City Council · 2024-04-09

Yes, welcome. We have a different assignment for us than we usually do, so this will be interesting.

We'll turn this to— we'll go ahead and start.

We'll open our work session and we'll turn the time to Karina.

Thank you.

I actually am going to turn the time to—

right, perfect.

We got a whole thing going for us, you know.

Well, we're, we're excited to be with y'all today. It's, it is wild to me to think that events is a year old and also only a year old. It feels like we've been doing this forever, but we're really excited about what we have to present today. We as an events team, obviously Sydney and Karina, myself, and all, all the departments really pitch in on these. We set out a year ago to start to create a calendar of sort of community pillar events. We love Orem Fest and what that does, you know, the first week of June. It's just such a fun event. We were able to add in our Lights On experience this last year. We enjoy partnership with a number of other organizations that help us bring events to life through the Sierra, through our partnership with IHC for the Fall Festival, or with University Place for our Touch-a-Truck. And so we always want to be cognizant of the greater calendar of community events and work with these other organizations. But we think we have identified our next community pillar size event. A lot of this is based off of the feedback that y'all as council have provided to us in terms of our areas of focus. We wanted to do something that we think highlights the unique business environment, specifically around food. We think we have something that highlights the unique cultural aspects of our community and brings us together. This is a revamp of an existing defunct event, Taste of Orem. But we have— we're lucky enough to have Corinna, who has given it the Corinna once-over. And so we're here to present to y'all today the idea or concept of the Taste of Orem event as a fall outdoor community pillar event. So I'll sort of kick it back to our team here.

And it wouldn't be a Corinna event without getting you guys excited about the event. So what you guys have in front of you is an example of what you're going to have with Taste of Orem. And so what myself and Sydney did is that we went to many of the local businesses that we have, and then we have a menu next to it of like the empanada that is from Asado. We have Holy Tacos, we have Frutería, we have the Chubby Baker. We also have the Bangkok Wasabi. And then the other one was Memos, which is a Mexican bakery that is just sort of across the street. So dig in while we tell you about Taste of Orem. So, like I said, so this is a new staple that we are wanting to introduce to Orem City. So this is a food festival as well as a cultural arts event. This is something that we have been tasked with doing this year is finding ways that we can have inclusion with our businesses and with all the different demographics that are You know, different cultures that we have here in Orem. And so what better way to understand culture than through food, which is my favorite way of understanding different cultures.

Let's see.

Okay, so welcome to Taste of Orem. Like Greg said, this is something that was introduced a while ago, and so we are wanting to have our take on what we want it to be, and we want it to be more than a food festival. And we have looked into a market study of like, who else does anything like this? And there's no one else in Utah County that does like a food festival. The reason why we also want to do this is something that is very interesting with Orem Fest. Because of the size of the carnival and the boutiques that we have, we actually turn away about 80% of the food vendors that apply for Orem Fest because The space only allows up to 26 food vendors, and we get about 80 to 90 applications. And so it's hard. And so we're like, okay, let's take that and let's make it its own thing because everyone loves food. And then we also want to introduce all of the, as you can see, amazing restaurants that we have here in Orem.

Perfect. So we are going back to like, you know, why Taste of Orem? We want this to be again that new staple event in Orem. a couple of those. We have Forum Fest, we have Lights On, and we want this to be a new staple. Um, and like Karina said, yeah, this isn't really an idea that we have in Utah County right now. Again, we've looked in, there's like an option in Salt Lake of— they kind of do a little one. And then obviously there's different food festivals in Park City, but this is big and different for Utah County. And then we want this event to showcase the different culture and arts expressed in our city. We know that there's so much out there and that we know that there's a lot of people that are interested in a lot of this. They just don't really know. And so we want this to help the local businesses as well as have that connection between us and then our residents. And then we just want to celebrate all these different cultures that we have.

There's so many different opportunities.

And so we're going to go into just a little bit about how it works. So actually, I don't know if you guys know this, but I'm from Canada, and back home we have something really similar, and it's super successful. And this is kind of how they did it. And so we were talking to a lot of people, right? departments with finance and with, like, legal. And this is kind of how we wanted to start it. So the event itself is free. We want everybody to come and obviously be included. But we wanted to do like a kind of like a ticket system. And so we have— we'll have several check-in areas throughout the park, and those will be, you know, several tents where you can have like a one-stop shop where you can buy these tickets. And then That would be it. So, for example, we would have 30 tickets for $30. And then we would be working with the businesses. We have had connections and helped talk to Kathy in development with all of her business alliance connections to work with these businesses to create and change their food members to— sorry, food menus to accommodate this. And so each vendor would have these different tiers of ticket menu items. So, as you can see there, there's the ticket tiers. So we would have everyone require everyone to have a sample, and that could be something that is like their best-selling item that they normally create. Can be like a curry, can be like a taco, and that is just 2 to 4 tickets. And so with everything being like a dollar, that kind of works out how they can figure that out. And then we would also have like a meal and then a combo. So similar to how like all food vendors Have them at their, like, food trucks and food booths. It would be a similar payment. It would just be like that one kind of stop shop for the tickets and the pricing so that we can help out with that.

So, like I was saying, we want this to be more than a food festival. We want this to be an experience. And so we want to add in the cultural arts experience. So on our main stage, we would love to have different Um, cultural performances. And so, um, you know, the ones that we see at Orem Fest, we can also see or get new groups that don't get to be at Orem Fest because of, you know, the high demand of wanting to perform. And then we'll have, like, culinary demonstrations. We were thinking about, you know, Just Ingredients. It's a huge business here in Orem, and having them have an hour to go on stage and explain What is just experience? How do you incorporate it into your everyday cooking or your everyday lifestyle? And so having that culinary demonstration, and then we thought something that would be really fun is we'll have A-frames all around the park. And so you can do it, make it kind of like a competition, a camaraderie between the businesses. And so we'll have like the people's choice so they can try these samples, scan that QR code, and then submit their choice. And then We would have a city officials vote. And so that's where you guys will be able to walk around, try the different samples, you'll have the pin, and then you can cast your vote as well. And then we'll have an expert vote where we're hoping to get like UVU culinary or restaurant owners and get their input on just something that is fun and having like a little bit of a competition between the foods. Then we also want to focus on the food lovers experience. So, like I said, we would have those vendors demonstrations, but then we would also have like UVU culinary go out with their students and do some demonstrations or do some education or recruitment to their program. We can also— something that we got really excited about that is very famous in Kansas City is a grilling and smoking competition. And so we have worked with the fire and police and thought about it. They will combine together and it will be like, hey, come see if you can compete against our public safety and compete in a grilling competition at this event. We were thinking about cake decorating and then all of these other examples of things that we can focus on throughout this event and introduce more to the public.

Perfect.

So here's a little bit more about just some of those logistics. We have like the cost offset, so we know that we're making— we have a certain portion. So because we have those ticket sales that we are going to be over, we will be helping to retain that transactional percentage of the ticket sales as well, just to help with businesses. And again, that is Something that we've talked to finance about, that we have talked about the logistics of, as well as looking for those sponsors that Karina mentioned. And some of that will help to have money to go back into events and to the city. And then we also are looking at opportunities that we can help with the Forum Community Foundation, as well as the food pantry. We have, like, the food pantry so close by in the Friendship Center. And so finding a way to incorporate that and then give back to Aurum is something that we also will be doing. And then we also just have the quick park layout. So this is just a little bit— of course, it's like a little bit similar to Aurum Fest, but we have those food tents and vendors in the middle of the park. We have those check-in and ticket stations around. We'll have the barbecue-like competition in the parking lot with the Friendship Center. And then we have some other different options that we can Look into.

So like I said, we have worked tirelessly meeting with every department, getting their input, getting what they think could make this event really successful. And so we have the events team, and these are all of the things that we will be going over or be overseeing. And then of course, the help of everyone in Orem City, because it is just 3 of us. But as much as I have confidence in ourselves, we definitely will be reaching out to different departments to help us out. To pull this off. And then this is just a little bit of a timeline. We will be moving rather quickly on this to get the vendor applications and everything by September, and then it will be held here at City Center Park. So that is Taste of Orem. I would love to open it up to see if you guys have any questions, comments. What's your favorite food that you just tried?

Okay, can I just say one thing? So this is so interesting. I just had a conversation with a friend a couple weeks ago, and she was talking about how she's from Peru, Peruana, right? And she says, I was not a Latina until I came to the States. I was always Peruana, you know, I was always a Peruvian. And so I think this would be great to just highlight they're different. These countries are different. They have different cultures. And in our elementary school, they learn different dances from all the different countries.

And how fun.

to have that brought out, you know, for them to be able to share that. And the Pacific Islanders, right? We've seen all the different cultures there that we can celebrate. And then the food, of course, gotta love that. We're just talking about pouring pigs.

Will we ever pour a pig?

Could we roast a pig?

We can get Chief Sanders to pour a pig.

Yeah, I was like, have you ever been to a Filipino wedding?

Maybe Steve Earl.

Like the little one where they pour the pig?

That is just—

How fun would that be?

Yes.

Anyway, I love it.

I love it.

Thank you.

So Steve, are you gonna let us have fun or not?

I'm very anti-fun.

I could just highlight, you know, of course, we've heard over the years the desire to do more celebration of our, of our different cultures that are living here in Orem, and they're doing business here in Orem.

Meanwhile, we've been having a lot of success in adding bougie and green on a budget events.

And then we've also had a lot of success in recruiting new food businesses. And so, bringing all these things kind of together, we feel like the potential upside or benefit is worth the risk of, you know, maybe falling on our face if we end up not being able to execute perfectly. So there's enough There's enough that seems right with it. It's worth the effort.

But if you've got feedback or questions or concerns—

I've been wanting to do this for years. And I'm so excited and the detail that you pulled together already. If there's anything I can do to help, I would love to help. I just, I think, you know, Going along with what Lene's saying, this is such a wonderful opportunity to pull the community together and to be an Orem family, you know, and just the celebration of culture and food, music, dance is— that will be fun if Steve will let us have fun. No matter what.

Thank you.

No. Oh, yes.

Just one other weird spin on—

have some kind of a competition or demonstration on canning preservation at the county fair. You've got food canning, judging, and that kind of stuff. This would be a good preliminary event for that, which is a different part of a different culture too.

Yeah, that is a good point.

Teaching the young kids how to dance.

Yeah, I do not know how to dance, so that would be a good thing to do. No, thank you.

That's a really good point.

And can I add one more thing? Because I should have added this when I said that before. And I'm learning a lot about the Scandinavian influence. Yes, in our city, from the, the story, right?

The Pioneer Babies.

Huge influence there. So I would like to Have some opportunity to experience that culture too.

Yeah, we're definitely trying to reach out to all of the cultures that we can, because we, again, we have so many different types of restaurants. And so we are doing our—

we're reaching out to everyone and see if we can hit them.

That's perfect. This looks great.

No, and again, thank you guys for your support. I think with myself and Sydney, You know, we are really appreciative that we are given this opportunity to put on an event like this. We could not do it without the support of Bryce and Brandon Ryan, and of course, without the support of you guys. And I know with just that, we're gonna make it so successful, and we're gonna make it a new staple of Laura.

This time next year, as we're reporting on the success of this event, we need a picture on there with all of us.

Yes.

Or we'll say case of aura, and then it'll be like kind of stains everywhere.

Yeah.

Well, that is everything. Thank you guys so much for your time, and enjoy.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Yes, sounds fun.

Awesome.

And this is delicious. Oh, good.

And then let me take it off.

That's what we're so excited. I think we wanted to set the skeleton of the event, and then, you know, we had— I don't know if you can see in the box over on the side, I think we had gone into like a Tailgating meets food experience over there. But then we could go the— we had talked a lot about preserving and canning and our garden demonstrations right there. We had talked about Dutch ovens, the grilling competition. I think as we put the announcement out that this is an event and we want the experiential cooking, I think the right ones will come to us.

And I—

we don't have— we're not set on whether it's, you know, which direction we go. I think we'll just— we just want to hear what's important to our residents and our businesses.

Right.

And then we'll organize the event and the judging and all that around it. But I love the idea of a number of residents going home with blue ribbons for Dutch oven and preserving and grilling and smoking. A number of businesses— I think we've talked about making a really cool, gaudy trophy that goes to these businesses that becomes iconic. We want something that they're going to put front and center so that we know if it's, you know, Chubby Baker or Yonuts or whatever dessert, they want to have this trophy. And, and, and so yeah, we're really excited about taking it whichever direction it goes, you know, as we hear from people.

Can we bring Bobby Flay? Oh, uh, I will do my best.

Whoever wins our competition, Bobby gets him.

There are all kinds of competitions you could have, you know, I mean, like chili cook-offs in the fall, right?

Yes, yes.

Well, yeah, there's like chicken, salmon, ribs. Like, there's so many different ideas that we can go off of.

That's why we have to do it all day so we can have a lunch hour and a dinner hour. Double the amount of food we can consume in one day.

Exactly.

Are you looking at doing mostly at the park?

Yeah.

Yeah, we had talked about some ideas where the events started here and maybe expanded back to the brick-and-mortar restaurants over the next couple of weeks. Some of the other cities that we looked at did more of this tour of restaurants, but I think as we thought about, you know, some of the cultural art celebration festivals, some of the family activity, we, we decided to bring the restaurants and businesses to us. We've seen it work for Orem Fest. And so, yeah, I think we'll be at a park for this one. But again, as we work with the, uh, with Kathy and the Orem Business Alliance, we're definitely open to feedback as we try to make this, you know, sustainable year after year.

Love it.

Sounds good.

Thank you, guys.

Thank you.

I do see it. Okay, next up, number 2, Bryce, Library Community Impact Survey.

I'll slide over here to the driver's seat. Uh, thank you, uh, again, Mayor and Council. Uh, I just wanted to provide an update today. Uh, a couple of months ago, uh, through all of our social media channels, working with the communications team, we sent out a survey from the Orem Public Library, uh, as a community impact, uh, study. This was a big part of our strategic plan that we spent last year putting together. And really trying to solidify our library and where we're at and what we're doing well and what we want to improve on. But it was really important to us that we got some baseline data and information as to how residents use and interact with the public library. We also wanted to start to establish that the library would proactively communicate. We have a wonderful story at the library. We wanted to make sure that we were getting that story out to our residents and that they could understand the work that we were doing and how that was going. As part of our project, our community impact survey, we received 436 responses to our survey. The group that we worked with from the RBDC then followed up and did a number of focus group interviews on the phone or in person, just talking to these residents to hear again, how do they use the library?

What do they love?

