City Council · 2024-09-17

Legos with all the ranges, 4 to 99. Person else can't play anymore. Legos are what?

Legos are only—

they say ages 4 to 99, and he's upset. So you jammer? He can't play anymore. It's got him on it with the crocodiles. I got you some pictures there. I kind of see it. We'll make a copy. We can make it a choose your own adventure. The boss is here now, but just please prepare to be in court.

Hi, how are you? Good. Uh, I apologize for being late.

Did you already start the meeting? No, we waited.

We were going to wait. Okay, well, I apologize for being late. We were meeting. Um, welcome. Move right into this presentation.

Mayor, Council, thanks, uh, for letting us come and chat with y'all today. We are here to discuss, uh, Orem City Events and specifically the Orem Fest Commission and some changes that we are proposing to the city code to better reflect the current use of the commission and how we really, um, can involve our residents in really meaningful work, how we can expand their scope, and how we can, uh, use the commission structure to provide some consistency and excitement across a number of city events. When I was assigned to city events a year and a half ago, BournFest really was a standalone event that we were taking on. We had Touch-a-Truck run wonderfully, mostly by Public Works, but with a lot of departments. We had a number of events that were mostly run by that department. But there was maybe some opportunities to bring those into a singular team led by our event staff, Karina, and now joined by Cindy. And we wanted to now have our commission structure reflect the fact that we have a number of different events sort of all being run by the same team, coordinating with different departments, departments, and to create some of that consistency. So as we looked at the why, number 1 is we wanted to focus on a commission structure that aligned volunteers with appropriate volunteer functions and staff with staff functions. In the old way of doing things with ORM Fest, we sometimes had commission members who were meeting with the public and discussing terms of a sponsorship, or maybe they were the lead on executing a contract and then bringing it back to the city. And that led to some chaotic moments for our volunteers, or times where we had to go back out to the business or to the public and maybe redirect what the volunteer had set up so it was in alignment with staff policies. So what we're hoping to do here is put our resident volunteers, our resident commission members in places where the resident can be really successful. they can be fulfilled and have the level of autonomy that they're looking for in their role. And then the staff can take on a lot of the logistics, the contract signing, and use the policies and procedures of the city. Additionally, we hope to sort of expand the scope and consistency of the involvement across some of our ORM events. You have in front of you a copy of the suggested code changes. Steve Earl in the legal department helped us align that with our other commission code items.

Yes.

Perfect.

This isn't a redline version though, is it? This is not. So we don't know what we're changing. We just know this is the new code. Yeah. We could get you a redline version though. That'd be helpful to know what we're changing. I don't know how quickly we can do that. I could probably go print that out right now. Okay.

So, thank you, Steve. To that, the number 1 is changing the name from the Orem Fest Commission to the Orem Events Advisory Commission. And aligning that. Number 2 is it goes through and again pulls back from specific Orem Fest tasks to talk about how they can be involved across a number of our different events. It says specifically here to report periodically to the city council regarding activities for upcoming Orem City events, to enlist the cooperation and participation of various volunteers and community organizations and clubs in association with Orem City events. To provide advice and recommendations to the city staff regarding the format and programming of Orem City events. And so again, where it had instances of saying Orem Fest, this now would allow them to be involved with Lights On, with Touch Truck or Treat, and then taking on other various smaller events and advising with them to say, should we bring this up to a full-scale Orem City event, or maybe even a partnership event? And saying, should that become like a fully sponsored Orem City event?

So will that reporting be overseen by you guys?

Similar responsibilities that we have through the Orem Fest Commission would now be to the board.

We're not adding any extra power or oversight to anyone. We're still filtering.

Yeah, the residents now would have oversight and opportunity to be involved in more events than just Orem Fest. That's probably the most significant change.

Thanks.

