City Council · 2024-08-27

You seen in here? I've already seen the ambulance.

These 4?

Those 4. They had them out one time when I came to work. They had them all out in the parking lot. They just came on the wrong day. I think it was the day they got him, or like the day after they got him. They're all drooling?

Yeah.

I was there. Pretty freaking nuts for our first, our first gas-powered one ever. All been diesel before.

Interesting.

I think they are the extended cab as well, so you can actually put people and stuff behind them. I guess that could be good and bad, but probably mostly good. I think they— one of the things they said is they have a lot of— I should say a lot— on lots of occasions they have people go with them.

Yeah.

Suffer. Oh, that's all right. Thank you. Sorry, Ted. All right, I think we're good to go. Walk it over there, Pete. So welcome to our work meeting.

Uh, we just got back going outside and looking at our new ambulances.

They're very, very nice, and, uh, excited to introduce those into the city.

Um, as far as our agenda today, we're running a little bit behind, not terribly, but a little bit, so everyone could just kind of keep the, the conversations moving.

We'll start out with item number 2, which is the presentation, concept, and estimate, uh, on the 400 East and Sequoia North Phase 1.

And Taggart, if you'd like to take charge of that.

Sure. work, thin work last time I presented, so I was a little better. We'll be presenting today about 16th Avenue and North 4th at East Intersection. Uh, in, uh, 2018, city applied for funding from MAG, this Matt Line District Association of Governments Metropolitan Planning Organization, for Uh, local area. And, uh, just to give you a background, um, this intersection has the Murdock Canal Trail that comes to the southeast corner and then the northwest corner, and a lot of users will cut diagonally across there. It's not a very safe intersection for pedestrians and That multi-use trail is very heavily used. And so this was a project that for years has been talked about, improvements to the intersection. So in 2023, the city hired JUB to do a study. As part of that project, we applied for funding from MAG. We were awarded approximately $1.4 million to do some improvements there. And, uh, in 2023, we hired JUB to put together, um, a study. And so they, they reached out to staff. Um, next one. Sorry. So yeah, just give you a background. So they reached out to staff and in coordination with staff came up with 12 different alternatives. Some of those ideas that they came up with was directional crosswalks, roundabout, moving the crossings to different areas on 16th North, enhanced roundabout, pedestrian scramble, grade-separated crossings. So with these 12 alternatives, what city staff JB presented these 12 alternatives to the TAC, Transportation Advisory Commission. And with the scoring they come up with from all these different alternatives, we were able to narrow down those 12 alternatives to 5. Then JB prepared posters and a lot of information that we went to a public open house. With those 5, and these are those 5 alternatives, uh, directional crosswalks involving eliminating right-turn lanes. And there's also an option to leave in the right-turn lanes. There was rerouting the trail to 350 East, having a crosswalk— it's still on 16th North, but hooking that down and putting a HAWK signal in.

Great.

Separated crossing, roundabout, and pedestrian scramble. So with the— they also did a lot of social media survey. With the results from the open house, they come up with the preferred alternative was Alternative C. It's only 5 degrees separated. So tunnel, there's also an option for after the open house with more brainstorming come up with an option for a bridge. Those are the most expensive, expensive options. And, um, so in conjunction with that, there was a long-term solution and a short-term solution. Long-term would be the tunnel. That'd be 5 to 7 years out, would require quite a bit of grants and additional funding. The short-term solution One of the options is— call this Option B— would be to eliminate the right turn lane. That's one of the things we wanted to present to you today, Mayor and Council, is eliminating a right turn lane is not ideal. But on this option, it would just be the South Lake, very minimum traffic there on the right turns. I said right turn lane going north heading east at 2nd and 40th. So that's one option we wanted to present to you. And then this option would be keeping all the right turn lanes with directional crosswalks, realigning the crosswalks there. That kind of forces them to cross the south lane on the west leg.

So that lines it up better with the Murdock Trail, the right turn. Is that why you're doing it on that corner?

Yes, it does deflect it just a little bit there and force them to cross in 2 different locations rather than half of them splitting this way and this way. You still have a sidewalk there, so some of them cross that, that way. This option is with our estimate. It was about $350,000. And those crosswalks would be designed— maybe wait for a light. Is that the way you see that happening? Yeah, maybe part of the signal network. It's not its own signal. It's got to be degraded, or it's got to be far away. Would the signal still allow you to cross the other ways? Yeah, but this would be the bigger, more obvious turn.

So I'm sorry, does— do pedestrians control the signal, or is this— are they going to have any influence on the signal?

They will.

So they can, farther up the trail, say I'm coming, and then—

I don't think we've determined that's an option. As long as people, depending which way they cross, the problem is if they push the button and they want to go north instead of west, we have to distinguish that. The technology is there to do it. It's just determining the effects of that. We talked about it having a higher one for bikes. You could be on a bike and hit it higher so the pedestrians couldn't reach, which is normal, but. are options outside of this layout. Maybe point of emphasis, the key here is this will just be short-term solution while we, you know, go after grants and save up money for the bridge. Anything else on it, Tagger?

So, so just to understand the directional crosswalk, Just to understand that.

Yeah.

So what is it exactly that pushes you down that path as far as going the other way?

So crossing in the dedicated crosswalk.

So it is—

so are there not crosswalks in other spots? So there will be crosswalks on every leg of this intersection, but what would force the trail users to use this would be the alignment of the trail. We're going to direct them to. Right now the trail kind of comes at an angle directly to the corner of both of these, so we're going to try and push that away from the corner a little bit. And then we could put, um, we'll put a full-height curb at these corners with possibly some boulders or something to keep them from crossing. Right now we can show— they'll just shoot across. No, they do.

Yeah, I almost—

we talked to one of the riders. it works. It's like if you put sand in there or any kind of cobble, they won't ride through it. Here's a minute video. I know we were behind, but we caught you up. We're at 4:30. So this is a, a higher speed video, so it's a little bit fast, but just gives you an idea looking south. Hey, if you captured me running through the intersection, I'm going to be really disappointed. So you can see that was a legal That was a diagonal. Um, and this is— I don't know how many hours. The shadows don't change much, so I don't know how long it was here. But I think jaywalker. What's interesting, I think this might be the lady that looks at her phone halfway through jaywalking again, right there. And if we watch to the end, you'll see her go the other way and almost get hit, so she runs to the crosswalk. And John Taggart, would it be— would the deterrent going straight across be primarily landscaping, or would it be bollards, or both? We talked about Disneyland bollards, you know, by New Jersey, but I have done— so it can be whatever project or combination, I guess.

We talked about directing them towards So the bikes just go both ways, right?

Whatever they want. Yeah, I don't think there's anything that will stop them. They'll continue to do what you see, just more cars, unless you get bicycle speed bumps. You want to set that? Chris, to your point, nothing will completely solve it until we get the grade-separated crossing. That's correct. But we do have some, some, some short-term little ideas to at least improve. Would you do anything with paint or anything to make those 2 crosswalks feel a lot more like they are the main path? Yeah, yeah, do some improvements. Here comes the lady again. Now watch what happens when she crosses illegally here. Oh, she realizes So clearly you can see stuff going on. And it was, it was telling every time we show this internally, man, it says a lot of what's going on. Probably one afternoon. I really like that you're pulling it back to the corner because that's a pinch point, definitely.

Yeah.

Whether you and your neighbors saw this I-16.

Yeah, I-16. In fact, it took me 4 minutes to get out of my neighborhood today to come to this meeting.

Actually, this is looking north. So, one feedback we got from road riders was this building blocks completely when you're heading south, looking left to see if there was any car. Which building? Oh, that— yeah, yeah, that just completely blocks any perception. Private shed, or is that a city shed? Private. That's something that comes up often, and there's a lot of infrastructure here too that blocks. Yeah, it's lower riders. So, uh, if that's an option, monitoring down the road, that shed removal, but that bigger— Another thing you'll notice is it seems like on the corners you'll have people just standing because there's nowhere to stand, and they'll almost out in the road. So pulling it back will help that.

And there was a lady in one of those little bikes that where you sit down, and yeah, that was a little scary. She was just like right there.

She's in a recumbent bike sitting down low?

Yeah, and I was turning this way, right, or south, and she was just like in the street, front row.

Any other questions? I just— a suggestion, whatever you put on those corners, the landscaping, sand will stop road bikers, but it won't stop Something like plants, concrete barrier, like you cannot go this way. We discussed not introducing landscaping because of the water. Yeah, there's hardscape stuff we can put in, physical barriers, rocks.

I appreciate that you guys are doing something. That is dangerous.

Thank you. Okay, thank you. Appreciate that. Item number 3, uh, communication survey results. Pete, you gonna guide us on that? So we have Ron Bealy from On Point Insights with us tonight who's going to come plug in and present some data. A couple months ago, we came to you with the communication survey we sent out to the residents to see how— it's been about 10 years since we've done it. So we wanted to get kind of some fresh data on how people want to be communicated, what kind of things they want to be communicated about. And so Ron has some interesting findings to present to us. We— he presented to me on Friday. We met as a communication team on Monday, and you're getting it today. So that's some pretty good turnaround.

Yeah.

But we're glad to have Ron. He did the employee satisfaction survey for us. last summer, and so he's back again, this time for communications. Excellent.

All right, all right.

Um, so we have a link that we'll provide to you after this meeting so you can go into everything in your own detail. Um, just a couple of things. We spoke with, uh, I just closed it off last night.

So the, the—

we have responses from people through last night. We started on August 1st. We went through August 27th. We got 854 surveys completed. And it's pretty representative. Like, we looked where they're at in the city, and it's very, very representative of where residents live. We got a large list of utility billing emails. That's who we went to. So it's light on renters and heavy on homeowners. Is what it is, but it's very representative of the homeowner population. How is the age demographics? Yeah, so we should show you that on the next page here. So we have a very balanced group across age groups. We do have some older respondents, you know, 55 plus, but we have a lot who are 35 to 54 in that age range. We have fewer who are young because we don't have the renters. That you could get. Now, if we wish to go and get renters, we could do that, potentially do postcard mailings or something to get to them. But here's where we're at right now. But you do have a very representative sample as far as the ages, right? So we got a lot of emails, but I went to the same ones over and over with reminders so that we exhausted a population rather than just the first ones to respond are included. You know, we worked this quite a bit. To make sure that we got good responses. More females than males, which is always the case. It's about usually 60/40. So you're a little beating the odds of 56/43. And then we have a really nice mix of education. A lot of more highly educated people, a lot of middle, a lot who have just some education. And then we have most of them Don't have children, but it's about 48-52. So a lot of people with children in the household. So, um, just really, really positive things. Um, how long have they lived in the city? We kind of have skewed the people who've been here for quite a while, 20 years or more. But we do have a lot of people who have been here less time than that, that we can look at the details and see how they feel if they've been here less, less time than that. We used a question that you already had on employment status. Most people are employed, although we have a fair number of retired people who are in the sample, a fair number who are self-employed or employed part-time. And if you want to look at it, we can do, you know, you can click and say, oh, I would just want to see what the students are saying, although there's only 1%. So that's going to be 8 people, you know, so not a lot of students, but you can look at details by a different group. And 94% are homeowners, with only 6% being renters right now. All righty. Now with the results. How informed do they feel? Most people feel pretty informed about the way things are going in the city. About 70% say they're very informed or somewhat informed. There are a few who say they're just neutral or not very informed. Then we asked how informed they'd like to be, which they'd really like to be informed. And I was— this is the first time we've done this survey, so I was pleasantly surprised to see the interest in being informed about what's going on. And there are very few who even say neutral. Like, I thought Like, I just have imagined a big portion of your city would just not really care. And that's just not the case, you know, so you have a lot of interest in being informed. What communications methods, which communication methods are you aware of? The digital newsletter, meaning the email newsletter that goes out, like, it really is something people are aware of. And they're, you know, they know about this and the website and city council meetings. Of course, they're aware of those, but it drops off pretty rapidly. We asked them to select all of them that they're aware of, and a lot of things fell off pretty rapidly. Facebook is 32%. As I recall, we looked at 10 years ago, it was around 11 or 12 or something. So it was not very much before. So we've nearly tripled the Facebook penetration that we had before. But it's still only a 3rd. And the print newsletter, which I know you send this out every month, it's pretty low. So whatever is happening, like, it's just going by. They're like, they're just not realizing that this is there.

Well, the print newsletter has only been going on for probably 6 months.

Oh, well, it could be that we have to work that longer.

It's relatively new and it's every other month.

We did a long time ago, and then there was a period of time where we paused. So we did it, we stopped it, we're redoing it. We started. And so I think we've only had like 3 editions.

Yeah, that would affect your—

that would do it. That would do it. Well, awareness is low. And Instagram— Most of the group who's getting— who's replying to this are email readers. They are, and that's a fair argument. Like, I mean, these are people who connect with email quite a bit.

Yeah.

And more likely to be aware of what's going on. And we could have— we chose not to. We could have broadened it out and gone to Facebook users, gone to whatever. We literally could have. And we still can, if you'd like, by the way. I have no problem. Like, we have this base. And if we'd like to go out to a bunch of Facebook users and say, tell us what you think, like, I have no problem. I think it'd be interesting to do them.

Mailer, because then that kind of tests your print, your mailed newsletter.

Yeah, you could do a mailer. There's just the cost of postage, you know, with that, but it's easy enough to do. So, so this, this need not be finished, you know, but here's where we're at right now. Next, how frequently do you use it? Okay, so what I did was on the right-hand side, we have, if they said, oh, I'm not aware, or if they didn't click that they're aware of it. You see that proportion. So this is the proportion of everybody who, who is in the survey. And so 36% nearly always use or read the digital newsletter, and 33% often do. So you put them together, and it's 70% of your residents' email invitations that we're talking about. Nearly always or often use that. Digital newsletter. It's pretty high. And there's some who are not aware. Facebook, like, if you look at everybody, it's about 20%. Nearly always or often. Print newsletter is 13%.

Is there a way—

did they—

could they have answered? Like, did they check everything they did?

They did check everyone else. So would they— if only if they were not aware of something, we didn't ask when they used it. Okay. So that's why that's here.

So part of that 20% could be the 20—

could be part of the 60%. Yeah. And then the other thing on the right-hand side here, so we have them all on the right-hand side. I have the conversion. So if they're aware and they nearly always or often use it, so what's the conversion ratio of awareness? And 85% who are aware then of the newsletter often or always use it. And 75% of those who are aware of Instagram often or always use it. So the awareness is actually— you do get pretty good conversion on some of these. You don't get too good a conversion on some others. So, so, for example, the YouTube video right now, and I don't know, you haven't been doing this, but only 38% of those who are aware of it often or sometimes use it. Whereas some of the others are getting really good conversion. And we might be able to track the conversion rates that we get on some of these things over the course of time, if you'd like to do this. What's that?

Oh, that column on the far right in the red.

That's not— That column on the far right. I just did the conversion of awareness to the left 2 columns.

I understand. I'm talking about the—

sorry, not the far right, but the next to the far right.

But I can read it now.

So, not aware. That's the red. Right. That's the not aware. Yeah, this is— I'm not aware. So, I mean, this is kind of interesting and useful and a bit of a challenge, but good. Now I want to show you all users. So if they are a user, so the base of all of these is they're a user of this product or this communication style. How much do you typically read?

Nearly all.

Just some. Very little or none. Do you know if they're aware and they're using— I mean, if they're using it, they're actually reading quite a bit on nearly every one of them. So, so there is some value in doing that conversion, getting them onto it and getting them— because when they do, hardly anybody just reads very little or none of it. But at least most of them are reading nearly all of it, especially the digital newsletter, Instagram, Facebook, and print. And then, of course, the city council meetings, you know yourselves how many people stick around for those, and those are lower than the others. But I have some suggestions for you for city council meetings for other— some of these things coming up. So that should be useful for you. And then how useful is it if they're a user of this? Like, how useful do they find it to be? And we have the fairs and pours on the far right-hand side. And very few people find your communications to be fair or poor. What color is fair? Fair is the right hand— is the 2 on the right-hand side. What color is it? The light— It's the red. It's a lighter red. And the poor is the darker red. So very few, and if you want to look at the percentages we have here, 4% said the print newsletter, if they were a user of it, was fair or poor. And most of them are pretty strong. Like, very few of them right now, let's say, have elevated themselves to be very good. Okay, so there's room to improve clearly, right? I mean, it's, it's good communication, maybe even okay communication and good. And so there's room to improve good, but we'll look at some things that you might be able to do to improve it. But it's not bad. So you're in a good space, even very good. A lot of the time. And the ones that are very good, like that, it seems like this Instagram post is really working for people who like Instagram. Whatever you're doing there, it's working. And, and the digital, the digital newsletter, the email one, it's working pretty well for you at Facebook. And the print newsletter, not quite as strong as the others, but also pretty good. The frequency. If they're a user, are we giving it to them in the right frequency? I think the answer is yes. I don't know that I would tweak anything about your frequency. You know, about the frequency that you're doing now seems to be about the frequency that might be useful. As many as 10% almost say that it's fair or poor for the frequency, but I think you're, you're in the sweet spot of frequency for these things. Now, what I did on this next slide is we've gone through several slides, and I put everything together into one page where you can kind of see how everything works. So you have the frequency or the awareness. So the awareness drops off pretty quickly on the on the first column, and then do you use it? The next column, and then. How much are you digesting? What is your rating? And how's the frequency doing? So you can kind of see them, how they're all doing. And, and I don't know, I think it's kind of useful. It's a lot of data, but you can see at once how strongly the digital newsletter is doing because of the awareness, but also because of the views. And Facebook, Which is coming— well, the city website, how many are aware of it, but how, like, little it's being used. Maybe there's— I don't know how much time you want to spend on your website, but maybe there's some room to improve it. We can look at some things that they suggest. And so, to me, kind of the message that this is saying is that all of these methodologies are good and useful and And so we shouldn't, you know, the message is that we should try to get rid of any of these. I don't think you should. Yeah. And I think they each have a different purpose. When we ask them what they would like, it's amazing how differently, let's say, the newsletter people are on what they ask, is it to be in the newsletter versus the Facebook and Instagram people, what they'd like to see in theirs.

Right.

And I'll show you a little bit about that. And so we may want to be— give some thought for, okay, for Facebook and social media, let's be heavy on the activities in the city, you know, the things that are coming up to be aware of and so forth. But on the newsletter, it's definitely more, a little more business-oriented around like, this is what happened in the last city council meeting and this is what you can look forward to, kind of. So I'll show you a little bit more on that. I'd like to show you the future preferred communications. We said, future preferred on the left. Below are current and future ways that Orem City could communicate. Which 2 are best for you? Okay, so that digital newsletter among these people is very strong. But also note the strength of text messages. Which you don't do. And there are a fair number of people who, when mentioning text messages, said, send me a text with a link to the Facebook or with the link to the whatever, right? And then, then, then I'll check that out. So you can use it, the text messaging, to just populate them over to other things. And it might be a very smart approach for you. But a lot of people You know, they're, they're fine with the Facebook, print, the Instagram, they're all fine. Note that none of these, as Bren is bringing up here, it's like, do we want to get rid of any of these? Are any of them falling on deaf ears? And only 1% said nothing, right? So that's not the answer, of course. And there's very few people who feel that way. So none of these—

How do you explain that your city website is 3rd? Future proof, because people want more on it. Whereas before it was way down.

No, I mean, I think that there are people who would love to have more on the website. I think that's a fair thing, and we can look and see what they said about that. How are they communicating if it's like a non-city one? Word of mouth, news station, newspaper, even other Facebook pages. But I don't know. I thought it was somewhat interesting, but only a little bit. And if you want to give feedback, that's the right one. If you want to give feedback, how would you like to do that? And these people are pretty much saying email or a phone call or a text message. But I was surprised to see how many people thought a city app on their phone would be a good idea. And so I think that's worth considering. It is only 20%, but it's 20%. And so, you know, it's something you might want to want to consider doing. Although the email and the phone call, the text messages, messaging seems to be okay. In-person visits is pretty low. Note that only 8% say an in-person visit is the way they'd like to go. But that is ahead of city council meeting. All right. One of the things was About the website, that's a proactive thing. That's something that you have to— They have to choose it, don't they? I'm going to the website. I'm going to do something. The other ones come to you. But the website has its purpose. So, like, you know, if they want to find out and you'll look, there's certain things that they say, I wish we had more of this. I wish we had more of that. And you can say that should really be on the website. So there are a variety of things that you'll see in their suggestions for improvement. And you go website, Facebook, newsletter, you might be able to quickly sort through where they belong. Alrighty, then I have this. I'm not going to spend any time on this really, but we can look at some of these things by— oh, and by the way, there's an error that I haven't gotten fixed because I want to show how many people are in each column. And I will have that fixed, but there was an issue with it to get it working properly. And so I have zeros in these columns, which is not true, but I want to get it right. And I just— I left it in here so I didn't forget. But you can say, oh, well, how do males versus females think on how they want to communicate? And you can do that. And we won't spend a lot of time, but I will say that the females are much bigger on Facebook than the males. Right? And, and, and so you can kind of see which gender kind of goes to one or the other, or by age, or by education. So we won't spend time on this, but if you want to look at that, you can say, how do— what are the highly educated people? How do they want to— what are they aware of communication? Or the one beneath it, which ones do they use? So we'll be— you'll be able to do that. So that's there. Now, I thought this was interesting too. On the content, we asked them what content they'd like to see in the communications that we do, and that they want to see things on city events, 49%. I was surprised how many people wanted city council updates, and it's a common request even in their— like, if we ask them, tell us what you want. A lot of people said, I'd like to know what happens in your city council meetings. Now, you'd think where city council came in here, they'd have no interest in that. But it's not true. It's actually quite high. And so there's a— they do want to know about the events, but, but what's happening in your city council meetings, there could be more that you do. So we'll show you a little bit more about that. But also city services, parks and recreation, safety updates. Local business updates, so forth. So there's a fair amount. We put in something like, how does government work? I think you'd have to be desperate that you could even— you could do that. There's a way— there are other things you do first.

Content.

2nd one. The city could share other content was the question. Which of these appeal to you? City events, celebrations, and festivals. Big. Traffic and construction updates. So here we're getting some, like, some practical things. I would love to have some practical information fed to me. There's quite a few that fit in that practical space, and the practical things tend to want to go to the newsletter, maybe, right? Or the website. Probably not the Facebook so much, or whatever, right? So you can see, look at that. Openings of new businesses, interestingly enough. Volunteer opportunities. Non-city events like concerts, car shows. Family-focused content. There's quite a few of these, and I just honestly think you could get creative and have some fun with some of these things and, and, and make some of them happen. Upcoming city council meetings is on here. So I thought there's a lot of them that I think anything 10% or more there, you may as well maybe think about how you maybe want to do some of those. A lot of them didn't come through like inspirational or motivational. I guess they're getting that in the Facebook posts that they're getting or whatever, right? So that's pretty low. Leader profiles. I don't think they care much. I had, you know, just a little bit, but more they care a little bit about the leader profiles, but I think more it's about where are we going, what's happening, you know, what's the direction of the city that was, that mattered more to them than a leader profile.

Yeah.

Um, so I thought that was interesting. And then style preference. This was kind of a fun one to add. We added this in here. What do you want? Larger text formats, maybe face-to-face. Those things are at the bottom. The things at the top were some concise articles, summaries, bullet points, infographics. So whatever it is, it needs to be crisp and short and easy to digest. And you might be partially there, but there's more probably you can do.

Yeah.

To be concise, bulleted, and so forth. I did a little slicing of this by, by age, and the younger people were definitely bullet points, infographics. The older people, still pretty short, you know, they, they wanted concise things as well, but not as much as the younger who were like really happy. So I thought that was interesting. Interactive content is pretty low.

We—

I was interested in, do they want an informal tone or professional tone? You know, I think it's kind of an in-between.

What's your definition?

We didn't really define it. We didn't define it, but they definitely didn't go really hard. They went more informal than professional, but not a lot. And so I don't know that you play around with being too informal. I think you just be more honest, you know, straightforward, honest. And I just don't know that trying to be informal or their friend is at all what we do.

I guess I think of informal tone as kind of a little more sarcasm, a little more comedic.

Yeah, we didn't go into details for sure, but like, it's okay, but it's not like, oh, I went informal. That did not happen. And professional is not too far behind. You know, so I think, I think you play them down the middle on that where you, you, you know, kind of go right down the middle on it between informal and professional, and that's probably where you'll need to be. So I thought that was interesting. Videos. There's actually quite a bit for videos here that they thought they might like that. But, but I think they would be supportive. of the other things that are there. All right. We asked them, do you have anything more you'd like to say? And not everybody gave a comment. Out of the 850 that we had, only 184 left a comment. So most people had nothing more to say. If they did, I broke them into some categories here of they gave a comment or a suggestion about communications directly that might be useful to you. There were— that's 33%. 25% gave another suggestion. Traffic, lights, you know, they gave something. Be more transparent, but not necessarily about communication specifically. So, so there were a lot of people who gave other suggestions, and I separated those out, and I really didn't spend a lot of time on them, but you can go through them to see.

Okay.

And then they had comments about the city council, comments about the newsletter, comments about Facebook and Instagram. These are kind of useful for you. And so, so I'm gonna go to some of the actual comments. Oh wait, I'm gonna go to this one. Comments about communications. So we went through the comments and I'll tell you what I did. I took all of the comments like there were 40 comments or whatever, 50 comments, and I put them into AI. I put them, you know, ChatGPT, and I said, would you summarize this for me? And here's what we see. And so it said, here's a summary of the common themes. And they did want city council meeting summaries. That was a common thing that people were asking for. And then they wanted some timely, relevant updates about safety alerts, upcoming events. That was a common thing. Conciseness and clarity. Conciseness was a common thing. Practical information. That's interesting. Such as garbage collection schedules, street work timelines, commission member introductions. Others, some practical things. So some of the more practical things, website in my mind, maybe on the back page of the newsletter, some things you may want to think about. But I'd like to show you some actual comments as we wrap this up. Here are some newsletter comments. So I'm gonna, I'm gonna go think of all the demographics, not just the old people. TikTok is a great place to share things. PG, that's gonna be The city— Pleasant Grove. Pleasant Grove has a monthly physical newsletter. It's great. Apparently this person is not aware or hasn't realized that the newsletter is coming in. I love living in Oregon. As an old peep. As an old person, I always read the digital newsletters and appreciate the news emergency alerts. I wish the city website had more content and perhaps links to other non-city activities. I've lived here a long time. I'm so surprised By the interesting things going on in our community.