What are the challenges? And this was really good to get baseline data so that we could hear the median experience, not necessarily—

Mm-hmm.

you know, maybe the people that would want to call in, or maybe that they're so involved, they love everything, and they're a super user. We just wanted to hear from our residents. And so we, we wanted to ask sort of 2 questions through this process. What was your experience at the library or with the library? And then what kind of impact were we having on our average residents? In your council package, you have access to all of this information. It was about an 80 or 90 page survey. We're not going to go over all that today, but You get a chance to see who uses the library, how long do they come, what are they doing? And what we wanted to ask was, again, are you satisfied? And our information here tells us that we have a really high satisfaction rate. You know, 93% of our people feel that we are meeting their needs. We had only 0.7% of our respondents say that they didn't feel like their needs were being met. We were able to talk to them and say, let's, let's hear about that. And what was great to hear was that the types of issues that they were having with the library, Were pick and screening, you know, they wanted more holds, or they wanted more copies of books, or they wanted to have the book for longer, but also have other people have fewer access to it so they can have more books. You know that we want everything and we want more and we want it now. So it was great to talk to them though, and just hear these, these very day-to-day things that were important. The questions we had asked as pertinent to our strategic plan were, what were we doing well? What changes would you want? Do you trust us? Are we having an impact? And then we had sort of a question that we wanted to answer, and that was, did people view the library as an errand or as a destination? And of course, the answer is both. They need to drop off a book through the drive-through book, or if they just got to go in and grab a hold and get out of there, we're an errand. They do that on the way to the grocery store or after-school pickup or something similar. For the other, for 51% of the respondents, we were a destination. They wanted to go over, they wanted to be there, they wanted to have a relationship with the librarian, they wanted to go to a program. They wanted to have a conversation. They wanted something deeper. And so our goal was to sort of split those into 2 different things. And so if they were only ever destination, only ever errands, could we make it quicker and easier? You've seen some things like the new Hillcrest Park has a library locker and library book drop. So if you live on the south end of the city, you can just say, please, I would like to have this book, leave it over at Hillcrest for me. And if you've used an Amazon locker before, you go, you'll receive an email code, you type it in. I mean, what's waiting for you? So ideally, those that are maybe limited by our parking or limited by public transportation, or they just don't want to drive as far, now they can get that there. And then they can—

How utilized is that?

Sorry?

How utilized is that?

It will open when the park opens on May 14th. So not at all. So far, not at all.

Zero.

Not a single person.

It's because Stephen doesn't let us have fun.

But we're very interested because if it goes well, we would love to see one of those library locker drop book systems at our recreation center. You're already out of the car, you're already there. Now you can just have your book waiting for you and go from there. So again, we wanted to separate out, are you using us as a destination or errand, and how can we improve both of those experiences, which was fun for us. And so if you were a destination, we want it to be more exciting. We want to focus on relationship. You know, if you're a librarian and you are having to deal With a lot— not deal with. If you have a lot of very simple repeated tasks over and over, you maybe don't have time to interact on a deeper level. And so if we can remove some of those and leave you and give you as a staff permission to spend 20 or 30 minutes with somebody, then maybe we can build that relationship. So, as part of the focus group, we had some value propositions. I joked about it earlier. They wanted the book for longer, and also they wanted shorter holds. And how do we hit that sweet spot? And so we got some information there. We had a lot of requests for more Spanish material. Every time we buy a Spanish material item, though, it's replacing an English material item. What is the perfect balance? We heard last meeting from the NGT study. Do we buy digital or do we lease a digital item license, or do we buy a physical item and then absorb the ongoing maintenance costs and square footage cost of an item? So, again, Community Impact Survey gives us and our staff a really good baseline amount of data, and we're really just excited about this.

Thank you.

So some recommendations that you can see from both the community impact and the user experience, things that we're doing really, really well that we're excited about. People feel like they have access to the library. They feel like we have incredibly knowledgeable staff, and they just had great things to say about the people that they interacted with. There was also a lot of excitement around our programs, what we would call collection access, and then the physical materials or digital materials that we have, which we call our our collection. They came with some recommendations, things like expanding our operating hours or our drop-off system. Those come with a cost. And so again, it'll be a value proposition, but we're excited about maybe some Saturday night activities or events. Maybe 1 day a week we open up at 6:00 AM for our early risers so they can get into the library on their way to work or on their way to a workout. But a couple of exciting things there, things like the book sale seem like a really easy chance for us to host an event. Rather than just having stacks of books out there, can we make it an event like some of our other libraries do and go from there? We also identified a couple of things. Affectionately, we call them monovalent dissatisfiers. They cannot make you happy. They can only make you sad. Think referees in sports. No one left the game like, you know what, we lost, but wow, they have some great calls out there. The best you can do as a ref is Not upset somebody. I think we had a couple of those things in our library that we've identified, you know, specifically with how we deal with fines on children's books. No one's ever, you know, excited about that. And so we thought maybe if we make a book sale more engaging, we can raise enough funds there to offset having to charge a young parent because their child may or may not have damaged a book and may or may not have been the last one to have it when that page ripped. And we have to have this really sort of accusatory conversation with somebody that we just don't know. And so we— our thought would be, how can we get rid of those really negative experiences where we just— the best we can do is not upset them, and the worst we can do is really upset them, and instead just get rid of that without having it be an impact to our budget? So we're really excited to look for some of those things. I think you'll also continue to see a lot of emphasis on our Spanish language collection, both in terms of the number and types of items that we have and We currently have some great work with how we catalog and create access to those collections. So if you are a Spanish language speaker, not in there to search for books about Spanish, but to just have Spanish language novels, you know, to make that a little bit easier to understand how you can get those access and access those items. One of the other high priority recommendations here was to create an experience library, and that spoke to us as sort of central to what we're trying to accomplish as a destination. There's a number of really exciting things that are on the immediate horizon there, specifically some of the work that we'll be looking at for our courtyard and the current plaza space that we're sitting in now. Once our new city center is completed, how can we activate those outdoor spaces for people to come and be here and not just come and grab something and leave, or not have enough seating or space to congregate in small groups? We're really excited about Library Hall. Again, additional access. I can't wait. for the number of residents that when this building, this portion of this building comes down and you have this gorgeous walkway that will create, how many of them will say, I had no idea that you had an auditorium here. I can't believe you built this when you built the city center. And we'll say it's actually 5 years old. We're excited for that. And so we look at the things that people experience and we want to prioritize access to those. If you're familiar with the PERC collection, this is an interactive library of things focused on early childhood education. We're working with the PIRC organization right now to absorb that into our collection so that we can check it out for them. Their volunteers can focus on programming and interaction. We'll bring it out of the basement upstairs, right alongside the rest of our children's collection, and it'll be easier to use. I mentioned the changes to how we acquire digital materials as well as Spanish language materials, and we're looking at We're taking a hard look at some of our policies that are organized and maybe saying, how can we make this more user-friendly based off of some of the feedback we got here? Maybe our holds, maybe our fines, maybe the number of items we have out at a time. Where can we just really help families that are using this and doing their best and still collect, protect the collection and protect our investment in the collection? We have, again, over 400,000 physical items. That represents a significant investment over decades for our library, but also Collection is only as good as people have access to and trust us to use it. So we want to make sure that they have a chance to do that. That's it. The library is doing well. The library is important. It has a strong social impact. It is popular. We shared this at our last Library Advisory Commission, but during our first quarter, we had 20% more users and user interactions than we did this time last year. More people are coming in significant numbers. And they're talking to our librarians, and they're having those conversations and those relationships. Really excited about that. Linda Gallagher, she is our Collection Services Division Manager. She came up with our motto of Let's Library. And so she's, she's been instrumental in this. Mike and Jamie, our other division managers as well, in both gathering this data, helping us ask the right questions, and then making sure that we're sort of primed to act on this baseline data. And go forward with their strategic plan for this year. So that is our community impact survey information. Again, you have the entirety of it in your packets, but, uh, do you have any questions for us?

I was just impressed with the depth and the breadth of your survey. Um, I couldn't get through all of it, but I went through a lot of it, and I was blown away how much, you know, how, how far you dug down to get the responses.

And then to have the actual responses, their comments, I think was helpful too.

The comments, especially the anecdotal.

To see what our neighbors are saying about the library, it's been fun.

Great.

Thanks, sir.

Yeah, I was gonna say that same thing, that the comments were very impressive to have them all listed in that, in your packet there, to have taken, you know, everybody's thoughts. I really appreciated that. I have a few things. The Perk Center, thank you for doing that, for extending the hours. I think that would be one of the biggest frustrations. I, when I discovered that when I had young kids, little kids, that was amazing. But then it was difficult because it didn't have consistent hours because it was based on volunteers, staffed by volunteers through— anyway, that's fantastic for doing that. Um, one comment on the Spanish, um, library. So, um, that has a great need for— we have so many students in our community that are doing, doing dual language immersion classes.

I ended up—

back then their library didn't— when my kids were in it, didn't have a lot of those. So I just bought them through Scholastic Books or whatever, those Early Readers and the Magic Treehouse and those books. So I guess I would say let's do it for the, the Native community, but also think of this— I think we'll be serving this other community also as we pull more of those, um, books in. And I hope it isn't a switch off. I hope we don't have to pull a book to put more of those. I hope we can just increase, increase that.

And then my last comment, when I read through that, I saw someone say storytime.

10 o'clock is a tough time when you have young babies. They take their naps at 10 and 2. And so until they shift to the afternoon nap only, but the 10 AM time, you know, my kids were just fallen asleep then. So I don't know if you can figure out— it did have that they were going to address that, I noticed, in the study. So I think that that would open up opportunities for maybe some other additional participation.

We did, we did some testing with some afternoon sessions and they completely filled up. It was instant. And so, um, I think we're really excited about being able to expand that. And, you know, we call it collection access for programming and all of this. It brings people into the collection. And so I think we're realizing that that shift towards programming is not a loss of books and librarianship and mission. It's bringing more people in to have access to it. So in the budgets that we submitted for this year, you will, you will see a shift, but not even a shift to your point. Some, some cost savings on personnel allowed us to expand all of our collections. budgets this year without an increase in our overall budget. And so we were able to not have it be a trade-off right now. We were just able to increase every one of our collection budgets and our programming budgets so that we can have those types of programs.

Is there an opportunity to do like, I mean, a 9 AM versus the 10? Because then the kids can go in here and then they're tired, you take them home, they go take their 10 AM. Plus, can I say one other thing? Miss Orem, I went when she read to the kids. She had an activity where she went in and read in the library. That was so cute because it was the older kids and she had them doing activities and standing up and dancing and talking to their neighbor. Just the whole what you guys are doing there was really great because it wasn't just learning about, you know, reading and learning. They encouraged interaction. So tell your library staff that was amazing.

Perfect.

Thank you.

So the name isn't something about, you know, we all bought books when our kids were younger. And is there a line of book donations that you don't want to cross? And I mean that like you don't want everybody just bringing all their stuff out of the garage, you know, 1970, whatever. But would that be a helpful thing? And I know we've done Book drives in the past, is that something that—

We regularly receive maybe not hundreds of books per week, and then those that don't meet the quality or needs of the collection are taken to the book sale. And if they're not sold there, then they are donated. And so we're able to accept everything. And then again, if based on the librarianship principles, it doesn't muster adding to the collection, then we are able to take it to the book sale or move it along. So, yeah, we encourage residents to bring them by. That'd be great.

Can I just say quickly that I love that Bryce and our library management are doing this? This is when you have something that's so directly engaging and interacting with the public of a service that does that, then you want, in order to be in a, with an attitude of continuous improvement, you need to get good information to then make Good goals moving forward. So this is an effort that, that Bryson's rec leadership team have done since we opened our new rec center. I just love seeing this now applied to our library services. It helps us again make sure that we're being very specific and detailed about improving and doing new things and making sure that we're responding to the demands we're hearing from our residents. Right.

No, it's, it's definitely a really good direction the library's gone.

Just as far as—

I mean, there was always a debate. We want the library, we need the library, and there's all these arguments on both sides. But I think what you've been doing is going down the path that we need the library, we want the library, let's figure out how to make it the best library possible. And I think you're doing a great job.

Thank you. Our, our residents shared that sentiment. It is a resounding need, uh, for the city. It is so important to our families. It is central to their experience of being an Orem resident to have this jewel of a library right at the center of town. So it's, it's our job to get them here, remove the barriers that are preventing it, and make sure they have a great time while they're here.

Right.

And we've got, we've got a good budget that supports it. So we should make it the best it can be.

Right.

So, okay, thanks, Bryce.

Okay, let's move on to item number 3.

And we see Vicki in person and our Yes, and we'll go to the MDT analysis.

While Carson is getting us connected to that, um, as you recall, we're looking at every department and division in the, in the city to see if there's any, um, ways that we can be more efficient, or, um, just to, just to, to show that we are being as efficient as possible.

It's areas.

So for today, we're going to talk about the Recreation Department and Public Works.

You can do this one also if you'd like.

I'm good, that's on you.

Uh, Bruce, are— Bruce, are you there?

Can you hear me? Do you hear me? Are you able to hear me? You said you said yes or barely.

Bruce, can you try speaking again?

Are you able to hear me?

Vaguely, and there's some feedback.

I'm on the phone.

Are you able to join off of your computer?

Are you able to—

are you able to hear me, Carson?

I hear you.

I hear you. Do you hear me? Carson, are you able to hear me?

Hello?

Well, it sounds like we're having some difficulties on their end. Um, I have the presentation though, so I can go ahead and talk to most of the points.

Hello, are you able to hear me?

With all of the content. So, um, today we have 2 reports, the Public Works report and the Recreation Um, report. Um, we'll be starting with the Public Works report. Um, what MGT, um, did for their study for, for Public Works was going in and looking at the, um, some of the divisions.

Carson, are you able to hear me?

Testing, 1, 2, 3.

Specifically the Parks Division and the Traffic Division.

Are you able to—

are you able to hear me? Um, what the workload that they experienced with the, with the expectations we have as a city. Next, they looked at the organizational structure of the Public Works Department as a whole to see what the industry best practices were for that organizational structure and management. And then finally, they went in and looked at the risk and safety management practices within the department. So, with the first point, with staffing, Looking at the Parks Division, our city is pretty on par with what other cities have per acreage with their FTE. So our city is within a good area or good margin of best practice with staffing our parks.

Carson, can I just add to that? I think, Chris, you could probably identify that we've done a shift in some of our positions for seasonals?

So we exchanged about, uh, I think it was 10 FTEs that were seasonals that were working around 1,000 hours a year. Uh, we exchanged that with about the equivalent number of full-time employees that are benefiting. So one crew leader, 4 technicians. As we are trying to embrace and support The great vision of Bryce Merrill. We decided that we needed full-time support on the shoulder months when he's holding his softball tournaments in February and praying that it doesn't snow, right? But we need to embrace his work. It's a great vision. That's the value in that. We've exchanged We needed full-time support on the shoulder muscles.

