just the work orders. The work orders are being serviced on a 24-hour service standard. That's a good standard that is consistent with peer cities. The only issue that we found was the family fitness center hoping that it could get work orders processed faster. When a piece of gym equipment goes down, they don't really want to wait 24 hours to have it fixed. We address this in the recreation chapter that we will present at a future meeting. I'm not— I don't mean to duck that question right now, but I think when you see the recreation discussion, you'll see it makes more sense to talk about how to take care of what the family fitness center would like. So for next steps, you should decide what activity codes you need. The goal being you'd like to not only track productivity, you'd like to have trend data. Did we do more this year than last year? Are we trending the right way? Are there particular types of problems that are arising more frequently that tell us maybe instead of fixing it, that thing should be replaced? And I think that the software package can do that nicely. It has to be paired by creating the activity codes in discussion with management. As far as the choice of software, you are already licensing Elements XS, and you can have it for use by facilities maintenance without an additional license fee. You would need to spend some money to configure it so that it does what facilities maintenance needs, but we think that is the efficient solution. That takes us through our prepared remarks, so I will stop now and take any questions, or if you just simply need time to discuss this, then— Please, the floor is yours.

Well, I just want to summarize this last point with the software management that, uh, I, I just want to commend Byron's team. They've been very proactive about implementing innovative solutions. Um, they initiated this software build-out today, actually. Um, and I've been— I've helped him a little bit with the agreement and everything with Element 6S, and it's going to allow them to be a lot more proactive and increase efficiency. It'll allow them to track every single asset in every building, whether that's a spigot, a fan, and so on. So rather than having reactive— putting out fires across the city in the buildings, they're going to be able to see this maintenance schedule. It'll tell them when they need to go replace an asset before it gives out. And so I think their vision is going to definitely benefit everyone across the city. All employees are impacted by facilities. All of our residents are impacted by our facilities, so it's going to be a great benefit and just a one-time cost of $10,000.

That's a monumental task. So kudos to whoever pulled that together.

I'm dumbfounded.

I mean, that's just— that's huge to be able to nail down every asset and maintenance. And replacement and that whole—

yeah, so that's a big task, but Byron, it's Byron's team and they are gung-ho about implementing it and getting it going in the right direction.

It's taken a long time.

I mean, to me, Byron is, he's detail-oriented, he's energetic, his attitude is proactive. Now we're going to give him the tools, the software to be able to accurately plan for and schedule out preventative maintenance in addition to the corrective maintenance. This, this aligns with Byron's just natural skill set and just fun attitude.

Is there any—

are there any studies done? I'm sure there have been that shows cost savings because of the preventative maintenance that's able to be done versus replacement of Machine at the rec center. Yes, yes. If you're tracking your maintenance and you're doing everything on a scheduled time period and you know the lifespan, you're documenting everything, you'll definitely save money. We've been after this for a number of years and we almost pulled the trigger last year on a different software package, but we're glad we didn't. Thanks to Chris for paying for it. We're the sole— so we're, we're pretty excited. Now's the hard part. We're, we're going to hire an intern as part of our part-time group, our custodial group, to someone in a facilities management program at school that can come in and help us start to populate the data. And getting a new building, you can put the new building in the system and not worry about this building in that system. So we won't waste our time on this building.

Don't put this building in the system.

And we all know how this works with our cars, right? You keep your car maintained, and I like driving a well-maintained car, and my husband likes that too, so I don't complain to him. So this will be awesome.

Yeah, this is something that we've been doing and trying to do in public works, and it makes sense to do it across the board from the smallest group of assets for vehicles or whatever. We have a corrective maintenance preventative maintenance program there as well, but GIS is tied to all of these assets. How many Hundreds or thousands of valves and fire hydrants do we have? Well, Byron's got to think about, you know, all the different boilers, all the different air filters, when they need to be replaced, and the timing and scheduling, all of the maintenance that has to occur. It's pretty complicated unless you have some kind of a master document. Takes time and effort to set it up, but it pays dividends in the end.

Yeah, yeah.

Any other questions on any of these reports for All right, Bruce, thank you.

Oh, thanks, Mom. Are they still there?

Carson, who's the other gentleman?

Uh, Ricardo.

Bruce, Ricardo, you guys still with us?

What comes out of the cloud goes back into the cloud.

Well, I guess we can— we can keep on.

Okay, well, we appreciate that presentation, and, uh, we're making lots of good progress on this MVP study.

Appreciate it, Carrie and Carson.

All right, we're going to item number 3. We'll have an AMI update with Chris Murphy.

So, several years ago, with our 2016 master plan, part of our master plan identified the need to be able to monitor and measure water on a more effective basis. For years, we've been doing it through a flexible or variable labor force, part-time labor force that come and go. as there's a higher demand in the system during the summertime. And it's been effective to some degree over the years, but we've known all along that it would— wouldn't it be nice if we could have all the data at your fingertips? Well, that's where we are today. So thanks to the vision of many that have been involved, including councils of years past, and Tom McDonald's one of our first representatives on our Public Works Advisory Commission meeting that This was a part of that recommendation, so we appreciate your support on that. Reed and his staff are going to report on progress and where we are. We'll give you an update of where we are today. Ironically, Reed's going to talk a little bit about how even prior to hiring staff to go out and measure the water consumption on a monthly basis, did it twice a year, once in this— once in the, uh, in the spring and once in the fall. So just 2 times a year. So you can imagine, uh, kind of the discussions that maybe exec staff and council had back 20, 25 years ago. Like, this is very simple and it's straightforward, but maybe this isn't the best way to be managing this valuable resource. So we're in a much better position today. Our staff has replaced how many meters, Quinn?

You've jumped into the punchline.

22,000. 22— I thought you had an exact number, but that's good.

5, probably.

5?

What is it? Make up one, we won't know. 22,300 communicating right now. So all of the meters that have this technology are in place, about Very good, Tom. You finally logged on, Tom? Yeah, yeah, I couldn't remember my password was 1234567 or something.

Well, Mayor and Council, it's good to, uh, good to be with you today and talk about a project that we've been doing for quite some time. We're pleased to be where we're at because we're going to be providing a Quite a tool for our residents.

Sorry for the interruption, but I feel like I'm an acronym interpreter. So AMI stands for Automated Metering Infrastructure.

Yep.

Basically, we can get the information of water use from all of our citizens from our offices. So just a quick review of Of the water division. Quinn Fenton standing in the back by the door, he's our water division manager. He oversees 3 groups in the water division. The water division is, is part of the public works department. In the water division, we have 3 areas. The first is the water distribution group. That's the pipes throughout the entire city that deliver water to all of the homes. We also have the water supply group.