Thank you.

Focus on spending less money. No need to send a paper newsletter. One person's opinion. Stop promoting government leaders. That person's opinion. In the newsletter, I'd like to see more about the budget and how the money is being spent. Well, you may want to be careful about how much of that you do, but, you know, there's a call for that. Love the city emails, the library email. There's a lot of message in the newsletter. That's kind of an interesting thing. We saw this more than once. I would prefer more informative content in the body, what the council is debating, events upcoming, etc. So anyway, you can go through these and get your mind a little bit around maybe how we tweak the newsletter. There's not a lot of comments, but there's some useful, and all of these people are talking about the newsletter. And if we want to talk about, for example, Facebook and Instagram, they're all grouped together. So here's somebody on Facebook. Use social media more. Be at more community events such as festivals and business openings. Think of all demographics. Oh, that's the same thing this person mentioned in 2 places. Oh, no, I have 2 things connected.

Yeah.

Sorry, I left them both in there. Okay, so the Facebook only. So, or school updates should be from the school district. Neighbors have no clue what's going on. These things are only based on Facebook. Anyway, you can go through this. Twitter would be nice. Anyway, there's a fair number of things. I don't necessarily want to take your time. You'll read some and you'll go, this person has no clue what we're doing. And that might be true. And so some of it is like when you read some of these things that may be, how do we communicate? How do we— make people more aware, because they may not be aware of something you're doing particularly well on all of these chats. Like, you may be doing it, but, you know, along those lines, Ronna, I mean, that is kind of a theme or principle that I'm getting from this too, that we have an opportunity to do more kind of cross-advertising between these different methodologies. So, you know, we may want to use the Digital newsletter to let people know, hey, look, do you know we also have a printed newsletter? Click here. There's a QR code to our website or Instagram. So essentially just using one particular methodology to make people aware of our other ways of communicating. I like it. The other thing I noticed is there are some people who get pretty negative, but you run into those people all the time. And so realize there's 850 comments. Or 850 respondents. And then when you see 4 people who blast you, you realize that's 40, right? So, so— I think it said only 2% negative comments.

I think—

There's not very many, right? Like, they were all relatively good. And you'll see, and we have them here so that you can see what they thought about the mayor and council. And you can look at those comments, but, you know, put them in context, please. And don't take them too personally. There are some people who Find the negative on everything. But I think it came off pretty well. And I think you have some good guidance on how to tweak it and refine it going forward. And, and, and I still have a couple of things I want to fix on here, but it's 99% ready to go. And we'll have this thing ready to go in another day. And you can share it however you wish. amongst yourselves. And if you want to, if you wish to share publicly, you can certainly do that as well.

So, so are you emailing that to us? I have a couple questions actually. First of all, I think this is great information, so thank you for putting it together and for your direction and collecting this information. Um, second of all, I think this survey self-selected people who were pretty involved in the city generally, and I think you've said that with maybe some—

Well, we did, but we definitely went to people who, by email, We went to the utility billing email, but we didn't try to self-select anyone beyond that.

If you look at the demographics, like most of them own their own home, they've been in the city for 20 years, like, you know, they're just involved people, which is awesome. So we know how to communicate now with those people. What about all these other people who probably need to be involved in the city more, or might like to be involved in the city more, that we're just not— they're just not represented?

So how do we tap—

I think we have a great opportunity there.

How do we tap into that? That would be my first question. And my second question is, what do we do with this now that we have it?

Yeah, so as we met yesterday for over an hour talking about the results and things that we can do, we have some plans. One of the things we took from this is the content is quite good. Like, when you look at the people who know about it and use it, they like it a lot. We're talking high 80s, high 90s. But it's about extending the reach at this point. So we talked about maybe we start going to the farmers market and setting up a booth, like showing, you know, what the ways that the city communicates. Like in this past printed newsletter, we put a whole thing in there that's like a quarter of a page and it talks about all different communication channels. And, you know, not every communication channel jives with everybody. So you just kind of find the one that works for you. These are, you know, these people love email and that's great. We know how to communicate with them, like you said. But, you know, what do we do for people who are just more social media people? What do we do for people who are website people? And so I think it's given us clear direction on, you know, some of these things were very surprising to me. Did not anticipate them, but now we kind of have an idea and make a plan to reach those different audiences. I think we also maybe got some hints that Ron mentioned too, of word of mouth. And, you know, we have some plans to engage more with our citizen volunteers, and we can inform them better than they can help spread the word by word of mouth, because apparently that's the way that people want to be communicated with. Also, the texting and looking at what kind of technology we can use to get the word out by texting. And then the idea of an app, we've been working on something along those lines for quite some time now. You know, start to essentially beta test that and do kind of the final troubleshooting as well.

And I don't know that we don't know That we're not reaching other people. They just don't get a utility billing. Just because I— just because I— my utility bill goes through my landlord doesn't mean I'm not, you know, getting emails, quite frankly, right? Or on Facebook.

Yeah.

Yeah, that's one of the things.

So if we could Somehow, I don't know how you'd gather that data because maybe we'd be, I don't know, surprised, maybe disappointed. But as far as how that group that didn't respond—

It'd be easy to put a link out on your face, on your social media pages, and just say take the survey. Like, we could do that.

The tricky thing is we have a lot of people from outside our city on our social media. I mean, I don't know, how do you do that?

We can ask them where they live, we can ask them for their zip code, we can ask, we can show them a map and say Where do you live? You know, we can do some things that— I mean, they could lie. Most people don't.

We've seen that in studies where people lie 10 times.

And then we can remove the ones who say, I just live on the border, I'm in Provo, or wherever. And we can remove them.

But it's hard to know if—

I mean, there is a scenario where the people who want to be engaged have already sought out these channels and they're on them. So there's that.

But then there's also, you know, like, Fred and I were talking yesterday, but this gives us a really good framework of what we've got, how it's being used.

It doesn't necessarily tell us—

it points us kind of in the right direction, but it doesn't tell us exactly where to go.

I mean, that's gonna take some trial and error and working. But I think one of the ways that we could expand what you're talking about is through text messages. Like, that was number 3 or whatever.

And we don't do that at all, but that means we would have to just buy some massive text, you know, phone number lists and start working in some of those. But that, but that would be a way to, you know, people look at their texts, and if you were trying to up your subscribership, your readership, and then ping pong from the different, you know, marketing paths or whatever, I think that would be a way to do it.

Yeah.

You know, and, you know, this, like you said, this only shows a little bit, you know, because like our social media is up 260% over the last year. So I know we're on the right track. Social media, it's just a matter of getting more people into the tent, you know? Yeah. So, and it's working when you get them in. Once they're the ones who do it, they love it. So we have some strategies and things we're going to try to work on to expand the reach. Yeah. I think this gives you a great framework. some really good information. And then, like you said, with your Facebook social media being up 260% over last year, that shows things are definitely happening. But, but now we just tie everything together, right? And we even take that, like the communications you guys did, you know, and some of this we can incorporate. We could just get everything optimized. Yeah.

And it's almost like you go after certain channels and really try and optimize them.

And then go after additional channels.

Yeah, that was kind of the whole idea with the surveys.

We have the plan, we have the data now. We can go forward and start tackling some of these problems.

Well, we have our direction too, because I mean, the comments here about why are you highlighting these businesses, why are you talking about it? Well, they need to understand what is going on in our city.

It's not a negative necessarily.

That's our revenue, right? You know, we want people to know. I learned about businesses in Orem by following the great stuff you guys, your team's doing now. So yeah, I think with our, with our mission of, of our purpose that we want to accomplish, you guys are doing great. I really, I want to say one more thing. You did do this, had in the past, if you remember, uh, with a different person, um, did like a citizen agenda. I really like that.

Yeah.

The, the Miro's agenda, you know, I don't know if that's what they're referring to bringing back or something, but that was Awesome.

Yeah, we can easily put that back together. Okay, any other thoughts? Okay, thank you. Good job.

Go forth and conquer.

Um, why don't we go ahead and, uh, just have a prayer and start the food? We are going to be tight on time, so let's just do that and then start back up at 20 after, just in 5 minutes. Would somebody like to offer the prayer and the food? Oh, okay, I'll do it.

Our beloved Father in Heaven, we're grateful for the opportunity we have to gather here today to, um, address and make decisions about the needs of our citizens. Pray for lay inspiration as we serve in these positions in this capacity. We pray for blessing upon the food that we're about to partake of, that it will give us nourishment and strength, and we can use that strength and serve and be so grateful for all our many blessings. We say these things in thy Son Jesus Christ.

Amen.

Thank you. Thank you. We'll follow you. Mayor, would it be okay if I just play this news clip as you're gathering? Sure, you can listen to it in the background. You just want to listen? Can we get audio on this? This is an RC. And so I was going to show you a video clip, um, but I'm just going to give a summary. Did anyone happen to watch KSL News last night? Did you happen to notice what happened in Clearfield last night? What happened, Ryan? 10-year-old boy was killed. 10-year-old boy was killed riding his bike to elementary school, died. Uh, this report came out last week. 999— 990 people, not students, were hit during the— during 2023-2024 school year. So basically up from August to the end of the— end of this— end of that school year. And so they're just the mentioned that, you know, Utahns are encouraged to change driving behaviors and so forth and, uh, to be safe out there. So I wanted to bring this to your attention. These are things that are happening actively right now, um, in our community— or in the state of Utah, I should say. Uh, part of the reason why we're presenting tonight is to give you an update on some of the things we're doing to enhance Safety for not just students, but for anybody that's in the right-of-way in the city of Guam, whether they're driving vehicles, riding a bike, a pedestrian, or somebody walking to school, whatever age, elementary through high school and so forth. We've, we've made a lot of significant progress, I would say, and improvements. We're here to present to you some of the things that we've done over the last year or so.

Thank you.

We have 105 total requests in our Traffic Tiger Team spreadsheet that we're monitoring and tracking and updating weekly. About 21% of those are still active requests. 79% of those are completed or closed requests. When I say it's a closed request, it doesn't mean that we did everything that they wanted us to do. It means that we listened to them. We obtained data. We may or may not have made a change depending on what the request was. There's 21 active requests today. Um, today, so on our traffic tagging team, we have Taylor Forbush in the back, and then Tyler Pay in the back, myself, Taggart's over here, John Dorney, Ryan Clark, Brent Bybee. I think we're all part of the, uh, tagging team. Um, Sergeant Paris Stevens is also part of that as well. I don't think she's here. Um, but you see well represented. So we do meet every 2 weeks as a group of different disciplines together to, uh, to evaluate these requests, since you then, um, you know, have the police go out and run extra patrols, or for, for traffic operations to collect data, or for engineering to then perform the actual design and review it, and then we construct it, and then, and public works will then Maintain it and so forth. Brent, I can just emphasize what Chris is saying. You all know how important traffic and traffic-related requests are. People are passionate about it. So the fact that we built kind of a cross-departmental team that's been able to tackle these things and essentially effectively come up with solutions for 80% of them. Really is, is cracking the bustle, and it's, it's taken, you know, all these— Thank you. I noticed really quick before I turn it over to John that in that survey that was just presented, that 49%, second only to 50%— I don't know what the top one was— 49% of those surveyed wanted to see more information on a regular basis regarding traffic and construction updates. So took a mental note of that. I think that's something we need to work with Pete on. We have to try to attempt that when we're doing pavement projects or construction of any waterline projects, or whatever it might be in the right-of-way, or giving people as much advance warning as possible. So we'll, we'll address that and improve what we have been doing in the past. So John and Taylor have gathered a lot of information, and we'll be presenting to you now on what we've done over the last 6 to 12 months. We're 24, 25 minutes behind, John. Say it real quick. We did get about 3 requests this week for the Tiger Team, so they came online right off. Okay, so basically we're just going to roll through energy improvements real quick. I know we have 20 minutes, but we can cut it down pretty quick. If you have questions, raise your hand, or comments. Taylor does a lot of the And then you get the lining and striping.

This is awesome, guys.

This is awesome. Um, and a lot of the intersections, so overlay road striping, red curbing, um, that was done up near Timpanogos High School. 12 West Bonneville, that actually was taken today. Um, they're working on it. We're waiting for Rocky Mountain Power to connect it. You guys are so— And we're open, so I believe the school district's paying half of it, right? Supposed to be. Check some of that. So we got them to cover half of theirs.

This— who covered half of it?

School district.

Nice. Okay, the Cascade Elementary, um, the next 4 slides are all about Cascade. This is east of Cascade, so Cascade is on the left here. Another overlay enhanced crosswalk. You notice there's new red curbing because One of the biggest things is parking close to the intersection. We'll show you how that happens when they get away. Here, this is supposed to be south onto Say Road, 2nd north. We put in these safety bollards, and you can— I mean, I am 6 feet tall on the sidewalk, so that height of eye is about 3 to 4 feet. So if I were to hunker down and be the height of one of these bollards, and if there were cars parked here you can't see the other cars coming. And so what happened is people pull out in the crosswalk, they see, and then they're blocking the kids. And so we put up these safe hit bollards so that parents just can't park in the red— in the red zone. It was already a red zone. Yeah, but they were using the red zone as a, as a, as a wait-and-see zone for kids. So from PD's perspective, has this helped with safety? Yeah, having all both sides of that the way it is right now. Yeah, so the north side, we're looking at doing the same. The crosswalk is a little bit more rough and it's further out. There's a cross gutter, and so they'll just block it. I think I've showed you a video before of that. Um, Cascade Elementary, again, this is 2nd North and 4th East, so I believe north is right. So if you were to go down Second North, you come across 4th. This is the plan for that, uh, striping, crosshatch, and here's the initial— they already started doing it, put in the paint. Now they're going to do it, do the other things. We'll have rapid flashing beacons here at this location, in both locations on 4th East and Second North. Yeah, it just shows the overhead, but there's side signs that have those beacons flash. We'll be in there. Oh, that's going again north of Cascade on 8 East. This is going in as a signal with an enhanced crosswalk. We also recently poured— if you can kind of see in the background, this road was jetted out, this area. The city, I guess, purchased that years ago planning for this. Um, that was acquired about 15 to 20 years ago, that land. We just hadn't done it. So now instead of every single car stopping there, all 15,000 cars, you know, maybe half of them are going to be stopping. It's going to help with their air, uh, air quality as well, because we're not going to be stopping everybody and starting up at, at that intersection. Crossing guard will be added. Uh, this is on the other side of town, near Northridge. It's part of the Safe Route walking plan. If you look at the state website, Safe Routes plan, and some of these are on them, some of them are not, but we know if they're near a school, kids are using them. This is what it used to look like. This is what it looks like now. So that tree It was a sacred tree to this person. Not to say that it was sacred, but they planted it probably 40 years, 40 years ago. And it happens to be right in the middle of where we put the sidewalk. So we've been trying to get this right-of-way here, this project done for a long time. And oftentimes there are those kinds of steps we have to get done through, whether it's an irrigation ditch or knocking down a tree or whatever it is, in the name of safety. This is the right thing to Did they finally acquiesce? Yeah, that's what it looks like now. Trees go up. Yeah, I know. So I did build a new strong arm to do the work. And, uh, I was out there taking this picture and asked the neighbor, how do you like the sidewalk? They're like, Tom, we love it. I think I know why. Garbage can— they're dragging the garbage can up and down the hill and in the snow. They were positive about it, but it also enhanced the school walkway. capabilities. Northridge Elementary, this is one of the schools we met with the community council. It's a little hard to see, but we added ADA ramp here and plans for future crosswalk to be moved, and then it was RRFB followed by the rapid flashing beacons. So that's— those will go in, have a little bit of a time frame, part of the federal fund. Um, We are waiting for funds to come in. I'll get the funds. That is $1,600 million. Also Northridge, they added last year— this is a, a 4-signal head that has been installed on this head now, so If you wanted over there, because you're getting a 4-signal, a 3-signal, it allows you to stop traffic and be more efficient, but cars flush out of the school. When you have just the 3-section head and that green ball with no green arrow, you're limited to what you can do. And so this is, this is what that looks like now. It's a 4-section head, all 4 sides, the flashing arrow. That was an improvement for the school. This is Sharon Elementary sidewalk. The left picture, I think, is looking west. Right picture is looking east. It's the same trees right here, but basically there's new sidewalk added to Sharon Elementary recently.

This is a little bit of a stretch.

It, it generally helps the communities, um, and what that does is provides access They aren't being hiked, but the developer, um, we had them open up the tunnel west as part of the HCA hospital property. Um, this is what it looks like heading south, right up at this intersection. And we know the sacrifice of the neighbors liking the dead end and having their ending street, you know, for connectivity to the school and other places that, that hopefully will be open. It's kind of open temporarily for people to get access to. There'll be a new signal there too coming up here in the next couple of months at 800 North and 600 West. This is at the Sarah Shell. This is looking north. Sarah's on the left. This is what it used to look like. This would be the opposite direction. But basically, we have an enhanced flashing beacon. This property owner allowed us to kind of redo the entire pad back there. A lot of that was right here. When we were out there looking at it, it's not 50 across the road. We know the school kids are moving and even outside of designated school crossings. My mom thanks you on that last one, last Sears show I went to with her. She's like walking in a more leisurely pace, but it took some— Thank you, Chris. You also got the new light, replaced the light, right? We did, we fixed the light the next day. It was reported Next to us. There you get your reporting at the end. We just need that last night.

I said we just watched that last night.

Is that— yeah, I believe Canyon is in Linden, right? Look at that previous picture. So this is the context that we don't get sitting here in a meeting looking at a picture of an empty street.

I mean, we were there last night.

There were lots of cars, a lot of cars, and there were people everywhere. It was dark location and dark. Those flashes were going, people walking safely right back and forth. And you speed at the dash for your life. But I mean, literally, there was probably 800 people in that vicinity. I firmly think you're taking pictures with no cars on there, standing in the middle of the road. There'll be some additional safety enhancements at this. They just didn't have them in time to install, so they're coming. Oh, Daniel, even though it's Lyndon, it's still Fairbrook here. And so that's what it used to look like. That's what it looks like now. That's been in there for what, a few years now? Yeah, about 2 years. So, um, school crossing is— Do we share ownership of 2000? We do. Yeah. and responsibility to operate, maintain. So loosely, this is tied to Parkside Elementary, um, with Geneva School closing. Geneva School?

Yes.

Yeah, if you technically look at the Safe Routes map on UDOT's website, Parkside Elementary takes you all the way around the block of Parkside. So this This possibly gets you to the park side. It's a pretty long walk from elementary. It's not, um, guarded across the cars, but this is what we call the Z crossing, um, going in there. And there's an extra picture actually that kind of reflects nothing on it. So, um, it really serves the park, hospital grounds, and trail ramp, hospital to park. So that's going in, that work, it'll eventually look like— It'll also have the lights, flashing beacons there, and a refuge in the middle for safety. What's nice is that if you put more of these in, the residents can pick which one they want. The last 2 are not directly tied to schools. This is more of like a high school, North Boardwalk Canal Trail, 2000 North. We added this— what we're adding is deflection beams on it. We didn't have So again, not a crossing guard, but it does enhance the trail network. And this is more of a high school level kid biking in. This slows people down too. Yeah, this actually did come up in our joint meeting. Yeah, this whole 2000 portal with the temple going in there, we're committed to looking at this because they're worried stuff's going to happen. We're like, well, let's not do anything before to know what's happening. Not including the open house period, we can't count that, that's just chaos. So once things get settled in, this whole 2000 North corridor will be— Hillcrest used to be a school, now it's a park, but we are enhancing crossings there. There wasn't really any crossings at any part of the park, so we're out there doing that now. There's a debate of adding a second one, um, but this is a General pedestrian safety. Thanks, John. Any questions or feedback?

What, what, what you can see here, I think, I hope you see, is that we're increasing our frequency and, and level of response to safety concerns.

We're trying to address them more quickly than we have perhaps in the past.

Uh, we've had additional resources and funding made available by City Manager Bren Bybee.

Huh?

And thanks, thanks for your support in doing this as well in the budget and including these enhanced budgetary needs to help improve safety for our community.

With that said, not everybody likes what we're doing.

I will say that what you saw there on Main Street with the bike lanes and the park and then the narrow through lanes, 10-foot through lanes, We had somebody on the north end there say, this is the dumbest thing I've ever seen, and why are we wasting this kind of money and paying taxpayer dollars so you can destroy our road like this? I've driven it many times. I, I talked to, I talked to people in my neighborhood who drive this all the time. I said, give me feedback. He's the only one that's given us that kind of feedback, and he's one that's told us a lot that people speed up and down. This This does nothing but calm traffic and improve safety, and it tightens everything up and it creates a perceived friction by having those bike lanes right next to a 10-foot drive lane. And my F-150 truck driving this at 25, there is no concern at all.

Should be.

Should be because it's a Ford. Other than that, it's at least, it's, it's at least safe. And so this is huge.

No, this, this bike lane right there, that's Windsor just this way. Yes, Windsor Elementary. And everyone comes out of our neighborhood, Chris, right?

The kids ride their bikes south of here. I could have put— I picked a school, it could have been Windsor too.

And Timpanogos is right down that street right there. Yeah, so this— no, this is a great thing.

I don't know who that guy is, but all these pictures I took today, almost— there was a lady biking in this lane. Almost everywhere I went, there was a biker anyway.

Yeah.

And can I tell you what happened here, guys? This is Chris, right? So I drove down, they just paved the street, and I said, hey, are you gonna do the bike lanes we've been waiting for for 10 years?

And Chris was like, I don't know, let me check, and made it happen.

It was awesome.

We— you can see we had to kind of cut off some paint there. I'm like, we gotta come back, guys, fix this. We're gonna do it right.

And that's what we got that in there. So turned out really well.

I also want to give a shout out to John and Chris. I was at the Cascade School Community Council meeting when we were, you know, talking about the dangerous situation there with the traffic, and you guys were just perfect with the residents.

Um, we'll, we'll be coming back with more.

Go ahead, John.

One last update. Do you reserve money for bike racks for bike borrowing for the budget? 4 pads have been poured around Lucera, and we're ready to buy bike mounting equipment. And then 3 more pads will be poured with pavilion replacement out here. So they're super happy. And I'm not saying it's free, but our budget didn't have to pay for that concrete. So came out of a city budget somewhere, but not ours. $5,000 one. So we were able to have them put— add that in with other projects.

So our money is going a long way.

They're happy, but we're going to end up with 20+ bike racks just in those 2 places, and that's up the road.

Nice.

Any other thoughts?

This is great. This is one of our core things as a city we have to provide is outstanding roads. So I think your Tiger team has done a really good job.

Thank you.

Thank you for your support.

You're waiting for jackets?

Tiger team.

Got Rocky on the back.

I just, I just want to recognize there are many people involved.

It's just not us 2 or 3. We have, we have Tyler, we have PD, um, and others that I've missed, and Tiger and IT. I mean, it's, it's a, it's a full hands-on deck kind of an experience, and it's been great. It's been a great thing for the city, I believe. Thank you. Thank you. All right, um, we've got item 5. So we've got, got 2 more items.

Budget is 25 minutes, and then we've got to go through the budgets.

We're going to budget the agenda real quick. So we'll cut 5 minutes off ours.

Yeah, if everybody's trying to take theirs down by themselves.

Just accept item 5 of this, this program that Chief Spencer is going to just quickly give you an overview. It's honestly because of the budgetary support and support from you, Mayor, and Brynn in the reorganization of fire administration, providing an extra person in fire prevention. This is one of 3 or 4 programs that we wouldn't have been able to do for the community based on not having that personnel and that budgetary support. So I'll just turn it over to Chief Spencer. He's provided you a folder that outlines this program, and also there's an invite, I believe, in all of your calendars tomorrow to meet, um, the cadets that have been accepted into this program. Chief? So we're excited with the start of the school year to start our Orange Park Cadet Program. We've been working in conjunction with the Alpine School District to Bring students in to give them a limited and controlled experience in fire and EMS. But what you have is the basic skills that they'll be learning in the next several weeks. This gives them an opportunity to pull hose with the crews in a controlled environment, do some medical evaluations in a controlled environment. Then the last of the semester, they'll ride with our crews. So in the past, the interns have been— it's been a passive experience for them. Just finding that we get to be a little more involved. And then we hope, as several years goes down the road, that some of our employees come from this program. We have one of our own firefighters, Will Hayden, in the back, who visited the fire service because of his cadet experience from where you come from, right? California? That's it in a nutshell. Tomorrow we're having a meet and greet if you were able to make it, but we're hoping it'll be a good experience for the students. They'll get school credit. It'll be good for us too. And it's a, it's a semester-long program. Chief Spencer and his team have put a lot of work and effort into this. It really is obviously a recruiting tool for us to involve all 3 high schools, all 3 communities, Linden and uh, vineyard. And so we'll see over the next couple years what it produces as far as employees coming out of our own schools. That's the goal. Minimum age requirement inside the box. What's that? Minimum age requirements. So the Alpine School District requires them to be juniors or seniors in order to get credit. We want them to be 16 years of age so it works well for us too. How many do you have currently? Currently have 8, and we don't want to go over 12. We want to make it a valuable experience for them. But we'll do 2 semesters. So, is this— thank you, Mark. Stand up to you. It's just to meet those 8.

To meet those—

you're welcome. We threw that in by now. You're welcome to show up. There's no pressure. You can't make it, we understand you're busy. But I think the face time with Byron Council, friends, if you can make it, that'd be awesome. Students are all really excited. Absolutely be a good thing. Nice. Sounds like a great program. Oh, thank you. Thank you. Okay, we've got, uh, Pete.