Yeah, when he's holding—

which is significant efficiency. If you lack that, you're going from 20 hours, right, being there all day at their park. That's the background. Transition those positions into 5 full-time. Yeah, which is significant efficiency. If you lack that, you're going from 20 hours, right, You know, being there all day at their park with that great transition. So it's a great way to transition those kids. Not just on the study hall, which is significant efficiency. Exactly that. You're going to go out 20 hours, right? You know, being there all day at their— yeah, that'd be added.

You should send that to me.

I'll send it out to my, uh, uh, other recorders because one of them—

I don't want to send it to you in person. I'll send it to your cell phone.

Yeah.

Yeah, I don't want to—

they'll be like, what is—

okay, tell me if it got—

if it came through. Oh, it's in there. Somebody posted that on their Facebook.

But most—

most we've had lately are like, uh, no, what's that?

Go ahead and close that, and I'll connect and look at the levels underneath.

But I think overall, I think I saw levels coming in around 5, probably whatever new thing he has.

What are we thinking?

Is it working?

Yeah, yeah, we can see levels and hear levels. We just need to check one more. Okay, we just did one.

I did print out the slides so I could still present and make copies for everyone.

Oh wow, you're prepared.

Yeah, that was the idea.

You knew we were trying to sabotage you.

And well, no, I came yesterday with Pete, you know.

I came, made sure it all worked, the right stuff.

You never know.

No, you never know. And if we do, we'll just— I'll send you to print that One for every— I'll go get my—

Well, we're excited.

Is Heather here? Is Heather going to be with you guys?

Carson, this is Taylor.

I think we met.

Yeah, we have met. Okay, before you finished your term out, I think. He's great.

So I, I do miss you guys. I miss— I miss the staff a lot. Well, we still get to interact with you at occasions like this, and I'm on Orem Fest Parade Committee.

I'm also one of the 4 I'm over volunteers and garbage.

I don't know what that means about me, but—

It's possible it went in your purse if you had that much.

Good to see you.

And it was some guy's computer. Yeah. Oh, did he have his phone standing like this? Oh, I love it when they do that. So good. doing something similar. Every time, every guy.

Really?

Uh-huh. Do you think moving to Unix takes that something to the top, make it more simple and dependable? Well, it removes Zoom from being your backbone, just like, right? So Zoom's not the backbone. You're not dependent on Zoom. It, it comes down to, like, the operator, the operator having the authority to just say mute for now. Now if you bring Zoom into the— Zoom can still break. There's no getting around that. Zoom can still break, but, but your meeting can continue. We can route around because the whole point of the vMix piece, you have access to everything, right? And you can control it on the fly. Like right now, we're relying on the automation to work. The automation breaks. So like with the vMix set up. Yeah, yeah, to an extent. Yeah, I guess the idea where, where your video is routed through Q-SYS, right there, to an extent. But then you're— then you don't have any problem.

Yeah, then everything, all the So, so, Mark, are you, are you here on behalf of the LDS Church giving machines, or what's your—

yeah, doing the giving for them. Yeah, there you go.

Thanks for doing Thomas's Way Community Action. Who are everyone? Remember the Gibby machines?

Yes.

Yeah, it's cool.

Yeah. Okay, I think being able to come in.

Of course.

Yeah.

So Mark and I served first term of my first 4 years. How many years were you on council?

Was it 14? Man.

Oh, you're gonna have to say.

How long did you do it for?

8.

I thought I might go 12, but It just got a little too, uh, 4 years is kind of nasty.

I don't know how to say it.

Yeah.

Um, yeah, school district's what was rough.

I'm not gonna lie. You ever seen something trouble system?

Yeah.

All right. Oh, thanks. Wait, so you're presenting with others? Yes, and Ken.

Oh, cool.

Yeah.

Oh, here we are.

It's probably gonna be closer to 6:30. I hope that's okay. Yeah, around the clock. Exactly. I'm chill. Is Shelley still gonna do some, um, Soap and Summer Warm Fest? She's still doing that.

Okay, I'm now helping with the parade.

Oh, you got the parade?

Um, one of 4. I'm, I'm volunteers in garbage.

There's—

I don't know what that means, except we always need to look.

Yeah, I think, I think the old cards were great.

Old cards.

But didn't everybody have 2?

They had one for you. Well, some of them were small.

Mine's in color.

So sometimes—

test, test, test.

I've got mine.

They were having a little technical difficulty.

If we have problems, we can go around and try this. I'm hoping they were going to be okay. Test, test.

Might be a little too fast.

Ken, we should give you 100 times to present. I probably have seen you during COVID

Sorry about it.

They deserve—

I agree.

So, 13:30.

See this? You're good at it. Yeah, absolutely. We had it on our wall.

Well, you probably see the evidence.

Mayor Pro Tem does. No, the other ones just rotate every 6 months. Okay, I took it off. I don't think it's going to show.

I'd like to call this city council meeting to order and welcome all of you here. We're going to start out with an invocation. And a Pledge of Allegiance. And we've got Ruth Chatterley and Matt Chatterley, and Jeff invited them. So if you'd like to introduce them.

Absolutely. Ruth and Matt are dear friends for a lot of years. They're both Orem High graduates. They've raised 6 children, 4 girls and 2 boys. And Ruth worked at Mountain View High School for 11 years, so as an Orem High graduate, And they also awarded her with a diploma, a graduation diploma from Mountain View, so she can be considered a Bruin and a Tiger. So good for that. Ruth is also the daughter of Stella Welsh, one of our former mayors here in Orem. And Matt, uh, Matt is a talented artist. He had his artwork on display in Library Hall for several months, uh, here a few months ago. And, uh, honored to have them here with us this evening.

Thank you, Jeff. So we'll start out with Ruth, if you'd like to come up and give the invocation.

Our Father, which art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. We are grateful to be here in this city meeting. We are grateful for the many who have come to Orem in years past and who will yet come. We are grateful for those who have served in the city and those who currently serve, and pray with sincerity of heart that they will continue to do so with transparent— transparency and honor and integrity. We are grateful, Father, for thy guiding direction. Many will come to Orem in future days. Many generations will be blessed by the work that has been done and will be done. And we pray for the foresight and honesty and direction that this council may give, and pray for Thy guidance and love to be with all the citizens of Orem from whencever they come and from whatever culture and region they come from, that they will have a home and a family here in the city of Orem. We seek Thy will in the name of Jesus Christ, amen.

Thank you, Ruth. Now Matt will lead us in the Pledge of Allegiance. Please rise.

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

Thank you. We'll now start out with some presentations. This first presentation will be Mark Seestrand, who's going to bring us up to date on the giving machines.

Thank you, Mayor, members of the City Council. Pleasure to be here tonight. This is a little bit of an annual tradition. Every year we do the giving machines at the University Mall, and at the end of the year we like to just have a way to say thanks to so many people that were so involved in the process. So this is not a toot-your-own-horn event. This is a chance to say thanks to the City Council and to Orem City and the community, as well as to be able to to say thanks to some really big, important volunteers and organizations that help make that possible. This year was our 4th year in Orem. Started in 2019, and we did 2021, '22, and '23. This year was our best year that we've had in all these years, and the Giving Machine as a program is run by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. And has grown to be a worldwide endeavor now that helps and seeks to support and help many people around the world to be able to have a better quality of life and to, to be able to get some essential elements that they need. The GIMME machines this last year were in 61 cities in 7 countries, including Canada, Mexico, Guatemala, Australia, New Zealand, Philippines, Hmm. Over 600,000 people participated in giving and donating through the Giving Machine process. 350,000 items were donated. 250 local and global nonprofit organizations were involved in distributing these, these necessities. We find that they are closest to the action, and by helping them help their constituents is a wonderful way to make the program work. These charities were international as well as local, and we were privileged to work with a number of local charities here as well as with a couple of international organizations. We wanted to just recognize 4 kind of groups of individuals that have been associated with this. We had a number of local partners that helped make this happen. Our first and foremost is Cindy Nee from the University Place, the University Mall. Cindy, come. I'm going to have you stand over there. The University Mall and University Place, the Woodbury family, Rob Callis, Cindy, Jared, have been super involved in making this really the best location in the world for the Giving Machines. They supply the power, they supply the internet access, they do decorations. They're there to support with security. They're there to help work with all of the local stores to make sure everything has worked out well. And Cindy and her team, we begin the process in July with some fun meetings and start to think about the possibilities, and then it executes. And for some reason, working with University Place just goes without a hitch. And so we want to just really thank Cindy and the whole University Place team for their efforts in, in joining us in this endeavor. In addition to the University Place, we've had support and help from RC Willys, from Needers, from Utah Balloon Company. You'll notice the wonderful balloon display that has a lot of people getting pictures taken. We've had support from doTERRA and Nu Skin and Deseret Book. These have all been arranged by various members of our committee, so I wanted to just kind of recognize the other members of the, of the Communication Council that have been involved in, in pulling this together. So we have Val and Nancy Hale. They're going to be helping hand out some of the plaques tonight. We have Tom Walker, who has helped with the donors and with the volunteers. And then we have John Dye, who also helps with communication and PR, in the very back.

Thank you.

And Jenny.

And Jenny is with us too. So thanks. And the Wrights are— and, uh, yeah, Tim and Wendy Wright. So you guys are going to join us for the picture too in a little bit. We're going to end up having just a really big picture here up front, if that's okay, uh, with you guys. Uh, the next thing that we wanted to thank— so besides the sponsors and all those that, that come to make that work, uh, we have volunteers. Um, the giving machines opened up on November 20th. and were in business until January 2nd. We only missed a couple of days in there— Christmas and New Year's were a couple of— Thanksgiving Day, actually, I think was the only one that we had off. But to man the machines, we usually had 4 people there all the time. Tom Walker was in charge of— and Tim Wright were in charge of making sure we had volunteers and coverage. In total, we had 651 volunteers donate many hours. 2,154 hours in making sure people could use the machines in the way they wanted to do, and the machines ran faithfully. A lot of those tiles would drop down. We'd have to refill those machines on a regular basis. So I just want to say thanks to the volunteers for making this work. Also, we had a whole bunch of people that came and donated just here in the Orem region. I believe— I can't say this officially, but we were the top in terms of participation, both number of transactions as well as financially. Orem did a wonderful job in getting the word out and getting participation. We had over 18,000 transactions, and those transactions involved many items. And it was, it was wonderful to see the joy and the excitement of the kids and the family as they picked and select the items they wanted to give to someone in need for Christmas. We had a total of 80,000 participants that, that were part of that 18,000 transactions, and the Orem location did a little over $1,450,000 in donations to the international and to the local charities. So let's hear it for the donors. We've invited them all to join us also on the— oh, just, uh, curiosity, how many in the room donated to the giving machines? It— I mean, that's just the, the nature of it and the extent of the, of the generous, wonderful people here in the community that give freely. And then I wanted to now recognize the charities that this is where the real work takes place. So we can, we can, uh, uh, generate the income and, and get the donations, but then giving it off to the charities where they can deliver these goods to the individuals is, is pretty significant. So I've asked for a couple of people to help hand these out. We'd like to start off with, uh, is Sam Lee here by chance with Africa? Sam, come on up. Sam is here with our international charity Uh, the African Girls Hope Foundation. If you watch the video, his organization is the one where the, where the young women were dancing and singing in their school uniforms. So we are presenting to, um, to Sam and his organization. The community donated 685 uniforms and 1,447 Chromebooks. So not only can they go to school with the uniforms, They also have technology to really help them advance in their education. So congratulations to the African Girls Hope Foundation, and thank you for the work that you do. And stay up here because you're going to get your picture taken. Another one of the international groups that we have that's always kind of interesting is, you know, the one of the big winners was chickens. So we donated 7,000 625 sets of chickens. That's over 15,000 chickens that are going worldwide. I don't know how many goats are in Utah, but I think we're donating all of them. 3,578 are being donated to families in foreign countries to help them build a way to sustain and support their family through goat cheese and through a number of other, other activities. And so that's going to the CARE organization. We also supplied 473 refugee kits, blankets and necessities that help a refugee at least get started for a little bit in these foreign countries when they come with basically nothing, to have something to work with. So that's with the CARE Foundation. Uh, is Scott Johnson here with the Boys and Girls Club?

Yes.

Great, Scott, we have for you Um, 106 after-school support programs for your kids, 1,699 family bonding games to help families join and come together, uh, 3,602 books for reading for kids, uh, 653 experiences with the STEM program, and we have 203 summer camp scholarships to help your young men and young women Attend their summer school programs. So a wonderful round of applause for the Boys and Girls Club. We have Tom Hogan here from Community Action Services. Community Action Services, as you know, provides many, many programs, very much involved in the food and in helping those that are in need of the basic necessities. Uh, the community donated, uh, 300— 3,921 take-home meals for kids after school. And here's the big one, um, 100— or 1,822 sets of 150 meals. So that's really 273,000 meals coming from this organization. So let's hear it up for the Community Action Food—

Please.

Uh, Tabitha's Way is also one of our food organizations. I don't think they were able to make it tonight, but for Tabitha's Way, there was 20— come on, get on up there, Debbie. This is fantastic. So with Tabitha's Way, uh, they had 3 items. Produce for Kids, $2,151. Veterans meals. I think it was a month's supply of veterans meals for 1,450 of those. And they're well known for their school backpack supplies that are, that are donated. 2,715 backpack supplies for kids to go to school. So Tabitha's Way. Is Ashley Taylor here from the Refuge? Okay, the Refuge, as you know, works with women and families that have been in abused or battered circumstances. They received a significant amount of support to help in their very, uh, needed causes. So for after-school supplies for young children that have, have gone through some serious domestic challenges, $856 after-school supplies. 3,767 blankets and comfort items. Kitchens in a Box, 568 of those. Safe shelters, nights at safe shelters, 542 nights. And then trauma support kits to help the whole family, 817. We greatly appreciate The Refuge Utah and the work that they do. And one of our longtime supporters and help is Bill Holterstrom from the United Way of Utah County. Where are you at, Bill? Come on up. What we love about United Way is they work with 23 other charity organizations, and so under their umbrella, we're able to really leverage additional charities and, and programs to help them be effective. So to the United Way, we have the RAH program, R-A-H, and Cheryl Adamson, I think you're here, right? Come on up, Cheryl. With RAH, they received 573 adaptive art supply kits for their adult children, as well as the family respite time of 293 hours of respite time. We also have Family Haven, who is a wonderful organization locally that works with families and mothers. Uh, is, uh, Janelle, uh, is it Christiansen?

Yes.

All right, I got it right. Uh, Janelle and the Family Haven are receiving abuse prevention classes, 157 of those, as well as therapeutic books for their clients, 355. And then United Way, in addition to that, is receiving art classes, 686. Hygiene kits, 1,144. Mental support for moms, 533. And new baby kits for those brand new infants, 2,538. In total, over $600,000 worth of goods and services and chickens and supplies went to international, and over $850,000 stayed locally with this Wonderful group of organizations. So I really appreciate the work that they do, and I would love to give them a big round of applause as well as have the mayor and council join us for a wonderful picture here in front.