All right, so the commission members, things that they would be able to be involved with. First is our, our calendar, you know, the number of events that we have, when we're having them, event support. Previously, they would have like first-line responsibility to a portion of Forum Fest. And again, that means we have a volunteer who is sitting like 16 hours in the VIP tent, or they are doing parade logistics. And that's not great for them. That's not a really fulfilling, enriching experience. It also sometimes puts puts us as staff, uh, where we have someone who is outside of the policies and procedures and reporting chain. It puts them and us in a difficult position, in a sort of a high-stress environment. So this allows them to be event support, to mingle, to be with y'all, to be with our residents, to focus on the thematic elements, and it puts, uh, less, uh, logistical burden on our commission members. Um, they would do their debriefing report to the city events, uh, of city events to the city council. They would help with volunteer efforts. Community connection. You know, we recently had an event where we were working with a third party on a car show. And, you know, it was on our park, and we were working with 2 or 3 organizations to host an event. Those are the types of events that our residents who are out in the community working with these other groups would be able to bring to the commission and say, how can we be involved? How much should we be involved? This would allow for event testing across various events. We know how important Orem Fest is to our residents. And so we're often very cautious to make significant changes to something like Orem Fest without testing it first. Now that we have a commission involved with all of our events, we maybe, um, we know we have a new vendor that we want to try out, so maybe we take them to the My Hometown event, or we take them to something else. We see if we like it where it affects a couple hundred people before we put it into City Center Park and affect 20,000 people.

Great idea.

Uh, this gets that sort of consistency across the board. Um, and then a lot of what our commission members and talks with them love is the, the theming. Um, what is our, our motto or our, um, theme of Orem Fest? How do we decorate this, or how do we make it feel more magical? Uh, you know, those types of things I think are where residents could really weigh in a lot with us. And then logistically, our staff go and make it happen. We budget it out, we find vendors and suppliers and everything like that. For the staff across the Events Commission and across these various events, uh, like I mentioned, anything that involves city policy and procedures, contracts and agreements, purchasing, issues of risk management, you know, the parade is a, it is a risky endeavor, putting 30,000 residents on roads with vehicles and animals and bands. There's a lot that goes into that. By having staff work directly and sort of interface directly with our risk management department, it keeps the focus a little bit simpler. Interdepartment coordination, you know, we're doing a, you know, police night out or fire prevention night or public works truck retreat, we're able to go staff to staff to make those logistics work so that our residents are not having to get in between interdepartment communication. We of course work on the annual budget, logistics and scheduling, vendors, all of our sponsorship, when cash is transacting, when people are paying the city for services or marketing. Again, I think that is best handled between the communications team, Heather Cox and our sponsorship group, and the city staff so that residents aren't having to do some of that work. Right now we put our 4 biggest events on here, you can sort of see that as we look at our commission calendar and when they meet. at any particular meeting, we would be able to be in a brainstorming, a planning, an execution, or a debrief phase for particular events. With the annual focus on just Horrorfest, sometimes those meetings, we have 6 months of just planning, and if we don't want to waste residents' time or have them come to multiple planning meetings, this would allow us to be, you know, in November, we are debriefing on the trunk or treat. We are getting prepared to execute the Lights On event, or planning for the upcoming Orem Fest. And we would sort of be able to work through multiple calendars at the same time so that they are able to be really involved. There are, I think this last year, our events team executed 58 different events of various sizes. Not all 58 would go through the Events Commission. We did an employee party, we did the August employee party, probably doesn't need commission oversight. And so we'd work with the commission to say, hey, These ones rise up to the level of resident involvement. These ones can probably stay staff internal. And then we would, every year, we could probably discuss which ones are moving up or down, which ones are coming into the fold of city events, and which ones stay third-party events and everything like that. Like we mentioned, we'd be able to expand the influence of our residents through testing, identifying event partnerships. This last year, Pete and the Arts Council and our events team And the senior center and other groups, we had the Come Together Festival or the Bluegrass Festival, the American Legion Car Show, events that used to be completely not associated with us entered into a more formal association with the city so that we could deliver a better event to our residents. That, you know, obviously the outside organization gets full credit for the event, but by working a little bit closer, we can align a fireworks show because of fire safety and fall zones and everything like that.

Mm-hmm.

For the Bluegrass Festival, it used to be a ticketed event, and we said, hey, if we help bring it in and reduce your cost to the city, could we do that in exchange for no tickets so that people can— we never ticket an event at a park. Those have been really successful, and I think we had more residents that got to do more great things and have more sense of community with Orem by pulling, using this group to say which events should we pull in, which events do they want to stay separate, but we can maybe remove some red tape or make it simpler and safer. we'd be able to again have a richer, fuller calendar.