Okay, we'll keep this short and sweet as well. And so we wanted to just talk to you guys a little bit about the Orange City Appreciation Gala that we have coming in September. And then we wanted to ask you guys something from you guys in order to make the program the best that it can be.

Okay, so we're gonna do a quick poll.

So as we know, this appreciation gala is for celebrating all of the volunteers on admissions committees, you know, anyone who is essentially building a better forum. And so we're excited to celebrate where, you know, I'm really appreciative that I get to be a part of it and to help celebrate them. So what the date is going to be September 24th. It's from 6 to 8:30 in the Grand Ballroom at UVU. has been added to all of your calendars. You should have gotten an email from us as well to RSVP with your guests and catering and all of that. And so what the event itself will look like is going to be live music, we're going to have an award ceremony, and then we'll have like a social 30 minutes when people come.

You can hang out in the lobby, we'll have some hors d'oeuvres, and then we'll invite you in to come have a dinner and then So as part of the celebration, we'd like each council member to select a volunteer that you work with on any of your boards and commissions as kind of a Volunteer of the Year. We want to call this award the Orchard Award. It's all about putting your roots deep down into Orem, building a better Orem, the fruits of the labor, making great things happen for the city. And so if that's what we— that's the ask that we have of you, is that you Think about all the people you work with on your board commissions, and then give us a name and a slight short write-up. We have a form, right?

Yeah.

So after this, you'll be receiving an email from myself with a little bit more instructions with the Google Form.

And in that Google Form, I know that a majority of you serve on multiple ones, but we ask you just to pick one across the board.

And then we'll have you put in a blurb because we will have like a similar pamphlet of what we had at the employee Party of just like the picture, the blurb, and then the award that they'll be receiving.

So, you know, so essentially each council member will be giving you one person who will get an award.

Yeah.

So you're not taking all those people and coming up with one.

Each council member. Each council member. Yes.

Okay.

And I know that that's gonna be like picking your favorite child. That's easy.

Yeah.

There you go. Yeah, we just wanted this. We feel like it's a way good to help elevate the night and recognize the truly exceptional people that we have volunteering up here at City Hall.

And then once we receive those awards, we'll send out another email just with the details of the program. We will ask that all the council members come up onto the stage as the volunteers come up to receive their award. They can shake your hand, get a picture, kind of go off. But we're excited again to celebrate the volunteers. And we thought this would be a really cool way to really stand— make them stand out as well. But other than that, do you guys have any questions? Pretty simple.

Um, let me just say one thing.

We've talked about this for a while, but so the general idea for the council is that we want our commissions, uh, and groups of citizens who are helping us to really become a bigger and bigger thing and become more important.

Want to get all those commissions, like, optimized, working, you know, adding the most value they can to the community and getting people involved in there who really want to be involved.

And that kind of takes you to kind of the way the world works right now with— you've got your— if you live on social media, you've got your influencers and they do their thing and spread the word to everyone.

But we want these people on these commissions to be more like influencers for the community, carrying the message of Orem. And going back to what he had on his survey, You know, where mouth-to-mouth or person-to-person is, you know, the way things spread organically.

So there's a bigger picture here.

And this is kind of our first step in bringing this together. But then over the coming year, we're going to be making these commissions optimized to the field. This is kind of the first step. So that's kind of where we're going.

Love it.

Great idea.

Thanks, Karina.

Okay, well, thank you guys so much.

Thank you. All right, got all this time. I should like take a break just to— like a minute. Hey, well, let's just run through the agenda, and we don't have any council reports. According to the agenda, so we'll go, um, to item number 3 called Order for Invitation. Uh, I know those people.

You know those people?

And how is that?

Darren Murphy.

Darren Murphy and Scotty Murphy. So would you like to introduce them or just welcome them?

Yep.

Okay.

He's the principal of Okay, and then we've got, uh, item—

or we got, yeah, budgetable events. And we've got item 6, um, mayor's report referred by the council. Got item 6.1, the swearing-in of the new fire captains. I'll just get up and introduce just the whole concept, um, call them up, you know, Teresa, if she's got the whole— she'll swear them in, then I'll ask the spouses to come up, do badge pinning, and then like a picture with you guys in the boardroom. Okay, so I'll turn it to you. Perfect. Okay, okay. And then we've got 6.2, Public Works Advisory Commission.

I'll be doing that.

Jim Michaelis, he's the chair. Okay, it's on the next page.

Okay, so you'll bring us up to speed on that?

Yes. Then item 6.3, proclamation, Constitution Month. Uh, Pete, you'll introduce that. We did this last year, so we're hoping each year we can get bigger and better with this. Item 6.4, a presentation of the Babel Award recipients.

And Pete, you'll take care of that too?

Okay.

Me, you come in, Peter, just— And then we've got, uh, item 8, consent items, just approving one meeting minutes. Item 9, scheduled items. get a public hearing on Shandian Park Tech Center redevelopment. My guess is we will have a lot signed up to speak about that. But what makes you think that?

Just because I just got incredibly emails and X phone calls.

Yeah, so I don't know if you want to try to limit that.

Can I make a suggestion? Yeah, I, I would almost say because of that fact that that's such a heavily— there's going to be a lot of comments Can we switch the 2 and put the Skip Dunn one first so they can leave?

Well, they might have quite a few from Skip Dunn.

Yeah, they're not—

they're gonna have a few, I would think. Dave, you know— David, you know that better from the Planning Commission. Whatever, whatever. I mean, I know some people come and they have to leave at 7. For what?

Canyon Park?

Okay, so, and then—

so I guess we'll just leave it. So, but as far as Canyon Park Do we want to—

I mean, I don't know.

We've got a ton of emails. Do you want to limit it?

Maybe you see how many people are really going to speak. What's that? See how many people are really going to speak.

Well, I guess this is straight up public hearing.

Yeah, right. But you could ask and raise your hands who wants to speak. And you can see. So what would be limited to a minute and a half or whatever? There are a lot of people speaking on both of them. Yeah.

So maybe we say we're going to talk about this for a half hour.

And just when that runs out, then we're done. So line up and show elbows.

Please keep your clock 10, right?

And yeah, ideally no more than 3 minutes. We'll take 30 minutes.

You guys can decide amongst yourselves who you'd like to speak.

Yeah, that's good.

The emails are pretty similar.

Yeah, and I think that's what most people are going to say. I don't know how you handle that. I think we're okay with the 30 minutes, and I agree it's likely not to pass, but they're going to be here and they're going to be thinking, what's next? Yeah, yeah, yeah. So we'll give them a chance to give feedback. Okay, 9.2, uh, public hearing. See, is this 15th February?

Yes.

Okay, so we'll just go off of that, and then I guess we could do the same thing as far as see how many people are going to want to talk about You think it'll be the same? I don't know. I don't think— a lot of it skipped, but they're both on the same agenda. It was— it's not uneven, but— so were people generally, um, on both sides of the issue? They were no on kind of both projects, were Okay, there were 2, I think, before the project.

Yeah, the one, the one guy that was for Canyon Park emailed and said he's not going to be here tonight. So, but there was just—

pros and cons, equal number. Okay, so what I'll do with the second one is just try and get an idea how many people raised your hand, and we'll see what that looks like, and then go at a time appropriate, no more than 30 minutes. Okay, 9.3, uh, amending the current year fiscal budget. That will be granted. And city manager information items and adjournment. So, Josh, cookies. Wow. I mean, I would hate to see you have it all away. Yeah, well, that's what I'm going to do. I mean, it's just wrong. I can't— I'm not even sure. No chips? Jalapeño? Carl?

Something happened to my gadgets.

Every year he wants something. Here's a fishing charter, and that's the one he picked this year. He was showing us pictures from this guy. It's a good thing.

They don't do that up in Idaho, right?

Well, that's like— you can go up there and the bar up there, they've got a game for foster. It's a different type of game.

Test, test, test.

Like to call this meeting to order and welcome all of you tonight. Tonight we'd like to start out with an invocation and a Pledge of Allegiance, and we've got Theron Murphy and Jody Murphy, and Lynnae invited them to come, so if you'd like to introduce them.

Yes, so, um, Theron and Jody are just great residents of Orem. Jody is an amazing volunteer in our city. She's also an amazing photographer. And Theron is our principal at Timpanogos High School, and he just does so many great things for our kids and for our community. So I'm just— we're just honored to have you guys participate on our program today.

Thanks.

Our dear kind Father in Heaven, we are grateful to gather together as a community in Orem and make decisions that affect all of us. And we ask thee to please guide us with thy wisdom and thy spirit as, as we seek to make decisions that are in the best interest of the people that live here. That we will think of everyone with merciful hearts and And that decisions will be in the best interest of all of us. And we ask Thee to continue to bless us with joy and happiness in our community and help us to look for ways to help and assist and volunteer to bring about Thy Spirit in Orem. And we say these things humbly in the name of Jesus Christ. Amen.

Amen.

Thank you. Would the audience please rise for the pledge?

Please repeat after me.

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

Thank you. Okay, we'll move to item 6.1, and this is, uh, this— I'm swearing in one of our new fire captains. I'd like to Have Chief Sanderson introduce this.

Thank you, Mayor and Council members in the audience.

My name is Mark Sanderson.

I'm the city's fire chief, and this is one of the funner parts of my job, is when we get to recognize new leaders that come to the department.

3 of these captain positions are due to the Vineyard staffing that we're just ramping up to take ownership of the station that they're currently building next year.

So we're promoting early.

We're gonna, we're gonna run this skeleton crew out of Station 3 as a primary engine, ALS engine, into Vineyard until that house is ready. So what I'd like to do is I'd like to bring the 4 guys up, then I'd like to ask Teresa to swear them in. Then at that point, I'll invite the spouses up to pin their badge on them, take a picture with their spouses, and then Follow that up, excuse the spouses, and then take a picture, Mayor, with you and the council, if that's okay.

So if I could have Mike Hickman, Gordon Livingston, Steve Trejo, and Andrew Butler please come forward.

So they can see me.

Okay, so if you'll raise your right hand. Um, I, state your name, do solemnly swear that I will support, obey, and defend the Constitution of the United States, the Constitution of the State of Utah, and the law, Laws and ordinances of the City of Orem.

That I will conduct myself.

That I will conduct myself. In a professional, professional and courteous manner.

In a professional and courteous manner.

That I will provide professional quality and compassionate service.

That I will provide professional quality and compassionate service.

To the residents of Orem.

To the residents of Orem.

With dedication, pride, and integrity.

Dedication, pride, and integrity.

That I will discharge the duties of my office with fidelity.

That I will discharge the duties of my office with fidelity.

Good job.

Congratulations, you guys.

If you want to remove your badges, if your wife is here, Um, please ask her to come up. If not, Hillary just became one of your wives. And your, your captain badge is behind you on the table.

If you'll grab that and offer it up to your spouse so she can pin it on your shirt.

And the first one that draws blood, we pay a bonus.

Hillary, got you.

Let's get a group photo. Trejo, you're just soloing it.

Sorry.

Oh, shit.

All right.

Well, congratulations, guys, on being the newest captains for Orangethe Fire. We expect really good things out of you. So with that, Mayor, if I get a picture with you and the council.

You guys, next. You got to slide back a little bit.

All right.

Still saying move back.

There you go.

Okay, right there. That's good.

All right, everybody, just one last applause and congratulations, you guys.

Thank you, Chief, and thank you to our fire department for the amazing job they do for our city. We'll move to item 6.2. We're going to have a report from our Public Works Advisory Commission, and Chris Shirkey will lead that.

Here we go.

Mayor and City Council, it's a privilege to be here tonight. Uh, as the city staff representing the Public Works Advisory Commission, I'd like to introduce Jim Michaelis, who is our committee chair. Uh, he's been on the Public Works Advisory Commission. This is his 2nd term, he took a hiatus and we brought him back. His term is up again. Uh, 2nd term is going to be up, I think, next month, and he is committed to be considered to continue for a 3rd term. So Jim is very well committed to the city of Orem, and I'm going to turn some time over here to make some introductions and introduce the topic.

Yeah, I would like to introduce some of the other members of the committee. We have Todd Hadley, Joseph Gordon, Gary Morley, Robert Moore, Brent Tobler, and Mike Wimpey.

If they're here, they could stand.

I haven't seen any of them, but— Yeah, I haven't seen any of them. It's been a great privilege, I would say, to be able to serve on this committee and to be able to work with your Public Works Department. They're a fine department. They do a lot of things that are in the interest of the citizens of Orem. One thing about Public Works, you really don't get a lot of credit for doing things right, just because if no one's calling, you know everything's going right. And so they've done a fine job with that. And so Chris has put together kind of a synopsis of what we've been doing for the last year. And so I'll turn the time back over to Chris.

Thank you, Jim. So we'll, we'll go quickly through this. I know you have a Probably a lengthy agenda tonight, but we want to hit the highlights over the last 12 months and give you an annual update, annual report. We've met actually 7 different times during this last year. In, in the, in the Orem City Code, it says the commission should meet at least quarterly and on an as-needed basis. We felt like it was important for us to bring some of our newer committee members up to speed and give them updates regarding a lot of the details of what we do in our organization. We have 8 different divisions. We have Water, Water Reclamation, Stormwater, Parks, GIS, Fleet, Traffic Operations, and I'm missing one. Okay, it'll come to me here.

Parks.

I did Parks.

Yeah.

So, in any case, we, we are very busy. Uh, we have 120 employees altogether. On a given year, we have about 60 to 80 seasonal employees that come and go every year as well. So we have up to 200 employees in our department at any given time. This last year, we, we had the opportunity to meet with these different groups, with our water division in September, parks in November, fleet in October. We met with Lewis Young Roberts in Birmingham in February of this year to go over municipal finance. We met with our Provo River Water Commissioner, Scott Burgendorf. He gave us an introduction to water distribution and how he manages the Provo River water system. The Alpine Aqueduct, which you have had the opportunity to hear from Central Utah last week on. And then our newly created GIS division. So with that, we have a couple slides for each one of these to give you some highlights. We manage about 60% of our drinking water comes from the surface water, meaning it comes from snowmelt and rainfall that is contained in our Provo River water system, which starts in the Uintas. We have access to the Weber River, the Duchesne River. We take water from the Colorado River. river basin via the Duchesne Tunnel. We have 2 major reservoirs that we have water rights in a part of, either that we lease or that we have full right to, in Jordan L and also in Deer Creek Reservoirs. We have in the bottom right picture, I want to bring your attention to this. These are actually our employees that are doing work, not on a daily basis like this, but This does happen on a regular basis. What you see in the bottom right corner is the Alta Springs, where they're tethered to the side of the mountain there. They're geared up and they access our Alta Springs, our upper Alta Springs, where we have water literally that comes through the rock and through the mountains, and then it's gathered and collected and put into our Alta Spring system, which supplies about 10% of our drinking water altogether. Uh, we We have some technical data. We have graphics, graphical information on water flows from Alta Springs. That's what you see in the top right corner. Top left corner, we have 15% of our water coming from springs, 25% from wells or groundwater, and 60% from surface water. On the bottom left there, you see how our actual production and consumption of water occurs during the course of a given year. That's a typical pattern that we observe. We also had a presentation by our fleet division manager, Thane Carter, and they have a model that I— or excuse me, a mission statement I wanted to share with you. Their mission statement is to provide the highest quality value-based fleet maintenance services for the City of Orem in a timely and a cost-effective manner. We used to, in years past, simply budget Let me put it this way. We didn't really budget for our fleet. We took the scraps from the last previous fiscal year. This is many, many years ago before Bren was here, and because now we do it differently, and it's very progressive and forward-thinking, and we have a good plan for preventative maintenance and actual prospectively looking forward and looking at sinking funds or funds that we put money away to pay for larger cost items. Some vehicles could cost more than $1 million, where we have to budget and be fiscally responsible and not try to gather that money all at once, but over an extended period of time. This kind of gives you a highlight of the equipment that we have. We have 360— you were introduced to 4 new vehicles in our fleet today. We have 4 new ambulances. Fleet is managed in Public Works and by Thane Carter.

He Meets—

he starts meeting about this time of year with all the different department heads on their needs for the upcoming fiscal year. The upcoming fiscal year starts June of next year, but he starts planning for that in about October of the previous year. So you can see just kind of a variety of equipment that we manage there. In parks, we had our parks division manager present on all of the great things that are going on in the city. We have a new Hillcrest Park that was recently opened and dedicated. We have a new train that goes over there and at other locations for different events at different times of the year. We manage a lot of different sporting facilities. We manage the cemetery, the skate park that was recently inundated with the flood that's now cleared off. We manage volunteer programs. As you know, that the— with the new hometown initiative, with the LDS Church and other churches cooperatively working together. We're going to be highly engaged and involved with some of those volunteer types of opportunities. This is an example here. This is our urban forester on the right side here looking at some of our sycamore trees that have been inundated with anthracnose. Laura Lewis came. She's our financial advisor. She came in February. She gave us kind of a basics of municipal Finance 101. We talked a little bit about bonding, what people might be afraid to ask about bonding. Is what is bonding really, or debt, a 4-letter word? Should we steer clear of that? And under certain circumstances, we feel very confident in that it's the best way to, to manage, uh, perhaps a $50 million project that you can't pay for on a pay-as-you-go basis. We have to, we have to look forward and look at at that as a multi-generational asset that will be used by our children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren, perhaps over many generations. So she gave an excellent report to us. She also reported that our Fitch and— excuse me, our Fitch, Moody's, and S&P ratings, and these are old, for general obligation, they were up at an AA+. They were recently upgraded to a AAA, which is Uh, we're among the elite in terms of those ratings. Uh, for— in terms of revenue bonds, uh, we're also at a AAA rating. So we're very fiscally fit and financial response— fiscally responsible. And there, there's a benefit that occurs when you are fiscally responsible, much like in your own personal credit score. If you have a better credit score, maybe over 800, you could probably have access to to a lower interest rate. Same thing with bond ratings. At a AAA bond rating, for, for example, a, uh, a note in 2025, your rate could be as low as 2.65%. Our Provo River Water Commissioner, Scott Burgendorf, he manages the Provo River water system. You know, he's not an officer, but I think he is actually sworn, a sworn officer to some degree. Uh, there's a lot of issues that happen And go on in the Provo River watershed. He's not a cop necessarily, but he does manage the water rights for Provo. No, it's not a free-for-all, just grab what you can kind of an event like you see here in the right picture. It's an actual organized— Under the Department of— well, our State Engineer's Office for Water Rights. They manage all of the water rights throughout the city. All of the water that comes into the state of Utah is actually owned by the state, and then those that have water rights have the right to use the water that's actually owned by the state and managed by the state engineer. You can see that he tracks data, and it's very complicated in our watershed. We have water that comes from a variety of sources. We get reports from him every 2 weeks. We're on a regular open communication basis. I would suggest. Recently, Central Utah Water came and gave an update. They gave an update to our Public Works Advisory Commission also regarding Alpine Aqueduct Reach 1, and they identified certain risks that are known in that area. And on the right side, you can see they have identified one of many fault lines that are in northeast Orem, also landslides that are above the Cascade Golf Course in that bottom right picture, If you zoom in on that, you can see that a little more closely. But there are several concerns with the stability of the land in that area, and they've come forward and suggested that they need to reline or reroute this pipe, which you see here, which is on former hole number, whatever it was, 10 or 11 or 12 on the back 9. What they look at, though, is if there's a failure potential, is it a high, medium, low, medium-low, so forth. If it's high, if it's a high risk, what is the consequence of failure? And they determined that the consequence of failure for this line, which is known as the Alpine Aqueduct Line, it's extremely high. It provides 60% of our drinking water that comes directly out of the Provo River on the Olmsted Diversion. This also provides drinking water to millions of people along the Wasatch Front. So this was an update that they gave us there. And then lastly, I'd like to report on our new GIS division, which stands for geographical information system. Our GIS division has been centralized, and they're making great decisions on managing assets for our city— assets such as water valves, hydrants, detention basins, stormwater management systems, streetlights, signal signs, striping, all of those physical assets that you see in the city, they're publicly owned. We, we have, uh, we track and maintain databases to know when the last time, when it was installed, uh, when we are to maintain it and, and do some, maybe, maybe repaint something or, or repair something or put in a new filter or do whatever it might be. So we track all of that and, and have, are able to then produce a really good capital improvement plan on an annual basis that we then bring forward for your budget and for your acceptance there. It's highly data-driven, it's data-centric, and we're looking at making this outward— I would say outward-reaching to the community by inviting them to provide feedback and input to us through this database, through inputs through our 311 request system for such things as signs. You know, if you notice something's wrong with a— if there's a pothole or if there's a sidewalk that's uneven, it's a trip hazard, or if there's something missing somewhere that needs to be replaced or paint that needs to be redone or whatever, we are going to be making this available to the community here in a short amount of time in this year. So we're excited about being able to do that. Again, all of these things were brought forward to us by, uh, these different departments, different, uh, divisions in our department, as well as outside resources. Some of our future challenges include updating our master plans, which we're pretty well done with now, with our sewer, water, stormwater, police, public, and then, uh, public safety. So police, fire, streets, and so forth, transportation— those are all, all but updated now at this point. And now what we need to do is create a, a new impact fee and update an impact impact fee. In other words, when somebody comes in and puts a burden on our system from outside and develops in our community, that they pay their fair share to have the right to access and to utilize all these things that other people have been already paying for in the past. Um, so we're looking at updating then our respective master plans for each one of those— or excuse me, financial plans, which include impact fees, revenues from utility fees, and then And also other funding sources from grants, loans, bonds, and so forth. The biggest nut we have to crack right now is that $160 million nut we call the Warm Water Reclamation Facility, and that capital facility plan there, which in 2023 dollars is $160 million. So we have to be very creative looking at stretching that across multiple generations. You might ask, why is the Cheshire Cat there? I'll assume— I'll assume you do. And I'm going to answer with this. One day Alice came to a fork in the road and saw a Cheshire Cat in a tree. Which road do I take? she asked. Where do we want— where do you want to go? was his response. I don't know, Alice answered. Then the cat said, it doesn't matter. In Orem, we know where we want to go. We have a plan. We have plans for our sewer plan, for our water plan, for our parks plan, for public safety and Vineyard and so forth. We have plans. We've put forth a lot of time and effort in developing these plans that'll pay dividends for us today and into the future.

So that—

with that, that's PWAC. Are there any questions?

So you can see that that's a massive job that he's gotten here.

Thank you for that. Does anyone have any questions?

I just have a comment, and I think, and since I've been on the City Council, I've been able to see more and more what you do, and I don't think most residents realize you literally keep us running. We don't think about it when we turn the faucet on, but you do, and we're so grateful. So thank you for all that you do, and thank you for your help with that.

Thank you.

Wow.

Very nice. Thank you very much. We appreciate your support as council members, mayor. Executive team and citizens of Orem, thank you for allowing us to serve you.

Not only do we have great employees there, Chris, and your team, but the, the support team, the committee of Jim and his group, do a great job.

And I've been on and off that committee a number of times during my time on the council and always impressed with their commitment. And they start at 7 in the morning or 7:30. It's a, it's a good start.

So thank you.

We try to get to work before people get to work.

So yeah, no, you, you guys do an amazing job. And to Jen's point, a lot of people don't even know you exist. If you'd like everyone to know you exist, you could stop doing your job and water stops coming out of taps, toilets stop.

Yeah, no one in a hurry anyway.

Uh, so we're glad that you're invisibly doing a phenomenal job.

Thank you.

Great.

It takes many people. So there's, there's a lot of credit due for many. So thank you very much.

Thank you. Okay, next up we've got item 6.3, uh, Constitution Month. Pete Wolfley, our communications director, is going to talk about that.

Thank you, Mayor. As part of my duties with the Orem Heritage advisory board. One of their duties, as stated in city code, is to promote patriotism in the city of Orem. And one of the ways we've done that over the last year is Constitution Month. Everybody knows about July 4th, the great American holiday, but I'd say an equally important day in our history is September 17th, when the Constitution was signed. And so September has been set aside as the time to study the Constitution, celebrate it, and just learn more about it and help our community know more more about it too. So I've come before you to ask for your signature, Mayor, on this proclamation that will state that September is Constitution Month in the city of Orem. And we have some fun activities planned to help celebrate. Uh, last year was our first year doing it, and we had an essay contest and an art contest, and we'll do that again. Uh, the library will also be putting on a display of constitutional-themed books and resources, so that'll be going on in the library. One piece of feedback we got last year was that UVU has an amazing constitutional studies program, and so we're going to be doing more with them to help promote their activities. They have tons of activities for all ages, kids included, to learn about the Constitution and in a fun way and learn it from, you know, the scholars and experts in that field. We're very excited to do this. The Constitution is, you know, really, I think, what makes our country great. And so on behalf of the Heritage Commission, I just asked for the support on this and You'll be getting more information as we move into September.

Okay, that sounds great. And as you know, the council, we fully, fully support that.

Thank you.

Yeah, you might want to make—

just make a motion to adopt the proclamation making September 2024 Constitution Month. I make that motion that Steve just said.

Second it.

Second.

Aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Aye. That passes, and we're all very much in favor of Constitution Month. Excellent. Thank you.

Thank you.

Okay, next up we've got item 6.4, and Pete is going to take this also. This is the Babel Award recipients.

Yeah, so, uh, last Thursday, as Many of you know, we had our annual BABO Award.

And for those in the audience that don't know about BABO, it stands for Building a Better Orem.

And it's all astronaut and space themed because it comes from a story of President Kennedy when he went to visit NASA.

He saw a guy mopping and picking up trash, and he goes up to the guy and says, what do you do here?

And he says, I'm helping put a man on the moon.

And so that's the attitude we try to have as city employees, is no matter where you're at in the organization, no matter your role, you're helping to build a better Orem. And we don't distinguish between whether you're at the top of the organization or entry level.

Everybody's efforts make a difference.