Ready, Cedar? Tell us how to get— all right, we're gonna have to squeeze in tight.

Shoulder to shoulder.

You want to be down there? I'm going to play angle. Get your wide angle lens. That's right. You're hiding. There you go.

All right, here we go.

1, 2, 3. All right, thank you.

And if y'all want to just shake the hand of the mayor, especially—

great.

Yes, please.

I'm happy to give this to Wendy and let you—

go ahead.

Great comments, huh? Oh, I'm on the board. I can accept At one point I was their longest volunteer.

Yeah, thank you for that presentation. The giving machines have a huge impact. We'll move on to item number 6.2. This is a report from the Historic Preservation Commission, and it will be Grant Allen, senior planner, and Olivia Johnson. On the Historic Preservation Council.

Good evening, Mayor and Council.

Um, we're excited to present— um, I'm sorry, my name is Grant Allen.

I'm the senior planner, um, staff liaison to this commission. Um, and I've got Olivia Johnson to my left and Devin Pierce, our co-chair, or vice chair, I should say.

Thank you.

Here to present the activities this last year of the Historic Commission. So, if you want to go ahead.

Thank you, Mayor and Council. It's been a busy year for us at the Orem Historical Preservation Commission. We have accomplished a lot, and we have a plan to continue to accomplish a lot for this city. First, it's— we are now a certified local government. So the commission is active for the first time in over 10 years, and we were established in January of 2023, or shortly before that. And then— It's designed to promote historic preservation at a local level. This is a federal program through the National Park Service and administered by the Utah State Historic Preservation Office, which is— we call SHPO, and qualified local governments become certified and are eligible to receive matching grants from SHPO, which we are glad to say that we did receive. So in January 2023, the commission applied for a grant with the State Historical Preservation Office, and the grant of $10,000 was granted and was— is going to be used to survey the— a portion of Orem. The area that was decided on is from 800 North to to 1600 North and between 1200 West and State. Also, we are including a special interest in schools in Orem that may qualify for historical preservation. We also have been working a lot with UDOT. UDOT has started the process of expanding 1600. They provided a survey of the houses, um, on 1600, but up from between the freeway and up to State Street, um, allowing for us to remove that area from our, um, survey and apply that grant money to another location here in Orem. Um, we are— we decided recently that we will be, uh, surveying Memo Drive and a portion of 75 East to 800 North, as well as 200 East to 1020 North, including Garden Drive. Um, that area is the area behind Burjato, if you know where that is. Um, and this area will become a new historical, historical district here in Orem. Um, it was proposed that the area included in Memo Drive, um, and the previously mentioned area qualifies to be a historic district. And this area was developed post-World War II and shows historical relevance to postwar Utah and Utah County. So, that's very— we're very excited to start working on that and getting that designated. We also got to work with the Eva Carlotta Anderson Memorial Garden. It was proposed that a piece of land be developed as a memorial garden here in Orem, because there were pioneer-era remains believed to be on the area of Infant children whose mother had buried them there. And this area will be used to make a memorial garden for women who have lost children and loved ones. We've also discussed the Orem Pioneer Cabin. This one is very fascinating and very interesting to a lot of us. As a lot of us know, I believe it was in 2020, A pioneer cabin was discovered in the walls of a home here in Orem, and it has been put upon us to decide to what extent that cabin is restored and where it shall be located. And we are currently exploring the National Historical Register for status of the cabin, and it will be placed at Heritage Park. And we're still discussing ideas as things become available to us, if that's where it's going to stay or if it'll be placed somewhere else. Our commission, we do have been doing some tours of places in the community so that we can get a better idea of what we are trying to preserve here in Orem. We have toured the Orem History Museum, which is an excellent resource here that we have about our local history. And then we will be touring later this month the Olmsted Power Plant, and we are excited to see what we can learn from these historical sites and how to continue to present— preserve them. And we also are trying to figure out, using these tours, how to get the community further involved in local historical preservation.

Okay.

Is there any questions from any of the council on Any of these items? Deborah, do you have anything to add?

I'll say something. So I was on this commission last year, right? I saw as you guys, um, began the arduous task of creating this commission and identifying what was important in Orem and just building from scratch. And I just— this is fantastic what I see you presenting here, because I saw the beginnings, right, where it was— we were trying to figure out— we knew what we wanted to do, we didn't know how to get there. So thank you for your hard work. This looks fantastic. Thank you so much.

Thank you.

Thanks.

Thank you.

Okay, thank you for that presentation. We appreciate all your, all your good work. Next up, we've got item 6.3, and this is a recognition, uh, thank you to Trader Joe's. And Pete Wolfley will present this.

I'm gonna invite Gina up.

She is—

she knows way more about this, and she's even come with a sign.

I brought my own signage, but I did bring the treats, so I should get some credit.

Council, Mayor, Council, and all of those wonderful attendees here, I'd like to invite Herbert and Noah up. I'd also like to invite, um, Joyce, who is the chairman of our Senior Advisory Commission, Verl Huli— he is on our commission— and one of our amazing volunteers, Peggy Taylor.

Come on up.

These people know a lot about what we're talking about today. You'll recognize those from Trader Joe's in the amazing Hawaiian shirts. Um, we want to thank them. So what many of you might not know about is, uh, we partner with many, um, different companies within our community, one of them being Trader Joe's. We also partner with Costco. Costco, Macy's grocery store, Pizza Hut, Chick-fil-A, um, say again?

Crumbl.

And Crumbl cookie. Sorry, how can I forget them? But, um, recently we were— we received the paperwork from the Trader Joe's location here in Orem, which if you haven't been there, you should go there first of all. But they share their products with us, things that maybe are close to date or have damage on them but are still good. And we set up, um, like a farmer's market food shares table Monday through Thursday for the seniors. It's all done by our volunteers. On the weekends, Joyce and her family, um, as well as Peggy, help out, um, picking up those donations. separating everything out so that we know what needs to go out on the tables on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday. And each of our seniors are able to get one bag of groceries every single day for free. And it's because of these companies, and especially Trader Joe's. I need to let you know, in one year they donated 325 $1,000 worth of product to the Orem Senior Center. I don't know if they realize how grateful we are for that. Um, on average, we give out about 1,200 bags of groceries a month, on average. Now, I know I couldn't get that many Signatures on this, but we have this amazing sign for you that so many of our seniors have written their thanks and gratitude, and we hope that you will accept, accept this as a gift from us. We love you guys so much. We're so, so grateful.

Would it be all right if we come up for a picture?

Yeah, let's go upstairs. 1, 2, 3. Okay, thank you so much.

Excuse me, coming down.

All right, thank you for that, and thanks Thanks especially to Trader Joe's for those donations. Next up, we've got item 6.4, and this is for the police, and this is BJ Robinson, if you'd like to come up.

Mayor Young, members of the city council, uh, citizens that are here and present, it's my pleasure to represent the men and women of your police department here today to recognize our chief, Chief Josh Adams. Last month, end of the month, Utah Chiefs of Police Association held their annual conference, and our chief was nominated and selected as Chief Police of the Year for Large Agency. In part, the nomination highlighted our chief's leadership and focus and care on improving officers as individuals through individual accountability Increasing our department training, and with the aid of the city and, and you as City Council, increased mental health resources to officers and their families. Josh will shrug this off because that's how he is. He's a good leader, and he will shift the focus to the men and women of the department and say they make him look good. And that is true, they do. But it's because of the leadership that he provides. I witness on the daily the toll that it takes, the heavy burdens that he carries, and the heavy lifting that he does. And so this award is very deserving. And so please join me in recognizing Chief Josh Adams as the Ukopas Police Chief of the Year. And it'll be a little easier if I ask him to come up as a favor to me. Uh, if you'll please come up, because I know that, uh, he won't do it if I, if he— if I don't phrase it in that manner. So, Chief, if you'll please come up for me and, uh, please accept this recognition.

Thank you.

Mayor and Council, if I can just say briefly that, um, uh, we all know that Chief Adams is the type of person who looks and is very tough. And he also likes to, you know, get the job done in the background, but it truly is an honor to work with him, and he truly cares. I've loved seeing that. He's been an example to me and to our executive team in how he cares. He takes the time every year to meet one-on-one with everyone in the department to make sure that, like Chief Robinson mentioned that they know he cares and that their emotional and mental well-being is important and it matters and should be at the top of kind of the priority list in how we go about then doing public safety services.

So, Mayor, I've got a comment. So we know that Chief Adams loves French Bulldogs, and there's an old joke that people resemble their dogs in both looks and characteristics. French Bulldogs, or Frenchies, or some call them, are exactly playful, alert, and adaptable. They don't bark much, but their alertness makes them excellent watchdogs. They can easily adapt to all kinds of different situations. They are highly intelligent but so incredibly stubborn. All of these characteristics are true, are equally true of our Chief. Thanks, Chief.

Thank you, Brandon, Dave, and definitely congratulations to Chief Adams. That's amazing. Let's move on to item number 7, our personal appearances. And tonight we just have one appearance, and this is Tony Kretschner, if you'd like to come up.

Hello, Mayor. Hello, City Council representatives. I'm Tony Kretschmer. Many of you might know me as Anthony Kretschmer, a top contributor to the Orem Forum, What's Happening in Orem, Stand for Orem PAC. I'm here today to address you in a very pivotal moment in our school district. We are at a crossroads where we have an opportunity to enact a split upon a district that has grown exponentially bigger, too big for so long that our own Utah legislators have enacted laws to force them to split. I have been a resident of Orem for 30 years. My wife has for more than 50. I chose to move my family here to raise my 8 kids in Orem so that they would have the same experience that my wife had going through the Orem Alpine School Districts of yesteryear. That no longer exists. As most of you know, I was a huge supporter of Prop 2. Unfortunately, there was a campaign of misinformation that I feel that caused that to fail. We have the opportunity again because right alongside with Prop 2 failing, Prop 1 failed. And as I mentioned 18 months ago, no general election bond will pass the school district again. Without a reconfiguration split, period. The Utah State legislators have made it known that they cannot continue to live on lease revenue bonds and arbitrarily raising our property taxes without the consent of the voters. I am urging you in the last minute I have to please seek out an interlocal agreement with our neighboring cities of Linden, of Vineyard, and yes, even Pleasant Grove, because I believe that Option 4 of the MGT education study would be the most beneficial to us. We have students that live in Linden, attend Windsor Elementary, go to junior high in Linden, end up in Pleasant Grove to high school. Let's keep that school clusters together. I am urging you to please seek out the other city councils of Linden, Vineyard, and Pleasant Grove, and let's get this done. Thank you.

Thank you. We'll move on to item number 8. Consent items. And on our consent items agenda tonight, we've got approval of meeting minutes for March 12th, 2024 to March 26th, '24. We've got item 8.2, a reappointment to the Board of Adjustments of Karen Jeffries, and item 8.3, a reappointment to the Building and Fire Appeal Board for Wilford Whipple. Would someone like to make a motion on that?

I move that we approve the consent items.

I'll second.

Aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Aye.

The consent items pass. Thank you. Let's move to item number 9, scheduled items. Item 9.1 is a presentation by the Community Development Block Grant, CDBG, update, and this will be Heather Cox from the city and Debbie Larray, former council member from MAG, and Ken Ransom, the CDBG chair.

Okay, thank you, Mayor and Council. Um, we are here to talk about The most recent meetings we've had for CDBG and our funding recommendations. My name is Heather Cox. I'm a management analyst for the city. And of course, you know, Debbie Larray, she is our representative at MAG who helps us run this program. And Ken Ransom, he's the chair of our Orem CDBG Commission. We have a few new appointments on the CDBG Advisory Commission. Stephen Heaps was reappointed. And Scott Snow is a new member of the CDBG Commission. Uh, I'm now the specialist for OREM over CDBG, and Jen is— Jen Gale is now our council representative. Uh, historically, our allocations have been about between $600,000 to $700,000, and we've been advised that we will receive approximately the same funding as last year, um, so, which is $632,646. Our rollover funding from last year is $30,543. So our total estimated funding— this isn't solid, we don't know 100% if this is the exact number, but it will be roughly the same number— will be $600,000. Yep.

Not to interrupt, but just to clarify, that rollover funding, where does that come from?

Um, it was from the projects last year that didn't spend their, their total amount, so it was leftover funds other projects.

So with that rollover funding, we'll have $663,189.

Yep.

So the Congress just passed, um, the bill that would, that would include this money, and it was on March 5th. They have 60 days to get us the final numbers, so we're hoping by the beginning of May we will know the exact amount. But until then, we are— they've We've been told by HUD to just use what we had last year. It'll be very similar.

And after our 30-day comment period, we will have another presentation at the end of May. So we'll have— we should have that final number for that final presentation. Okay, I'm going to turn it over to Ken, and he's going to go over our spending.

Thank you, Heather. Good to be here before you again, Mayor and council members. representing our city's advisory commission for CDBG, and I'll run over the, um, the numbers that we're recommending. And just want to thank first our council— excuse me, our commission members. Thank our commission members for their service and for, uh, helping us out with this project. And thanks to these 2 as well. And, uh, just want to mention too that I, uh, Joey Elisa and I served— represented Orem on the joint commission and just wanted to let you know that that's a difficult process to go through because their asks— these are great organizations that do great things for our community, and they need far more money than we can give them. And so we try to stretch those dollars as far as we can when we make these recommendations. All right, so the, the first one, Orem Police Department Victim Services— this is an Orem-only project. We're recommending $30,000, and this would assist with the salary for an advocate working with victims of domestic violence. And the next one is also an Orem-only project for the department homeless— the Orem Police Department's homeless services that helps our officers help homeless make the next step toward improving their lives. And we think this is worthwhile as well, and we recommend this be funded as well. The next 3 are joint. These are public service joint funding recommendations.

Thank you.

conditions. The first is for Community Action Homebuyers. Orem residents take these classes and have the opportunity to improve their chances to, to purchase a home. And these— we recommend that this be funded at $10,000. And Kids on the Move— we're all familiar with that organization— benefits many of our Orem residents. We're recommending $10,000 for their Head Start nutrition program.

Yes, I, I know you're going to go through several sheets. Are these all similar to what we've offered in previous years, or could you tell us if there's a delta, a significant delta change as we go through these?

Well, our funding recommendations do change a little bit, and you might want—

I guess I just want to know about major changes. Thank you.

The joint funding on the regional level, a lot of, a lot of the same ones are funded, but there were also more that asked this year. There were specifically more capital asks. On the Orem-only level, it is mostly the same. There were projects last year that were one-time projects that have dropped off. So we are doing all of the same things as last year on the Orem-only level, and we are adding one project, which is the Orem Senior flooring project.