So I think we need to coordinate here because— is Pete here? Because our Arts Council brought in the Come Together, we brought in the International Folk Fest, we brought in— I'm trying to remember— the Bluegrass.

And they—

that's what they're focusing on right now is bringing in, not creating art events, but bringing in partnerships. So how do we coordinate that with this?

We, we love that.

How do we keep the people in their lanes? Or, you know, we don't— I don't want to step on this commission. I don't want our people to feel like they're still— no, that I want them to feel like they're still involved in bringing the art events. What, what are your thoughts?

One thing that Sydney has, uh, really worked on this last little bit is creating event protocol that Each of our events that come in would follow the same things. So when we have a parking lot, or when we have a fireworks show, or when we have more than X number of people in a park, we have standards for the number of bathrooms and the number of first responders on site and security. That keeps the Art Council really focused on the entertainment and the venue and the music and the experience.

Yeah.

We have some best practices and policies, and it's an annual review where we're able to say, okay, Arts Council, who do we want to bring in next? Do we want more or less fireworks? Do we want more or less of this. And it will, to our resident, we want it to feel like Orem City hosted that. We would never want to say, oh, that was definitely an Arts Council event.

That was an Orem event.

And, you know, we want it to feel like Orem City hosted it. So I would say logistics and consistency behind the scenes for some of these.

So you're not pulling those events under this commission?

Just like on Monday, we have the IOC Harvest Festival, not pulled in, just not taking over. These are these event partnerships that we have some level of overlap and support.

Because when you say commission scope, it kind of made it sound You're on this end of this commission, you're not—

No, but we would formalize what we are and aren't doing. Because sometimes that gray area— in fact, these partnership ones are ones that get the stickiest the quickest.

Yes.

And so this would give us, you know, some resident commission to say, hey, have we talked? Have we done this? What is the formal— are we sponsoring shit? Or do we just see our logo slapped on their event after the fact? We're like, oh, that wasn't ours. We didn't know about that. This gives us some formal relationship guidelines.

So is there—

like with Come Together, I mean, so that every activity is not a new experiment. That's why they're trying to just bring— basically, they have the format, right?

Okay, but this commission isn't voting on the Come Together at all. No, but they have no oversight.

Partnering.

You're just showing the partnership.

The partnership.

Okay, thank you for clarifying.

So for the City of Peace, it will be really clearly defined. won't have to redefine it every single time.

And that's where the code they're changing isn't for the commission to oversee it, it's for us to have one code that helps us do it all.

Perfect.

Thank you.

Okay, I feel much better about this. I've got to protect my commission.

Please do.

Please do.

Okay, so that's, that's really what we have suggested here. It goes through a number, the number of changes to the code. Hopefully the red line reflects this that Steve has handed out. A lot of it is simply changing some of the language from Orem Fest to Orem Events Advisory Commission. There are a couple of things that, again, from specifically this Orem Fest and a number of events. Do you all have any other questions on what this new commission might provide? We did have a chance to do a deep dive with Council Members Gale and Kilpatrick, who are on the Orem Fest Events Commission, and we went through a number of deeper logistical questions. I think this piece would start that so we can then take this to the commission and work with them on enacting this for the upcoming year.

I'm still uncertain here because we have people come to our arts meeting wanting to come and perform in Orem. So who filters that, the Arts Council or this commission?

If they were asking to perform as part of Orem Fest stage entertainment or Orem's Got Talent, then we would be much more involved. If the Art Council says we don't currently have enough venues, we want to create a new event where we can have more people perform, Arts Council would say we need more performers, and then we would get together and say, let's talk about that. What parks do you want to use?

Do you—

From a staff perspective. I guess my question is, does that event get run through this commission? The event that comes to the Arts Council to ask if they can perform in Orem, do they go through this commission?

I would say they would. If it's a— if it's an act asking to perform in Orem, it would go through them, and then we could help filter how big of an event, what is the impact on the park, how many nights have we closed that park off to general users. We would have that discussion.