And so that's the theme of our kind of employee credo. That's the things we try to live by, wake up every day to build a better Orem. Karina helped put this whole great event together, so she's going to review that and then we're going to go into the awards.

So yes, we had our end of, you know, end of the season, end of the summer employee appreciation party. party.

And so that was over at the City Center Park, as you guys were there.

We—

it was a hot day, and so we had the program, we had ice cream, we had food, and we were just able to really celebrate as a city, um, you know, all the great work that we put in throughout the year. And then also be able to present these, uh, BABA Awards and the winners and really showcase our appreciation for them and then celebrate together as a city. And so I feel like it was a really successful I think everyone really loved just being out there and just being together, being able to get out of our daily works and then go to the park and just connect together and just celebrate working for Orem.

And we thank you for letting us come before you because we felt like, as great as the party was, we'd love to put this on the official record in the history of Orem, that these were the employees this year that were nominated and, and won these awards and some of our most outstanding contributions this year. So I just have a quick couple slides here just to talk about the program. So the Babo Awards, they're peer-nominated. This isn't coming from the executive leadership team. This is peers nominating peers. So anyone can be eligible to be nominated. It's a year-round nomination period, so it doesn't happen just in the summer. If you do something great in December, if you do something great in May, it can be recorded and considered when the award comes around.

We did—

there were 55 employees nominated this year. The Employee Advisory Council are the ones that determine the winners. They represent each department in the city as well as each management level. So there's about 10 or 11 employees that sit on that committee, and they're the ones— they have the hardest job because all of these employees are super deserving, but they're the ones that have to decide who gets the awards. Uh, one fun thing that we've had the last 2 years is the, the trophies have been made from wood that grew on the city property. So these ones here that you see pictured, they are actually this big ponderosa pine tree that was on the corner. And so we've always loved that, that we were able to kind of repurpose that wood that, you know, has a rich history in Orem and on the city campus. And then each of the winners receives a modest cash bonus for their contributions. Uh, the award categories are Rising Star, that's for part-time employees. Part-time employees play a huge role in everything we do here. We couldn't do it without them. The Rookie of the Year is employees that have been here with us in the city for 2 years or less. We joke with Gary McGinn, who won Rookie of the Year, He's had a 30-year career in the industry, but he was the Rookie of the Year. So, but it's kind of fun.

Yeah. And then the regular Babo Award, just recognizing excellence in all the different departments.

Uh, there's at least one winner from each department. And then of course the top award is the Employee of the Year Award.

So 15 in total. Just wanted to—

you have the book before you so you can read the names and read about the contributions that each of these individuals made.

But there's all of their pictures. These were some of the biggest contributors this year for the City of Lawrenceville. And we want— we have a few of them are here. We'd love to get a picture with you and them and just celebrate their, their great contributions. And then one of the other things we do each year is recognize employees who are hitting significant milestones in their service. This year we had 2 employees that have been with us for 40 years, which is incredible. And there's— they still have a love of the game and they, they wake up every day and do great work for Orem. And then you can see the 30, 25, and 20 years. Our beloved police chief is on there, 20 years.

Congratulations.

Congratulations, Josh. So that concludes the presentation. If we could just grab a quick picture with those that are here, uh, appreciate your time and letting us present this to you.

Okay.

Well, thank you for that presentation. As you can see, there's lots and lots of great things happening in Orem. We're going to move on to our personal appearances. And just to clarify, so at the beginning of each meeting, people are allowed to sign up if they'd like to make a comment on just anything in the city. Um, and so we've got 4 people who signed up for that. And then we've also got some public hearings going on that I'm guessing some of you might be here for, for some of the different zoning issues that are happening. And so as far as, um, just as a general guideline to everyone, I'm going to just read this statement, um, that we put out. And this will apply to the first 4 people but also to all the public comments tonight. So what it says is, time has been set aside for the public to express their ideas, concerns, and comments on items not scheduled as public hearings on the agenda. Those wishing to speak are encouraged to show respect for those who serve the city. Comments should focus on issues concerning the city. Those wishing to speak should have signed up before the beginning of the meeting. And again, that's just for this first part. Please limit your comments to 3 minutes or less. And the first person on the personal appearances is Elaine Cochran. Come on up. Sure, thank you.

Good evening, Council and Mayor. Grateful for this opportunity. First, I want to say how grateful we are for Chris, um, Shirky. He has been working with our neighborhood to resolve solve this issue for the last couple of years. We really appreciate the time that he has spent, and I know that he's going to help us get to a resolution. As the— and I apologize to the audience that you're not seeing these visuals. I should have come and done a little more research and found out that you had a plug. The first illustration that I'm sharing with you on the front corner is our neighborhood. It's Chairapple Drive in the Chairapple neighborhood. We've lived there Many, many years. We were some of the first people that moved there. In fact, Melanie can attest that when the Chair Apple development was first developed, our kids used to go play in the puddles every time it ran at this spot. But over the years, as you will see, this was the 2024 flood that we just had recently during August, as we do every year during the monsoons. If you'll turn to the next page, please. The next Next image is our 2023 flooding in the same spot. If you'll turn to the next page, I'll show you why this is happening. Historically, I believe it was the Strattons that owned that piece of property. It was a beautiful cherry apple orchard, which is where their name originates. And we have the delightful opportunity of explaining that neighborhood name every time we try and give someone our address. But anyway, you'll notice that the original plat map, the consent map, and this is concept map, and this is not it. I've pieced this together to illustrate it. Chris was kind enough to offer this to me last year, and I've misplaced it somewhere. But originally, from 1600 North going up to where Skyline is now, that was originally going to be the Northridge neighborhood. As I'm sure you're aware, Half of this has been developed into the Northridge neighborhood. But about 20 years ago, the Dickerson brothers purchased the upper half, and instead of continuing that road up and the natural drainage of the area, they put a home right in the middle of what would have been platted for the street to be and the drainage pattern under the street to be, and developed our beautiful chair neighborhood. Now, we love living there. We have wonderful neighbors there, and Melanie will attest that there are few, very few members of our neighborhood that have not lived there for over 20 years. But there are 2 houses that have sold more than any other home in the neighborhood. One of them belongs to Susan Jackson. She's going to share her thoughts in a few minutes. If you'll turn to the next page, It'll illustrate that red circle that you're seeing. That is the center of Chair Apple Drive. It is the emptying center of this water— this water flow system. You know, it was awesome when it was just our street and the water off our street was fairly easily handled by the draining system that was there. But now look at the last picture. This is what occurs every single year because of the added development. We need your help. We need you to support Chris, um, Shirkey and his efforts to help us resolve this issue. Thank you.

Thank you. Next we've got Wayne Murray.

Hi, I'm Clissa Murray, and, um, my husband wanted me to go first, and then he'll— if he could be second, that would be great. Um, I live in the Cherry Apple subdivision in Northeast Orem, and I, I wanted to thank you for giving us a few minutes tonight to, to express our concerns regarding the flood that happened on Tuesday, August 13th. Although it was a very powerful storm that night, some are calling it a 100-year storm. I am here to emphasize that that flood that happened at my home and the Cherry Apple neighborhood wasn't the first time, and I'm afraid it won't be this the last. I have lived in my home now for 17 years, and this is the 3rd time that we've had a flood happen since August of, of 2013. Um, it is one thing to be dealing with the water that comes from a powerful storm from the sky into your yard, but we cannot be expected to manage the river that comes from the streets above our homes, then jumps the curb at the church, um, parking lot where it gains speed as it rushes down the asphalt into the back corner of the lot. The drain cannot keep Keep up with the amount of water that— water there. So it finds the path of least resistance, and it rushes through my backyard and my neighbor's backyard and out to the street, flooding homes downhill in its path. Something more needs to happen to— needs to be done to prevent the flooding and the subsequent damages of hundreds and thousands of dollars again. Um, 3 days after the flood, I spoke to, um, Chris Shirkey in the church parking lot, and I believe, um, he's the Public Works director. And I appreciate the changes that were made last year, um, in our— in the subdivisions above us for the draining, um, systems last year for a potential spring runoff. But as you'll see, Um, it wasn't enough to protect our neighborhood. After he saw my videos, um, in the backyard that day, he said the city needs to do a better job of keeping the water on the streets, and the church needs to do a better job retaining and draining the water on their property. He went on to say that this was going to require teamwork and that we needed to have a meeting with the city, the church, and the homeowners that were affected by the flood. He said it's going to take engineers to help us to resolve this situation, and I am hoping that we can all come together and work on this to achieve this. When you're making decisions on how to go forward on this situation, I wanted to make sure that you saw the whole picture of this specific— and the specifics of this devastation that happened to many wonderful home Orem residents who have spent many years contributing positively to this city and to the community of Orem. I'd like to finish by sharing a few videos of the flood that occurred at my home and my neighbors' homes, and I thank you for your time.

Thank you. Wayne Murray.

Yes, do you know if there's a way to connect this USB under here somewhere. So I've got HDMI here. Does this hook into back here somewhere?

No, that's, that's just for the mic.

Okay. If we had an adapter, what do you—

we need a model?

Yeah, just because this will go to mine, and if we just have an HDMI that this can plug into. Well, look at that. I just want to also thank the mayor and the council for letting us have some time to visit with you here. Um, before I start, I wanted to also recognize Chris Shirkey. He's amazing, and we are so grateful for, uh, for his willingness to meet with us. Um, we first met with him last spring when we were kind of concerned about the spring runoff. And we're grateful for the measures the city took to put up some barriers up along Skyline Drive at the bottom of Dry Creek Road to try and prevent the water from coming down. What we've noticed is that when we get these large storms, like we said, this was the— probably the 3rd once-in-a-lifetime storm we've had in the past 10 years. So, I wanted to just share maybe a couple of videos so you can kind of see What some of the things that we've been experiencing. This first video is just water that's coming down just 2000 North. This is about where 2000 North and the Murdoch Trail comes across.

So.

Then this next one is taken from, from our front porch onto Cherry Apple Drive. And so you can see, this is heading, pointing south. You'll see some little things coming into the picture there.

Okay.

So right through that corner, there's actually a little, little low spot in the curb there. There's a drain right there at that corner. What ends up happening is it hits that, it hits that little jump, and it actually jumps right over the drain. So just then proceeds down the street. So that's a little distressing. But again, this is just a very large storm, and you saw the water carrying the trash. This was before my wife actually went into our backyard. Um, to see what was happening back there. You can see the water jumping there, the, uh, the drain. Um, then this next picture real quick is, uh, our backyard, and our backyard backs the church that's on Heather Road at about 620 East.

What do I do?

I got to keep it away.

So you can see the water pouring down. Down, down steps. And it just— fortunately for us, the water went around both sides of our home due to the grading that the previous owners did in the backyard. So we did not have any flooding in our basement, thank goodness. But the water went essentially parted and went around our property, but then Ran out onto, onto Terrible Drive. Um, and I wanted to show you this next video is our next door neighbor, um, who lives just to the, just to the east of us, also borders the church property. He was not as fortunate.

Totally flooding our backyard. It's going down, it's all in our basement, totally flooding our basement.

And again, he was not as fortunate. They had about a foot and a half of water in their basement from the water coming from the— that came from the church, which, which, uh, before that, uh, came from down, uh, from, um, 2000 North onto 690 East, made the turn on the head of the road, and then jump the curb at the church. And then the, you know, when it's trying to come down the church, the church— I filed a facilities incident report with the church about probably 4 years ago. And they did some work, they improved the drains, but it just isn't enough to handle all the water that's coming into the church property from outside the church property. And then one last video I wanted to show you from This is actually taken from the neighbor's driveway, 2 doors down from us, looking back toward our property. Um, you can see where the— So this is, this is pointing east. This is our neighbor 2 doors down. Now he's going to pan over toward, toward our property. And as you can see right here, that is where the, that river was coming into our property. It runs right along our property line and drops out, right? Right there onto the street, then ends up proceeding down, down the lane. Um, to where you can then see there's just a massive flood down the street where it, where it, uh, inundated, uh, 2 or 3 homes in our neighborhood, but also the water then went over into the Northridge neighborhood. And I think there were multiple homes down there that had flood damage. Um, I think our state president said he got reported About 35 homes in our neighborhood were affected by the flood. Of course, not all of those were from the water coming from the city or from the streets. A lot of it was just water that couldn't be handled by their drainage and their own property. But again, just asking for some help. See what we might be able to do to resolve this issue. Again, grateful to Chris Shirkey and his team.

They've just been so amazing and grateful for their desire to help us figure this out.

Thank you.

Okay.

Thank you. We appreciate you educating us on this. We've got, uh, Susan Jackson is our last person to come up.

I told Elaine I wasn't going to speak, so this is going to be off the cuff. Um, I'm Susan Jackson. You may have known my late husband, Dave Jackson. He was involved with you anyway. So I live in one of the houses that Elaine said wasn't supposed to be there. Um, I've been there 19 years, and all the water that you saw Mr. Murray show you pictures of, it all comes down those hills and pools right in front of my house and the house next door to me that wasn't supposed to be there also, and it becomes a lake. And the worse the storm is, it'll come up my driveway, which is luckily slightly inclined, um, but then it goes right into the window of the house next door to me. It's been— their house has been flooded at least 3 times that I know of, but I think someone said maybe 4, um, also with the previous owners, um. Anyway, so I'm just gonna say, please help us. We were told— we talked to them, they're great, they're trying to be very helpful, but they're saying that some of those solutions will have to come from us. And I've thought of a couple of things I can do, but I don't have the equipment. I don't have— I, you know, I don't know what to do. So I think we just need help to get rid of that water. It all goes down. There are several drains around us. But because of the hills, there's only one very small drain that it actually— that actually works. But it goes in there and then it all goes— all of those go to one small pipe, and that pipe is not adequate to get rid of the water fast enough. So my basement is flooded, and, um, it's, it's, it's overwhelming to me after recently losing my husband.

Thank you.

Um, so anyway, please help us. We need some solutions because I don't know what to do. Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you for bringing us up to speed. Um, and I'm sure that— so Chris has been involved with this, and then Brent will work with Chris.

Yeah, Mayor and Council, of course, taking notes. And, and as was suggested, the— I think the solutions will lie in kind of multi-organizational communication and coordination. But yes, we've heard loud and clear, and of course we want to be part of the solution moving forward.

Thank you, Brent. All right, moving on. We've got item number 8, consent items, and the only item on the consent items is 8.1, the approval the meeting minutes. If someone would like to make a motion—

Make a motion that we approve the consent items as outlined. I second.

Aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Aye.

The consent items are approved. Let's move on to the scheduled items. The first item on the scheduled items tonight is a public hearing On an ordinance enacting Section 22-11-67, PD-54 Canyon Park Tech Center Redevelopment Zone, and Appendix AAA of the Orem City Code, and amending Article 22-5-3A and the zoning map of the City of Orem by changing the zone on approximately 24.3 acres from the PD-6 zone to the PD-54 zone. located generally at 1203 North, 630 East. If you'd like to come up and, uh, begin this conversation.

Thank you, Mayor, council members. Uh, this project that comes in front of you is a rezone from a tech center, the Canyon Park, to residential, and it's up by the cemetery. And this is a view of the Old Ward Perfect site. To the left, you'll see Timpanogos High School to orient you a little bit to where we are. So, they want to go from the PD-6 to a PD-54, and what that means is they want to do a residential zone where they would write some of the terms for the zone. to match what it is that they'd like to do. And to give you a little more context, you can see from this map, this is the outline of the acreage that they're proposing be rezoned to residential. And we have shown there in kind of the aqua green color are the PF zones in the area. You can see the cemetery, you can see the high school. And then the other school to the south. And we also have listed the residential zones surrounding it. To give you an idea of this zone, the area that they're proposing to be rezoned is on the southern border there, approximately 832 feet wide, and then the depth. Is 1,280 feet. And so that's the area that they're proposing to be rezoned. And from this zoomed in, you can see some more residential around in the area. This is the concept plan that they have that would go in on the little over 23 acres we're talking about. And to see all of that doesn't really give you a sense of what we're talking about. And we have some R-8 zones in the area. We have some PD zones that have different density. So we created what is essentially a heat map. And it's linked to lot size. And so this heat map, the larger the lots in the area, the more green it is. And then the smaller the lots, the more red it becomes. And so when you look at this zone, you can see the— if you go down to the bottom left callout box. So the proposed zone that we have here with 150 lots, they would have a median lot size of 4,975 square feet. And we use median because a zone might have various sizes of lots. There may be a few big ones, there may be some small ones. And if you go with the average, you may have 1 lot that's, you know, 100,000 square foot, and then you have, you know, 3 lots that are 10,000 square foot, and the average would be 50,000 square feet. But that wouldn't really give you a sense of. of what we're really talking about here. So we tried to compare and put it into lot size to show the median in each zone. So if you go and you look at the different zones, some of them, for instance, like Strawberry Fields, and that's immediately to the east of The rezone area. It has a median lot size, but it includes the common areas, because in that particular zone, you may have smaller lots, but, but it's actually a much bigger project because you have common area on which there are no homes built. And so that common area, we thought, was including that into the median lot size. size made the most sense. And if you go to Abbey Road, which is just east of that, it's the same thing where they have some common area. And so we're trying to look at what the median size is. Any, any questions about that? Hopefully I didn't confuse everybody with this explanation of the heat map that we're trying to use. So, The next map shows the project superimposed on it. And again, this project has— we couldn't go in and look at individual lots and color code them like we have in all the other areas. We didn't have the data to be able to do that easily. So we show That underneath the heat map color. And then now you can see the proposed development that went to Planning Commission. And now you— we've taken the heat map away. Now you can see kind of the size, and there's some various sizes. A few are bigger lots, some are smaller. And We zoomed in again. This shows the development as it exists now, the area. And then I'm gonna press forward. And now the proposed project will be superimposed on that area. And so now you can see it zoomed in a little more to get a sense of how we approached it and the lot sizes. Lot sizes. Uh, the density. And I bet you can guess what the big issues were. Density, parking, traffic. These are always important issues in a community and how we go about developing. So we have that now with their project. These are some of the elevations that they're proposing.

Uh.

With that and some floor plans. And again, and then the text of their project with the setbacks a little different to be able to— in their proposed text for the PD-54 zone, they would be proposing some amendments to our setbacks that a, say, an R-8 would not have. would typically have. And some more of that. And here's just the last slide in this group is a street view showing the entrance into the existing technology center there at Canyon Park. Any questions that I can answer? The developer is here and does have some slides that he would like to go and walk the council through at the appropriate time.

Do we have any questions from the council? I think we're good. Go ahead and have the developer come up. I think what you put together is extremely helpful as far as conceptualizing the sizes of everything.

Good. And if there's something, a question that you have, and we can't get the answer, or I don't have the answer off the top of my head, we'll get that for you as quickly as we can. Brian, or—

I'm not the developer, but I play one on TV. My name is Steve Waldrop. I am the governor's housing policy advisor for the state of Utah. And I've been asked to come down here not to represent the developer, but to represent the interests of the governor and the state. And let me just express my appreciation to you from the governor for your service, Mayor and council members.

You've got—

this is the on-the-ground space. This is where things happen, where neighbors are close and sometimes too close. And, and And so we understand and appreciate the balancing act that you have to undergo as you look at difficult projects and challenges to growth and all of the things that are happening across the state. When the governor was asked last year, about midpoint last year, somebody asked him, if you were to look ahead 30 years, what do you think the number one thing that could keep Utah from becoming what it could potentially become? What would be the one thing that would stop Utah from its, you know, natural progression and advancement? And as he thought about it, the number one thing that came to his mind is affordable housing, the inability of our kids and grandkids to purchase homes and to participate in the American dream. And as a result of that, in December, they created a new position in the the governor's cabinet and asked me to come do it. So I've been in this position for about 8 months, and that's why I'm here tonight. I'm speaking on behalf of the administration, and this is space I've been in. I was in the legislature for a few years. I have founded a social benefit housing fund, so this is space I understand. And I'll just give you a few statistics that help to sort of frame this issue for what we're dealing with at a state And then it, you know, kind of lands in each locality, in each municipality. By 2030, it's anticipated that we will need approximately 200,000 more homes in Utah. We currently have about 1.15 million homes. So just consider that growth. That's if Utah doesn't become any sexier than it is right now. It's already It's already like the belle of the ball in the, in the nation. Our economy is strong. It's diversifying our, our way of life. I flew back from St. George just a couple hours ago. I sat next to a gentleman, lives in Park City from California. He's lived here for 8 years. And he said, I wanted to move here because I wanted my children to go to a school where values mattered. And this is Park City, you know, so some people don't think Park City has any value, just so you know. Park City apparently has some values. But that was his reaction. He just said, we want to be in a place where community matters, where people care, where, you know, where we just feel like we're a part of something great. This is one guy, and it's anecdotal, but this has been repeated, as we know, throughout the state. For the first time in 2022, we had more— or 2021, actually— we had more in-migration into Utah The natural growth since the pioneers. So we flipped. We are now the attractive place to come. We've seen that in our state over the last few years, and at the same time this is happening, at the same time we're becoming so attractive, interest rates went up, our housing production dropped off. We will increase this year our housing deficit by roughly four. 14,000 or 15,000 units. We're already at about 37,000, so we'll be near 50,000 by the end of this year. That means we have 50,000 more households than we have places for people to live. Simple law of supply and demand. What happens when you have more people that want something than something you have? The prices go up. And that's what we've seen over the last several years. Utah has dealt with this demand. This is nationwide. Utah is no However, Utah has gone from being like the 39th, 42nd most affordable state. Like, we were pretty affordable for a long, long time. Utah is now the 3rd least affordable state. Hawaii, California, Utah by most measures. And how that's happened is this. The median wage—

Go back to 2000.

If you go back in history, the median wage relative to the median home price was always about 3 to 1. You take the median wage and you say, okay, if you make— you take that times 3, that'll buy you the median house, just the house that, you know, kind of everybody has. In the last 10 years, the median home price relative to the median wage in Utah has more than doubled. It's now 6.5 times the median wage. That's the median home price. Utah also builds the average, the largest average size homes in the nation, 2,800 square feet. So, so there's some things that, that have kind of contributed to where we are today. And, and frankly, the— we've never had to really play in the market rate housing space as a, as a, as a government. It usually self-regulates. It usually kind of takes care of itself. And it has for many, many years in Utah. We always had more land, and we just kind of grew. We're at a point now where, because of these external factors, and then the land capacity in Utah, as we know, we're a bobsled run. We got a lake on one side and mountains on the other. And so most of our people live between those 2 points. So now we have this constraint on land. We have people flooding into our state, quite frankly. And that flood will continue. We just were awarded the Olympics. We've got a PGA Tour event coming to southern Utah. Our exposure is going to grow dramatically. And what makes us what we are is attractive. We are really cool. I mean, there are bad problems and good problems to have in life. And this is a good problem, to be so cool that everybody wants to be here. That's very different than how it was when I grew up and I was in high school. I was not the one everybody wanted to ask to the prom. That's kind of how Utah used to be. No one wanted to ask Utah to the prom. Now, everybody's after Utah. Utah's the prom queen. Everybody wants to be here. And so that's created this pressure on our entire system. And, and now we have a situation where 92% of people in Utah that do not own a home cannot afford to buy a home. 92%. That's a staggering number. If you fast forward 30 or 40 or 50 years from that statistic and think about what that means for the future of our state, our country, our, our society, we're dealing with now Today, social spending—that is, our social spending—is the number one thing we spend money on as a state and as a nation. Right? We—that's where most of our money goes—is social services. For a very long time in the United States, through zoning and through lending restrictions, we froze out a large segment of our population—the Black population—from owning. owning homes, from building generational wealth. 60, 70 years that went on. We finally started unwinding it in the '70s, kind of went through the '80s and '90s before we really got it straightened out. Where is the majority of our social spending going now? To the offspring and the generations that followed those individuals who are frozen out of creating generational wealth. It's not hard to see the future. if we don't correct this problem now. Homeownership is the number one tool for wealth creation in this— in the country. Um, the median renter— I'll give one more statistic and then I'll wrap up. The median wealth of a renter in the United States is $10,400. This is by— this is, uh, government statistics. $10,400. That's their net worth. The median net worth of a homeowner in the United States is $396,200. That's a 40x. That's a massive amount. And I was thinking, you know, geez, is that just a recent phenomenon? Is that just because we had this run-up in house prices? Go back 10 years, median wealth of a renter was $5,000.

Wow.

before this run-up, the median wealth of a homeowner, $200,000. That 40x relationship has remained pretty constant. So when we look at what we're trying to do, what, what is our job as leaders, as citizens? What do we care the most about? We care the most about our families. We care the most about our children. We care the most about leaving them a world where they can succeed and thrive. where they can participate in the American dream. That is currently at risk when 92% of our kids can't afford to buy a home. And that lack of generational wealth has impacts that go on and on and on. So I'm here tonight to, um, to just acknowledge the fact that these are hard things, but that we need to do hard things. And, and they're There is pain associated with growth, absolutely. But we've grown before and we will continue to grow, and we have to do it wisely and intelligently. And it's possible to do that. That's why you're here. That's why this work has gone on on this project, to get it to a point where it can be intelligently planned and come before you as a plan that has buy-in from a lot of different stakeholders. My, my closing comment is this: what we say we care about the most— our kids, our grandkids, what they inherit from us— I think it's, it's a critical piece to understand what our moral obligation is in this space. And so I don't view housing any longer as a policy issue or a political issue or a neighborhood issue. To me, this is really a fundamental moral issue about what we care about most as a society. And right now we have a situation where we have to change. We have to do different things than we've done in the past. And that's just the reality. And it's going to be the reality for a long time to come. And those decisions are tough, but they're possible. And there are a lot of good people willing to make adjustments and to make it work for all of us. But those are the hard decisions that you have to make. I appreciate your time. I don't know if you guys wanna stand up now, if you guys have any questions for me after that soliloquy. Apologies for talking for so long, but this is something I care deeply about.