Thank you.

Then do you have a percentage breakdown for Orem-only or joint that you have to follow, or—

Yeah, and that's going to come up on a future slide.

Thank you.

Thank you for that. And any other questions before we— all right, we'll jump back in. And so the, the final one on this slide, the Food and Care Coalition, again, that's a joint, uh, that we're funding with our partners Provo and Utah County and MAG. Um, these recommend $15,000 to fund meals for low-income residents in Orem. So next slide, please. And these are public services recommendations. Again, these are all joint recommendations. So Community Health Connect, they connect medical professionals who are willing to donate their services to those who need those services, can't pay for them on their own. We recommend $15,000. Family Haven, Utah Valley, formerly Utah Valley Family Support, we recommend $32,264. This, those costs go to help with therapy costs for them. And Big Brothers Big Sisters, recommend $10,000 funding allocation for them to help with their mentoring with youth programs. And the final one, Food and Care Coalition, recommend $15,000 for their program costs for low-income residents in Orem for meals. So that total is $95,160 and some change. Next slide, please. And these are non-service, non-public service recommendations. The first one is the City of Orem's administration costs, which go to Orem and for MAG, Mountain Land Association of Governments. So that recommendation is 126529. And this next one, the City of Orem, it's an economic development loan payment. That, to my understanding, will be paid off very soon. Heather can confirm that.

This is our last payment, so that $99,000 will be freed up next year.

And, uh, the rest— so City of Orem Code Enforcement helps to fund a full-time officer working with target neighborhoods with code enforcement. We recommend this be funded at $161,500. And then for the Orem Critical Home Repair and Home Rehabilitation Fund, we recommend the $56,729. And for the City of Orem Neighborhood Preservation, we recommend $30,000 for their— fund their events and activities during the year that they, uh, that the city holds in the, in the, uh, neighbor— in the neighborhoods that meet the criteria. And Heather referenced this earlier, so the city has notified us that they have a need to replace the flooring in the senior center. So we recommend this be funded at the estimated cost of $30,998. And our final recommendation for you is the Refuge. They are building a new shelter in Orem and recommend that this be funded at $63,265. And the total you can see there, $663,189.

Thank you.

Are—

that, uh, is our budget.

What's the infrastructure for the, the refuge getting?

It will include things, um, like utilities coming, utility lines, things like that, as they, um, prep for that new building. So water, sewer, electrical.

Does that impact fees at all, or just kind of the general utility, like running the lines?

Um, Jessica, do you remember?

Yeah, I know that they asked for, um, $200,000, and, um, so the total ask will be— and you'll see that on the, the regional one.

Is that the thing on 8th North and State, right? Yeah, the women's. Perfect.

Like, yeah, it's toward the end, so it'll be a great asset to Orem.

How does that, uh, critical home repair and home rehabilitation, uh, How's that managed? And the reason I ask is because we're going through a process where we're, we're looking at doing a lot of volunteer efforts, and we're looking at code enforcement, and we're trying to marry that all together. I'm just curious how this would fit into that.

Yes, so we usually provide funding through the OREM's CDBG allocation to that. However, this year, instead of doing the full $100,000, we cut it down to $56,000 because it is a revolving loan fund. And we never seem to spend it all. And with this senior center flooring project being a top— a big priority, we've allocated some of that money to the senior center flooring project. Um, so that's a 0% interest deferred loan payment, and we continue to work with MAG. Actually, we're going to move forward working with MAG to be able to administer that program.

I'm just curious about that one because it It might get a lot more visibility with the path we're going down as far as funds that could use to be available.

Okay.

And seeing that, um, once that loan is paid off, that Section 108, next year, if, if the need is there, you could certainly transfer some of that $99,000 down to, to critical home repair following year. So, you know, if you want to look and see what the demand is for this year.

Okay. But that was $100,000. Yes, we moved it to 56, but that was because there wasn't enough demand.

Yes. So the, the— we never use up— we usually use up roughly, well, from what I can tell, um, half of that critical home repair budget. And we still have citizens paying back into that as they're selling their homes and moving out. Uh, they have to pay back their loan. So we aren't using all of it. I, I talked with Brandon Nelson about it, and he said, you know, we really don't need to put a full $100,000 into that. The other nice thing is that the senior center flooring project is only a one-time project, so that $31,000 can go back into the critical home repair program next year if we need additional.

I could just see this, and I think you're fine where you're at now, but I can see this as we move forward with this project using that entire $100,000.

Yeah, and that's my question. Can you amend this into the future? It looks like we have those needs.

Yep.

Oh, can we?

Only if we have the funds.

Right, but I mean, if we can switch the funds. Before— we don't have— we're not tied to this. Once the funds come out, these numbers will be—

once we know the exact number from HUD, we will do contracts with these, these amounts in them. And so, um, in order to get— we'd have to do an amendment to the subrecipient agreement, and there have to be some— either something that went lower, um, but the total still has to be the same.

Okay, and fiscal year 2025 starts July 1st, ends June 30th. Oh, perfect.

So July follows the city Fiscal year then?

Yeah.

Yes, yes, correct.

Yeah.

Is— are we acting on this today or just hearing about it today? Just hearing about it, because I know you like to come a half dozen times before we actually vote. Ken, it would be helpful if you would send out to us last year's budget, last year's grant, this year's request, and current year proposal. If you could send that out electronically, then we could A, what they've been given in the past, and we'd have a better understanding. Would that be— is that easy to do? Someone in county can do that for us, Brent?

I've made note, and we'll, we'll do it.

Thank you. It looks good. I, I just can't remember everything we did a year ago, and so that would be helpful if I had that in front of me when it is time to vote on the issue.

We're happy to provide that for you. Okay, I'm gonna talk a little bit about this regional committee, which Ken and Joey were part of. Um, there were 24 applicants. They were all very good projects. We fleshed them all out, who asked for, um, a lot of money, of which we only had $680,000 to distribute between Provo-Orem and Utah County. And what we did is, after we had figured out the total amounts that each— each, um, usually it's a 10% give out of the public service part, and, and there was also this year We talked to you about the capital projects. That was another 10%. We didn't always have those capital projects, but just know Food and Care Coalition needed new flooring down in Provo, and the Refuge Course here in Orem asked for $200,000. So $100,000 asked from— we also had a third one, Fit to Recover, which did not get funding this year. So, um, we had quite a few. How we determined Orem's— um, Jessica, many of you know my boss Jessica and I, we went through each of the projects and we, we looked at the different beneficiaries from each community. And one of the reasons that we assigned these, these particular, um, services, whether it was Kids on the Move, you know, Community Health, all of these are ones they had a strong percentage of Orem residents who were utilizing. So that was one of our decision-makers of how we assigned it. We still had to get to this number of the 126, and if you can see, like Family Haven Provo had to take some, we had to take some, but the other ones were based on just beneficiaries of our warm citizens. So we feel good about that. And, um, and we feel like this was a— this was an abnormally high ask year with 24 projects. We don't usually have that many, and we were happy to fund 18 of the 24. So any questions on that?

Okay. Also, I think it's important to note that this year we received more asks of— for capital projects, which we didn't last year. And so that dipped into our overall funding as a city. Um, the joint funding also dug into our, our funding. Um, so our total recommended allocation is $663,189 and a little bit of change. The next steps is we have the open— we open the public comment period for funding recommendations in May. After public comment is closed at the end of May, um, we will come back Again, and you will vote on our recommendations. Any questions?

Any questions? Can, can you give us a little bit of detail on, on how it works from management perspective? In other words, you gather all the data and now you decide where the funds are going And then is there an ongoing process where all these different people you're giving money to have to be interacting with you on an ongoing basis, or how does that work?

Sure.

So we did have, um, the city prepared recommendations. I believe you talked to Brynn and whoever else, department heads, to kind of get the idea of what the city's priorities were. And then we had, of course, the community regional, um, meeting, which we had 2 representatives on. And so they, they decided the regional give. And one of the advantages is that so these organizations don't have to go to Provo and the county. And so it's, it's been a good thing ongoing. We, we prepare contracts, and then quarterly they'll be submitting their draws to us at MAG, and we will double-check receipts. And then we work with Heather and Brandon, um, to the MAG. If they're an organization like, let's say, Kids on the Move, we pay that and then you reimburse us. But things like our admin, you, you, you reimburse, you reimburse directly. And then your ORM-only projects, you just transfer funds, I believe, between different accounts to— is that how it works, transferring funds from one, like say, to the senior center or to the, you know, the neighborhood resource?

We, we approve it with the federal funds through HUD, and then yeah, we make sure that our finance director is involved in doing the proper fund accounting and transfers through the process.

But I do, I do, um, prepare the vouchers. They're called an IDIS voucher, and then I send those, um, to Heather and Rannon for their approval, and then they approve them, and then that's how they get the funding from the federal government is through that system.

There's also a lot of reporting required, so we have to gather numbers on who's being served. Um, there, CDBG has many, many requirements uh, on the federal level. So we have to report on how many people were served, uh, what demographics they fill. And one another thing to note about critical home repair is that we have an application process through the ORM website. So anyone who needs a home repair, they have to go through a pretty lengthy process. And I think this may play into why we don't spend all this money, because these individuals have to prove that they make less than 80% AMI. That is a CDBG requirement that's put on us. They also have to prove that they are basically strapped for funds. Um, so many people who receive these funds are either elderly or disabled, or they live in one of our CDBG-designated neighborhoods, but they have to prove that they make less than 80% AMI. And it's a pretty, pretty difficult process. Then it goes to our loan committee here in Orem, and they, they have to also go through all of the applications and approve whether they can have those funds. So then they— we do reporting on that end as well, make sure that everything—

Do you think— do you think— just curious, do you think it's reasonable process for them to go through? I mean, or is that why it's so hardly any money's going out?

You know, I think it is reasonable because we are held to federal standards about who we can money to, and they basically have to prove that they meet those standards. So for example, sometimes, you know, I've gone through an application where she did, you know, someone did technically meet those qualifications, but they had other means to pay for a— and there were other applicants who were elderly or who just, we felt, needed the funds more.

If you loan, I mean, say you loan to someone who's elderly, And they pass away, do you have like a lien that repays that?

We do put liens on, on the home. So once they pay back those funds, we reconvey those deeds. But, um, do you know what happens when— that has happened before, and I think we just— I believe we just turn it into a grant at that point because there's no way.

Yeah, we do try to put a lien if they sell the home, um, but if they continue to live there, you know, until someone dies Um, you know, we'll, we'll be reasonable with that. I did want to bring up, um, our director of Family Haven. Um, she is someone who will be benefiting from this, and I'd love to hear from her on what these grants mean and, and how it benefits Orem residents.

Thank you for coming.

Thank you so much, Debbie, and Council and Mayor, for allowing me to take a minute to speak tonight. Um, my name is Janelle Christensen, and I've been with Family Haven on and off in different positions for 16 years now, 6 of those as the executive director. And these programs mean so much to our community. I mean, it is so cool to me to see this list and kind of get goosebumps to see all the good that's happening and to just be a small part of, um, that, that story. Uh, the population that we serve is primarily victims of child abuse or trauma with these funds. and people like they described in these other, uh, these other line items who don't have access to those services by any other means. You know, they're demonstrating a real need when they walk through our doors. And when we— what we know about, uh, the, the things that these children are experiencing is that it really changes the trajectory of their lives, right? So when we can intervene early, when we can find that resilience. The average number of sessions that a child needs is 16 versus an adult who's then coping with it is 4 to 5 years. And so these funds make a huge difference in being able to support them when they need it and change the trajectory for them for the rest of their life. And then that leads to obviously societal benefits and things like that. I just have one quick story I wanted to share from a mother-daughter who was able to use these funds this last year after learning that her 12-year-old daughter had been sexually abused by her grandfather, and they had no other way to access, access care for her. And this is the story. This is her mother's words. She said, I used Family Haven for therapy for me and my daughter as I was dealing with going to trial against my mom's second husband. I had hit rock bottom and experienced extreme depression and severe anxiety. Going to therapy at Family Haven was the thing that helped me from losing my— helped keep me from losing my mind. I was going for a year on a weekly basis, and if it hadn't been for the grants, I wouldn't have been able to get the help I needed. I'm so grateful for this wonderful resource that was there for me when I was going through the worst crisis of my life. My daughter also used family— used therapy at Family Haven when she hadn't opened up to anyone what had happened to her since it went to court. It was only through that, with that care with Family Haven, that she was able to speak about her trauma and face it in a courtroom. The grants to get her the much-needed therapy were a godsend. We went in as victims and came out as victors. Thank you, Family Haven. And really, thank you to you, to CDBG, to this program, because when she references grants, this is what she means. This is what allowed her and her family to find that hope and healing.

Thank you.

healing that they so desperately needed. So thank you for your consideration, for your support in the past, and for the difference that this makes in our community.

Thank you.

Anything else?

Any other questions?

Any other questions?

Say one thing.

I know that our, our Miss Orem, current Miss Orem Natalie Green, um, that's her platform, is the, the— for getting victims of abuse to where they can get the need— the things that they need and the therapy that they need. And I really appreciate what you're doing because it does make a huge effect. Um, get that happening now, right, on their entire life so they can overcome. Thank you so much for that.

And we will get those numbers for past— last year's funding and this year's funding for comparison.

Okay, thank you so much for letting us come and present, and we appreciate it very much.

Thank you. Okay, next up we've got item 9.2. This is a rezone enacting Article 12-11-66, uh, a PD-53 zone, and Appendix OO of the Orem City Code, and amending Article 22-5-3 And the zoning map of the city of Boerum by rezoning the property located generally at 1960 North State Street from the C-2 zone to the PD-53 zone. Matt, if you'd like to present that to us. And what— yeah, if you'll present, then we'll have a public hearing after that.

Thank you, members of the council, for allowing me to be here tonight.

Um, as stated, this is a rezone. Now it is. Thank you. This is a rezone, a request from the applicant. Uh, essentially what it does is adopts a brand new zoning district. Uh, for an area of Orem that we'll cover, um, and we'll go over the reasons for that. And that zoning district will facilitate the proposed concept plan that the developer applicant has put forward. The subject property is located on the intersection of 2000 North and State Street. It's, uh, where the Neaters currently is on Sweet O Burrito. There's a former grocery Store that's been vacant for some time on the property. The current zoning is the C-2 zone, and the proposal, though, is to rezone that as a PD-53 zone. As I mentioned earlier, a brand new zone that will facilitate this development. Uh, with all PD zones, a concept plan is adopted. And this concept plan governs the development of final plans and is also required by the PD zone that any future development will more or less comply with the conceptual plan and all our other zoning regulations and development regulations. What we see here is a perspective view from State Street towards— from the south of the site. Southwest and looking actually towards the northeast. Timpanogos probably should be in the background there, but, um, we have here 2 office buildings in the fore— um, well, sorry, in the forefront, a drive-through facility, um, 2 3-story office buildings. And then if you could look at the far left of the screen, um, behind the existing meters, a, a 2-story Office, uh, and, and I misspoke. These are office/retail mixed-use facilities. Here's the site plan that gives you a little bit more context. Uh, State Street's on the south side of that, and, um, north would be actually oriented a little more to a 45-degree angle, but this fits better. The site plan. Uh, yes, sir. Yes.