That's—

that group takes care of the water, makes sure that the water that's in the mountains or in the ground gets into the pipes that gets delivered to the home, to the homes. And then we have the water utility group, which is kind of the focus of today's presentation. They're the ones who maintain the meters and account for all of the water that's delivered to the homes. So, in the water utility group, They gather and provide billable, accurate monthly reads. When they do that, they look for residents or businesses that might have high unusual consumption and would reach out to and say, hey, we think that there might be a problem or a potential leak. Last year, they, they completed 3,549 work orders where they came in. Different issues arose in the water system, and they would go out and work with businesses and with our residents to address any concerns that would come up. And then they also upgrade and replace all the meter parts necessary to be AMI compatible and basically just maintain the meters throughout, throughout the entire city. So right now we have about 22,300 residential meters and 1,300 commercial water meters. Those range from 3/4-inch all the way up to 12-inch meter that supplies UVU. A vast majority of them are 3/4-inch meters to all of our residents. Now, Chris alluded to this, a little bit of history. Back in 2001, I was getting my graduate degree at BYU. And we had a project that we had to come— we had to come up with a good idea for a project to do some analysis. And I thought we could— let's look at a water conservation rate with my group within the water field.

And thought, oh, this would be a fun thing to look at.

And the Public Works Director at the time was John Park. He invited me to go to an exec staff retreat where we talked about water conservation, or water in general, and presented this water conservation rate.

It was somewhat—

it was a little different than tiered rates, but it had the same, the same idea that, uh, that people would be charged different based on how much they, they would use. There wasn't anything that really came out of that. Well, at that time we were reading meters In the spring after winter, and then in the late fall, right before winter. We did that so that we could get the winter use, and that's what we use to calculate how much sewer a resident uses. And then we base our bills on the winter use. We don't want to include irrigation water because that's not going into the sewer. So we read 2 times. 2 times a year. At that meeting where we discussed the— this water conservation rate, it was decided, you know, maybe we should see what we're using on a month-to-month basis and start charging residents each month instead. And so monthly meter reads in the non-winter months was decided back in 2001. This technology existed, but we didn't decide to jump in and go with AMI right away. In talking with Quinn, he said that back in 2006, there was a new technology where they could take a handheld device and hold it over a meter, and they did, and we did that for all of our commercial meters. Made it really easy for us to go and get those reads. More discussion came about in 2016. we adopted the Water Master Plan, and in that was— the city council adopted a plan, a project to include this automated metering infrastructure throughout the city for all of the residents. And it got funded in 2017, and we started to install the project back in 2018 using our city staff to do that. It took a while, 23,000 residential meters and 1,300 commercial. It takes a while. Well, we recently finished the last one in December, and we're ready to roll the system out. So, in funding, the project cost about $7.3 million total. We received a $1.5 million grant from the federal government, from the Bureau of Reclamation. And so the users will end up paying about $5.8 million. This was in that 2016 master plan. The city council wanted us to pay as we go, so we saved up money so that we could pay for this. This project is paid for. There's no— we didn't bond for it or anything like that. We paid with it from user fees. I'm going to invite Ty Penrod. Ty Penrod is our is our water utility group field supervisor, and he understands the day-to-day operations much better than I do. So, Ty, if you want to come on up here and explain this AMI architecture, and then he's going to walk through, show you some pictures of what exactly was replaced— what was replaced with the meters, and what does this AMI technology look like.

Thank you. So this is a— this schematic was provided by Itron. They are the creator of the endpoint, which, as you can see right here, the endpoint talks to the repeaters and collectors that we have in the city. There are 18 repeaters and 11 collectors. They then go and talk to our Cloud, wide area network, and from there that comes into our system, our CIS, our utility billing system, and we then have it for NAA, which is an ICON software, and the new My Water portal.

So what do you— and then he'll show you the endpoint is on the meter itself. That's the antenna that sends a signal which we collect with the repeaters and the collectors, and that comes to our— to the computer system, to the cloud, and is available to us for billing and to the consumer to monitor their use.

Yeah, as you can see right here, we just have 2 simple pictures of some installs we've done. The selected one is a 3/4-inch residential meters. Just showing these, what we pulled out. You can see the refills under that lid is standing out. A new electronic register. This is the 1-inch, same design with the— How long did a typical install take? It very, very much depends on the situation. Obviously, the can and the setter, which is this piece connecting to the meter. Um, a smooth situation where nothing fights you really, and it's easy, I guess you could say, you could do a 3/4-inch meter in 2 to 5 minutes. That's once you have the water off. And can you turn off the water just for one house, or do you have to turn it off to a larger group? No, just to that one house. Yeah, so you can see both these dishes. This guy right here is the meter valve. That soft green thing. So it turns off just like my sprinkler system? Yeah, it's a quarter turn. Yeah, so generally the whole process we have— there's many more steps than just chuck the water out and pull the meter out, but it's— we would hope to be in and out total in 15 minutes at each house. Some of them, that's a lot of hours.

Yeah.

And that's the fastest. Yeah, that's very—

with our older homes, with many older homes, it was— it's a lot more difficult.

These are just a couple pictures we have. As you can see, the top left picture, that is the endpoint that I mentioned earlier. Refer to it as an ERT. I'm sure many of you have heard that. It stands for Endpoint Radio Transmitter. That endpoint is plugged in. If you can see the cable plugged in right there, that goes directly into our register. And that register cable comes up next to the endpoints, and then if you look at this picture, There is what's called an install pivot, and that holds and mounts that endpoint right up against that Oliver lid so that radio frequency can pass and communicate with our towers.

So this is the underside of the lid here. You can see the, uh, the register right there and connected with a wire down to the meter itself.

Kind of power sources like this would be Battery.

Battery.

We'll have to replace batteries. It's 10 years, I think.

20 years. 20 years.

I mean, the meter doesn't last that long.

The—

both the register and the endpoint batteries are rated for 20 years. We have 22,000+ in the field, and we've already had some fail with just a couple of years, but those are under warranty, and we should hopefully don't have very many like that.

If I remember right, their warranty is good for 10 years, and then it's prorated after, and 10 years out too.

Typically, you don't have warranties on batteries, so that's a good thing. This is just a screenshot of our homegrown webpage that we use to install each meter. RMIT has been extremely helpful to our team. Little whole water division with this. As you can see, the 3 fields at the top, we enter the register endpoint and meter serial barcode. We have a few checkbox boxes there that we can go through and document. And then this is all input into our utility billing system and There for us to see and have that data.

Once that's done, it's a matter of flipping a switch and then it goes live, and the entire city is live right now. Thanks, Ty.

That's all I needed you for. Thank you.

Well, unless you guys have questions that sometimes you toss us questions, they're like, I've got my guys here to help me out.

I just want to say I appreciate talking to our team, because even with all the efficiencies we've been doing, you know, NGT has been recommending, I'm not sure I do anything that cool in 25 minutes.