Yeah, we appreciate that. And this really is more of a conversation. Because there's a lot of assumptions, right? I mean, what is affordable? How do we get to affordability? You know, how do we get to affordability when we've got 7% interest rates that were created by massive inflation at the federal level? We have no control over that.

Right.

And so we're being asked to fix, and then we're also having a conversation of, you know, what would fit in the community. with all the areas around it would be probably 100 houses. And so if we stretch it to 150 houses and shrink all that lots and create all that density, what have we really gained? We've changed the nature of that area and we picked up 50 houses in a city of 100,000 people. And so this is more of a conversation, I think. And we do have a— we actually have a lot of ideas. on affordable housing side, how to really get affordable housing. And we need to talk further about that because we have areas of the city that need to be refurbished, upgraded, redeveloped, and we could use some state money for that, and we can make that happen. So anyway, it's a good conversation.

I appreciate that, Mayor.

And that's just so you know, that's one of the other things we're working on. So we should have a proposal for that from the state level to help revitalize some of our legacy cities which are struggling.

Right.

But I appreciate your comment, and I think we need a lot more of everything. We have a supply issue. And so our goal from an administrative standpoint is to focus on ownership first. I mean, that to me is the key. And if, you know, if a community approves 100 homes, Weber County just approved 275 units in a development. development additional beyond what they had already established. And that's roughly $110 million of value in the pockets of their constituents, their people. So that's the balancing act that, again, you, you got it right. I mean, it is tough, and affordability is a, is a, is a continuum, and we got to reach all levels of it. This is one part of it. It's not the only part. And this probably won't be the only time I'll come talk to you. Hopefully, I have some other good things to work on. So, thank you.

Good. Well, thank you. Yeah, we want to have that conversation, so we appreciate it.

Hi, my name is Zach Hartman with Land Advisors, and I'm the owner's rep. So, typically, we're not hired to fill up office buildings and to lease them. We're kind of more of the bulldoze, redevelop, new program.

we get hired.

Um, just to give a little background, so— and if, if you have the slide, that slide right there. Yeah, Gary, can you pull that one up right in front of you? That one, that's my favorite. So you notice there's a lot of parking there.

Perfect.

Oh, wait, no.

There you go.

So this is from 2008. If you can't tell, there's a few more cars here. Um, it's a little busier, and I think that's the dream of the, of the current owner, that the office park would look like this. But I think after a decade or more, that hasn't really been the outcome. And as far as the demand side of this, we thought it might be good to convert some of it to residential. So when we first started the process, I went out to a group of builders and we brought in Edge Homes for the first time. And I believe— I think you have the next slide— that's like their version that made it— didn't really make it through the community meetings. Just buzz on through this.

There we go.

Yep.

One more. Good. Keep going. One more.

Okay, so this one actually— yeah, go back to the last one. So originally, um, the Moeller Group came up with a plan that kind of laid out higher density for rent. That wasn't really well received in the community outreach. And so the next slide is—

How many were— how many units did is in this one?

Oh, this is going to be in the hundreds, like 300, I think.

What is it?

Um, what is it?

300.

Yeah, and mostly for rent. And then the next slide, we kind of took the feedback, and this was the Edge product, and this is how many units? 170. And that wasn't well received either, so we broke up with Edge and we went back out to the marketplace. And I, I've known Tri Pointe Homes nationally for a long time. They build a higher-end product, a nicer home that I thought the residents in the area would like. Um, I've also known Brian for 10-plus years when he worked at Ivory Homes, and his division president I know really well is a Utah guy. And essentially, I was like, this is a good fit. These people will work with the community, will come up with a better solution, um, to what we've had. And I feel like through the community meetings we've had, we've answered a lot A lot of questions back and forth, and I'm gonna let Brian finish the presentation. It, it was interesting having the fire firefighters in here prior, you know, 4 captains, and I was talking to them like, hey, can you guys buy a home in Orem with what you get paid? And they're like, no, we work about 3 jobs and we couldn't even afford a townhome. And I'm in this portion of the project probably doesn't solve It's not going to solve huge housing issues. That's not the point here.

The point would be to kind of start thinking about that.

So are these $1.3 million houses? Are they $900,000 houses? Are they $700,000 houses?

Right?

And I think on the next phase, if this moves forward and we find a better program, maybe you guys could give me— you know, we have 25 people that work for the city that make, you know, $35,000, $75,000 a year. And part of the future approvals, and I got to work with everybody, we come up with some plan that actually delivers that, right? I don't want to create, you know, affordable housing that's restricted where people can't get their net worth. But there are things we can do at the start of these projects to kind of put our arms around the issues that are in front of all of us. So, and it's interesting because I'm trying to bend my way of thinking of always trying to force forward and push dollars into into this, I would call it the commitment to the Utah way of doing things. And I just think we can come up with a different way to do this than the way California did it, right? Um, I'll let Brian walk through the lab, our current plan.

You can go to the next slide. Evening, Council. Brian Prince with Tri Pointe Homes. Appreciate the time tonight and want to thank First off, city staff. We've been working on this application for 6 months now, and they've been a great resource to guide us to this point. Um, so with that context in mind, Zach spoke to the fact that I'm not the first applicant on this proposed redevelopment. Um, when we started talking with Mueller Group and the current ownership, um, we talked through the story, and it was apparent that, that I wasn't the first guy at bat and that we needed to slow down, um, and have some discussions with, uh, the neighborhood, with stakeholders around the property to understand how to move forward in a thoughtful way. Um, the application required that we hold one neighborhood meeting. We held several. The first open house we had was in March of this year, and, uh, Came to the vision we had. We held it in Building Q, which is the most southern building there on 1200. Great turnout, over 100 people showed up. Great discussion with many, many residents. I know a few of you were there. This was the original plan we presented, and it was a mix of townhomes and single-family homes with kind of a vision of preserving some of that, that existing open space along the west side of the property. And that was really the vision, was some higher-density homes in the core as it feathered out to single-family homes along the periphery. Got a lot of good feedback. Overwhelmingly, the feedback was, we want to see a more traditional single-family detached neighborhood, a more traditional single-family community. And so took that feedback, Went back to the drawing board, had an additional meeting in May, another open house meeting where we invited the neighborhood to come out, give us more feedback, as well as I sat down with smaller groups like next door, the Da Vinci Place HOA, Starway Fields HOA, and had other meetings with individual neighbors to get kind of more specific guidance on When there's this list of priorities as it relates to open space, lot size, home type, what, what really was the priority, um, for the, for the neighborhood as a whole, and what were the major concerns? And so you can, you can jump to the next slide. So this next slide is, uh, as Gary mentioned or showed earlier, this is the current proposal. Um, the general overview of this design and what really guides the design of this community or subdivision plan is, um, all single-family, front-load, traditional 2-car garage, traditional full-length driveway homes with the city's standard public right-of-way. So that, you know, this is not a private road. This is kind of city public road design. The PD-54 ordinance really is your PRD zone. And so there's a question or a reference to the setbacks. The setbacks that are designed into this subdivision meet or exceed the setbacks in your PRD zone, is really what we mimicked. And so took a lot of the feedback and came up with this design. This, I'd summarize this as As an effort to balance the desire to see a traditional single-family home community with the interest to deliver a home that's priced at a price point that's achievable for an Orem family. I wouldn't call this traditional affordable housing. This is a home— well, in context to what the governor's office mentioned, it's not— I think people have thoughts on what affordable housing is. These homes will be priced in the $700,000 range, single-family homes that for a lot of us that bought our first home, that doesn't feel very affordable. But in this market today, in this area of Orem, which is a very expensive neighborhood, expensive Is attainable for, for community, you know, families that have owned a home and are looking to move up into a better setting. And so it's a balance of trying to design something that's— that meets that community design vision that the residents wanted to see at a price point that is attainable, along with, you know, this is a condition, it's a site that's built, developed, right? So there's physical existing conditions that are a big hurdle to, to this infill redevelopment as it relates to grading, utility design, traffic connectivity. Any infill redevelopment can be quite complicated, and we spent quite a bit of time with, with your city staff to understand and ensure that this was physically possible. that it was physically possible to build, that there were utility capacity and resources to make that work. And so with that process and application, worked heavily with your staff to not only understand from a land use perspective, but from a design and constructability perspective that this was feasible. One element that was part of the requirement that was a big concern that was mentioned is the traffic. Part of the application that is required is an independent traffic impact study that was completed. We engaged Hales Engineering, which is a 3rd-party engineering firm here locally. I have a representative, Ryan Hales, here tonight to answer any questions about that analysis that was completed. And so I mentioned that because a lot of that, including potential impacts from a traffic standpoint, were taken into account when, when we organized this vision. Um, some of the feedback that we received from, from those neighborhood meetings, and then at the Planning Commission hearing a few weeks ago, was, uh, road connectivity. For example, like the road connection on, uh, 630 East or Research Way, you know, where that road connection would fall. Some concerns about, um, having that align up with the connect, that existing intersection that goes into Da Vinci Place. And that connection was really guided by city staff along with the proposed right-of-way connection on 1200 North. But that's something that, as the applicant, we're open to and hope we can work with staff on a design that can accommodate the traffic as well as address any concerns that the neighbors to the east have. Another concern was parking. And my, you know, my answer to that, and is tonight, is all these homes are— will have a 2-car garage with a full-length driveway on a public city road, and that cross-section is You know that it's your 64-foot right-of-way with about 30— I think it's about 34 feet of asphalt. So about 2 11-foot lanes with 6 feet on the side for parking. This wasn't designed to require or need the on-street parking, but it is that standard right-of-way that could accommodate some on-street parking. And the 3rd was, was the density. There was some concerns about the number of homes. And that's just being transparent about the concerns that came up and that we would like to work with residents and staff to mitigate, to make this a beautiful community. I don't think it's mutually exclusive in that an ultimate outcome here has to be a win for us and a loss for the community, or vice versa. a win for, for the residents who are concerned, and it doesn't have to necessarily be a loss. I think we can come up with a solution, um, that meets that balance of, uh, the type of product that, uh, existing and future residents in Orem are looking for, um, and something that's viable for, for a homebuilding company like TriPointe. So with that, um, uh, I think that we did address one of the questions that came up was the boundary of the subject property. I think Gary showed that it is a 24-acre boundary. The early slide that he showed was much greater. It's really just the 2 southern buildings there on the south side of the office park that are part of this application. So, with that, happy to answer any questions you have. About the proposal.

Yeah, do we have any questions? Not yet. Okay, thank you.

Thank you. Appreciate it.

Is there anyone else from the developer that you had?

That was it.

Thanks so much. I do have Ryan Hales from Hales Engineering if there are any questions about the traffic study that was completed.

Okay.

That was reviewed with staff, and we talked about it at the Planning Commission. So happy to answer any questions about that.

Okay, thank you. Okay, any other— no other questions. So I guess we'll go to the public comment section. So we're going to open this up to the public. Um, what we'd like to do I'm not sure who's— how many of you are here to speak on this? Quite a few. So what we'd like to do, we'd like you to be heard. We'd like to keep this to a max of 30 minutes for this section, because we have to go through a whole other development as well. So, I would imagine that some of you know each other, and maybe you can kind of self-select among you, but. You can get up to 3 minutes per person. The less time that you take, the more we'll be able to hear from.

Okay.

Yeah. So, well, yeah. Okay, stop changing. Okay, no, I understand, I understand. We'll just go for 30 minutes, and like I say, you can go 2 minutes max, 3 minutes. Uh, the less time, the more people can go. And so just kind of self-select amongst yourselves, um, and then come approach the podium and, and we'll see what you have to say.

And Mayor, we might add, we've had a chance to hear from so many of you already, so we're not ignoring those views. We've— you've been kind enough to email us in a polite, respectful way and to call us. We appreciate that, but we have heard you and look forward to hearing from a few more.

Yeah, no, that's a great point. We've gotten a lot of emails, uh, on this topic. So take it away, and please introduce yourself and where you're from.

Okay, perfect. Hi, um, my name is Janae Anderson. I'm a current resident of Orem, and recently my husband and I purchased a lot just north of this proposed project. We were extremely frustrated to see this magnitude of high-density housing brought to the fence line that we're going to eventually share, mainly because this style of housing isn't even close to matching the existing neighborhoods around it. Our biggest concern with this whole project is that Tri Pointe Homes is not a Utah-based company.

So this is the first project they've ever done in our state.

So lucky us, we get to be the guinea pigs. But They're coming in here dropping 150 homes on 1/10 of an acre lots with 10-foot backyards. Then they get to skip town and they leave us with the traffic. They leave us with lower property values, and they leave us to deal with this mess and this spike in an increased level housing market. $800,000 for that size of a home is insulting to Orem residents and setting a price precedent that can't be undone. And because these prices are so insane, it makes me think that these homes won't even be going to families, but rather to investors who are going to rent them out as Airbnbs, which will come with a whole new slew of problems for all of us around it. My husband and I looked for a place to build a home for our 3 young children for 5 years. We were overjoyed to find a spot in this part of Orem because it's quiet, it's safe, it's a great place to raise a family. I understand that housing is important for cities, but it has to be responsible. It has to match and protect the value of what's already been put in place. We're also really worried that if the zoning for this part of the complex changes, then it's only a matter of time before the entire complex around it changes and we're left with even more high-density housing in that area, in an area that already can't support it. Okay, so imagine not just 150 homes, but more like 700 homes crammed into this tiny section of our beautiful city.

The average house size in this area is only 1,000 square feet.

Household number is close to 4 people per home in Utah, that will be almost 3,000 people. This adds extreme stress to our emergency responders, to our traffic, and most importantly, to our schools. We currently have 2 children attending Foothill Elementary School, which is one of the 2 closest elementary schools to this project. My 5th grader is already in a class of 35 kids. My 3rd grader has 31 kids in his class. So if this project is approved and other projects around get approved, They're going to bring in 150 families, even more into this area. Where will the other school go? City planners voted unanimously to turn this project down for a handful of reasons. And when asked if he wanted to compromise and make revisions to the plan, the developer, who was not from Orem, said he didn't want to make any concessions and pushed it forward as is. Tri Pointe Homes is not about preserving the quality of Orem.

And lastly, I wasn't, I wasn't going to end with this, but I was pretty insulted.

I find it insulting when the governor sends in a mouthpiece to preach and talk down to us. And the biggest question I'd like to ask anyone who's in favor of this project, do you currently have 10 homes sitting in your back fence line? And if you don't, would you fight to protect your space and your property values? So you can take this message back to Governor Cox that he just lost my vote, and I think he lost a lot of votes.

Thank you.

Uh, thank you for the opportunity to say a little tonight.

I guess amen to what's been said already.

And so I'll—

my whole concept of what I wanted to address has changed tonight.

My name is Ron Hanson.

Um, served on the school board in Idaho for 12 years. I know what you're going through.

I've been there. You don't make friends.

You don't make friends.

You make enemies when you're in this kind of position because no matter what you do right, one thing wrong and you're the enemy. So anyway, to get to the point, I've been to the meetings with the gentlemen that are here and I've looked at this pretty close. For those of you who are interested, if you'll look at the map on the right side over here, you'll see Da Vinci. Look at the size of the homes there compared to the lots across the street.

They don't match up at all. I tried to make that point to them in the meetings that we've been to, but it's kind of got a brush-off.

So then I went home and figured out that Da Vinci, which they say it's patterned after, has 12 acres, 48 homes. This development here has 24 acres and it has 150 homes. That's doubling the acres, tripling the homes. I don't know about what the governor's thoughts are about this, but as you look on both sides of this, the homes are pretty nice homes.

They got roughly what I just mentioned as far as density, and I really hate to see that many homes shoved into that area and totally changed the looks.

of the subdivision that we live in up there right now. Another comment I'd like to make before I finish here is that there's 2 egresses out of Da Vinci, there's 2 out of Strawberry Fields where I live, there's 2 out of 150 homes. I don't know about you, but that's not being— going to be a very good traffic situation relative to, to the number of people that are going to be in there.

And if I look down the, down the road 30 years and I think about what my grandchildren I'm going to live in around here.

Um, I don't want to live in downtown Salt Lake.

I don't want to live in downtown Provo or even downtown Orem. I want to live in a residential area.

And shoving what I think is going to happen in this area if we start letting this go, it's going to turn into downtown Orem up there too. There are just too many homes on too little space. Thank you.

Good evening, my name is Dave Noble. I am the president of the HOA of Da Vinci. We are located immediately to the east of this property that is proposed to build upon. We are in favor of developing this property with certain reservations. Okay, we like TriPointe, we like the way they've talked to us and Listen carefully to our opinions. I won't tell you what my first reaction was to the, the proposal to put 165 townhomes here, but it wasn't favorable. We like the single-family home model that they built. However, we are of the opinion that the number of homes is far too dense. You have a document that I passed out earlier. It looks like this. case you're— you've got a lot of paper on your desk. And I know I'm responsible for this document in full, okay? No one else has contributed. These are the exact measurements of every single lot in Da Vinci. If you read down the column, there are 45 homes in Da Vinci. All of the lots there, the lot size there. If you read down at the bottom, there's 341,000+ square foot of lots. The average lot in Da Vinci is 70 7,598.3 square feet. 7.8+ acres of Da Vinci. Da Vinci is 10 acres in size. 7.8 acres is homes, 0.85 acres are roads, 1.3 acres comprise common area, grassy areas, a tennis court, uh, a parking area as well. We have a beautiful place with a lot of grass around it, a lot of common area grass, and we love it. It's a beautiful place to live. This is a 55 and older community. However, the average age in this neighborhood is probably closer to 75 than 55. Okay, I'm sorry if some of my neighbors are offended by that remark, but it's, it's also probably quite true. We have people that are in their 90s there. The homes are designed so that you can live on the first floor. There's a full-size basement there. The homes range in size from 3,200 to 4,666 square feet. We want this neighborhood to develop at least comparable in size lots to that of Da Vinci. The homes that are in Strawberry and also in the other subdivisions on the east side are comparable with our lots. On the west side, The lots are larger, the houses are larger, the houses are more expensive. There's a house that burned down there that was 25,000 square feet. Um, our houses aren't that big. There's another house there that was for sale a few weeks ago that's 18,000 square feet. There's some very large homes on the west side of this property. I don't believe that anyone can build homes today and sell them with lots that size or of that cost. Da Vinci, as I said, if you were to model this property exactly the same as Da Vinci, TriPoint could build 122 homes. I've done a calculation and ratio between the acreage, what are roads, grass, et cetera. That's how many homes you'd build if you build it exactly like Da Vinci, 122. If you put it on 8,000 square feet lots, it would be 116 homes. If you put it on an RA plan where it equals 8,300 square feet per home, it would come out to 107 homes.

You'll need to wrap up pretty quick. Your time is up.

I am.

I'm almost finished here.

Thank you. Again, we support the builder.

We like what they're doing.

We appreciate the conversations they've had with us, and we want to encourage that this be developed. I'm a little concerned after listening to the governor's office what might be coming our way, either from the state or the nation. This property needs to be developed in a responsible fashion with a good builder. Thank you. Hello, thank you for listening. My name is Jace Anderson. Um, you know, I, uh, I actually wish Governor Cox were here tonight.

I wish he was in Orem.

I wish we could let him know that we actually live in the 4th most dense city in the state. We do not need more density. I spoke with Brian, the representative from TriPointe, after he presented a couple weeks ago. I told him our situation, and he actually said, if I were you, I would be frustrated too. I imagine if the roles were reversed, if this was going to be approved in their backyards, They would be standing in front of their city council saying the same thing that I am. I know Governor Cox is from Fairview. I would imagine that he would not have this approved in his backyard. I urge you all to do everything that you can to preserve Canyon Park and keep it the way it is. If now by chance you decide that you want to put housing in this area, I would urge you to match the current neighborhoods that are surrounding it. My neighborhood is in a PD zone with a minimum of 2 stories. Thank you. Minimum acreage of 0.75 acres. Most of the homes are actually larger than that. To try to turn around and make the bordering property into R4 zoning with 0.9 acres as the minimum is absolutely laughable. If anything, let's do some transitional zoning here. Let's leave the current buffer between our properties, then transition into half-acre lots and blend down from there until we get to the Da Vinci neighborhood, which is. Now, most of you ran your campaigns on the promise that you would preserve the character and integrity of our neighborhood— neighborhoods. Chris, you said, I'm committed to managing the city's growth responsibly and to ensure that Orem continues to thrive while preserving our unique character. This means the future development respects the character of our neighborhoods without high-density housing encroaching on our neighborhoods. That's correct. Approaching on residential areas.

I agree with you.

Jen, you said on November 3rd, 2023, I oppose loosening laws to allow burdensome high-density housing in low-density neighborhoods. You also said that in your top priorities, your second one was to preserve the character of our neighborhoods. Jeff, you said that that you would not—

you said you did not want to compromise and make revisions to our neighborhoods.

I ask you all now to please protect our neighborhoods and do what you promised in your campaigns and to vote against this proposal.

Thank you.

My name is Jim Chatterley. I live on 1200 North, right across the street from the Da Vinci entrance. I'm a licensed civil engineer, having 4 or 5 years of rocky road repurposing properties similar to this in California. So with that in mind, I think we have an opportunity to learn from COVID, what occurred in many businesses where many of the professionals had to work at home or offsite because of the COVID restrictions. Unfortunately, Mueller Group purchased the property that very window of time, so they're struggling. And yes, we know that a big part of their business plan is, is getting the buildings At least. So I have some creative ideas. Part of it is, let's maintain at least 80% of the existing landscape. The hydrology, the drainage, the traffic is already working for the parking area that is vacant and/or occupied by the, the 2 buildings that they intend to demolish. The idea would be to use that same circulation, design slab-on-grade foundations where we're not affecting the drainage, minimizing the cost of redevelopment with the easements that are already existing and dealing with hydrate— with hydrology. They would not be affected. The idea is to create a design where we could have a hybrid zoning allowing professionals to work remotely under a lease arrangement where they could be managed to occupy with their families. With this part of the design of the structure to have acoustical and physical separation of the office space for the professional while his family is still occupying and living in the home. The idea is, let's, let's invite entrepreneurs who can then afford to build a business in a lease operation in a comfortable and affordable way. I've attempted to talk with Brian At TriPoint several times without an opportunity. I have drawings and ideas that I'd love to share with you.

Thank you.

My name is Stephen O'Rourke, and I'm a resident of Orem. Mayor Young, city council members, thank you for your service and allowing me to speak to you this evening regarding this important issue. Please indulge me as I use a Major League Baseball analogy. reference to make my point. One of the most interesting differences between Major League Baseball and other professional sports is that in baseball, teams get to choose how their home fields will be sized and shaped. While there always has to be 90 feet between the bases and the distance between the pitcher's mound and home plate has to be 60.6 feet, the depth and height of the outfield walls is left up to the teams to decide. For example, Coors Field in Denver The outfield distance is 415 feet to center field, while Fenway Park in Boston is only 390 feet and only 302 feet along the right side of the right field line.

I'd like to draw a partial parallel in this concept of baseball and their field development and our city and its development.

There are certain standards which must be met in order to develop a functional and appropriate community and neighborhood.

These include community safety. Community services, appropriate and sustainable infrastructure, which is roads, utilities, emergency services, schools, and sustainable density, and neighborhood support and preservation.

Our city has been identified by some developers as a great place to make a profit.

More specifically, the Canyon Park technology area is for sale and being looked at as a gold mine. We are being presented with a product by would-be developers that they are suggesting is a solution. To a problem that has been identified as a nationwide housing crisis, not only a crisis in housing availability but in housing costs. In identifying our community as a great place for them to help, we must recognize that they are a business with investors that are looking for price points and profits. Back to the baseball field analogy, due to the different size of fields and shapes, a home run in one field is only a base hit another.

TriPointe and other developers are stepping up to the plate in our community and hoping that we will be their Fenway Park, an easy home run.

Our city council has been— has the responsibility of protecting the plate, our neighborhood. We need to make sure that the developers work for a base hit.

We can't just shorten our outfield fence, roll over, and let every developer who steps up to the plate hit a grand slam.

Thank you.

If this development goes through, the developers will be compounding the problem of housing cost crises by putting in over 150 homes at over $700,000 apiece.

It will, it will sustain the crazy increase in housing costs all around without making it any easier for homebuyers to enter or stay in the market. As a business, their model success is based on ensuring that housing costs continue to rise so that their current and future projects Projects can have a more expensive housing environment in which to profit. You can look at their website and see what they're saying. As a community and neighborhood, we are not opposed to a base hit every once in a while, as is illustrated by the developments building—

taking place in our neighborhood now.

But this plan being presented to us right now is a grand slam for TriPointe and their investors.

We don't owe them anything.

We as a city and community don't have a problem that needs solving. Or can be solved in 24.3 acres in the parcel of Northeast Orem.

We should not allow this.

There is not one thing that they are bringing to the table that will enhance or improve our neighborhood in any way.

This plan will only bring more congestion and volume to our current services and environment that will be only too large of a burden to absorb and incorporate appropriately, safely, and effectively. Thank you. I'm Rock Belknap. I live on the west side of this. I don't notice anything to do with the berm. I guess you've wiped it totally out. Now you're back fence to fence. The only problem with that is that they've raised— you know, the berm was raised, the road base was raised.

I'm not—

are you going to scrape that whole thing out and go back to where the open field was before they began? If not, they're going to be, you know, 30, 40, 50 feet above, you know, that's going to be a kind of a problem. Everybody's talked about the, the, the, the, obviously, the, the added people back there. I don't need to add to that. But I know you have to develop something. It's just, it's some great properties. It's, it's got to be used. I understand that. I definitely would prefer to have some more open fields. That berm was promised, about an 8-foot berm to kind of, you know, kind of block off the travel for all that word-perfect congestion and stuff. But it was promised for a walking space, and many, many, many people use that back there now. It would be nice to still continue that to kind of connect to the path up along the Murdock Canal Trail. I don't know how high you're planning on going and how you can can kind of reduce that a little bit. I measured out there, you have 6 homes, uh, spaces to where we have 4 home spaces on the next cul-de-sac over. So I mean, you're just cramming them in, and obviously, just like little rats, we get congested and we're going to get a little, little anxious with each other, and we're going to probably have some little kickbacks along the way. And I hope it's not too serious along the way. I know you made promises for things to make. I just hope you continue with it. I've wondered about that berm. It was not done properly. The path was never, ever made. I don't know who holds you responsible. I just hope you'll hold yourselves responsible to do what's right for the neighborhood. I've loved what these other gentlemen and ladies have said. Thank you.