Would you go back to that slide you just—

on—

so down, so Nieders existing building, correct? Um, right to the right of it, that's the entrance off State Street, is that correct?

To the right of it, yes.

Okay, thank you.

There's one other existing building I failed to mention that's right behind, um, Sweeto Burrito on the corner of 2000 and State. It's a 2-story, um, I believe office-type use. We have detailed site plan data.

Talking about that slide just a sec.

Yes, sir.

So the very bottom is State Street?

Yes.

Okay.

And the, um, left of the screen would be 2000 North.

Okay, thanks.

We do have some data that we can refer back to if we need to about the gross floor areas, the parking stall count. Um, these will be tied to the conceptual plan and be required to guide the development.

And you said those are a mixed, uh, retail on the bottom, and then so the main floor is retail.

Uh, potential. I think they might have some flexible flexibility there between retail or office, depending on market demand.

Mm-hmm.

But the, um, 2nd and 3rd stories are programmed for office space exclusively, uh, per these layouts here. That, that's what makes sense. However, um, they being in the PD zone, um, there is a land use table. And I can actually look at that when we have Q&A and just verify if it's limited to just those 2 types of uses.

Okay, thanks.

So these are building elevations. They show the floor plates, the 1st through 3rd floor, as well as the elevations of the buildings. They're similar in nature. And then the one to the north is, like I said, 2 stories. Some other perspective views of the conceptual plan. This makes it a little bit clearer, especially in the bottom left-hand corner, that retail element. There's also a little plaza in between the 2 buildings, which I think is a nice addition. Okay, this is the existing site conditions. As I said, there's a former grocery store. It's been vacant for some time, and then you can see Nieders off there in the upper left, Sweeto behind that, that beautiful fall tree. I think—

As I looked at this during the stuff you sent out, it looked like Nieders was going to remain and the Sweeto Sweet Burrito, or am I— correct? Those 2 buildings would stay, the rest would be raised.

There's an additional building behind Sweet Burrito that would remain.

It's a small building, right?

It's a 2-story smaller building, about 6,000 square feet, I believe.

Combination office, I think.

Yeah.

Okay, thank you.

The main building to be raised would be the grocery store, right?

Thank you.

We, uh, with all PD zones, we have a governing ordinance that would be adopted as part of this. There are some exceptions. This is really very similar to the C-2 zone. Um, the, uh, my understanding of why the applicants propose a PD zone is for a few exceptions. Overall, this will be in line with the general development of the corridor. It's not particularly, uh, divergent in any significant way, uh, from what's allowed already on the site. site by the current zoning, but they did ask for a few, um, variations, and hence therefore we have the specialized zone that would allow those variations. Typically, we have a 15-foot setback from the sidewalk, the back of the sidewalk on State Street. They're asking for 10 feet. That allows them to, um, maximize some parking space and to get their numbers close to where they need to be. Also allows for a drive-through to go through on that retail pad site.

Yes, they're going to be a—

I'm trying to look. So how does that building on the south, the drive-through, line up with meters, the setback for meters? Do you know?

It's behind it. I'm not sure how many feet. I would guesstimate it's at least 10 feet behind the current meters. Behind, but they have that drive-through that goes in front of it, and that impedes into the landscaping area that we would normally require.

Okay, but visually it will be—

Visually, yes, it's within the 15 feet.

Correct.

Um, other than that, setbacks, uh, remain, uh, equal to the C-2 zone. And then the building heights, um, correct me if I'm wrong, but they're, they're equal, right, Ryan? Yeah, to the current C-2 zone. Landscaping, I already mentioned the deviation there. Um, they do request for slight, slight parking reduction rather than 1 stall for 250 square feet. Um, To allow 1 stall per 255 square feet. And this allows them to lay out the parking and the buildings in the way that they desire. Um, there is a difference between buildings less than 10,000 square feet, where the standard is based upon total gross square footage versus buildings larger than 10,000 square feet, which is based off a Leasable square footage standard. So stairways, foyers often aren't part of the leasing package, and therefore they're excluded from the overall calculation.

Matt, what would be the net difference in parking spaces if we grant that variance?

Ryan, do you have the number on that?

Yeah, it's, it's depending on how you round, it's between 7 and 8 stalls.

For the entire project, correct?

That's correct.

And then the—

is—

can you—

I'm curious, why were the trees, um, reduced?

We do have the developer here that could probably answer some of those questions better if the mayor's interested in inviting him up, if that's okay with the mayor.

We're almost done. When you're finished, come up.

Yeah.

Um, one advantage, uh, We recognize there's some tradeoffs with the proposal, especially reducing the landscaping on State Street, but staff ultimately recommended to the Planning Commission an approval. One of the main advantages is they've come forward with a solid concept, and by rezoning to PD, that actually bounds them to the concept rather than, um, you know, that design shifting and morphing to something unexpected in the future. There was some concerns in the Planning Commission meeting. Ultimately, the Planning Commission did recommend approval on a 5-1 vote, um, to that— recommend to you that you approve it. Uh, there was concerns about the height and the viewshed from the residential area to the east of the grocery store. This is a street view from Google Earth or Google Maps showing the existing condition of the back of that grocery store. You see how it's only about 12 feet off the Property line. Yeah, I estimate about 20 feet tall. That's an estimate. I didn't get my measuring tape out. Um, but, um, you can see just sort of how imposing that is. And just to provide some context, there were some concerns expressed from the public about the viewshed of the 3-story office buildings. They will be 100 feet from the property line rather than 12. And then, um, I just sketched this out today just to help illustrate that the viewshed doesn't significantly change. It actually slightly improves a little bit with that 3-story, 100-foot offset. Um, and it's a much more attractive facade than the cinder block wall. So hopefully that adds some more context about the, the view impact. Now, that's for properties immediately adjacent to the grocery. There are some further south that don't have any obstruction in their viewshed, and a new office building would, would, uh, provide some obstruction. But again, uh, it's a— gives you some more context.

And that particular height is currently allowed under a C-2, correct?

Correct. So, so it— yeah, they could apply under the current C-2 rules and, and still be that height within 100 feet of the property.

Correct.

And again, to your point earlier, we know what we're getting when they start with this PD zone, and you don't know what they're getting when you start with a C-2 zone, right? Which is probably why you and the Planning Commission recommended approval.

Uh, yes, added to at least the staff level. Yeah, I'm sure the Planning Commission, each member have maybe a little different take on it, but, um, from the staff perspective, yes.

And is that the same, the C-2 is 100 feet just like the PD, or is the C-2 different?

I do feel, uh, If I remember correctly, we do allow buildings closer than 100 feet, but they have to be shorter down to 35 feet. And, and I do think they're allowed up to 0 feet from the property line. Is that right? I have to go review the code.

It's 1 to 1, 10 to— with a difference of 10, beginning at 10. So 35 feet, you could be 35 feet tall, 48, 48, but the, the tallest is 35 at 35.

Thank you for that clarification.

Is that correct?

Okay.

Yeah, I love it when you quote code.

Just in circles around.

Oh, can I ask one question?

Yes.

And maybe you're going to show this, but, um, so the office space, so floor 2 and floor 3.

Yes.

So when you say office, um, my impression is whoever's occupying that will likely be gone at 5 or 6 Yeah, typically that is, that is around standard operating around office use.

However, I don't think we have any zoning regulations that say an office couldn't be open later, you know.

Right, like after hours.

And again, that's why I need to go look at that Land Use Code, because if they have like, say, a spa or salon in there and they operate at later hours, you know, we wouldn't prohibit that.

Okay.

Thank you.

So ultimately, the Planning Commission did recommend the City Council by ordinance enact these provisions of code as outlined on the agenda. If there's any questions for me, and—

I do want to ask the applicant about the trees.

Let's go ahead and invite the applicant up.

Or do you want to wait till public comment is done?

No, you can—

trees.

Come on up.

Thanks for meeting with us tonight.

My name is Dave Vincent. I'm one of the partners and represent the partnership putting forth this request.

The main reason for the tree request was because it matches what is already there.

The existing trees, which are quite large, full, mature trees. So tearing those trees down would actually Reduce the amount of landscaping and the coverage that is there existing along State Street.

You're looking just to supplement that same look that's already there?

Correct.

Okay, thank you.

Can you go—

David Vincent, and then our lead architect, Justin Hepler.

Yes.

Yeah, David Vincent and Justin Hepler with AJC Architects.

Could you, could you just go back to kind of the pros and cons sheet?

Pros and cons?

Well, I was just talking about the pros and cons.

Yeah, the two, the differences between the two zones. There we go.

And there's 2 slides on this.

So, so the question I have is, you have the total square foot of the feet of the new building, but the parking, I'm assuming, is my concern. That you have Neiders and Sweet Aburrito, and you're going to utilize those parking stalls as the total amount for the retail and the office space.

So, so originally we were, um, we've been working with staff on this, um, for over 2 years, and the original approach was we were going to look at this, the rezone in isolation, um, with, uh, Sweeto Burrito broken out and, uh, Nieders, the existing Nieders building broken out as separate parcels. Um, they recommended that we instead rezoned the whole property that's owned by Nieders. And so, at that point, we did combine those totals into the parking counts, but the parking counts worked before when they were independently broken out as their own parcels. So we, we didn't change anything to do with our parking count. We just ended up Looking at the site more holistically. So we're not dependent on the parking from those sites to make this work. Now, we are blending a little bit of Nieder's existing— they ended up— they end up using some of that existing parking field because they're so busy, but they meet their requirements within what they have available on their parcel. So—

So with your new buildings, you're saying that you have enough parking If we do the PD zone, you go down to 255 per.

So with, with our new buildings, we have enough parking that with, with when the whole site's considered as a whole, we work. If you broke out Nieders and Sweeto Burrito as separate parcels, it still, it still works. And, and if we want to get into analysis of the parking, we can do that.

Yeah, that's, that's my main concern, because with Sweetabrito and Neaters, if they're packed, where are people going to park? If it's—

So there will be a cross-share that happens, um, between, uh, all of the different parking available on the site. But that's one of the benefits of a mixed-use development is you can do that flex up and down, um, within a larger parking field. So, um, we anticipate That there likely will be a little bit of an overflow into that front parking area when Nieders is super busy at noon. But also, the office will likely park primarily around the office building to the south side, to the north side, and they'll kind of blend a little bit. They'll tend to park close to the— to their office up at kind of the east side of that, that parking field. And that should leave plenty of parking available for needers to kind of bleed into there. And the— what we anticipate to be a restaurant pad to kind of bleed into there. So we don't anticipate any challenges managing the parking on the site between all the buildings. And we've been working with PEG Development, who does a lot of development of large multi-use projects like this, and they're very comfortable with that.

Okay.

with our parking field.

So, so what plans— I mean, I've been there, I've been to Nader's at noon. What plans do you have for the drive-up? Because it— so it doesn't block.

Yeah, so we're actually working to solve a current drive-through issue with the way that we have our new configuration.

Currently it's a single lane, and we're proposing 2 lanes.

Yeah, and they also are kind of— yep. So we're looking to solve a problem right now also As we readdress this parking lot.

So, yeah, because that's a problem right now.

Yes, it's a problem.

I can't— if you park and someone's in the drive-through, you can't— and you go inside, you can't get out of your parking spot. Wonderful.

Thank you.

If we, if we didn't— if we had been able to move the State Street entrance, we probably would have pushed it a little bit further south, but we don't have any option with that. So we're, we're, we're working with this as it is. Yeah, it's very complicated.

Yep.

So, Matt, can you go back to the, um, the pros and cons, whatever the positive and negative— yeah, right here.

Again, there's 2 slides, so if you'd like me to look up the other, just ask.

Because C2, that's, that's basically 4 per 1,000, which is 2.5, and you want 2.55. I just concerned about the parking. That's my main concern. Also, like with apartments, it's the same thing.

We, um, so. Now, one thing that the planning staff might want to address is, um, without the rezone, we still would be able to come in and ask with a parking study for a parking reduction. We likely would be asking for the same amount of stalls as a parking reduction, and staff has the ability to consider that and weigh that with a parking study. If you look at the parking study that's attached to the proposal, they actually Think that we're overparked for what our use is going to be, and they have a lot of analysis that demonstrates that. Um, so, uh, I don't believe— and staff can respond— that we're asking for something that we otherwise couldn't ask for without the rezone. We just are— we're just locking it in with the PD development.

So, what is the total square footage?

So, My screen froze up.

I have that, Councilman. Um, the new square footage is 88,150. The existing is 10,540, for a total of 98,690.

And David, do you mind if I ask a question while you're considering? Are you in the middle of something? I don't want to interrupt. Go for it. The type of client you're going to have In here for the— and I know you're representing the developer, you're the architects. The type of clients you're going to have in here are going to be more professional versus a call center versus some other thing that would demand high parking. I'm sure you don't have your— all your— any of your contracts inked, but who are you shooting for? What type of people?

We've already had conversations with dental offices, medical insurance.

Who are going to be light users as far as parking? So Having had some experience with commercial real estate, 4 to 1,000 is plenty. And you're talking about a total net difference of 7 or 8 parking stalls on the 88,000.

So it's, it's small.

It's a relatively minor thing. And if you're not doing call centers, I'm feeling very confident. And it doesn't look like the architect lends itself to a call center because they're not big flat floor plates with 30,000-foot floor plates, right?

Breaks up really well. 4 quadrants per floor. And that's, that's what—

that's the client for professional offices.

Yes.

Yeah.

2,500 to 5,000 square feet.

Yeah. That's going to be your current client, your go-to client, 5,000.

And in the office world right now, that's what sells. The, the large—

selling these as condos?

No, no.

Okay. When you say sells, I was just— yes.

Thank you. Well, yes. Yeah. Lease as well.

If you're gonna have professional office, like you say, That really does open up the parking because it's just, it's not that big of a use. Well, no, and it changes all the time and it's just, yeah, well, we've always got plenty of room.

You know, the doctors close down for lunch and so maybe that frees up parking spots for neaters during the lunch hour.

When also they go home at 5 or 6.

They go home at 5, so that opens that up for dinner.

Yeah.

A question maybe more for Ryan. Along State Street, is that curbed? Is that red curbed? If there was a massive wave of lunchgoers, what's— what does State Street look like as far as parking along State for a short period of time?

There is a shoulder there right now, and it looks like you can park there. There is a bike lane shown. But it's not red curbed.