Amen.

5 minutes, you built 3 games. That's awesome.

So with, with this, again, this is— this gives us as a city the tools that we need to more efficiently gather all of the water usage data throughout the city. We no longer have to walk around and lift the lid and look down there and type in a number. We're getting that electronically. It's also a tool for our residents.

We—

they will have access through our My Water portal at mywater.orleans.org. That's the launch page. Which will take you to a vendor that we use called WaterSMART. This company specializes in, in making water use data understandable to, to communities throughout the country. So, this portal will allow residents to monitor their water use. It's available 24/7 online. And of course, it avoids the human error that sometimes happens when we do those manual water receipts. It also comes— that portal has some tools for customers or recommendations of things that you can do to conserve water. I have a couple of screen grabs, but there's probably 75 to 100 ideas that citizens could roll through, scroll through and look, oh, that I'd like to learn more about that. So, There are other tools there as well. It also gives leak detection. It will— you can set it up to contact you and say, hey, I think that you've got a leak, or you've used a little more water than we think you probably wanted to use. You might want to look into it a little bit. In fact, Tom was showing off that he had logged in before, and as he was doing so, he told me he got in, things were working well, and the next day he contacted me and said, I got an alert that said I used 50 gallons.

Yeah, something like that.

I don't care.

Yeah, I said, yeah, that's— your settings aren't set right. Let's, let's, let's raise the alerts.

Hey, dummy.

Did it come through that clear? Yeah, yeah. But, but anyway, he was able to raise that so that he won't be annoyed by the alerts. but that you can adjust those. And what he did was verify that the communication works. But again, we're in a kind of a testing phase right now, and he was able to verify that for us.

Great.

I think some of our early testers have detected these.

Yeah, I'll get to— I've got a great graph here shortly. You sitting back there, Carlo?

Okay.

We should also point out that The city's only using this to compile data to create bills. We're not tracking anybody or anything like that. It's it's just for the city's use. We just it's easy for us to get the billing data, and we're not using it to turn off services at this point. We could if we wanted to, and if we did, it would probably be just for those that are we know don't pay their bills on time. Like, okay, it's just— let's, let's put this on this particular meter. Um, or perhaps there are meters that we don't have easy access to, but let's, let's, uh, let's put it, uh, it's behind a fence or something like that.

Now, when you say—

because there were—

we did get, uh, systems that were concerned about that, right? So it says it can't be used to turn off services.

Yeah, there's— you have to have a different device than what we've put in there.

Okay, so what, what we're putting in right now, what's We cannot use the turnoff water service, correct?

There's nobody in the city has a device in it that would allow us to do that. If we chose to do that, we would have a reason to do so to make it easier for us to, to do it.

But yes, you're, you're talking about if— yeah, we, we cannot do that right now. In the event we ever did it, it would be to, to deal with people who aren't paying their bill or something.

Good.

So this is an example of a couple of tree watering advice. Did you know we need trees? We need trees and trees need water. It gives you some ideas of how you can conserve water as you water your trees. Installing a high-efficiency toilet. There are lots of different, probably commonsensical ways to conserve water, but That's one of the selling points or options that we have in that My Water portal.

Yeah.

This is what the dashboard looks like. You can come here and view your bill, or you can come here and view— you click on the View Your Use, and you'll see some graphs that show what your use has been. Everything downloads at 5:00 PM every day, so Yeah, so in half an hour you can get on and see what you did this morning. Um, and then you can look at it for a day, for a week, for a month. You can choose what days you want to be able to see, be able to tell when you, uh, what time of the day your kids showered, or, uh, when you were on vacation because no water was used. Lots of, lots of ways to, to use this.

So, so what is a waterless car wash?

Yeah, that's, uh, looks like a spray bottle, but that's got water in it.

And the steam pot.

So I'm not going to tell you, Mayor. I'm going to have you log in and search that out yourself.

That's the dry shampoo.

So you can detect your own leaks.

This is—

this shows a month's worth of data of an unnamed citizen of Orem.

They are named.

What are you talking about?

So this is— this is my household. Oh, that's your zone. So from January 1st to February 1st, and you can see that, you know, we— this was me as well. So 214 gallons per day is what we average in my And it even tells you, maybe it's not— oh, here, down here. Nice. I got a nice work. I'm at 214, average is 208, efficient's considered 142. So I got some work to do. But when you have several older teenagers and young adults living with you, they tend to—

Yeah, you figure out what a waterless car wash is.

You—

so anyway, you can, you can see the ups and downs that happen, probably laundry day, or who knows what those peaks are, but it allows you to zoom in. We mentioned, we mentioned that you can use it to—

can I move this?

Yep. So this, you recognize this name right here. This is Uh, Carlo Kolowitz. He's our IT division manager. Um, he was part of the, uh, the group that we approached, including the city council. We sent you all an invitation to log in and test this out for us. And Carlo, as an Orem resident, we asked, hey, would you do this? I sent it to him right about here in the middle of January, towards the end of January. And took him a couple days to actually log in, but he did, and he started to look at it and noticed an anomaly. And he started scratching his head and said, what's going on here? I think I have a leak because it's suggesting an increased amount of water that was being used. It started on January 1st and slowly got worse and worse and worse and worse. He logged in. Figured it out, said, I've got to do something. And so he did, and you can see that this is the day that he fixed it because there was not as much waste that day, and then back to a normal water use. So, had he had this, it could have detected that leak much earlier and let him know. So, this is the type of tool that will be really beneficial to the residents in Orem when they get this set up.

And So, so is this, is this something they can set up now, or is this something we're working our way up to?

Yes, it can be set up now. However, I'll get to our rollout, how we're planning to roll it out. But later, in a matter of a few months, we hope to have the entire city connected to this.

Carlo, can you, can you share what the lead was? Yeah, so I had a great grad foundation. Main line in the house broke, leaking 3 gallons a minute. Well, you couldn't tell that that was happening? No water on the surface, no water. We didn't find the leak. We didn't have water till we were 3.5 feet down. Wow. And, uh, I dug different places in the yard where I suspected it could be first, and it was dry. So it wasn't until we decided we had to chase the entire line. So we started at the house and went backwards at that point.