Thank you.

Hello, I'm Susan Hidley, and we've lived in Orem off and on for 30 years, and I've worked for the library, and we also have a couple of rentals.

Affordable housing is a nationwide issue.

It's not going to be solved in the Canyon Park.

What it will do is perhaps degrade the, the quality of life in the homes of In the existing homes of all who are there. Um, I'd like to remind you, which I know, you know, that sounds arrogant.

I'm sorry.

I'd like to just emphasize the fact that we went through all this with the Planning and Zoning Committee, and they unanimously turned it down. Uh, the talk about traffic was like a smoke and mirrors act. If they put those 150 homes in, which is probably 300 or 400 cars, it is going to make traffic awful for the people in North Orem.

Uh, what I'd like to talk about though briefly is the trees. There are hundreds of trees on that property, full mature trees, and that green space that was That goes along that in this current plan is totally eliminated.

It was a sense of a covenant between the park and the people who lived on the next side.

People use it all the time, and to destroy it is truly to destroy a way of life for many of us in North Orham.

I've met so many people.

Employees come, they picnic there.

I'm sorry, I'm sorry.

They walk through it, and it would be a terrible thing to allow that to be destroyed. In their plan, hundreds of trees would be destroyed. If you go along 1200 North, that's mature trees. If you're walking, it's shade. If you go along 630 East, mature trees, beautiful trees, and it's all going to be ticky-tack homes.

I'm sorry. in tiny little lots. This will not serve the residents of Orem, and I hope that you will see that it is not on us to be guilted into solving the nation's problem with affordable housing, but it is on us to try to maintain Orem as the kind of family city we want it to be.

Thank you.

My name is Dennis Clark. I live across the street from the north end of the library parking lot. Someone just parked a truck with a boat behind it in front of my house, took up all the space available, and I've talked about that before as a problem with waste and recycling, renewing. What I want to say now is you're looking at the diagram of a sponge, and we live in a desert, and I'm willing to bet that all of the water being used to water the lawns and the trees is treated city water.

I don't think they're going to be diverting water from the Provo River raw up into that.

If they are, they'll have to treat the drinking water anyway. That is stupid. Of all the things we could do with that amount of land, that's one of the dumbest. So I would like to just say that it would be infinitely preferable to leave the land in its current situation rather than this development. And I urge you to vote against the development.

Thank you.

My name is Jerry Christman, and I just want to address a couple of things. We have major problems in Orem with traffic and affordable housing. And it seems to me these problems are related to how many people and cars we try and cram into a certain size town. Right now, from all I can tell from the statistics, Orem is number 5 in population density in the state of Utah. Comes after Kearns is number 1. White City is number 2. And I don't know if you know where White City is. It's a little town of 5,000 people out in the West Desert. Number 3 is Taylorsville. Number 4 is Midvale.

Number 5 is Orem, with right at 5,000 people per square mile.

Provo is number 35 with right at 2,500 people per square mile.

I think we've got our share of people per square mile. Thank you.

Thank you. That was a great job hitting the time perfectly. Good job. Um, we'll bring this back to the council for any comments or discussion anyone would like to bring up.

I just wanted to make sure that we're on the right track.

Go ahead.

I just want to make a quick comment and say thank you for being here this evening and sharing your, your comments. Uh, Mr. Waldrop, is, is that right? Mr. Waldrop?

Is it Waldrop?

Thank you for being here. Um, we've heard, uh, what you've said. Um, Orem's a little bit different in that 95% of our city is already built out. And so when we have a little piece of property, we need to make sure that what goes there fits the neighborhood and fits the community. So we're a little bit protective, if I could say so.

But thank you for being here.

We hear exactly what you're saying, and we know that there are places where that makes sense, and there are probably some places in Orem that we can talk about further development. And we want to continue the conversation with some of our older neighborhoods. But Just wanted to say thank you everyone for being here, and we're ready to move forward.

That's—

I've got something to say, but go ahead, Dave, and then Lynne, I know she does. Okay, but, uh, yes, Steve Waldrop, I appreciate you, you coming down and speaking with us. But as Jeff said, you know, if we're 95% built out and then the legislature passed HB 462, that any— anywhere you have a bus stop, I mean a BRT stop, for the light rail or whatever it's called, Frontrunner, you have to have density in that mile and a half or that half an acre, half a mile, sorry. So that's just increasing our density and that's high-density housing. But now if you come back to the neighborhood, you know, my bottom line is we need to keep the integrity of our neighborhood. And if you look at the map, Gary, if you want to pull that up. If you look at the map, the heat map, you know, on the west of that, the PD-14, you know, some of those homes have an acre and a half of property. And then you go to the north, that's 12—

that's R-12, that's 12,000 square foot lots.

And even in Strawberry Fields and, and, uh, um, Well, the other one, it's 9,700 square feet and 89—

Abbey Road.

So Abbey Road. So, and then in my neighborhood, it's 8,000 square foot. So if you really took the average, that property should be R-13. Have R-13 lots, and I know they'd sell like hotcakes. So there's a chapel on 4th East, I think we all know, that the church sold. And many people wanted to put 15 homes there on 2 acres, and we said it wasn't a good idea. Ivory Homes came in as a good partner, bought the property, is going to tear the church down and put 6 third-acre lots. Tell me it doesn't pencil, because it does. I just think that we need to stop the insanity and we need to keep that integrity of our neighborhood because Our homes are our number one, you know, asset other than our family, and we need to make sure that we keep it that way. And I'm just, you know, I, I get the, the state trying to put density on us, but I think if we're built out 92, 95%, we need to focus on that and make that the best because we have 40-some-odd percent rentals right now in Orem. We don't need any more. And so I'm, I'm definitely opposed to this development.

Thank you.

So I'd, I'd actually like to start by just thanking Mr. Waldrop for coming. So I serve on one of the CHAs for the Commission of Housing Authority Affordability for the state. So, and I think it's key here to, to just talk about terms, right? There's affordable housing and there's housing affordability, right? So we're trying to solve those here. And this is a challenge for us here in Orem, as, as Councilmember Spencer said, you know, we're built out. And Jeff said, um, and we actually have a large majority of rentals in our city. And, you know, 2 and a half years ago, I ran for city council, and one of the first things we did was we stopped the State Street master plan, which would have added even more density, 10,000 apartments on State Street, which just becomes problematic to our quality of life and our families here and really doesn't solve a problem. We, we, we have, you know, Dave talks about insanity as doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result. We keep building in Orem. We had kept building these high-density housing, high-density apartments, and it really wasn't— helping with our affordability. So I guess, you know, what we're really trying to do here, I, I, and I think we've communicated, and you have communicated this very well, is this is really a point where we need to define Orem as a place where our families will thrive. We need to really, um, feel— I feel a responsibility to protect the integrity of our neighborhoods, to, you know, be conscious and conscientious of some of the development, like around University Place. We have provided a lot of apartments there for rental opportunities, but also to have varied opportunities in our city for housing. Um, you know, we talk about our children and grandchildren, and I know I don't want my children or grandchildren living in a rental. And if we don't build more owner-occupied housing, that's the housing they're going to have to go to. I often have said now that I see, you know, my children might have to go out to Eagle Mountain, Saratoga Springs to buy their first home and build some equity. And then if they want to move back to Orem, they'll have that and can move back and buy their final second home or final resting place here to raise their families. And frankly, that's what we need here in Orem. We need families coming back. To establish families, to, you know, bring more children to our schools. I just don't see this development as fulfilling that. I, I see it as being a price point that will be bought up by investors, and, and we will have some additional— it will just contribute to our lack of affordability and lack of housing opportunities. So I appreciate Brian. I've talked to him several And I've tried to communicate that really, you know, I feel like we need more of these R-8 minimum lots where families can come and build a house and have a yard. That's what's in demand right now in Orem. And as a city council, we're really trying to be cognizant of providing different types of housing, and I feel like we are doing that right now by bringing more of this, um, product, housing product, to Orem. And I really do appreciate, um, everyone coming tonight. Um, I really— and especially Steve's comments where you said, you know, pretty much the number one way to, to build your personal wealth is to get into a home. So owner-occupied homes is just very a priority for us here. So I'm afraid this product just doesn't quite fill that, in my opinion. So thank you.

Thank you, Renee.

Mayor, can I say something?

Did you want to say something?

Yeah, I'll keep it short. And I would like to echo what they've said. First of all, Steve, thank you for coming. I heard you speak at the ULCT meeting down in St. George, and I really appreciate that. Appreciated what you said there, and I think what you say bears serious weight and consideration for us. As I look at my own kids and grandkids-to-be, where are they going to live? Right now it's really hard for them to find places. So I think all of us are struggling with that, and those are conversations that we need to have, and, and it's certainly broader than this context here. Second, Brian. I spoke with Brian with TriPointe Homes, and I was so impressed with him and the way he was able to talk with not just me but the neighbors surrounding. He's really done a lot of outreach And I think that's, that's like a model way. If we could have all developers come in and reach out to the neighbors like that, I would love to see that happen. And I would like to see you be successful. I would like to see a development in that area with homes for our residents, and I would love to see you guys put that together if it's possible. I also would like to point one thing out to our residents, and that is we have to be really careful when we talk about this green space. I live in that neighborhood. I love that neighborhood. I love the trees. But we don't have the right To dictate— the public doesn't have the right to dictate what private people do with their trees and their property. So we have to be really careful when we expect them to say, we want the trees to stay. And I do, I want the trees to stay. It is their private property, and they get to choose that. So I just want to put that out there. That said, I, I don't think that this development as it stands is within the character of the surrounding neighborhoods. And I, for me, I would have to say no. But I would say keep trying, because I would like to see something that is within the character of the surrounding neighborhoods.

Thank you.

Yeah, I've got something to say. Steve, I really appreciate you coming tonight and just giving that perspective. I think that's valuable to hear. I do think that it's— it doesn't really fit this spot though. Um, and the reason is, is because the number one theme is that, I mean, we want affordable housing as a city council. We want to do whatever we can to enable, help affordable housing. Um, the problem is, is this is not affordable housing. And not only is it not affordable housing, but it's, it's kind of worse. Because, I mean, I've got, uh, one of my children, you know, was fortunate to buy a house in Pleasant Grove about a year ago for $550,000, and that house is probably at least double the size of these homes. Um, my other— one of my other kids just bought a house in Harriman for $700,000, same price as these homes, but it's almost twice the size and it's got a full yard. And it's 6 years old. And so I guess my point is, is if we were to develop this in the name of affordable housing and then put houses that are available all through the valley at the same price, but now they're half the size, it doesn't really do anything for anyone. And so that's where we're interested in affordable housing and trying to do that where we can in Orem. Uh, we're, we're We're really interested in refurbishing some of the areas that can use an upgrade. But as far as this particular project, the way I look at this is this is— it's prime land, uh, as has been said several times. I think I actually brought it up the first time. We're the 5th densest city in the state. Um, we just don't have that much land left, and so we need to make sure that we put the land that we have to the best use possible. And I just don't— I don't see that this plan makes it. And then further, um, the Planning Commission came back. We've got good people on our Planning Commission. They evaluated this thoroughly. They came back with something we don't see very often, which is a 7-0 vote against this development. And so I feel like, um, just to go against that makes absolutely no sense. So anyway, uh, all in all, those are my thoughts, and I think we're ready to take it to a vote.

Mayor?

Yes.

Uh, Mr. Prince has asked if he could, uh, answer some— any questions that the council may have and, and ask the council a question.

Yeah.

He had a question if he could—

Sure.

Allowed to come back.

That would be fine.

Thanks so much. Appreciate the feedback and the guidance tonight. Means a lot. The question I do have is I'd love to get some feedback on what would be supported. I think there's a serious interest in coming up with a community design that aligns with kind of the vision that you've outlined. And, you know, this is me going back and Working with the current owner of the property to try to kind of come back with a design that aligns with what you've mentioned. So any specific feedback on, on what would be supported? You said what you don't like about it, but from a, from a— we'll call it a lot count or a zoning designation— any guidance? Not just because we can take that as kind of concrete feedback to go back to the drawing board, and it may not work. And that's okay if it doesn't work, but any guidance on what would be supported would be very helpful.

And, and that, that varies from council member to council member, but I'd invite anyone to give the feedback you'd like to give.

Thank you.

And I'd just like to express appreciation, Brian. We had an opportunity to have a conversation on the phone, and we discussed all of these developments, and we had actually some communication about my desires to kind of adjust Slightly so that it would become into more of uniformity with the neighbors and that west side particularly that has, uh, you know, those larger lots, then all of a sudden into these smaller. So that was, uh, kind of the discussion that I think we've had. And I, again, the, the, um, the gratitude that I have is, is just your willingness to talk. And as you are even right now listening to feedback, and that, that means an awful lot to all of those that are in the room.

Thank you.

And we've had an opportunity to have discussion, and you're so kind, and we appreciate your willingness to listen and, and try and make this a wonderful place for all of us to enjoy.

Thank you so much. Thank you.

Yeah, I, I have a comment. I think that, you know, on the west side, that PD-14, I think you do need to have the transition of bigger lots. And then as you go towards Da Vinci, maybe go to R-8, and I think that's where The minimum I would, I would be comfortable with is R-8 going towards Da Vinci.

So, and I have heard the residents would like to in some way preserve the mature landscape on the west there, if there's a way to have that be your common area, if you're looking at finding some in that sense. But just one of the comments I've heard from the residents.

Great, thank you so much.

One of my takeaways is, if you're asking for opinions, it's just who knows what this land's worth, right? It's not worth whatever anyone decides it's worth. It's worth whatever will be— can be put on that spot. And so, with that in mind, I think if you can come back with a development that does the things that we're talking about, that matches the areas around it, You know, that, that may make the value of the land less, but at the same time, that's what it's really worth because that's what can go there. By taking in and trying to fit 150 homes in there and jam all that in, that does push the value up, but not really if it's not feasible. So anyway, that's my advice.

Thank you.

Okay, Mayor, I'll make a motion. I'll make a motion that the, uh, that the City Council denies Acting Section 22-11-67, PD 54 Canyon Park Tech Center Redevelopment Zone, and Appendix AAA of the Orem City Code, and amending Article 22-5-3A and the zoning map of the City of Orem by changing the zone On approximately 24.3 acres from the PD-6 zone to the PD-54 zone located generally at 1203 North, 630 East.

Second.

Mayor, before you, before you vote on that, I think he has— he might, he might be asking for an opportunity to not withdraw but to continue or table this application so that they can possibly work it.

Yeah, I didn't, I didn't mention because I was waiting for For feedback, and, and Councilmember Spencer jumped in. If possible, I would love for, for the item to be continued. And, and we may be able to come back with a plan that aligns with your vision. Your feedback is invaluable. Steve, can you tell us the difference in, in turning it down versus a continuance?

Yeah, so if you, if you just turn it down, then that application is done. It's finished. They would have, if they wanted to come back with something else, they'd have to restart the whole process, kind of start from ground zero. You know, if they were— if they, um, if you were to continue or to table it, you know, and give them a chance to go back and rework it, um, then they— you might still want to go back to the Planning Commission, for example, if it's significantly different, um, but doesn't necessarily have to start from ground zero.

So the other—

the The other implication of that, of denying it outright right now, is that you can't come back with the same application for a year, basically. So for example, he's proposing a PD-54 zone, and if that's denied, then, you know, he can only come back with a new application that's substantially different than that. So there would be some advantage for him. He could still keep a PUD-54 designation, but he could rework the concept plan. He could rework the lot sizes and those kinds of things. So I think there is some advantage to the developer to continue or table this versus an outright denial.

And part of that is a technical— I mean, we spent several months with staff. And so that, that I have no problem going back to the Planning Commission if we were able to organize a vision that is supported.

So the question, the question that I don't understand, how much different does it have to be in order to stay in this continuance? Because if it— because from our— I mean, from people I've talked to, I think it'd have to be significantly different. And so unless it's significantly different, and that's allowed in the continuance, it wouldn't make any sense to continue it. So what's— How's that?

Yeah, well, the language of the ordinance basically says that an application by a party to amend the zoning designation of property which has been denied by the City Council may not be resubmitted for a period of 12 months from the date of denial unless the application requests a zoning classification different from the previous request. So if you were to deny the PD-54, he could come back with an R-1. proposal, for example, that would be okay. But, but where it gets just a little bit technical is if you're denying the PD-54 and he comes back with an— I mean, I guess we could call it PD-55 or something, right? But anyway, there's just maybe a little bit of advantage to the developer to have a continuance versus an outright denial, but it may not necessarily be a lot of difference.

I mean, I think it needs to go back to the Planning Commission for sure.

I mean, so, okay, so how does that fit in with what we're trying to vote on?

So is this— I'm sorry, so he can come back with the PD zone again?

Yeah, as long as it would have to be substantially different.

So what, what, 10%, 20% fewer homes?

I mean, it's not, it's not defined.

I mean, it would have to be a judgment call whether this You know, new application is substantially different.

And who makes that judgment call?

Uh, well, probably staff initially in terms of whether we would accept the application, and then ultimately the council would make that determination.

But we don't enter into that discussion until it goes through the staff, goes through Planning Commission, until the same pathway, right? I mean, you see, my confusion here is I'm trying to figure out at what Are we making that decision?

That's part of the reason— that's part of the reason why it's an advantage to continue it versus deny it, so that we don't have to wrestle with that question of whether it's substantially different or not. You see what I'm saying?

Okay, so what we're trying to understand though is if we continue it, I mean, we want something a lot different than this. And so if we continue it, are we going to get something a lot different, or are we going to get something a little bit different?

Well, but obviously that's up to the developer.

Then we can still deny it.

What's that?

I said, if it's not different enough, right? Still deny it, right?

I mean, you know, if they come back with a plan that you still don't like very well, then obviously you can still deny it.

Um, so, yeah. I mean, I'm trying to come up with like a way to summarize this or categorize it. If it was If we came back hypothetically, and this isn't my proposal, but if we came back with a density that mimicked Da Vinci and Strawberry, is that a— is that significant enough? I mean, just to try to come up with some type of category.

So my opinion is Da Vinci and Strawberry are so fuzzy in what their density is, because, I mean, if you take the lot size, that's a density, right? That— but, but if you take the whole common area, you've got a different density because it's a PD zone, or a PRD, I guess, in those cases. So what I want to hear, and maybe I'm misspeaking here, but I want to hear, you know, what, what size lots are you going to put in there?

Well, and what we're saying is I think our target is R-8.

Okay, I mean, that's, that's if we're all trying to get on the same That was the direction from the Planning Commission when I was at that meeting, and I tend to agree with that.

Well, that gives me great guidance on if we were to cut— if it's continued, which would be helpful, because then I can go back and see if we can make that work. But I now know what that change or difference would be expected from you. So I guess—

and I've been on the resident side. I've been on the resident side. I mean, that's why I ran for city council, because I was in those chairs and had an issue in my neighborhood. I, I, it's exhausting, you know, I mean, to, to have to go through this emotionally and, and show up to the meetings and things. So I guess my, my question for you is, you, I think you understand what the directions we're trying to indicate here.

I do.

I think it's very helpful.

And I would like to have just a real, you know, if you think you can do that, I'm happy to continue, but I really don't want to just create a scenario where we're just giving more lobbyist time, you know, to us, towards us, because it's not going to be that much different.

Oh, yeah. I mean, I think I've gotten the clear guidance I need. So in the event that we do come back, that, that's what— that would be the magnitude of the change. Okay, thank you so much. Can we make a motion to continue?

So, Mayor, so procedurally, we have a motion and we have a second, and so we either need to vote on that motion or, uh, can I amend the motion? Mr. Spencer can withdraw the motion and we can make a second motion to continue.

I would withdraw my second, and then he wouldn't have a second.

Well, it's probably cleaner if he wants to withdraw his motion.

Okay, so Mayor, I, I, uh, rescind my motion.

Okay, thank you.

And make a motion.

And make a motion to continue this.

You can just say continue without date.

Continue without date.

Yeah, go ahead before I second and get in trouble again. Well, with that, I think it would be a good idea perhaps in the motion or Or at least just understood that if you continue it, what you're going to do, it's going to be continued without date, but we're going to refer this back to Planning Commission. Let the developer bring the project to Planning Commission and Planning Commission hold another hearing and make a recommendation that would eventually come back to the council.

So, can I copy that?

Yeah.

Is that okay?

Yep.

You get a second, Matt?

I'll second Dave and Gary.

Okay.

Okay.

Thank you, Gary.

Are we all clear?

Yeah.

Okay, so maybe we'll vote.

Yep.

Aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Nay.

The motion is continued. Thank you. All right. All right.

You good?

Okay, let's take a— let's take a 5-minute break. And we'll come right back.

All right.

All right, will the council please come join me? And we'll carry on. Yes, please.

Good night.

Yeah.

All right, let's reconvene this meeting. Let's move on to item 9.2. A public hearing ordinance amending Article 22-5-3A and the zoning map of the city of Orem by rezoning the property located generally at 1230 West 2000 South from the OS-5 zone to the PD-55 zone. Kerry, would you like to lead that?

Yes, thank you, Mayor, council members. So, the subject property we're talking about is outlined in red in the aerial on the left. The current zoning, as you can see on the right, is the OS-5 zone. It's somewhat of a holding zone until we have something come in, and it's in the extreme south. Could you back up just a little bit when you said a holding zone? Tell us more about what that means. It doesn't have a lot of uses, and a lot of people don't— wouldn't use their property in that. If it's going to develop residentially, they'd come in and get a rezone for a residential zone. If it were going to be commercial, they would come in and get a rezone for a commercial zone. It's not a zoning that has a lot of uses that long-term people would have on their property to productively use it. So it's going to change from that to something else at some point. Usually at some point.

But it is an OS5, right?

Yeah, but it is currently OS5. Uh, and if I, uh, devolve into jargon as I'm trying to give a presentation, please interrupt me, and I'm trying not to do that. So, and this property is located in the extreme southwest part of Orem. And to give you a little context for it, as you can see from the map on the left, you have I-15 labeled there, and you have Geneva Road labeled, and Orem and Provo, and then 2000 South. That 2000 South is The 2000 south boundary in Orem, and it's 2000 north in Provo. And then, as you see, the, the green, that's Geneva Road, and then it kind of jogs over to the blue line. That's the Lakeview Parkway that UDOT's working on. The red portion is in Provo. Provo's building that portion, and the blue portion on that road that connects the green and red. That is the portion of the Lakeview Parkway that is in Orem that Orem is currently working on. And then on the map on the right, again, it shows in orange 2000 South in Orem, 2000 North in Provo, and the parkway. It's a little Zoomed in a little more to, to see that project. So that's where we're talking, that area there. You can see the Lakeview Parkway again. These 2 maps show the Lakeview Parkway, the plans that are going forward. Provo's working on their portion of it. UDOT's working on their portion of that. And so now at the corner, of 2000 South and the Lakeview Parkway is the property we're talking about from the OS-5. And the proposal is to put it into a PD-55. And the PD-55 is based on a commercial zone. The general plan is for it to be community commercial. And so, this is their proposed— that they brought to Planning Commission— commercial development that they would have. Now, with this—

Gary, can you tell us what community commercial is, please?

Yes, community commercial is a designation in the general plan. So when a property is designated community commercial, commercial, it means it's, it's not commercial today, but someday we anticipate as a city that we would have commercial in this area, and it would be community commercial geared more towards local community as opposed to our local neighborhoods around it. And there are some, as you can see from this map, there are some residential neighborhoods to the east and north. Of this project, and that would be community commercial as opposed to regional commercial, which would be most of the businesses on the parkway or or the mall area where the intent is to really draw people in and be a destination to come to that type of commercial. And so here, the idea was that it was a community commercial. commercial, and which in our general plan, the community commercial would be a C-1 or C-2 commercial. And at Planning Commission, the developer proposed this layout of what that commercial would look like. We're zooming in a little bit more so you can see it a little better. Just a minute to the other slide. What's the difference between the yellow and the white— whited outline there, Gary? The whited goes over some homes, it looks like. Oh, the yellow? No, the yellow I understand with the hard green line, and then it looks like it's white around it.

Does it?

Oh, oh, yes, sorry. That is a part of that residential development that you see to the north of the project. Is there a reason it's in white? Uh, probably, uh, yes. The, uh, aerial, um, when we put this on it, we had a bigger image than just the lot. I'm only looking at the yellow. Yes, you're only looking inside the green box. Yeah, in, in the box. Hey, I apologize for I didn't even think about that, but that is misleading. So the image we had to be able to size it appropriately was a little larger.

Thank you.

So again, we're, we're zooming in a little more so you can see it a little more clearly what's going on. So this is the project that they're talking about, just the area-wise and proposed building, proposed parking. And you see 2 main buildings kind of in an L configuration, and then 16, 17, 18, 19 in the middle, and then a larger pad towards the corner. So, one of the things that comes up, a question was, I've been asked by a lot of people, if this were actually a C-3 commercial zone, what would the impact be to this development? And C-3 has a 40-foot setback from a residential property line. And so you can see here on the east side, that's approximately, you know, and this is, you know, don't go build a project off of this map. You know, we're doing our best to show you that there would be a bit of an impact there to the buildings. In a C-3, they would need to be moved. Far— those buildings farther to the west.

So the red line on the east side of the proposed project, is that 40 feet?

That is 40 feet.

Okay.

And that makes it qualify as a C-3.

And that would qualify as a C-3. In a C-2, the setback from a residential line is 10 feet. In a C-3, it's 40 feet.

What was the C-2?

10 feet.

10 feet. Okay, but this is beyond that anyway.