In the 25 years that I've been there, I've never seen a single car park there.

Well, no, it's a vacant lot.

No. Yeah, that's true too.

So, yeah, but I don't see parking on State Street.

I think, I think the only kind of other side of State Street, there's a, there's a housing development and there's parking on that side.

There's a medical clinic and a retirement home.

I just think directly across parking on State Street is never a good plan. From the beginning.

Yeah.

Yeah, I— Mayor, I stand corrected. There are no parking signs designating it as a bike lane. I just had to look a little closer at the Google Street View.

Thank you.

I just wouldn't want to go into it with that being part of the plan. We need to park it on the, on the property.

What's your overflow plan for— I'm guessing you're putting a Swig there on the corner, but what's your overflow plan?

We actually were We did a lot of work to get that drive-through to configure right, but you enter the drive-through from the internal— there's an easement that has to be maintained between the lot to the south and across the site. And so you enter from that easement vehicle lane, and we feel like that's going to keep all that overflow traffic internal to the site.

Yeah.

And then here's my next question.

So exiting from that area, your traffic study. Um, are you looking at some traffic control devices somewhere? It's pretty tricky to get out of there.

You're increa—

you're increasing the activity in this parcel of land a lot. And I know, you know, coming out and trying to make a turn south, did they recommend any kind of—

So the controlled intersection parking study didn't recommend it. I mean, right turn is always going to be easier than left turn. Um, that's not something that, uh, we're proposing currently. Uh, we'd be more than open to your perspective on that if you wanted to try to regulate that. But right now, um, we don't have any plans to, uh, regulate that.

So it's really not us, it's UDOT, right? And they haven't—

Well, we haven't done our full submittal to them, so that could come back out of that process. Um, as we On with development.

Okay, correct.

Did you ask what the, you know, what, what you could have in a PD-53? What are the uses?

It's gonna be the same as C-2.

Yeah, it's, it's the same as the C-2.

It's the same as any use that's allowed in a C-2 zone right now. So there's like 1,000 uses, so to show you the table would probably not be very helpful.

We're basically talking about 8 less parking spots and 5 feet closer to State Street. Everything else stays pretty much the same. Is that fair?

That's fair to say.

And how many of those could the state— could the staff have done? Could the staff have approved those without a PD change? No, not a zone change.

No, we could not.

Um, you could have waived the parking requirement, but not the move to State Street.

We could not waive either one of them.

Okay.

And, and the gentleman at the table suggested a parking reduction study. That is an option to pursue if it were not to be rezoned, but staff doesn't approve that. It goes through a different approval process, and Steve and I can't recall off the top of our heads. It just goes to Planning Commission for approval. On a parking reduction study.

Thank you.

And with that setback going from 10— going from 15 to 10, I mean, normally I think we'd care about that, but because this is already— everything's set so far back, it has that nice open look, so it's pretty insignificant.

Yeah.

And I—

going back, I've worked with Mr. Vincent on this about 7 years ago. We started having discussions, and that road, that easement that he talked about, kind of locks that parking field in place. And so, if you did have that extra 5 feet, it kind of squishes the parking up to the building, and the drive aisle doesn't work out very well.

So, your sidewalks don't line up, right? Because you're— correct.

So, so right now, the sidewalk in front of Nieders doesn't line up with the sidewalk that is in the new parking field, and that's due to your rules have changed. Since then. So we're going to have to kind of swivel it over, um, to—

And how wide is the turn-in you get? Is it 13 feet or—

So that's from property line to back of sidewalk.

Um, we just—

I'm just saying, if somebody's really using the sidewalk or riding their bike or something, it's— it could get pretty busy.

So yeah, that, uh, ingress-egress off of State Street could get busy.

Do we have any other questions, or should we open it up?

We're good?

Okay, let's go ahead and, and open for public comment. You, you can, you can go ahead and stay here, and then just— that'll be more convenient. Do we have any public comment?

Hi, my name is Laurel Barney. I live on Ribbonwood Drive, so my property butts up against— it would be Building 1.

Um, are we—

like the idea of what's being, um, shown. The thing that we are concerned about is the parking. Um, Orem, you do a great job at a lot of things, but parking is an issue in a lot of places. At the mall, at Trader Joe's, at city council meetings, at, um, parking for, you know, at the, at the soccer complex. Like, there's just a lot of, of issues with parking, and we are worried that it's going to affect 2000 North. It's going to affect our neighborhood in that, in that way. So just as a reminder, we have an LDS temple that is going to be completed in Linden, and their access is going to be 2000 North, um, that light. Um, there are 4, um, exits and entrances on the Orem side in that half a block. you know, from State Street to Ribbonwood, and there are 6 on the Linden side. So that's 10 driveways or roadways that access that small area. That light, we just think that's going to be a problem and just want that to be considered as you—

Thank you.

As you, you know, go forward on this. Thank you.

Thank you. Anyone else, feel free to come up.

Keith Walker and I live right behind this property on Ribbonwood on 1969 North, 600 West. I know you want to know that. I'm going to call a little bit. I've shared some stuff today, and I'm going to share a little bit that what they said isn't totally true, but I'm not necessarily trying to slam them. I just want to know it's not totally true. As we talked before, I'm going to read some of this and share it. Tonight you're developing this property. We understand they want to make money and it's an issue. They want to develop and get all they can out of that property, but— and that's only good business. And the P-2-3 change allows the developer to take advantage of some of these existing long-term zoning regulations that was talked about. They're requesting a variance of 22 stalls. We've talked about by the setback. They're requesting a variance on the 2-5 to 2-5-5, which is 7 stalls. So they're requesting 29 additional stalls coming from the city to help them develop it. What they haven't told you is that they're 20 short stalls short already on that property according to their 2-5-5 zoning. And so really they're 49 stalls short in the total property, and they're asking for 29 from the city and being short 20. They're trying to get the 20 that they're missing back to the Neiders and Sweet O' Burrito's property. People's not going to develop in these buildings in Wolvern Park and Sweet O' Burrito's property even though there's 26 empty stalls or 20 all day long. So the lack of parking is a concern. I'm sorry, I got off track here. They're trying to use the extra 72 stalls from Sweet O' Burrito and Neiders. They admitted in their planning meeting and they admitted today that Needers overflows. So they're going to have a problem there no matter what they do. These existing businesses met their— they talked about that. Another concern is 2000 North. I'll share it with you. From State Street to Riverwood, Laurel shared some of the exits and entrances. The developer's drawing, a concern we have and we've been told it's not going to happen, but they have drawings of doors out of these buildings exiting 2000 North. So that's only encouraging people to park on 2000 North. We think that's a mistake. They tell us it's not going to happen, but we're not sure. We're concerned with 2000 North that Sister Laurel talked about, uh, and the issues that are on 2000 North. We strongly— we feel strongly that developers are still trying to put too much property Too much on this current property. Yes, we also know this section of Orem is an eyesore. It's a great eyesore and needs improvement. We know the city wants to improve it, and the city's appearance, the state street, as people enter the city. We generally are not, as the neighbors will tell you, opposed to wanting this done, but we still feel they're trying to put too much on this piece of property. We don't think there's enough parking. And then after the completion of that building, it's too late to resolve the parking issue. So we just would like to address the parking and feel confident that we don't create a monster that we have to live with down the road. Thank you for the City Council and your efforts and your interest in Orem City. On behalf of the neighbors of Orem, North Orem, thank you.

Is there anything you'd like to do to just address that parking Analysis.

Yeah, Ryan went through all the numbers just a while ago, so I'd defer to him.

Yeah, so I went back and pulled the original site plans that were approved for the Sweeto Burrito complex that also contains a 2-story Neiders building. The original site plan required 25 stalls for that, and on this map they're showing 26 there right now. So that's consistent with the original site plan. The original site plan for the new Neeter's, or newer Neeter's restaurant, showed 25 being required, and they have 19, 30, plus another 16 or so. So by code, they were only required to have 25. They do have more than that shown currently. Again, I'm not sure where Mr. Walker's numbers are, how they're being calculated. I'm happy to sit down with him. But running the overall site, I'm only coming up with 7 to 8 stalls difference depending on how you round that number. And that's counting the existing buildings on site.

So I have a question to something that Mr. Walker brought up. The driveways for 4 driveways that we can't do anything about what Linden's doing. Um, and I, I look at this and I'm only seeing 3 if I'm—

so there's currently—

oh, there's a 4th.

Okay.

Yeah, we're actually reducing one. Um, there's currently 4. We're reducing the widest one that is kind of right, uh, adjacent to the new 2-story office building. Um, so we're taking 4 and reducing them to 3. Okay, if you count the Sweeto Burrito one.

And then, um, the building, uh, Building 3, um, I think you brought up a good point. Will there be doors? Will there be entrance into that building from 2000 North? Or it looks like the parking is all on the south side and on the, the west side.

So we're, we're trying to meet balance, meeting the city's zoning requirements for wanting to have windows and access against the sidewalk and also, uh, you know, meet the needs of how we think the building's going to function. Uh, in reality, these buildings are not fully designed, so the doors that are shown there may or may not end up there. This is a very well-developed conceptual design, but there's still some room to continue to develop it. We anticipate that the primary entrances to those buildings will be from the interior parking fields. But we'll also be meeting Orem zoning requirements for the architecture of our buildings.

If we—

so, Ryan, if we wanted to, I mean, just so they could design the building how they want, could we red curb that 2000 North to keep people off that?

I don't think that would be a problem. I have the street view up right now. There's currently only a 3 or 4-foot shoulder, so parking's not allowed on the Orem side. However, there is parking allowed The Linden side, and so someone could park on the Linden side and walk across the street if they wanted to.

So we have to talk to them about that.

And our boundary is pretty much the center of that road.

How wide is that road?

If—

does it, um, you know, 2 lanes of traffic, parking only on one side, and then a small— do you know what I'm saying? Is it— sounds like it's—

Yeah, so on— it has 2 travel lanes, 1 center turn lane. The 3 to 4 foot shoulder in Orem, I'm approximating on the Lyndon side. It has a bike lane and on-street parking. So it's technically wider on the Lyndon side than the Orem side. Now, where that dividing line is, I'm not sure exactly between the 2 cities.

So the red curb would kind of just be emphasizing something that wasn't possible anyway.

Well, we could, we could red curb. the Orem side to reinforce that there's no parking there. But with the white stripe showing the shoulder, that technically is a— to park on that white line would be a traffic violation. Okay, you would be sticking out into the lane half of your car.

And our, our preference would obviously be to not have, you know, people parking on that street. So, so you've got your design, you figure that out, but as far as that would be our preference.

So, so, Steve, could, could we do a development agreement that they could have doors on the east and west and north of that building?

So we would prefer to say something like egress-only doors would be allowed on the north side, so we could still maybe have an exiting door there, but not a building entrance door.

That would—

so.

Well, plus, I want you—

then is there a fire code? I mean, yeah, an emergency exit on that side.

It's possible that as we refine that floor plan, we could need to have an egress, like an exiting door on that side. But if you could have some language that said building entrances should only be, you know, not on 2000 North or something along that.

Yeah, it would be nice to just— I mean, we want it designed as beautiful as possible, so we don't really want to be telling you where you can put your doors and that sort of thing. But if we can control it out on the roads, that would be better. And, and we may be able to talk to Lennon about that too, but our goal would be not to have people parking on that road.

So to answer your question real quick, if you wanted to do something like that, you wouldn't need to do a development agreement. You could actually put it in the zone standards tonight, and you could add a provision saying, you know, whatever you wanted it to say.

Just put it—

make it part of the PD 53 ordinance just so they can't park on the street?

No, not as the parking, but as the location of entrances. I, I thought that was what—

that was, that was my question.

But, um, I, I just don't want to force them to put entrances and affect their design. I'd rather control the parking some other way.

We're—

I think we're totally open to that. I just want to have the option for an exit egress door on that side if I need to for, uh, a tenant to have a way out, um, of their space.

So yeah, yeah, because yeah, if you had a door, then that people would park at the closest thing. If, if they had to park over here, I mean, they could exit out to go to lunch or go to Sweeto Burrito. But I mean, maybe we do that, I don't know.

So they'd be crossing a pretty busy street there to get to—

if they parked on the 2000, if they parked on the north side.

Plus you've got a bike lane Um, yeah, I'm looking— I'm thinking of when you had in American Fork, there's a new office, doctor's office, and they do— they have most— they have like right up against the sidewalk and they have the emergency exit doors, but you enter from behind the building where the parking lot is. That's kind of what this kind of looks like. Were you envisioning— I mean, I guess we're trying to find out what was your—

So we, we've treated the facade as a, as a Attractive. I won't call it the front of the building, but it is a public-facing part of the building. It's an attractive facade. I think that benefits the project. It doesn't look like the backup house. Um, the entrances that, that we plan on pedestrians enter the building would happen on the 2 short ends and the 1 long end that faces the internal part of the project. I don't think we have any reservation to being told that doors that open onto 2000 North had to be egress only.

doors.

Um, so, so how would you put that in the PD-53? Because you, you don't want to— you just want to limit to Building 3.

Yeah.

Um, because it doesn't work since we have a— since we have a concept plan that they're tied to, and this is that— this concept plan is actually part of the PD-53 ordinance. You could specifically say for Building 3 You know, the doors facing 2000 North or egress only, if that—

or whatever you wanted.

And that would work with—

that allows the tenants the flexibility to egress out the back of the building if they need to based on their occupancy, but, um, establishes that we aren't using those as primary building entrances.

Ryan, my only concern from the discussion tonight is knowing that Mr. Walker got a quality math Education at Orem High School, the same, the same Mr. Udy or someone there. So the difference, Ryan, between your math and his math has some concern for me. I don't know how we rectify this, but if we, if we say 255 parking stalls for this area, then the 22 short or whatever will be, will be worked on in the math. Is that correct? Because if we said we were going to stick at 250, we're talking about 2,000 less square feet to the developer, and I know he doesn't want to do that to get the extra 8 stalls. But if we're talking whatever number you got up to, that's a concern to me. So, well, I went to Orem High as well, so we're— oh, okay, we should be resolved.

Yeah.

One of the—

they just need to be counted on the map.

The property around it is 20 stalls short. In their notes at the bottom, they say how they make that up by using meters And Cerrito-Breedo stalls of 72 make up so they have enough.

But again, Ryan's math was 25 to 26 stalls. They were almost there already with the existing building. So I'm a little— I'm following all the math. I think I'm reasonably good at math, but I'm— there's a conflict here. So I guess I don't know.

Yeah, it was the square footage of every building included in that.

Yeah, I think maybe what Mr. Walker is alluding to is If Nieders is using 70 stalls or 60 stalls, but they only are required to have 25, that's a problem. Then there's, there's that overlap that the applicants talked about, how Nieders at noon will expand out into the office parking. And so there will be crossover and shared parking.