So this won't tell you where it's at, but it'll tell you to start looking. Okay, so you can track your weekly water usage. Again, this is, this is my house. You can see we shower in the morning and then a little bit at night. Shower in the morning, this was— don't know what was happening here, but you can see the peaks and valleys that That, uh, that occur. Uh, this is the hourly water usage, um, on Wednesday, January 31st. It's like somebody got up in the middle of the night, bathroom. Since our day starts around 6:00 AM, uh, pretty normal use all through, through the, through the day. So moving forward, uh, Mayor, this, this gets to what the question that you just asked. So, all of you received a welcome letter with instructions on how to create an account. You basically just need your account number and your zip code, and then it will walk you through creating an account using your email address and creating a password. Once you have that email address and password registered, then when you log in through mywater.orum.org, you'll be able to, to see this. Anybody that knows their account number and their zip code could get in today and do that. However, we don't want that widely broadcast just because there's still a few bugs that we, that we've identified through this process that we're, that we're cleaning up and hope to have cleaned up in the next couple of weeks. So at the beginning of March, we plan on reaching out to 1,000 residences in Quad 1. Quad 1, is that northwest?

Yep.

So in northwest Orem, and we'll send the letter out, a copy of which you all received, but it will look very similar to that with the instructions to— on how to log in. And that's when we'll see how many calls we get in 311. The following week, we plan to do Quad 2 with 1,000. So the first month, we plan to do 1,000 in each quad. There's about roughly 4,000 in each quad. So if we rolled it out slowly, we would be done in 4 months. But if it's successful and we don't inundate our 311 customer service center, we could ramp it up to get it out sooner. We want to get it out for the irrigation season for summer, because that's when most of the water can be conserved, and people are most keenly aware or want to be keenly aware of what they're using, and they have this tool available to them now. So that's all I've got. It's pretty exciting. I appreciate the feedback that we've received. This is Gail. Gail sent some great feedback on just making it a little clearer of what you need to do. A simple change that we can make to the letter, um, to, to, to, so that when the residents get it, they— it's clear that, okay, this is what I need to do. There were dashes that we had in our, in our, uh, um, account numbers. Now you can include the dashes or not include the dashes. So, uh, before it was— didn't work at first, but then I took the dashes out and now it works. Well, let's, let's make it so that Either works, and that's a functionality that's been implemented as well. So we're doing what we can to, to, to make it as easy as possible. We're also looking into another, another comment that was made was, I'm on automatic billing, but it says pay my bill here. Is this going to— Is this going to affect my automatic billing? And so we need to make sure that the message is clear that if you're on automatic billing, things aren't going to change at all. Don't worry about it. So we're trying to make that clearer. So we've had some great feedback. We anticipate and feel that we've prepared well to have a good Fleet rollout. It's just that time where we're ready to pull the trigger and we're optimistic that things will go well. Happy to field any questions that you might have.

Would it help if we made some training videos like logging in, showing people all this kind of stuff?

Yeah, sure.

I'm sure we could, but it's, it's a timing thing. We don't want to— we don't want to send it out to the entire city when we're rolling it out. So we could work with you to figure out strategically how to do that.

Yeah, just kind of a resource that people can look into step by step. Yeah, that's pretty easy.

That's a great idea.

Well, are you going to put it on social media too? I think it'd be fun to say, do you know you can detect water leaks at your house now?

I think that'd be fun.

I think when the time's right, we do it.

Probably do it after everything was rolled out, right?

Yeah, yeah, that'd be great.

So that might be something to keep pushing over the course of the year.

Absolutely.

So, Brent, uh, we still sending out the service warranty, you know, for people to sign up for their water and, and a week. So yes, because that's, that's huge. I mean, because cost you $100 a year and could save you thousands of dollars on your— if you have a break, if you're House or whatever.

So that's a good point.

Timing-wise, we might target a kind of a reeducation that the leaks sort of between the house and the main line, right?

Or the meter street.

Most of the leaks I think that you're gonna— that we're going to realize are not going to be on the coils. However, what you're suggesting I think is something that we need to do. We will reach out. And make sure that, you know, he's aware of Service Line Warranties of America. I think it's been very helpful. It's about $6 a month for water, $6 for sewer, and it covers you from the meter to the home, to the foundation for water. And for sewer, it covers you from your connection to the sewer main in the street, which is typically in the street, to your foundation, not inside your home, but there. Otherwise, they do offer warranties inside of your home as well. For water and sewer. And you may have been receiving notices recently from— is it Dominion on your gas?

Right.

It's the same company that's offering that same warrant, similar warranty for that utility. So your gas line from the meter, which is usually maybe just outside the foundation of your home to the inside of your home, that's yours to maintain. You own it, and that's your responsibility. So It's a good education process. I think we should press forward and do that. Getting back to the, the toilet leak, though, I think we're going to realize people are really using this. That I'd say maybe 20% of the community has leaks to some degree. It might be higher than that because toilet flapper, just the flapper gasket that you have in your toilet. That can go bad in just a short amount of time, depending on use. You know, it could be degraded or whatever. It could be just constantly— it's not setting or seating properly. And to most people, you can't even hear it, but there might be a small leak and it adds up really quickly. Reed, I think, didn't you have one?

Yeah, I've had several where it just gets set.

It doesn't seat properly sometimes.

I trained my kids to listen. That's been running for a while. I should say something to Dad.

But that kind of, that kind of an issue in the wintertime, for example, when your bill should have been 8,000 or 7,000 gallons, maybe you were up around 10,000 or 11,000 or 12,000. Well, not only does it— not only on your toilet. So that not only will affect your water bill for that, the 4 or 5 months in the winter, but that'll also be used to calculate your sewer for the next 12 months. So it's, it's gonna— it's a double, double hit to the consumer. This is gonna, I think, be widely accepted and appreciated, I think, by the community at large if they use it properly.

Yeah, this was a significant effort. Our team— introduce you to Quinn Tyler Pay sitting in the back. He used to be over the AMI. He got it started back in 2018. Neil Wincherton, who, who was my predecessor in this position, he got it started, and then I brought it to the finish line with our, with our team. It was a significant effort that involved the entire water section, not just the water utility group. We needed to get our distribution guys to help us to do it, our water supply guys to come and participate as well. If it hadn't been for them, this would continue to drag because it was such a significant effort. Go ahead. have a great group of— a great crew that work hard, and we're finally where we were— where we want to be.

So if I could just emphasize, and I know you already started to do this, but yeah, as we are rolling this out and as you hear complaints or concerns or ideas how we can educate and use this resource, please let us know and we can continue to Make the service better, make the user interface better.

Just if I could add to the My Water user interface, it's not just for water, it's for everything on the city bill. So people will be able to see their city bill at their fingertips anytime they want. So this is, this is going to be a resource that we're going to tap into to be able to share all of your information for your billing. I see that it's available in Spanish too already, or will be. I clicked on the Spanish link and it's like everything's in Spanish.

It's also in Spanish.

Thank you.

Okay, well, you've been a great crowd as usual.

Any other questions?

Just great work on this. Thanks.

Thanks, Reed. Thanks, your team. Thank you.

All right, we'll move on to item number 4. Oh, we've got Youth Fire Smart and Youth Fire Education Programs, uh, by Brandon Byers.