And what is it on, on the roads, the setback on the roads on a C-2 versus C-3?

Uh, you're gonna make me look at my cheat sheet. I can't keep all this straight. From the street on us, it's 30 on C-3 and 20 on a, uh, uh, C-2.

So we're talking a difference of 10 feet on street sides and 20 feet on— 30 feet on residential sides.

Correct. Now, this next slide will— since there's residential on the north, here's 40 feet back on the north. And I should have put in, but didn't think about it. Honestly, the setbacks from the street.

So describe the PD-55 that they're requesting, and that, I guess, was what was originally— when they went to the Planning Commission the first time, that's what they were told to come back with that. And tell me what that is.

Yeah, this applicant actually came in and made an application back in Uh, early part of 2022. This property was annexed in, I think, about 2014, 2015 into the city. And then in early 2022, the applicant came in and said, hey, I'd like to go to C-2. And, uh, we said, don't do that yet, because the road alignments and, and how the Lakeview Parkway and 2000 South were going to lay out weren't quite figured out yet. And so they delayed. Those alignments are figured out. We, we know where those roads are going to be. And now the developers come in. One of the concerns about this project has been some of the uses. that could be in a zone like this if it were just C-2. And so they came back with a PD where the biggest difference in the PD from a C-2 deals with the uses. And let me— and I have something I can show you, another slide that shows you something about the uses. that we're looking at. So here you now have elevations. This is generally what in their proposal, in their PD, they— the commercial buildings would look like. We then have the text. So these are the— in their PD-55 zone, these are the list of uses that has been proposed, and one of the more controversial ones is 5530. That is a gas station with or without a store. Um, at the Planning Commission, people have raised that issue. What you see there in yellow, antiques, that is a use in the C-2 that is not allowed in the C-3. But all the others in black are in the C-2 and C-3. So this is a list of some of the uses they have. The next list of uses, again, if they're black, they're allowed in the C-2 and C-3. The yellow is not allowed in the C-3. And then we go on. This is part of their text. I'll kind of go through that quickly. And oops, I went into the first one. And so that's, that's really the essence of this. It's pretty much a C2 with some variations. And Gary, oh, oh, yeah, sorry. Did I say— yes, these are permitted in the C-3. Sorry, I said not, but they are permitted in C-3.

Which ones?

Show the slide again, Gary.

Yeah, let me— thank you for pointing that out. I misspoke on that. So those are permitted in this, in the C-3. Yes, and the developer's representative is here to talk about the uses that they are proposing.

Okay, but going back to the previous slide.

Gary, if I could clarify, the ones in black are already permitted in a C-2 and a C-3. Those in yellow are only permitted in a C-2 right now.

Does that clarify that?

Yes, and I misspoke. I said they were only permitted in the C-3. They're only permitted in the C-2.

So it's those in yellow are being added to this PD zone.

If it—

because this PD is kind of like a C-2. Is that what you're saying?

They typically wouldn't be in that zone, but we're adding, I believe, and And Mr. Washburn could clarify, these are the only uses that would be allowed in the PD zone are the ones on these slides. So those are the only uses, but the black ones are C-2. So currently under city code, anything in black is allowed in a C-2 or a C-3 zone. Anything in yellow is only allowed in a C-2 zone.

Is a gas station allowed in the C-3?

That is correct, in a C-3.

Yes.

Can you go to that next slide?

I didn't think that was—

no, it is. Yeah, I will verify 5530.

Yeah, I think we— in the planning commission, it was you couldn't have a gas station as C-3.

That's right.

That's right.

Here, Steve, verify me.

While we're waiting for that, will you go—

Steve confirms that that's correct, that That SLU code of 5530 is permitted in a C-2 and a C-3 right now.

Gary? Yes.

It would perhaps be helpful for the mayor and council to just maybe understand the nature of a PD zone.

Sure.

In contrast to our C-2 or C-3 zones, and maybe the discretion they have To perhaps consider specific uses or setbacks in response to trying to work with potential neighborhood feedback or input?

Yes, a PD is a way that the council can, in effect, write a zone that fits a particular site and is tailored to that site. So, when you have a C-2, you may have a big laundry list of uses. When you do a PD and, well, a big laundry list of uses in the C-2, if you were to rezone to a C-2, then all those uses that are in the code automatically are there and are uses that can be done by the developer. When the developer creates a PD and writes this text, it's a brand new code. In essence, they're saying these are the uses we want here. And in approving the code or not, or modifying the code, the council can come in and say, well, we'd be willing to approve, but we want arts and crafts and hobbies out. We don't like that. That needs to come out. It's not appropriate in this particular spot under these particular circumstances. And so you can really tailor the uses that you have. Also, it's the same thing with like a setback. We have our standard setbacks. So in a C-2, a standard setback from the street would be 20 feet from Residential, it's 10 feet. A C-3, it's 30 feet and 40 feet. Well, in a PD, we put in the specific setbacks that we want to make the project work. And so the council, like, no, that's too close. You need to move it a little more. So the text that you have in front of you is the applicant's request of the Council to approve, and you can approve it, you can deny it, or you can modify it.

It's—

and I know the developer is here and represented by people—

is there some reason we just didn't do a C-2 or C-3 instead of— I mean, the more of these we create, it seems to be more confusing why we don't just have a C-2 or C-3, and then we'd know what it is all the time. Yeah, and that's an approach. approach that communities often will take is just to develop, uh, or, or to pass an ordinance creating C-2 zones. But often an individual piece of property, it may not make sense for it to have all of the uses on that that you would normally find in, find in a C-2. And so by doing a PD, you, you can Limit uses. Sometimes we use the tool of a development agreement. Sometimes we use the tool of an actual zone that's now written in, and it's when you look at our zoning map, it would be PD-55, and you'd go to our text and everybody would see exactly what that means. So zones are typically written For a general approach, but the unique circumstances of individual properties often will be such that we don't want to use everything in that zone. Could we have the developer maybe respond to that too? Can, can maybe I just jump in real quick?

Just a nutshell reason why we do PD zones is because all the existing zones may be either too permissive. In that they allow things that we don't want, or they allow heights that we don't want, or they're too restrictive, and that they don't allow enough latitude for the, the developer to do the kind of project they want. So we do a PD that's—

it's—

that's tailored to fit what they specifically want. And it also has the advantage of telling the council exactly what you're going to get, because they're tied to a concept plan. Whereas if you do it as C-2, you don't know what you're going to get.

Right.

So you might have You might have a comfort level with an office building that you might not have with a gas station or something like that. So that's why we do them.

Thank you.

Okay. All right. Are we ready to have the developer come forward?

Well, good evening. My name is Paul Washburn, and this is my first chance to present to at least 3 new members. of the council. So I'm looking forward to that. This property was acquired, I think it was 2005 or '06, by the Dunn family. Shortly afterwards, it was annexed into the City of Orem, and at that time it was given a master plan designation for the community commercial. Reasoning behind that is at that time Mountainlands, while they still hadn't finalized all of of their transportation plans, it was fairly well understood that the Lakeview corridor would go roughly in its current alignment and would require an extension of 2000 South, which at the current time is a goat trail, but is going to become a major collector. This corner is an important part. There's going to be a high-traffic area, and I think the council at that time felt like it was important to create an area where there was some community shopping and also ability to collect some sales tax to offset the city expenses. At our first Planning Commission meeting, it was suggested that we might want to come back with a PD zone. And I want you to know this wasn't something that we just cut and pasted together. We spent a lot of time on it, and we went through the uses that we we felt like made sense in this specific neighborhood. Maybe wouldn't make sense in a 20-acre development. Maybe wouldn't make sense in something else, but it did make sense here. Of the 35 uses that we have listed, all but 3 are permitted uses in the C-3 zone. There are some uses in the C-3 zone that we were adamantly opposed to. We don't think that is in a good location for a motel. Marijuana dispensary. Secondhand metals dealer, a euphemism for a hock shop. Massage therapy, tattoo parlor, and it goes on and on. C-3 actually allows 79 uses. There were 3 that we added. One was a small antique dealer. Um, I have to get my glasses. I apologize. Um, auto rental. The reason we looked at that is this is close proximity to the Provo Airport. For those of you that have traveled there, know they have a very limited supply of cars. They generally have to bring them in from other sides. This would be a place that was closer to that. We haven't talked to anybody in that business. They might come there, might not, but we felt like It would be in keeping with the neighborhood community of it. See, apparel alterations and dry cleaning services, drop-off and pickup only. Again, we felt like that felt— that fit within the small neighborhood that we were looking at. The last one we had was some office warehousing. I think almost anything would go there would probably fall under the standard land use categories anyway, but it looked like it'd be a good location because of the proximity to the major thoroughfares there for somebody that had a small business, say a heating shop or plumber or whatever, might find that a good place to locate out of. We don't have any tenants at this point until we get this zoning in place. We're not, not going looking for them. One of the reasons we're moving ahead and trying to get this taken care of now is the city and UDOT and Mountainlands. All of those are combining together to complete Lakeview Parkway and 2000 South. Both of those are going to be limited access roads. We're trying to make sure that we get our entrances in the right place that will function for the, for the project, and also to make sure that we get our utilities where they're supposed to be.

Thank you.

They finish that road, we don't get cut into it for a long time. We want to make sure we do this right. And so we've tried to be a little preemptive on that. It was mentioned we initially did an application 2 years ago. At that point in time, we were told that the road construction was imminent. When we found out that it had been delayed a couple of years, and we continued it until the current time. Creating the PD zone and I don't know how many of you sat down and read it side by side with the PD-3, but I think you're going to find that our standards are at least as high as what is in the PD-3, with one exception, and that's setbacks. And we have looked at a smaller setback. That may sound counterproductive when you're looking at impact on the neighborhood, but I'd like you to follow through this. If you have a 20-foot-tall building, You have a 20-foot setback. 6 to 10 feet of that is taken up with the landscape corridor, which means you have room for somebody to drive behind the building, but not park there permanently, not store anything, and only small vehicles. You know, a pickup, something that's going to be obscured by the, the 7-foot block fence that's required to go around the project. Larger box trucks can't get back there, obviously semis, things that would Create noise, and there will not be any parking behind those buildings. We've adjusted it so it's with height, but even with the 35-foot setback, the ability to utilize that space behind for anything other than just quick delivery is really obstructed. And we feel like that would actually have less of an impact on the neighborhood than shifting that out and then having some parking back there, probably required parking. Required to have the uses we need and to have, you know, large trucks going in and out that would have more of an impact on the neighbors. As you know, Gary has shown on the thing, if it has to be a 40-foot setback, it's not going to kill us. But we honestly think it would have less of an impact on the neighbors with the narrower driveways. I'm glad to answer any questions you might have. I covered most of the things I thought But you probably have others. Yes.

And I don't know if this is for you or for Gary, but can you just tell us more about the intersection? You know, how long has it been in the works, this Lakeview Parkway in 2000? How long has it been in the works? What kind of traffic are we expecting? What are its uses like? What is the character of that intersection going to be?

They were talking about it when I was on the City Council in the early '80s. And we talked about it again, I think, when I was on the Planning Commission in the '90s. It's a matter of money and population, and it's taken a while to put it together. Gary may have more information than I do.

Well, and there was not a willing seller on 2000— excuse me, there was not a willing seller on 2000 South, right?

She—

oh, that's on the Provo side.

Yes, right.

Yeah, you gotta have Provo and Orem, and Provo is looking at condemnation, or maybe in the process of it now to get that.

Okay.

Yeah, but I'm just saying the timeline, you know, where this is just recent, right?

Everything gets delayed because of sellers. Um, Mr. Dunn has been a very willing seller and has been cooperating with both city and UDOT on his property.

Maybe I could help with that, Council Member Gale. Uh, are you cur—

are Are you asking what the width of the road is or what type, how many lanes or?

Not, yeah, it was just the intended use. Like, what could we compare it to in our neighborhood just so we get an idea of what the character is?

I believe 2000 North Provo, 2000 South Orem will be very similar to what's on the other side of Geneva Road towards the freeway. So 2, 3 lanes with 1 turn lane in the middle. Lakeview Parkway through Orem will be 4 lanes with a turn lane in the middle. The Provo section, They're only building 2 through lanes with a center turn lane right now. They'll build the other 2 through lanes in the future. But we, because our segment's so short, we're going ahead and building the full width now so we don't have to go back and do it again.

And I believe that'll be a signalized intersection. I'm not 100%, but I, I wouldn't doubt it.

This is one of the arteryways into the new Provo Airport as it expands and whatever. So that's a Gonna be a major road going into the future. Yeah, so just to give you an idea, Geneva Road from where Lakeview Parkway will connect going north will be widened coming soon by UDOT, but everything south of that Lakeview Parkway-Geneva Road intersection will remain a 3-lane roadway on Geneva.

So they're anticipating the brunt of the traffic will mostly head down Lakeview towards the airport and kind of act as a belt route down to East Bay.

So are we— this picture that you've got here, is that what you're proposing, or is it conceptual at this point?

That's where the location of the buildings will be. Again, we don't have tenants. We want to get the zoning in place and obviously driveways and utilities before we put it out.

So, but as far as like the auto rental or, you know, or the gas station, where would they fit on that map?

They would be in that general location, yes.

But I mean, I'm trying to understand which buildings they are on the map, Ryan, or if you can go back to that map. So yeah, can you give us an idea of what this kind of breaks out as?

That extreme southwest corner, yeah, would probably be gas station. And convenience store, I'm assuming. The other buildings, they're conceptual at this point. We expect probably to be restaurants and the uses that are listed there. Whether or not each one will— excuse me— whether or not each one will occupy space 1, 2, 3, 4, I expect those will be combined depending on the uses. What we're trying to do is show what we're doing. One of the other things that we have done in this zone that is different than the C-3 is we are requiring that any commercial building has to face away from the residential. Try and minimize that. You don't get much sound pollution out of a building when it's faced away from you. And while we do have a height limit of 35 feet, I don't know that Many of the buildings will be quite that high. I think the majority probably in the 20-plus range.

Yeah.

And is that— is the, uh, the other map that they had, or the drawing that looked more like office warehouse, is that what you're proposing also right here?

That's a possible scenario, but it's going to depend on who the tenants are.

I guess I'm kind of confused. I thought our PD zones had, you know, typically you had to build what was presented.

The PD zone does do that. So, uh, the item tonight would— has, uh, an appendix. I don't know which one it is. Uh, need to look at the agenda. Uh, it's a rezone to create Uh, the PD-55 zone, and then, uh, they would be held to the standard of this design. And modifications would come back to us? Yes, if there's a significant modification, it would need to come back.

I think I remember hearing in the Planning Commission meeting that there will not be windows on the Backsides of these buildings? Is that a thing?

There won't be, no.

Thank you.

And that would be one— if an elevation showed a window on the backside and we don't want a window on the backside, we would not consider that a significant change to bring back the council. But if there's a window shown and there's not a text that prohibits the window on the backside, then the, uh, developer could put in windows on the back.

I don't think we have any intention of windows on the back. We had an architect come up with some conceptual sketch of the buildings, and, uh, if you want to add that to the zone As part of a motion, I haven't a problem with that at all.

What would be the difference between, like, the buildings on the left are a whole different look than the buildings on the right? Can you clarify what might go where?

Well, I think the buildings that are adjacent, I guess, the easternmost buildings, we anticipate that that would be bottom of Center Street where the Dairy Queen is, if you're familiar with that. With that. There's a Chinese restaurant there. There's, uh, I think there's a small gym, some things. I— that's kind of the flavor of what I think we're going to be looking at. There's a bread store there. Uh, what we're looking at is obviously we're going to try and be servicing the traffic that comes along Lakeview Parkway, but we're also trying to make it accessible to neighborhood shopping. We give a lot of talk about how we want Walkable neighborhoods, but we make shopping so far away. And not that anybody's doing a lot of shopping at the convenience store, but if they could walk to buy a bottle of milk, that would be a lot better than driving across town to WinCo.

Yeah, I guess, I guess what I'm trying to understand though is the difference between the buildings on the left and the building on the right, because they're— I mean, they're just a lot different. So what would be the use for the buildings on the right?

On the right, I think those are the ones we'd be looking at. Maybe sporting goods, the dance studio, possibility of some small grocery retail, drugstore, books, office supplies, those kind of things.

Have they built something like this before?

Have you—

have I built something?

Do you have an example of Yeah, somewhere in Orem or somewhere that—

I think I just gave one at the bottom of Center Street where the Dairy Queen is. On Geneva Road is something very similar to what we'd be looking at. There's a bread store there. There's a Chinese restaurant, if you're familiar with Vineyard.

Oh, okay.

Yeah, it's across the street.

So I was thinking Dairy Queen on 8th.

I'm sorry. Yeah.

Hey, Gary and Ryan, I could have sworn in the Planning Commission the holdup was the gas station. And, and, and because it was done, it was denied 7-0 because the residents didn't want a gas station. But now you're telling us that it's in a C-3 zone. So where was the miscommunication? Communication. Was that Jason Bench, or—

I don't know what the—

No, I, I think at the Planning Commission—

Hey, Paul, do you remember that? It was, it was the gas station, was the—

was the—

It was a discussion on the gas station, but the Planning Commission said they wanted to be a C-3 zone. We didn't understand that because our zone is more restrictive than it. But the C—

but I thought a C-3 didn't—

I didn't think the C-3 had a gas station in it, but I guess it can.

So C-3 does have a gas station in it, but you're correct, at Planning Commission, that was a major concern of the residents in the area.

Correct.

Having a gas station there. And so this proposal that's in front of you tonight, as a council, you need to make a determination. Does a gas station make sense in the—

okay, so the BD-55 don't, because I mean, if you put the map back up with the— no, the, the, the area map that has the— so keep—

you zoom out because you—

oh, this one, because on the— oh, sorry.

So they're gonna have a gas station at the Holiday— Holiday Inn is gonna have a gas station right there on the corner of Geneva. So, right, so right on Geneva, there's gonna be a gas station right there in the corner, right?

At the— yes, at the end.

So I don't know, I don't know if the name— if, if, if, if that's going to handle 2 gas stations. I don't know. And then that's the concern of the neighbors, and I get it.

Well, in terms of what we're looking at, uh, Lakeview Parkway is a major corridor. 2000 South, lesser, but still a major corridor. There is no access to this site except on those 2 corridors. Nobody can cut through a neighborhood to get there. Typically, those are the kind of uses you want to have on major corridors.

But I mean, if the neighbors don't want— is that a deal breaker, the gas station?

This place, this piece, unlike the other Would be further away from houses. The gas station would be— I remember when the concern on that other one, they were right in the backyard. This is in the corner of 9.5 acres or so, 9.43 acres, right?

It's significantly away. I'd say 500, 600 feet. Again, the only access is they would have to go out and onto the major corridor to get there, except as a pedestrian, they could walk there quickly.

Thank you.

I think another difference is the height. Your C-3 keeps you at 35, and it looks like in here you've got a maximum of 48.

No, with your 1-to-1s in the PD-30— PD-55, the maximum height is 35 feet.

Right here it says once beyond the 100 feet, the maximum height of any structure shall be 48 feet.

E-3, that's in the PD-

Uh-huh.

I don't see that.

Page 179 in our packet.

Can you show me which section you're reading that in?

So it's on the screen.

I have it on the screen. If you look at number 3, is that what you're referring to, Council Member Millett? Must be on 100.

100.

So that's just 2 times.

We can strike that.

It's not Is that talking about 100-foot setback?

Yeah, the only place that could exist is where the gas station is. We're not going to do that.

And again, this is a text in front of the council. So if— and I, and I heard, uh, the developer say Yes, we could strike the last sentence in that first paragraph of 3 under building height. So you could strike once beyond the 100 feet, just strike that out because the intent is only to have 35-foot-tall buildings.

Okay, might— sorry, it might just be easier to say the maximum height is 35 feet. 35 feet, period, and not—

correct—

not confuse it with whether it's within 100 feet or not 100 feet.

Okay, any other questions, or should we— you ready to open in public? Okay, I think we're good as far as, uh, questions for now.

I apologize, in the height on the copy I've got, it's 35 feet. We didn't have the other. I'm wondering if when we We sent it to the city. We may have sent an earlier copy. I apologize for that. Okay, our tent's 35 feet.

No, thank you. All right, let's, uh, open this up for the neighbors in the general area. Um, if you'd like to have something to say, feel free to come up. And can you, can you give me an idea on how many people want to speak? Okay, good. All right, go ahead and come on up.

And I would like to— before my time starts, I'd like to make 2 quick things. First of all, I think I beg to differ with you on the definition of OS5.

It is not defined as a holding pattern, except to the developer.

It is—

it can be a permanent designation.

It can stay what it is, in other words.

Okay.

Obviously, the developer wouldn't like that. But the other thing I would like to have my neighbors who are here, please stand. Thank you. Just to let you know that We, we also, whether we speak or not, have some input. Uh, you've heard tonight— Your name?

My name is Dennis Harrison.

Um, you've heard the perspective of the developer.

I would like to give you the perspective of the people who live across the fence from that.

Um, and I do thank the city council for the opportunity to address you and, and Express the concerns, feelings, and realities and perspective of the current Orem residents.

Our 55-and-older community is in southwest Orem, is across the fence from this proposed development.

Since we have lived there, it has been a very quiet, peaceful neighborhood with almost no traffic other than the residents and occasional visitors.

That is Except for the parade of heavy trucks and sound of heavy excavation equipment from the developer's efforts over the last 2, 3 years.

We don't even have normal streetlights. Very wonderful, calm area.

We would love for the zoning to remain rural residential OS-5 as it is now.

Please allow that to happen.

The proposed development would do almost nothing for us.

It would seriously disrupt our lives with noise, lights, increased traffic 24 hours a day.

Our peaceful lives would be turned upside down.

There are already 2 gas stations and convenience stores only a mile north of us, and will soon be another one 2 blocks south of us on 2000 South, as we— as you've mentioned. We don't need another one, let alone all the myriad of other businesses that are proposed. This proposed rezoning and development does not supply a current need. It follows the plot of the movie Build It and They Will Come.

Build the development and people and other development developers will come to it.

Thank you.

That would line the developer's pocketbook and those of whoever or whatever kind of businesses he would bring in there. But what about us, the people who are living there? It would very seriously impact the lives of those of us who live across the fence from it.

There would also be an increase in crime inflicted on our little community of vulnerable people. That would be, that would be easy access to whomever is brought into our area.

Ladies and gentlemen of the City Council, you, you have an opportunity right here to positively, to greatly positively affect the lives of current Orem residents who live where we live, so that we can have peaceful, quiet lives on the edge of the country instead of catering to new people and developers. Thank you. who want us to live in the middle of a bustling, noisy, light, sound, traffic, crime-infested rocket city. This is your opportunity to consider the needs and wants of the current Orem residents instead of just those of the developers and others who care nothing about us.

Thank you.

What a treat to see democracy in action.

I'm Roland Griffith.

I'm a retired Army colonel.

I was in the special operations for most of my career, so I believe in volunteerism.

The best units you can find in organizations are those who have a standard, those who volunteer, and those who are held to the standard. Mayor, thank you for keeping up with and honoring your pledge about what you wanted was let's make this year where we rise above that being the life we see around us, that united in honesty, service, and goodwill towards all. So first and foremost, in my now less than 3 minutes, I'm just grateful as someone who swore an oath.

For 33 years of my life to defend the Constitution.

I was thrilled to be here and watch democracy in action. I've lived in Europe. We've lived in Europe. I've been in 3 wars. I know what chaos looks like. This is not chaos. However, if the builder, or if the developer, Mr. Dunn, if he's talking about a European type of little area, Like we have in Europe, where you just walk down the corner, buy your groceries, go back home.

What a great idea. I'm all for it.

But a gas station has already been articulated in less than 2 minutes across the road. You've already approved a gas station for Holiday Oil on that corner of Geneva and 2000. You've got 20 pumps less than a half a mile down with Maverick.

I don't think a gas station would serve the community, and it wouldn't put an onus on people on the eventual Lakeview Parkway. The other thing, from that wall to this wall is approximately 20 feet. I vote for at least the 35 feet of the distance between the back of a—

an apartment— back of a commercial building And where we live.

There are other thoughts that I had, but I just, I just felt compelled to get up here because, you know, when you defend something that's worth defending, it's worth speaking up and letting those who are helping us practice this democracy—

you need to know that, for one, I'm grateful.

I don't vote for a gas station. I vote against that.

But I understand If they want to do a European-like little market, that's great.

That wouldn't hurt anybody. And I think it would also help Brother Dunn in taking care of his family to its 10th generation with the funds from whatever gets put in there.

Thank you.

Do we have anybody else? This is your chance.

I will try and speak into the mic because sometimes it's hard for us to hear. My name is Luanne Ferner, and I live in the I'm 55 plus. I think some of the concerns, um, are like he had mentioned, certain companies bring in crime more than others, um, and the noise factor, um, traffic, lots of different things. Um, if it had to go to a commercial area, It might even be fun, like he was talking about a grocery store, have it more of a professional, because businesses that are done at like 5 or 6, so we don't have in the evening a lot of people, oh, I wonder what's over there. And the traffic and the different things, the noise that might happen. Warehouses, you know, in the middle of the night, who wants to wake up to them backing up or something?

So if it's—

I don't know if you would say tastefully done, but if you'd be cognizant, I mean, like, um, a vineyard, it has that whole big section, but it's a couple of miles away from that residence. So if it's going to be so close, it would be nice if it was companies that, like for instance, close at 5 or 6 or something, a really nice grocery store that you would just have people coming in and going out and getting a few things. But we're just wanting companies that don't— I guess you could attract a certain audience that would be detrimental to us.

You know, big, um, trucks backing up at 12 o'clock at night, just different things of this nature.

Um, I hope you understand our situation, some of the concerns we have, and this is just what I wanted to say. Thank you very much for your attention.

Thank you.

Hello, excuse me.

My name is Chris Lichty. I live in the 55+ community. I appreciate being here, appreciate all of you.