Well, shared parking is okay, but overparking is a problem. That's the only concern.

Correct.

And I don't know if you're allowed a second shot, is he?

Just a comment on that.

Mayor, that's up to you.

Hold on, this— you need to be recognized by the mayor before you can come up to speak. Yeah, and that's his decision whether to allow you to come up.

I understand that.

Okay, so I'll, I'll let you come up, but just kind of keep it concise.

Well, back to the public input. So if you count the stalls on the property, they're 20 short. They're getting a variance of 22 from the State Street deal And they're getting 7, that was discussed, 7 or 8 from the 2.5 to 2.55. And we understand that. So if you take the property as it sits, not getting those variances, they're 49 short. If you give them the variance that they're asking for, they're still 20 short. And that's just counting the property. And it says it right there on their map. They know it. The reason I bring it up is they knew it, and they knew it when there was the planning, and they know it now. And they're still, but they're absorbing Neeters and the 72 stalls that occupy Neeters and Sweet O'Brito. There's 72 there. Because of those 72 absorbed into the whole plan, now they have enough to fit the planning deal. That's just how it is on the map. Does that make any sense or help me?

So are you saying, you're saying there's 72 between Neeters and Sweet O'Brito? Sweet O Burrito, right?

72.

72. So was there originally less required for those 2?

No, no. I mean, well, he said there was. I don't know originally. He said there was less.

That's where you're coming up with the difference.

I don't know.

But there's 72 that Nieders has now and Sweet O Burrito has, and they're taking those, incorporate it like they said with the rest of that property and developing it all at one time. They're using those 72 stalls to get to their 2.55 that they're required.

I'm just trying to understand. The discrepancy is that the original for those 2 entities was less. And so you're— now you're saying there's 72?

I don't disagree with Mr. Walker on what he just said. He is correct. There are 72 stalls shown, existing stalls shown on the map within the boundary of those existing buildings, but the original site plans only required 45. So there is surplus parking there.

And do we know how many of those 72s they're currently using?

I, I, we don't know. They could maybe—

you probably do that. You probably have some traffic information.

It depends on the time of day.

Sure. But do they ever use all 72? If they do, that's a problem.

Yeah.

Well, so probably the biggest time that we overflow is on a Saturday morning when the office buildings would be empty and when French toast is a deal.

Yeah.

Well, and I often see those to the north of Neeters, the 19, um, not really used.

And are you referring to in between the Sweet O Burrito and the—

Yeah.

Those are used.

We do a lot of employee parking there, et cetera.

And just as far as our submittal is concerned, we followed all the requirements of Orem City and how we wrote up our parking and how we did our analysis on our square footage. And there's no intent to hide anything in that. And I believe the city has reviewed it.

So, but that, that is the essence of the disagreement, I think, is those 2 entities required less parking on the original development, right? And so now their excess is being into the development.

Sorry, Mayor, but as we look at the site as a whole and we consider the uses, we do calculate The use for each use in each building, and then we show the collective result of that in our parking count. And so they would reflect what the current requirement is for Orem City in that analysis, in that table that we provided.

And I, and I get that for sure. And I think, you know, the biggest argument that you have is that the 2 levels of office professional use are usually really underutilized, and they're especially underutilized after 6, you know, after 5 or 6, and on weekends. So there's, you know, that's where you get into trying to figure out what's, what's possible, what's not. But I mean, to me, to me, that all makes sense. If this were all heavy retail, or if it was, you know, um, all fast food, everything in there, it wouldn't Probably wouldn't work, but it's not. It's a mix of pretty high use, which is Neiders and Sweetup Burrito, and then low use on the professional office from my perspective.

Mayor, if I could add, I just did a count of the site plan of the number of stalls shown on it using the numbers provided. You can kind of see in there that it shows a little number in each area. I came up with 399, which is actually shown in their table as the total stalls provided. Which exceeds even what their code of 387 or 388 is stating. So, I mean, technically, they don't even need the parking adjustment. So I'm kind of curious, maybe the applicant could explain why. Is it just for flexibility in case you need to change things during site plan? Do you have a little leeway?

I'd have to take a look at that and see. It is noted that way on the site plan. I think it had to do with The way that we were considering the new uses against the old.

But okay.

Just, I'm not trying to argue this fact, but on their plan, it calls for their square footage, and it says right on the map that they've got— they need 347. If you count the parking stalls around this building on this development, not Neaters or not Sweeto Burrito, they only have 327. And that's where they're 27 short or 20 short. And then they've asked for the— and, and if there's not a parking problem, like I said, we're, we're not opposed to this. We just don't want the problems down the road in a year or 2 from now once it gets there. If there's not a parking problem and it works, then it's a good thing. But if it is, it's going to be a nightmare, and that's our concern. Okay, thank you for letting me interrupt you.

Any other comments? Okay, we'll go ahead and close the public comment. Any other comments from the council?

I still have a concern about parking, but I mean, it's a nice project, so, but I am concerned about parking.

So, yeah.

I guess my concern with parking is I hope you're— I appreciate your double-lane drive-through. because that, when I'm there, that cuts off— that backup cuts off a bunch of parking stalls. Um, and I can appreciate the, the frontage, the ones on State Street. I feel like those that butt up against State Street will probably be used by Nieder's people. Um, I'm— I don't know, does Sweeto Burrito ever fill up with their parking? I've never really seen—

Very rarely.

Issues there.

So maybe if employees can switch over a little north and free up the north of Needers for additional Needers customers and do some training there, you know, education for the regulars that they can find parking over there. Um, the whole thing really is to avoid overflow into the neighborhood. So, um, you know, I, I think the project looks great. Uh, there's going to have to be some education and training for Those of us who love Neaters very much.

I mean, we've talked about all the different issues, but I really believe the professional office is going to mitigate the parking issues. And then I just, like you say, when you look at what's there now and what's been there for years, that doesn't add any value to Orem or the neighborhood or anybody. And the idea of, you know, moving this out to 100 feet as opposed to the 10 feet it is right now, I just don't see any negatives on the project, but that's just me.

Other than the doors need to be exit.

Yeah, and that I— and I'll go back to, as far as whatever they do on that side of the building, I think we want that building to look really nice. So it's this nice building. And so I think we leave it up to them on the design side, and then we try and mitigate the parking if it is an issue with red curb. Talk to Lyndon, do whatever to keep people off that street, because that would be a problem.

Steve, can you instruct us if someone was ready to make a motion, what they needed to add to the end of it about the ingress or regress doors?

So if you wanted to add that provision, I think that you would just make a motion to approve, for example, the proposed PD-53 zone with the modification that— and probably the best way to do it, if the developer's okay with that, is just to add a note to the concept plan on Building 3 saying that any doors facing 2000 North north would be egress only. They just put that note right on there, and then obviously when they develop their plans, that would be obvious to everyone.

That works for you?

That works for us.

Okay.

Somebody like to make a motion?

You gonna do it?

That's a lot of words. I'll do it. I make a motion to approve the PD Zone 53 as described With the modification that Building 3 has doors— the north-facing doors are egress only. Does that capture it?

Yeah, and just asking the developer to add a note to the concept plan to reflect that.

Yep. And add a note to reflect that.

Second.

Aye.

Aye.

Aye.

And all this talk of neaters and sweet-o-britos made me hungry.

Hi. Hi.

Yeah.

Hey, can we— sorry, this actually has 2 parts. You did the first part, which is creating the PD-53 zone, but then we also need to rezone the property that we've been talking about tonight to the PD-53 zone.

Do you want me to just read it exactly as it's written?

So, yeah, I think it's—

yeah, right up there.

Ryan's pointed out it's on the screen right there. You've done the first part.

Just read that whole thing.

Okay, sure.

I motion that we approve the recommendation to enact Article 221166, PD 53, and Appendix 00— or is that OO— of the Orem City Code, and amend Article 22-5-3A and the zoning map of the City of Orem by rezoning the property located generally at 1960 North State Street from the C-2 zone to the PD-53 zone, approximately 6.8 acres, with the modification that Building 3 north-facing doors only— or be egress only.

Perfect.

I'll still second it.

Aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Aye.

The rezones pass. So, thank you. Okay, moving on to item 9.3. Getting close to the end. Amending Section 2-7-5 of the Orem City Code, uh, choice of bid processes. Jake Summers will present that to us.

Mayor, council members, I apologize. I have neither Neaters nor Sweeto Burrito tonight.

But will you let us have fun? That's the real question today.

As fun as procurement can be. So, um, tonight, uh, we have a resolution before the council, uh, recommending adopting or amending Orem City Code 2-7-5. Which is, uh, the city's processes for purchasing and procurement. Uh, to give a little bit of context for the, the resolution, and I promise I will be quick, um, it is governed by Utah Code 63G-6A-101 and that chapter, which requires municipalities to adopt rules regulating the management and control of procurement of property, um, and the purchasing of, of any material. Uh, further, Utah Code 10-6-122 is the municipalities code, and that requires all purchases and/or encumbrances may be made according to, uh, rules established by city ordinance or resolution. Our city procurement code has been adopted in Article 2-7 Based on the MGT study, which was presented at the working session of the City Council on January 23rd, we are going to be following, recommending the increasing of thresholds and incorporating different changes to our procurement code for cost-saving measures, as well as to respond to inflationary responses in the market.

Thank you.

So this resolution does 4 things. First, in 275A, it increases the formal bid threshold from $25,000 to $50,000. The last time we made that adjustment, I believe, was in 2013, so over a decade ago was the last time we had— we adjusted for inflation purposes. Next is in 275B, it increases the cap For the written bid procedures from $25,000 to $50,000. So we're just taking that next step down and we're increasing it to match where we've increased the threshold for formal bids. Um, but also the third—

yes.

If there was a sensitive issue that was coming in under $50,000, but we wanted to formalize a bid, could we?

Absolutely. Um, I'm going to jump, uh, to, to head to kind of what, uh, 275 allows. It allows for All of the same procurement procedures that we do for anything over $50,000. It just gives us the added option to do a documented price quote procedure. So it just gives us one more tool for any purchases below $50,000, but it doesn't restrict us from doing anything more formal or more intensive.

So can you clarify that? So let's say we, we go along and there's some issue And we've changed everything to $50,000, but like Tom says, maybe there's something that's higher profile or whatever and it's $45,000. Are you saying we could just do the typical RFP process just the way it's always been?

Absolutely.

Or, or we could do the, the new one, which— so we would basically vote if it was an issue, right?

Yeah.

Yep.

Okay, so, um, to answer very directly to your question, Mayor, Yes, 275A allows for any purchases over, over $50,000 to either be a formal competitive bid, an RFP, or request for proposal, or a reverse auction. By increasing it to $50,000, that's— we're saying we will do that no matter what if it's over $50,000. If it's an amount below $50,000, we can still choose one of those 3 mechanisms. And we could also choose a documented price quote system.

Okay.

The 3rd thing that this resolution does is it incorporates the documented price quote procedure, and it lowers that threshold to $5,000. So we're basically taking what were 4 different thresholds, and we're turning them into 3 thresholds. And then the 3rd— sorry, the 4th item this resolution takes on is it increases the cap for procurement of services or goods that are below $5,000. So at that point, we don't need to go through the documented price quote or any of the formal bidding, but that is still incentive— it still directs staff to find the best price possible. Um, any questions so far? Okay, um, I've already addressed A and B. And as we've looked at this, we looked at comparative cities and counties to, to compare and see were the MGT recommendations in line with what other cities are doing. And basically, we're adopting a similar format of threshold as the Utah county government. Um, they have 50,000 and over is one threshold. Between 5,000 and 50,000 as a second threshold, and below 5,000. As you can see, other cities— Eagle Mount, for example, has a higher threshold at 75,000. But MGT's recommendations were to, to go to that step of 50,000. And really just cap us there. The other recommendation of MGT is that we review this on a regular basis and not necessarily wait a decade. to do it again. So, as we move forward, I think that we should be looking at this every, every several years rather than every 10. With that, I open up to any other questions that you have.

I know we talked about this at a work session a while back, but could you just remind us and help educate our public about why this benefits Orem City?

The benefits, as outlined in the MGT study, is that one, it reduces the time it takes for the city to make specific purchases. We all know the costs have gone up for about everything. So as we look at purchasing fleet vehicles, we would be restricted based on some of our fleet vehicles to do a formal bid process as opposed to being able to have more flexibility in asking for documented prices and being more reactive or more flexible in making those. So, one, it allows the city to be more responsive in, in acquiring property when it needs to. Secondly, it reduces the cost of staff time to do certain purchases. MGT believes that by raising the amount to a $50,000 threshold, it would avoid costs of approximately $210,000. And so there would be A cost savings to the city by making this adoption.

Where they come up with that $210,000, is that looking back over the previous year or 2?

Yes, it's going back over, looking at what our current policies do, what our purchases have been, and then basically deciding from that how much staff time, how much time had we spent in the bid process, and how, how quicker we could have been reactively to maybe have a had more savings.

So, so to answer the question directly, as far as what Jen just brought up, it saved us, say, $210,000, you know, had we done this before.

Correct.

So, yes.

Um, this is the world I live in, in the private sector, and, and it could be even additional savings because sometimes if you don't jump on a price situation and you, you're going through that formal process By the time it comes back around, that price has gone up and you missed a window of an opportunity.

Absolutely.

Could be even greater savings and, and much more efficient for this department.

Thank you.

Any other questions? I think we all feel pretty good about it as we kind of went through it in more depth in the work session. So somebody like to make—

I'll make a motion. I move that we amend Section 2-7-5 of the Orem City Code, choice of bid processes.

Second.

Aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Aye.

The ordinance passes. Thank you, Derek. All right, moving right along. Uh, Brenda, do you have any comments you'd like to bring up?

Just real quick, our applications are closing soon for the Aurum Fest Spirit of Aurum Award. And so if you've got people that you think would be good candidates for that, please get them to apply for that here really soon. And this is residents or residents that essentially are great examples of the Aurum Fest theme. Which is Honor, Hope, and Healing this year.

And how do people go about making that nomination, Pete?

Yeah, so they can just go to ormfest.org/spirit and the whole application is there.

It kind of gives some explanation about what we're looking for, and it's just a pretty simple process.

Okay.

Absolutely.

Thank you.

And then just last item, um, our City birthday is coming up on May 4th, so in a little less than a month, and we have plans to do kind of a day of service on that day. And we've got projects that we're planning to do at Nielsen's Grove. So again, this was one of your areas of focus to provide more service opportunities. So that one is coming along nicely. That's it.

Okay, thank you, Brent. All right, we're up to item number 12.

Mayor, I move that we adjourn to a closed-door session in Room 107 to discuss pending or reasonably imminent litigation, the character or professional competence of an individual, or the purchase or lease of real property.

Second.

Aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Aye.