Thank you, Scott. Yeah, the A-team's just coming in.

Come on up.

A-team.

Yes, I'm all good.

Yeah, I like your air fresheners in here. It smells really good.

Chinese air freshener.

Chinese air freshener.

All right, the mayor's turned the time over to you, so go ahead with your presentation.

Is that okay, Teresa? Sorry. Thanks, Pete. You're surprised.

Is that—

do I need to put it in the HTML now? Yeah, hold up.

It takes our kids a long time to start fires.

I want to know what kids that is that it takes a long time to start fires. It's harder than you think.

Okay, well, thanks guys. Appreciate you having us here.

Oh yes, you want to just go first, Sketcher? Let's do that.

Thank you.

2 different programs.

So I'll just— I don't know if you introduced us at all, Chief, or not. I did not. Okay, well, Scott Beard, I'll be with the city, uh, 17 years, um, new to fire prevention the last 6 months or so, so this is a new kind of new position for me. Um, Chief asked me to do a quick overview on A new program that we started. Um, both our programs kind of go hand in hand and dovetail really well together. But this, this is a program that treats kids that have complex fire obsession with fire.

Um, there's 75 on the current fire department, just so y'all know.

Well, and so we all have the And they—

Sorry, crew.

Interest in fire, and kids do too. This is kind of the next layer to that. Kids that might have developmental issues or trauma at home, and they, they kind of act out through starting fires. So when I first heard this program, Youth Fire Setting, you're probably thinking, are we teaching kids to start fires?

That's not the case.

We're not teaching kids to start fires. So according to FEMA, fire setting, youth fire setting is a complex pattern of behavior in which a child or adolescent starts fires either accidentally or intentionally. Factors in classifying fire setting include intentionality, damage caused, frequency, and interest versus actually starting fires. Youth that develop an unsafe relationship with fire.

All right, okay, still see that.

So really 3 types of this. Um, those underage, 7 years old, who start fires accidentally from curiosity, like a lot of us have done, right? Um, Children 8 to 12, those who may start fires due to psychosocial conflicts, behavioral issues. And then ages 13 to 18 are kind of the, the age group that where it gets more into criminal arson. Um, a lot of that peaks on the child's history of fire, of fire setting. So that's kind of a later stage.

Mm-hmm.

It does progress. Uh, this is the, the program's flyer that we sent out to all school administrators through Orem, Linden, and Vineyard. Um, just kind of talks a little about what, what fire setting is and what, what to do if they come across a student that might have this type of behavior, or a concerned parent that comes in at school and, um, wants help for their child. So it's contact information.

Wow.

A lot of it. So every school should have this at their disposal to Refer back to. Like I said, a big part of this main main main objective is this is early fire education. I want to get in the kids' heads, giving them parameters on when it's when it's safe to use fire and and to experiment with fire with with proper supervision intervention for children and teens that need further help.

This is what this program is for.

So our youth fire setting program will be implemented when it is more severe. Proper intervention can be accomplished by identifying motivation for fire play and then redirecting the child's creativity and energies into a more healthy form. This is what it looks like. So if you have a child or teen that's having an issue with this, We have a 5-step program. So, step 1 is an interview with the guardian and child to obtain a case history for a better understanding of the problem. Step 2, identify the motivation for fire setting behavior. If it's just curiosity, if they are trying to harm themselves or others. Step 3, educate the child on the dangers of fire and fire play.

What the difference is there.

Send the child home. We have an interactive workbook. And that's something they take home with the family. They complete as a family with, you know, fire rescue plans, how to safely store fire materials and ignition sources, stuff like that. And step 5, we do a 2-week follow-up. So they bring this workbook back, we go through it with them. And we give them a certificate, a reward for completing this program. And oftentimes we'll have them come to the firehouse, we'll give them a tour of the firehouse, that type of thing. There's always got to be some sort of reward there. And some of these kids need more help than we can provide. So we have a, obviously, a scope of practice as firemen, and we do have other resources available. through school resource officers, counselors, victim advocates, local counseling professionals. And we have a good working relationship with the— our PD. And our point man for that is Detective Rollenberg.

He's worked closely, closely with us in this program.

So, um, it's, it's something that we've had in place. We're just trying to rejuvenate And kind of make this a bigger program. And we saw some, some areas where we could improve.

So we're initiating that process now. So any questions or—

So have you received any feedback on effectiveness or positive outcomes?

So this is a very early program. And this isn't stuff we use every day or even every week, right? It's just when this type of scenario arises. So we haven't had any successful graduates yet or need for it yet.

Yeah.

So we did a couple months ago, had a child who lit a fire in a trailer home. Parents weren't home. He was experimenting with a lighter and burned the whole trailer down. So, There is a big need for it. Um, we just haven't had a real clear direction as far as at this point, you know, it's just been fire safety education. That's it.

We're now—

we have a process to follow.

So, any kind of idea how many kids we're talking that might be able to benefit from this?

Last year or so, yes. I mean, I'm thinking 5 to 10 might fall in this category each year. In the past, we get called out to maybe a brush fire from fireworks, and it was just, hey, don't do that anymore, you know. And so we're trying to capture those kids to get them into this program, and I imagine us seeing more now that we're more heads up with it.

So, Scott, do you mind if I check in? Yeah, go ahead. So one of the things— this program isn't just new for For the cities that we serve. Provo also just started this program. Lehi is kind of a little bit further along, but it's still a relatively new program. But one of the best things about it is it started the communication between agencies. So if there's a trend that's going on in one city, we now have an investigation in our city where we can go and we can talk about this with all the surrounding agencies. know what, we did have one that was really similar to that. Let's get together and see if what you had matches what we had, and then maybe we can tie it in and get help for these kids a little beyond what you say.

Most importantly, I want everybody to recognize is that without the leadership and direction from the mayor and the council and administration in wanting Orem to have the very best fire department by supporting an increase support to our fire prevention, which for 20 years has always just been a necessity. It's never been— I mean, it's never been a real strong focus. With the different change in leadership and the ability to increase staffing, it's allowed us to bring these programs into play where previously administrations and budgets just didn't support prevention. Where with our new administration's focus on if we can prevent the event, then— That's really, that's really what's saving the tax dollars and the, the community, the property damage.

And then who knows where these kids end up if we don't get it early.

There is a trend.

If we don't catch it early, turns into criminal arson and they're in prison. So this is a, a big indicator of future issues with the law down the road. So if we can get it early with his program, fire education, Getting the kids to have buy-in with community safety. That's, that's the main focus of this. But we do have a 2nd tier.

So when those kids do fall through, we need extra help.

And again, fire departments that don't have a focus in fire prevention, they can never say that they're the best fire department. So that's— this is our— I mean, this is a huge push over the last 18 months plus.