I kind of feel like we— many of the people here tonight, we attended a Planning Commission meeting of just a few weeks ago, and I'm kind of feeling like it never even happened. And so I really appreciate David Spencer, what you were saying.

I think speaking for myself, maybe some of my, my neighbors and friends, we were kind of under the impression C-3 would be no gas station, and now we're seeing that's not really true.

And as you said, Mr.

Spencer, that was a big concern of ours, and it still is, um, for the reasons that have already been mentioned tonight.

So it's a little bit disappointing.

I too appreciate being here, but it's like, wow, what about the Planning Commission where they talked about, okay, C-3, no gas station?

They talked about transitional building, transitional businesses, kind of like what Luanne was saying, you know, places that close, close by 5 o'clock, you know, doctor's office, dentist's office, that kind of thing. I didn't hear any of that tonight.

And so I'm just kind of thinking, where are we?

We're kind of back to like when we were here months and months ago, and, and we're going to continue I feel like a little bit, are we just getting beaten down with the gas station?

Like, too bad, folks, it's going to happen. We're asking you, if I can speak for my, my friends here, um, just to really consider our, our real concerns about the gas station. And, and again, again, why is there no talk about that transitional type of businesses that we talked about earlier?

Thank you.

Hey, okay, we'll have, we'll have this be the last comment.

Oh, hi there.

My name's Peggy Clark and I live in the community. Um, okay, Peggy, what was your last name?

Okay, there.

One of the things that really concerns me and probably can't do anything about are the heights of this building, these buildings being 2 stories or as much as 35 or 36 feet.

I've driven around to a lot of strip malls, shopping centers.

There's not very many 2 stories. Most of them are one story.

And so I envision that those buildings being so tall in our view there.

And, uh, and then that also makes me think, if they're that tall, there are twice as many businesses in it as in a typical strip mall, for instance.

And so I'm just wondering how many total businesses are going to get crowded into that amount of space that's there with that second story.

I drove behind Home—

Lowe's and tried to compare how tall that was.

It's really tall, especially if it's only 10 feet from the fence.

So I hope that there won't be any consideration that those buildings would be that close to the neighbors, because that's really close.

So I appreciate that you're considering our feelings and our concerns.

Um, in addition to our senior community, we have many young families and young people, uh, that are too the, the west there on, on your map. You know, we're, we're just some of the people, but those who live in those, uh, townhomes are very affected too, and many of them have children and families.

So we're concerned about what might happen as far as the safety of our neighborhood.

So we want to have that consideration too, and keep Orem the family city. Thank you.

Thank you. Just one more.

One of the young families. Um, and just super quick, if we can pull up that map of the area real quick. Um, my name is Aiden Greenway. So I, my wife and I are the family, um, kind of, she was just talking about directly west of that, um, development here. Our fence is backed up to this, this gate.

I agree with everybody else. My wife and I both do.

The gas station doesn't really fit here. We have plenty, 20 pumps. It's 40 pumps at that Maverick gas station right across. To start a family, you know, our bedroom window is facing this area. If there's a gas station there, they're gonna be able to see right into our window, our bedroom window.

So definitely agree with all my neighbors.

As a young person, I represent quite a few of the age group in this neighborhood. We are young, we have families. A gas station right across—

I could have misunderstood—

a 7-foot fence. It's not super high.

I could jump it. A lot of people can jump it.

Whether that can be changed or not, that'd be great. But a gas station, we don't feel would be a super beneficial thing for us as a family, but then also the neighborhood.

Thank you.

Quite frankly, has plenty. So that's just my 2 cents. Thank you so much.

Okay, thank you. All right, let's go ahead and bring this back to the council. We'll close the public hearing. Do we have questions, comments?

I do have a question, and maybe it's Paul or for you. It seems like if there was no gas station, if the setbacks were a little bit bigger, and if we limited the height to 35 feet, you'd get a lot of neighborhood support. I don't know if that's, uh, if that would be received well by the developer.

I think the 35 feet is probably—

that's not the biggest issue on their plan.

I think the 35 feet could be negotiable. The gas station is not. A good small grocery store there is never going to carry itself. The gas sales have to make— have to be there to make it work. One other point I'd just like to make: understand concerns neighbors have. Uh, everybody thinks when something gets built it's going to be the end of the world. My closest neighbor is Target. I look out my dining room window and it's there. Uh, I've got to tell you, it's the best neighbor I've ever had lived next to. They're great. Uh, I don't know that that's just a sign of doom, and that's a 45-foot wall that I look at. Uh, but the other Uh, point is, Mr. Dunn has been held from being able to develop this ground for nearly 20 years. All he's done is tried to follow what the master plan the city set out for him was. And as Gary brought out at the very beginning of this, the assumed zone was going to be C-2. What we've done is we've created what I believe is arguably the most restrictive zone that exists in the city to allow him to go ahead and utilize his property.

So what is your number of a clamp?

This kind of thing happens. Same thing happened at the other meeting.

Okay.

Can I ask a question? Where's Appendix WW in the packet? I'm not seeing that. We're referring to— I looked on our code. Gary, do you have that? So I'm asking Gary, because it, you know, we're supposed to have these property. Am I not finding property? And so concept plan is property in the PD-55 zone shall be developed in conformance with the concept plan included as Appendix WW. Is that, that, is that what we've been looking at is just that?

Yes.

And that's drawn per the setbacks of what's been outlined.

Well, that drawing doesn't have setbacks on it. The ordinance itself has the setbacks.

So that's basically just a design document.

Yes.

Kind of to the mayor's point, or is that's what these buildings are going to look like?

Yeah, that's been the— that's the developer's proposal. Those buildings, that's their proposal of what they want to build.

Yes. Yeah, sorry, we closed that.

No, I have some additional questions. Can I ask those now?

Sure.

Page 182 in our packet. It's, let's see, 19. Other regulations, except as otherwise specified in this section, the standards and requirements of the C-2 zone shall apply to the PD-55 zone. What does that change? What does that— that's pretty broad, right? We're pulling in now. We're opening up a door here.

So what it—

excuse me.

So what it allows is whatever's in the C-2 zone, their proposal is whatever's in the C-2 zone that's not modified by this. Is what is going to apply to the project and govern the construction of the project.

I don't know, Steve, are you familiar? Is that problematic?

No, that's language we have in almost every PD zone.

What really—

what it is, it's kind of a safety net in case there's some— typically in a PD zone, we will set forth all of the standards in this type of We'll have a standard for setbacks, we'll have a standard for height, we'll specify the uses and so on. So those are specifically designated in the text. That's there in case if something is missed, that for some reason a standard or a provision is not there, we don't want to have nothing there. So that's why we have a default to the C-2.

Okay, and then the C-3. So the C-2 has a 1-to-1 Step back starting at 10 feet, right? So you could have a 10-foot building, a 20-foot building, a 30, all the way from the— as close to the fence. Uh, tell me about C-3. Does it have that same ratio, or does it start at the 35?

I'd have to pull that out. It's been a while since I've looked at it, but maybe Gary has that at the top of his head.

There's a minimum 20-foot setback no matter what.

And then everything else has got to be the height in your PD is what you're saying.

In this—

it's in the—

it's in the text in this, what you've written. Okay, so you're not going to be building anything taller. You're going to be 20 feet away from any fence to build a 20-foot tall, at least before you start building anything.

That is correct.

Okay.

Typically, the thing you're referring to We haven't called out that there's no outside storage in this zone, but that's part of what is covered by covering it, saying the standards of the C-2 zone apply. It's all of those things, stormwater requirements, all of the engineering that is required. That's what we're talking about.

But that's not going to supersede these— his— the prescribed setbacks in here are going to supersede the C-2.

Yes.

Okay. And then what was your comment?

Well, one of the things I was going to say, what we We do, you know, based on what the concept plan was showing, it was showing a little bit greater than a 20-foot setback for some of those buildings. And so, if that's something that's important to you, and if the developer was willing to agree to this, we might want to have them specify what, you know, annotate on the concept plan what those actual setbacks are. So, if they're actually 30 feet, you know, then, then they would, they would be held to, you know, have a 30-foot setback, even though The text might say that it's 20 feet, but if that— if they're showing on the concept that it's really 30 feet, then— and they're okay with that, then maybe we have them note that on the actual plan.

You good?

Okay, let me just throw out some things because I, I don't want us to go, um, circular on this. So these are just a few things I see that I think are important. So we've got, um, a 55+ community here. Okay, 55+. I'm 55+, but things become more annoying to 55+, right? As far as noises and lights and all the rest. Um, maybe it gets more annoying to me. I don't like to go in noisy restaurants. Okay. And so I think we need to take that into consideration that this is a neighborhood of 55+. Um, It seems to me like the gas station is really the conversation, uh, because that's the thing that's going to be the most bothersome to the neighbors. So that's really what we're voting is if we want to have this gas station or not. A few other, uh, one other thing that I think is important, um, and I, I know where Paul lives, um, and he does He's next to Target. But there's also, when Target built that, they built a nice park, basically. They've got a big wall. So all you can see is a concrete wall, or a cinder block wall. And then you've got this nice park that I, you know, it's, what is it, Paul, like 50 feet of trees and grass?

And it's 26 feet.

Is that all?

That's all.

Wow.

And There is no 6 or 7-foot masonry wall around the perimeter of the property, which we are doing. So, you know, there's an offset there. Uh, we could obviously grass that in, but then if you put a wall up, that doesn't do much good. We're still gonna have to landscape all of it.

Yeah, no, I— what I guess what my point is, is I, I think the neighbors I, I don't really think you can have traffic behind those buildings. I mean, if you've got the neighborhood and you've got the buildings and then you've got traffic going back and forth behind there, I think that's really problematic. I think you want those buildings to be built in a way that there's nothing behind them, you know, as far as there's no commotion that way. Um, Well, the problem is, is if you think of most places that have— are set up like that, they've got a lot more room to deal with. You know, they've got delivery spaces back behind the buildings, and they've got— there's quite a bit room before you have a wall that blocks that off, whereas this is right close to the neighbors. And so it's—

This is a question about that. I know that you in the Planning Commission, somebody said that you modeled this after the Harmons complex.

Is that— is that—

did I make that up? Is that a thing?

Yeah, the basis of this is mirrored similar to the Harmon's property.

What's the setback at the Harmon's property? Do you know?

I think it was, uh, 20 feet minimum and then the height of the building. Okay, okay. But our effort in having that a little bit narrower— and it's 35 feet is what's shown on our concept plan— is we wanted to restrict the traffic back there. We wanted to be something small, a pickup, park long enough to unload and then get out of there. The wider that you have those, then there's more inclination to park cars there permanently or have larger delivery vehicles here, and that's what we're trying to avoid.

Yeah, and I would like—

this is a small center. We're only looking developable about 8.5 acres.

It's—

yeah, yeah, not much there.

Anyway, and that is part of the problem is that it's small. I just don't want to have traffic behind those buildings affect, you know, in somebody's backyard kind of thing. And so to me, those are the 2 issues is whether or not we want to approve a gas station and how we protect the neighbors from traffic back behind the buildings, or if it can be set up to where there is no traffic behind the buildings. So Those are my 2 issues.

Yeah.

And I think—

how much—

oh, sorry.

Well, I just think, as if it is modeled after that Harmon's complex, they don't have a problem with traffic behind the building, and they do actually have a gas station on that property, and it seems to work really well with the neighborhood. So there's not a lot of complaints there.

Yeah, there's no, no access.

And the other thing I think that's really important to consider is, I— first of all, I really appreciate you coming to share your perspective and the things that you're concerned about. And sir, thank you for your service. I really appreciate And I, I loved seeing your enthusiasm over watching the process of democracy at work, because I share that with you. Next, I think it's really important for us to note that these plans for that area have been in place for a very long time. So Lakeview Parkway— is it Lakeview? And 2000 South— those have been on the master plans for a number of years, as has this development as a C-2 community use. So as soon as we start talking about restricting the use for that property, Property and curbing the landowner's ability to do what he wants with that property, that makes me a little bit nervous. So that's, I think, something we also need to consider in this discussion as well.

I was just going to ask the question. So, so a masonry wall is a, is basically a cement wall, like it's a good concrete or concrete block.

Yes.

And how I'm just trying to envision what you can see over a 7-foot wall.

7 feet is about where my hand is.

So a large truck you would see, but if they're not going back there, but just normal day-to-day people driving in trucks and cars, you would probably wouldn't be noticed.

Wouldn't be seen and probably not heard as well because of the concrete wall reflects sound back the other way. You have a—

do you have a plan for any landscaping behind the buildings? Any type of trees to buffer the homes?

I mean, I'm just talking.

I don't know if you saw— were you involved in the Needers?

No.

Oh, no, that was— who did the Needers project? That was a great hybrid that protected the neighborhood. We had some good landscaping, but next we had a wall. We had some good trees and green space, and then a drive lane behind.

The—

I'm talking about the neaters that we just did. So is that—

We're planning on doing a first-class job. The Dunn family wants to hold this property. They're not trying to sell it off. They'll do leases and, and that respect. And so they're wanting to hang on to it. Everything we do, if you approve this zone tonight, we still have to come back and get site plan approval.

No, no, this is a PD zone. You've got your— you got your site plan in there.

No, I still have to come back.

We don't— you don't come before us again.

Not before you, right? But we do have to come back to the Planning Commission, and we will have the land—

Right, but they're just gonna— whatever you have in your— they're administrative only. They're not legislative at that point.

When you—

when you take whatever you plan to the Planning Commission, as long as it meets what you're putting in this doc right here, that's it, right? So that's why we're really trying to be quite diligent in making sure that what's in here— this is where we come in from a legislative standpoint, that we've got to make sure that this is okay, because the Planning Commission is only going to fulfill an administrative role at that point when you come back, right?

I think they've got more control than you're giving them, but we will have to present a landscape plan, you know, building elevations, everything that we're doing, and they will have to approve them. If there's any material change, it does have to Right.

And your landscape plan is for the ex— not behind the building though, right? You don't have one for there?

Behind the building, yes.

You what?

We are required to. Anything that's adjacent to residential has to have landscaping.

To me, it looks like it says streets.

And we do the streets too. There's— we've called out specifically what we're doing with the streets. The landscape, you have to have a landscape plan.

Are you willing to put that in the plan here, some specific landscaping plans to create that same kind of buffer?

I guess we could come back with one.

I guess that would be one thing I think that would buffer the neighborhood so we can create that same target Harmon's, you know, neater green space buffer.

Okay.

I think I'm still stuck on the C through C-3, 'cause that is the transitional from a residential. Gary, can you pull up the homes, the border of the land property? To me, that was very, very close, and I'm very concerned. But this neighborhood, they do not want a gas station. And I think to me, a C-3 is the best because it is a transitional zone in from a residential to a commercial zone. And I really don't like the gas station because it's allowed in a C-3.

Correct.

So, you could do a PD zone that's basically a C-3 without a gas station.

Paul, is that a deal breaker? Gas station has to be?

Yeah, it does. Yeah, it's the outside corner. It's the furthest away from all of the housing. And that's what makes the— actually is what makes the center viable. You've got to have some kind of a draw to be there.

And a grocery store doesn't draw?

Grocery store is not going to survive without gas sales. It's not a big enough thing. Um, I've got some experience with grocery stores. We pitched our Northgate development, 8th North, where WinCo is now, to every, uh, grocer probably in the western United States. I flew all over the country. All of them came back and said, no, you've got a freeway there. We have to have 360-degree houses to make that work. Fortunately, WinCo is a regional, uh, gas station or grocery store. They don't have to play by the same rules as the other, and they've been extremely successful there. But to say that you could put a small grocery store on that side with housing basically only on one side— the other side of the street, we're on 2000 South at the Provo side, 2000 North is going to be a commercial development.

There's housing on 2 sides.

Excuse me?

There's housing on both sides of the property.

It's not enough to keep it alive. I wish it was. There's a lot of things I wish as a developer that would work different. Uh, I had 40 years to study this and do it, and I know what works and I know what doesn't. And I can tell you it won't work without the gas station. There's no way.

Mayor, I'd like to make a motion. Not ready to make a motion yet. I would like to have some more modifications to this. I mean, the landscaping, you, you agreed to that. Do you want the landscape buffer? So you've got 10 feet along the streets. Do you want to add it? Are you willing to add a 10-foot buffer to the back fence?

I think we can do that.

And then what was the other thing?

The height, the 7-foot wall, the 7-foot— that's in it, right?

That's in it already. Oh, can I ask, so it has like— and I'm just saying because in my neighborhood we had this issue— you got a 6 AM, um, uh, is that standard, um, site maintenance, 6 to 10? I thought it was 7 to 10. Do you know, Steve?

Sorry, what was the question?

So site maintenance hours. 6 AM to 10 PM. I feel like 6 AM is too early. Can we switch that to 7 AM? Are you familiar with—

Well, that's to restrict deliveries to dumpsters.

Snow removal is what it says in here. Common area maintenance.

Are you—

yeah, you okay with that?

Yeah.

Because I mean, that— you guys don't want to be— no one wants to be woken up at 6 AM by the trash truck, right?

Um, Lights.

Well, yeah, that's what's problematic about the gas station. Is the gas station gonna, gonna be— have its lights on for midnight? You know, that was the problem we had with the Holiday Oil, was the, the, the 24/7 pumps.

If you read the text on the, uh, in the ordinance, it requires all the lighting is directed away from residents. Nothing can bleed out of our property lines. Now, that doesn't mean that you couldn't, you know, walk out on the sidewalk and see that there's a light there, but as far as it just, you know, being able to go into people's windows or whatever, no, we're restricted on doing that.

Okay.

What, what is the distance to the gas station from the back of the lots to the houses on the east?

I think we're about 450 And to the ones to the north, uh, it'll be probably another 50 to 75 feet in addition to that.

600 feet.

It's, it's a ways. Now, if you want to look at it in terms of the, the homes just above and to the side, it's, you know what, uh, 3 to 5 houses wide on either side. That's quite a ways away.

Okay, so Paul, let me just tell you where I— what kind of— I feel like our conversation, if I summarize, we on the— on next to the residential, we have a 10-foot landscape buffer. Okay, added there.

You've got—

because you've got it on the streets, we need to put it next to the residential. We've got the— we've taken out the 48-foot height from the C-2, and we've left just 35.

I provided a copy to Gary. I think there was a problem in shifting things back and forth. We don't have anything above 35 feet.

That's awesome. And I'm just kind of doing this as a summary for our record here. Okay, we've got The 7 AM site maintenance can't start till 7 AM. And then the setback of— what was your setback, Dave?

It was 40.

The 40-foot setback. So that kind of— you're going to need that anyway with your landscape buffer.

I think we can live with that.

What's that?

We'll live with that.

You can live with that?

Yeah.

What's that?

Another issue I heard earlier, took a note of, was no windows on the back.

Yeah, that's fine. Let's put that in as well. Yeah, I know we've already—

and then we're tied to the site plan of the gas station being That distance away that you indicated, the 600 feet in that southwest corner?

That's correct.

That will not be brought before as a change to the site plan?

That's where it's got to go.

Does anyone else have any comments? Okay, um, would somebody like to make a motion? Jen, Jen, you want to make a motion?

So I'll move.

I move that we amend Article 22-5-3 Sub A and the zoning map of the City of Orem by rezoning the property located generally at 1230 West 2000 South From the OS-5 zone to the PD-55 zone, approximately 9.43 acres.

With the amendments—

With the amendments that were discussed and on record, which are the 10-foot landscape buffer next to the residential area, 35-foot max height and site maintenance, no windows on the back, and 40-foot setback. 40-foot setback on the, on the residential, residential side.

So are those all there?

Did we have the setback at that?

I think you got them all down, and I think Paul, you nodded your head.

We've agreed to it. Yeah, yeah, gas station.

Yeah, which is on the gas station in the same location as shown on the concept plan. Okay.

That's the motion.

I'll second, a little bit reluctantly, but second.

Can I, can I interject here something too? Based on these changes, we're going to need to have the concept plan amended a little bit to show these changes. So could the motion be made subject to us also getting a concept plan that reflects those amendments we've talked about?

So moved.

I again second reluctantly.

There you go.

Go ahead.

Nay.

Aye.

Nay.

Aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Thank you. I'll get together with Gary this week and we'll make sure everything's corrected. Thank you.

Okay, the ordinance passes. All right, next up we've got item 9.3, public hearing amending the current fiscal year 2024-2025 budget.

What else we Brandon.

Okay, so Brad, Brad, this be good enough reason for you to vote for Oram just because of this situation?

Late nights driving downtown?

No, next Tuesday. Last Tuesday was why you wanted to move, so you didn't have to drive along Geneva Road. Can we just move to accept what, what Brandon said?

Well, are we ready to go, Mayor?

Yes.

All right.

I appreciate you getting here. I think after those 2 meetings, I can join the 55+ community. Can we ask the public if you have—

yeah, go ahead.

We asked the public to clear the room, please.

When do you do that?

600 feet one way, 400, and it's on the corner of the busiest road going to the airport. You're, you're gonna I know.

Well, that's where I like to be, you know.

Okay, Brandon, finish it off with all these neat numbers.

Uh, so, you know, this is a little earlier than we would normally come to you, uh, with some budget amendments. We usually don't come till October, but, uh, we had some things, uh, particularly as you've seen some of the emails related to the LWCF grants. Um, and so we have one in particular that we wanted to get going, um, in relation to Windsor Park. And so we had some, obviously, some other things that have in relation to various grants as well. And so we thought, well, we might as well— you have a light agenda tonight, and so I thought we could go ahead and get this taken care of. Um, so, uh, note number 1, obviously, as per usual, we have, uh, anything on there that's listed with the note number 1 are, are various grants that the city has been awarded, and we're just adding those grants into our, our budget. And as mentioned, down in the middle section here and in the Fund 45 Capital Improvements Project Fund, you can see the LWCF Windsor Park grant for the $411,000-plus. There's— we also received the Bike Skills Park.

I forget which phase that is, Phase 3, I think it is.

And so that's also another Are there any questions about any of—

What's Fund 73?

So Fund 73 is our Orem Community Foundation. Okay, it's our 501 organization. And so a lot of the times they donate to that organization, those funds are then moved out to where we need to spend them and wherever that particular project might be. Um, and, and the Woodbury item was actually— they normally pay us that in June, but they didn't pay it till July. They didn't give us that donation until July, so we had to account— that wasn't part of our budget, and so we had to account for that extra donation for the current fiscal year. So that one just happened to be a timing issue. Um, item number 2, as part of our CARE Um, there were approved use of surplus funds to, to make those grant awards, and so number 2 takes care of using those reserve funds for those awards. Item note 3 is in relation to the participation funds for the drug task force.

Those—

The participation has gone up for for all the cities in the, in the county in relation to that. So they have an adjustment related to the, their revenue for the task force. And then they have, uh, number 4, which is down in the capital improvement project fund for miscellaneous revenues. And as noted, we received some easement money from Rocky Mountain Power through Nielsen's Grove. So we're just putting that money into, if you will, into play so we can use it Um, for our parks in that particular fund. Item number 5 down at the bottom in relation to state street race events. This is just a cleanup where we actually have—

I don't see 5 on your list.

I see a 6 clear down at the bottom.

Oh, you're not showing it if it's good.

If it's there and I don't have it, it's right there.

Okay, thank you.

Oh, you don't even need to talk about if it's 95.

There you go.

Okay, uh, so we have that particular—

we have to talk about everything.

You want the gavel to hit me?

So that fee is listed in 2 different places in our budget, and they had 2 different rates. So we're just making sure that's updated so they both have the same rate.

And what is number 6?

And item number 6. Up the top. So you will recall, I don't know if you've seen the video of Lane Gray's vehicle out in the parking lot.

How do we get money off wrecking a vehicle?

We don't get money off wrecking that particular vehicle because the driver was uninsured. So we have dollars set aside in our self-insurance fund.

Oh, so we're moving it.

So we're moving it so that it's spent within, quite honestly, in Lane Gray's division so that we can account for that vehicle and the proper division.

So that's really all that is doing.

Correct.

Yeah.

And it was destroyed and we're replacing. So that's what those funds are for, for the replacement of that vehicle.

Do we need a motion on this?

So those are all of the items. Are there any questions about any of those things that I have mentioned?

No, it's a public hearing.

It is a public hearing.

Yeah.

I do want to say, you know, after the Richard Marx concert last night, he, he made it, you know, he said, it's what, same heartache, different day?

I, I move we have Brandon quit talking. Jeez, come on, I can get a second on that, can't I?

Here.

Are you ready for it?

Okay, are we good?

As soon as you have that open, that public hearing, I'm good.

Okay, and they both promised me they're not going to say anything.

Give me 5.

Okay, we'll open the public hearing. We'll close the public hearing.

All right, Mr.

Mayor, I move that we approve the amended current fiscal '24-'25 budget.

Second.

Aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Aye.

The amended budget passes. Thank you, Brandon.

Okay, come on, can we move?

Yes, we've got some city manager items.

Oh, sorry, just real quick. Utah League of Cities and Towns fall conference is next week. Um, if, uh, even if you get to a particular— like the day of, and there's something you want to go participate in, just let us know. Let Teresa know. We can still get you, you know, signed up or attend however much of that conference that you're interested and/or available in. And then, you know, of course we've had a couple of really great events in the Come Together Festival and in the My Hometown event. As wonderful as those have been and as successful and well attended as they've been. As always, if you have any feedback for ways that we might improve those or similar events moving forward, we want to hear back from you.

Kay and I had an assignment to go back and clean up at the end for the committee she's on. It was great how many people were still there at 9 o'clock.

Most of—

many of our employees, thanks to them, but also the public as a whole.

It was great.

It was very well attended. We consider it a big success.

So yeah, thank you for the participation and help.

And, and again, if there's ways to improve moving forward, please, please let us know because we want to continue on that awesome trajectory with those city events.

Thanks.

Okay, thank you, Brent. Would someone like to make a motion to adjourn?

I move that we adjourn. I second.

Aye.

We're adjourned.