And it'll be evolving as we do get more experience with these kids coming through. It'll, it'll be more streamlined process, but it's, this is the infancy of this program. And we feel good about it.

So, maybe the prevention aspect is the most important critical part of why we're doing this.

But we've also heard Chief Sanderson promise over and over that we were going to be proactively just getting out into the public and interfacing with our residents with more programs, more education, more events. And so, This is to some extent a return report on some specific actions we're taking in that regard as well.

And along that same line, I'm just going to challenge Brandon to bring cases forward where we do get a lead so that on a quarterly basis, if we have something, you can have a regular update or at least some information to show that it's actually helping our communities.

Do, do kids need to show some kind of high-risk tendencies to go through the class, or could it just be like, could Scout groups and youth groups.

And that's kind of more his program. Oh, that initial fire safety program is, is what he's gonna be talking about. Um, what I discussed was that second phase, that if there is an issue that needs more, more focus, more treatment.

Okay.

Um, but yeah, Brandon, go ahead.

Everybody knows. Okay, thanks, Scott.

Scott's done a really good job with that.

He's put a lot of time and effort into that. Get this one up here.

And just to echo the—

looks like it fell right there.

There you go, pull that cord.

Thank you.

Just to echo Chief's comments, we really, we really appreciate all the support we've been given.

It's definitely received and appreciated and recognized.

Um, and, and by doing that, I think it affects the whole community.

So Thank you, guys.

Okay, so this title of this program isn't trademarked, so don't look too deep into this.

Working on it.

So talking about education of the public, right? As, as firefighters, there's a lot of us, and we've, we've all seen a lot of hard things, from the very new firefighter to the more senior firefighters. Maybe Scott is pretty senior. Seen a lot of hard things. We've been there for a lot of people's difficult circumstances, loss of family members, loss of a home. And if we could all go back, And do something to help prevent that, even for just one person, I think would make it worthwhile. And that's what we're doing. This is, this is where we do it. We do it where they're young and impressionable, and we fill their minds with fire safety facts.

Okay.

Um, they can, from an early age, right? Those things can be ingrained in. And they're more likely to adopt and maintain those safe practices through their lives. So, who remembers from their childhood perhaps meeting a firefighter, paramedic, EMS? Raise your hands. Anybody? They're still there.

I got a cough.

You still have those memories in there, and I assume they're positive. Maybe they weren't. Maybe you needed help when you were younger. But everybody remembers a time when they met a firefighter, whether at the fire station or they came to their school. I remember in preschool going to a fire station. That's literally the only memory I had, but it was, it was a positive memory, and they were nice, and they cared about us. And that's the basic concept we want to get across to get them to understand that we're there for their for them to help them, right? And, and that's the age— I swear, past 3rd grade they know everything, and before that they don't quite remember it, right? Okay, so with, with little acts, uh, you can have a big impact on a whole community. Um, when you teach them these fire safety principles, those kids will go out. They're all very more responsible than we give them credit for. They're going to go out and they're going to talk to their friends. Right? They're going to talk to their family members. They're going to say, we need to do this, we shouldn't do that. You can't tell me your kids haven't told you what to do and how to do it, right? Even from a young age. And that's, that's going to help the whole community just through the youth.

Okay.

Now, I guess this is kind of a job security killer for us too. By reducing incidents. But honestly, I think, like I said in the beginning, I think we can all deal with less tragedy in this life. I think that would be super worthwhile. And then they can go on throughout their lives and have a great understanding of the importance of fire safety and, and how to be safe around Not only fires, but just in life in general, right? Wearing seatbelts, things like that. And then they're more likely to be advocates of ours in the community and throughout their whole lives. So the plan, the plan is to start with 1 class a week of 1st graders and to ramp up as staffing and scheduling permits from there. And to teach about the dangers of fire, gain comfort with firefighters, go over principles, super simple principles. Smoke rises, stay low in smoke, crawl on the ground, work on an escape plan. And then in the future, we want to work into kind of larger audiences, not just a single class format, but maybe Maybe an assembly, maybe have some props. Perhaps they can practice escaping from a window, something that their parents will probably never let them do, right? So I think that'd be really worthwhile to maybe work into that. So any questions, comments, suggestions, concerns?

I totally remember being a kid and them going to school and then sending home some paperwork that said, okay, what's your fire escape plan?

I went home and said, Mom, we got to do this.

And we did it. And now as an adult, I, I like, I just don't think of those things. But if my kid comes to me and says, hey, we got to do this, I'm more likely to say, oh, let's do this. I think it's the whole family involved.

Yeah, no, that's great. I appreciate you saying that. Yeah, we all have those memories, right? That's what we hope for.

As large as our fire department is and the focus we have, these are things that we need to be doing. We need to be on the public's eye. And solving the issue before it happens, because they're still going to happen. But if we can prevent 1 or 2 a year, you're talking millions of dollars worth of property damage or a single life that we could influence. And these 2 programs just lead into an additional program that we're currently working on that Carrie challenged us with. It's a high school explorers program that we'll be presenting to you over the next couple of months. Um, but it's just early recruitment is really what it is. And if we can, if we can entertain the grade school, high school kids within our own communities, then we can employ the people that live in our community. Um, and hopefully they'll stay. I mean, it's, it's awesome to work in the community you serve. Unfortunately, without these kind of programs, we just don't have that same influence. And so, with your guys' continued support, which we appreciate. I think we're going to make a difference over the next 10, 15, 25 years. So it's exciting for all of us.

So how are you rolling it out?

I mean, how are you picking—

you picking a certain school, or—

So I, I've already reached out to all the local elementary schools and, I believe, charter schools as well, and, uh, just sent messages to the administrators to let their teachers know, uh, that it's available. We've already done one class. We've got others coming up. This isn't something super new, but we've been super, uh, I guess busy rolling out other programs, and we've— we're trying to get back at it and, and do a better job. And we realize the importance of it, you know. So this is just phase 1. Like Scott said, his is kind of a phase 2. Our, our objective in the beginning is to kind of net every child and to, uh, have an influence on them. And his is more specific as we get into that. And then Networking throughout all those schools. They're all aware of both programs.

And, uh, to the point, we don't know the children we impact until we actually interface, teach these classes, and explore and get into their own heads in the environment. We don't know how many kids actually need the help that Scott outlined. I mean, right, this may completely vary as far as a workload.

Yeah.

But that's something that we'll just continue to address. to make a priority and, and bring it to your attention so you can understand the true need within our community.

Got some turn-ups here if somebody wants to try them on.

Well, before, before COVID we'd have a lot of groups come to the station for tours. That was kind of how we did a lot of our PRs. But this is more of a, a progressive, actually going out and searching and scheduling these appointments and going to the schools and Instead of being more reactive, it's— we're actually—

we've got a plan. We're targeting certain schools.

And how these develop— how these develop into community programs, especially with the new city hall. If you think of the second floor with our EOC and the size of classroom that is, there's no reason why these programs can't develop into some form of regular class on a regular schedule that bring the community into our facility, show off our new Absolutely. Then provide them with the necessary education so they know the resource when they need help.

Is that like with the, the Citizens Police Academy?

You could do the fire or anything?

Absolutely.

I mean, it's really, it's really crazy when you look at how busy our guys are, the call volumes run, service we deliver. We just— there's just honestly never been a focus in fire prevention. Um, they, they've always had 1 or 2 positions that has— we've met the basic requirements to do annual inspections to keep our business owners happy. We've never been able to do anything like this because you try to tax the guys that are working on the floor, as soon as they schedule a class, they got an emergency, and that whole class blows up. And so with dedicated personnel that can provide these with support from the guys that are on duty every day, it just— it's making a program or programs that are winnable, and it'll just make us that much better. Total wins to most all 3 cities.

And so along with all those programs like your CERT and like police, and so all those things are powerful, like Keith's doing right now on the CERT. They're just citizen awareness and pulling in the community to be aware, really helping each other in all these needs. So that's—

We'll have the facility that will house it. It's just on— it's It's really on us to organize it and then schedule it out and make it available. It's wonderful.

Thank you. So what is it, you have like 4 of you go to the elementary school? How— what's it look like?

Well, kind of depending on the event. If it's a larger assembly, I assume you'd have at least 2. You gotta herd cats, right? It takes a few people to do that. Um, the smaller class, you know, 10, 15 kids, I think it's just fine for one person to go in. Typically there's 1 to 2 teachers as well to kind of assist, but I typically go on my own if I were to do it.

And you got these cute little things for them.

Yeah, they like that. They get to try it on, they get to feel like big kids.

Do you have a hat?

You pass out, right?

Have some papers, right, for escape plans to take home for them to fill out.

One of the most important things too is if it's scheduled out in advance, I mean, everybody wants to see the guys in a fire truck. They love these guys, but they drive a pickup truck. That's not nearly as cool as the fire engines we drive. Super not exciting. And so when they can show up with a fire engine, given the call volume, it just bolsters his program.

That was my next question, is you'll take the engine if it's available?

Absolutely. The neat thing is, is that most of us are engine qualified. We can drive the engine.

So if there's—

we have backup apparatus, so we can take it. Absolutely.

Yep.

Yep.

Thanks. Thank you for your time, everybody.

Appreciate what you guys do.

Thank you so much. I'd just like to second, like, these, these guys are awesome. When I came in in April of last year, this was my ultimate goal, to take care of the nuts and bolts of getting the annual inspections and the businesses taken care of, but eventually getting to where it's the community service aspect of it, to where we're getting in touch with children and families and and hopefully just saving one. I mean, that's what it's all about.

That's right.

Thank you.

Thanks so much.

Thank you, guys.

Thanks.

Nobody wanted to try these on?

Oh my God, I'm going to try it on for sure.

I'm excited about it too, but I'm with, uh, actually PJ Robinson. I met Officer Friendly first.

This isn't police— this isn't Please stop.

You just asked, I answered.

That was a good answer.

You should have asked. I learned how to play ping pong at the fire station when I was a kid.

All right, um, we appreciate that. I think we're just going to run through this because— and then we can meet after that. We've got— we're going to review the agenda. Dave Spencer, did you want to make a report on some information?

Yeah, I mean, since we have met for 1 month, I can't go over what I, you know, report to you, I guess.

Maybe just tell us the commissions that you work on.

So I'm on the Planning Commission.

We've had 2 meetings and It's Planning Commission, so it's for Steve.

Um, Recreation Advisory Commission— I've never been on that one before. We went over the 10-year plan budget for CARE because it just passed last year, so we're working on that. And Bryce has got some great ideas, so, um, definitely would be money well spent using the money for all the projects we have in New Orleans. Um, Senior Citizens Advisory Commission Gina's doing an excellent job.

Um, and, uh, it's—

they do a lot. They, they cook meals every day over there, um, and serve the, the seniors.

And anybody can eat there for $5 at lunch, so it's a, it's a very good meal.

So the fire administration just announced their bingo games today, this afternoon.

Nice.

And so it was Chief Williams and, uh, over there Make it— have a fun time during the lunch hour.

That's it.

They're, they're hoots. So, and then public safety advisory, that's, uh, I think we're revamping that.

You start over.

But one of the benefits, I mean, we— Councilman Spencer just whispered in my ear, is, is there a way to— we've always been trying with the development of this commission, we've tried to work with Josh trying to figure out, okay, how can they really impact public safety in our community? Well, maybe some of these type of events along with some of the programs that the PD has, we can involve this commission and help get our message out and how we're trying to touch the community. This may be the avenue that lights the fire under this committee that really hasn't gone anywhere.

And then I'm on the, the Care Commission with Jeff Lamson, and that, uh, we'll meet April 25th and May 7th, do the recommendations for the many in the medium grants.

That's it.

Okay, thank you.

Would you like to make a motion?

Tom asked why we didn't—

no, that's why you never got on.

I tried to make a motion, nobody seconded me.

I mean, I know, I'm just kidding.

No, you're not.

Okay, all right, um, We'll go through the agenda.

Try that again this week. We'll see.

I'll make a motion in there.

All right, um, so item 3, call to order. Item 4, invitation, uh, and pledge. Uh, Jared and Liz Churchill are friends of mine. We asked to, uh, if you would confirm the pledge, we'll introduce them. Uh, we've got item 6.1, highlights of the fire award banquet.

That's been well publicized too, I guess. Peter, I guess you're doing that with, uh, on social media. It's been nice to see those posts. Thank you.

And Shane, will I just invite you up and you'll take that?

Yep.

I'm just going to take a couple minutes and show a quick video that I think we've submitted. May have already seen it on our social media, and then just talk through our viewing program. The benefits of it.

Okay, sounds good. Um, and then presentation 6.2, employees' platform. Pete, you're gonna take care of that?

That's right.

And we'll have our personal appearances.

Um, and we'll go into our consent items. Uh, there's approval of meeting minutes. There's an appointment to the Employment Advisory Trust Commission. Appointment to the Cultural Arts Commission or Council, uh, an appointment to the CDBG Advisory Commission, and appointments— several appointments to our Neighborhood Advisory Commission. Then item 9, we've got a conditional use permit. Um, Jason will present it to us.

Is there anything you need to know about that, Jason? No, other than it's 15,000 square feet for personal use. Part of the neighborhood funders was going to be rented out to businesses.

Okay, so you'll, you'll present that to us. And then, uh, item 9.2 is public hearing, uh, on the rezoning for amending the signing zone for Maverick Limited located at 1129 South New Road.

Uh, any, any advance on that? That was just matching what was currently across the street at Sheldon, so it's really just—

okay.

And then item 9.3, a map amendment amending the Lakeview area street connection master plan to eliminate the street connections between 1430 South and 400 West.

Mayor, you had asked for us to reply on whether we needed a public hearing, and I gave my information to Steve, and I guess others did So this is not public hearing, is that correct? You had that last week or two?

Is that what you came back with, Steve?

Well, we never really got a consensus on that. So it's not a required public hearing. You don't have to take public comments. So it's really entirely up to you whether you want to take additional comments or not.

You're not required to. I've had a fair few public comments. And my guess is most of us have been to the property. I've heard that most all of you the property. So I don't feel a big need for that. I'm ready to make a motion.

And I'm ready to second it.

I guess my thoughts are, there were people who didn't come last time because the mailer said it wasn't a public hearing. So to be fair, I would almost say if you spoke last time, we don't want— you know, we heard you. But if you didn't come and you're coming now and you came today, maybe we should give them an opportunity.

So can we have a partial public hearing?

If you wanted to, I think you could do that.

I think that's a reasonable limitation.

Do we want to say if you were here last time, that was your opportunity?

In the neighborhood meeting, they said, oh, it's not a public hearing.

I stood up and said, yes, it is.

It is a public hearing. Everybody can speak. And then those people that were very vocal there did not come. But so I did tell them that there wasn't—

it wasn't a public meeting. So, Jesse, I think if you open it up, you're going to have people that will object that the developer spoke last and they would have said something different. So, even though they spoke last time, they have something new to say. And so if you open it up, I think everybody will want to speak. And I think that if you've had the public hearing, you've satisfied the code. But I think a limited public hearing, I think people are going to say, well, wait a minute, I didn't really get to say all I wanted to say because the developers spoke last.

Well, so, but that's a misunderstanding. The developer always gets to speak last. They're at the table. They can speak whenever they want.

Right?

That—

no, there's no—

well, I mean, if we ask them questions after we close the public hearing, it happens often that way.

Because yeah, oftentimes the developer, you know, the councilor, the mayor might ask the developer to respond to the neighborhood points that were brought up. So that does happen.

So unfortunately, that appeared to be a different thing because we didn't invite him up to the table at the very beginning. But honestly, that happens. It wasn't anything that was unusual, correct?

Wasn't anything nefarious or anything like that, and didn't violate any required procedure or anything like that.

It's—

yeah, and I mean, I feel that I understand where they're coming from.

I've been in the audience and I've been irritated by things that the developer has said after I've not allowed them to speak anymore.

idea of the moment.

I'll let you later.

So that's my opinion.

I, I said the email.

I said I had people ask me and I said it's up to the mayor.

So there you go.

Oh, thank you.

I mean, I think— did we even discuss it for like—

Tom wasn't here a long time.

It was a long time.

So I mean, I'm—

everybody, thank you for your opinion.

Everybody knows where I'm, I'm at. And I sent an email to Steve, and I did respond. So I said, yeah, I just said, hey, I think we've heard enough, and I think we need to move on because it's a—

Opportunity in the interim to reach out to us multiple times.

Oh yeah, 20, 30 emails today.

Yeah, yeah.

So we've got a lot of emails. We had a major conversation last time.

Yes.

And just so we're clear, we had other meetings as well.

Yeah, so it sounds like this is more like saying we've covered this.

Is that what I'm getting from the group?

I think so.

So yeah, I would think so.

I'm sensitive to—

I have my opinion. I'm fine with being in minority.

Yeah, no, I lean towards letting the systems go as much as they want to go. I mean, up to a point. know, but making sure that they're heard. But I do feel like they were heard last week, and I feel like 2 weeks ago, whenever it was. Um, so I'm fine with whatever council, the group prefers.

I don't—

just so you—

I prefer not to have— You prefer not to? You prefer not? What does everybody else prefer?

People who didn't— weren't here, who were not here last week. Even if you were here, if you were here, you didn't take your opportunity. So it's just people who— new people this week.

Okay.

And everybody else?

That's my opinion.

I'm good to go. You think?

I didn't hear you, Jeff.

I said I'm good to go. I think I've heard a lot from both sides.

I also feel like I've heard a lot and tried to thoroughly research both sides.

Same.

And I've driven and talked to many private citizens through my drive. So I've got inundated with emails, you know.

So, okay, so I think we'll just—

that would be a closed continuation of last time.

Maybe express that we've received lots of information even today, and we've carefully pondered all of it, right, from all sides, right?

Okay, uh, so we'll do that, and then, uh, I'm sorry, I didn't respond to that.

Thank you.

Um, and then, yeah, item 10, monthly financial summary, we don't really do anything on that. Uh, 6, the manager information item, item 11, and then we'll adjourn.

I'm ready to make a motion on number 12.

Okay, so we have, um, just a couple quick announcements. Uh, it was Jen's birthday on, uh, January— February 8th.

Yes.

And so we have some special treats with the food. Oh yeah, I want to wish you a happy birthday.

Nice work. And then, uh, just real quickly, Greg Stearden asked if he could, uh, introduce something that he's going to do this next week.

On Thursday, day after tomorrow, I'm doing a one-man show at Library Hall as Ben Franklin. For the last 6 years, I've been Ben Franklin at the Sierra for the 4th of July, but I'll be doing forgotten founders' stories, like a teenage girl that helped save General Lafayette's command just before Yorktown, that Andrew Jackson was alive during the Revolution and was a 12-year-old boy that worked with the militia. Little things like that that we don't tell each other, or they don't teach in school anymore. But, um, Thursday night, 7 PM, and the important thing is it's free. Thank you, Greg.

All right, can we have a, a blessing on the food, and then we'll—

did you want to have a motion to adjourn first, Mayor?

Yes.

Did you already do that?

Do we adjourn this meeting?

Well, I think you're at the end of the agenda. Did you want to adjourn then?

That way we can stop recording if you want.

Yeah, let's do that. And we'll adjourn then. We'll have a bar meeting.

Do you motion to adjourn from a work meeting? I don't remember ever doing that before.

You've done it once or twice if the meeting ends.

Okay, I'm happy to make a motion to adjourn. Second.

Okay, good.

Hi.

Okay, return.

Then do we have a volunteer for the prayer?

I'll do it. Okay, our beloved Father in heaven, we're grateful for this opportunity we have to gather here today and to conduct the business of the city and to hear from the great presenters that we've heard from today and the efforts that are being made for the residents. We pray, Father, that we can continue in that Um, path and have thy blessing to be upon us. We also pray at this time, Father, for a blessing upon this food. It may nourish and strengthen our bodies and help us to use that strength.

Test, test, test.

Go.