Would that be internal communication then? Within just staff? So I think that's most—

that's what I'm trying to find out.

So the commission does it, then you guys make sure it works out okay. You guys, you humans, people.

Yeah, per the— what you're saying, the, um, you know, system you want to put in place. I just don't want— I just don't know if you're saying this commission is going to oversee what the Arts Commission approves.

The events, the events. So, so as he described on the earlier slide, it talks about partners, and it talks about Sponsored.

So the partnering would be the arts councils over the project, and they're partnering to make sure that the logistics of the event, they'll come off proper liability insurance.

That's what this is. This is the end. So every year they do this for ArmFest, taking that type of organization to kind of make sure every— everybody's, you know, the i's are dotted, t's are crossed. process to what happens on city parks properties, and so that we're all more—

Okay, so we don't have citizen oversight over the Arts Commission?

Yeah, your Arts Commission is your Arts Commission. This events would be more for helping with those events that are, um, don't have citizen input per se, and so they'll help with those.

But anything like one of the other partners Is that clear in here?

I don't know that that level of detail is specified in there. Because it's not— this is the ordinance that will change so that we can have all of the events that take place, have the infrastructure, the city employees help oversee. That's what this is.

Okay, so it's an infrastructure ordinance.

I mean, the way I understand this, so somebody comes to the Arts Council and they want to do whatever, so the Arts Council talks to them and figure everything out. But then they would turn to the staff piece of the event, this event commission, and that's how they would make the event happen.

Not the citizens, right?

Not the citizens of the county. Okay, just kind of like it's the city staff that would help the artists support.

Like how the farmers market didn't do their own music while Welcome Together was doing music. We coordinated and said, don't do your music this week because these guys are doing— that was all staff coordinated. Okay.

Yes.

Maybe another way to state it. I mean, both of these commissions are advisory commissions, or at least that's becoming more clear. And so it's not like I—

the intent of this is to not add sort of 2 approval bodies out of volunteers, right?

Because they're both just advisory commissions.

So the Arts Commission would continue to advise on the talent and the entertainment. And I suppose at some point, the Events Commission could, could advise on making sure that we're, we're offering them the best, best practices of support for every event. But it wouldn't be an additional approval or approval process for the talent.

Okay, it's just logistics Infrastructure.

And to add to that as well, there were times in the beginning of spring when we were getting ready for the farmers markets and deciding, you know, how long it was going, that I was invited by the Arts Council to come into a meeting and be like, hey, here are what we want to do for farmers market. Here are some of the events we want to do. You know, what are your thoughts? And so I was able to just sit and be like, oh, here are my thoughts of logistics and the other events in the event calendar as well was a big thing of like, oh, we can't do it right then because we're finishing up Lauren Fest. So we're adding in it. We have a couple other events that our, you know, council are going to be involved with. And so it was more of like, I came in, chatted with them, and then stepped out. And if they needed more logistics after that, I went back.

And it sounds like some things, I mean, like Orem Fest, some of the bigger events, they're going to be 100% going through this Events Commission, right?

Yes.

So that's like all by itself.

But then you've got these other things that something prior is—

they want to do some other event, so they're going to come to the Events Commission for support and structure and helping to pull off that event, but they're not, they're not really driving it. So it's got a couple— it's got several different roles.

I think primarily to the events that we kind of filtered under this, or the events commission, is Forum Fest, Truck or Tree, Lights On, and the Future of Taste of Orem. So it's not filtering and advising on the ones that we do partnerships with, like Arts Council.

I guess I—

because that's what I'm reading. It says, and other events. So, you know, you've clarified it now. So I'm Perfect.

And thanks for the redline motion.

That's very helpful. I just want to say, I know you guys spent a lot of time thinking about this, and I really appreciate it. I think this is where Oron is in the city. This is a really necessary next step to protect us from liability, but also to give, give us an opportunity to hear more from our residents, provide a variety of activities and events.

So I think it's a great thing you guys—

thank you.

You know, on this, on this, for just for general information, we've talked a lot about All of our commissions and our committees and our citizen organizations, all these different things. This is kind of a precursor of where that's all going. And so, yeah, this is the beginning of the refinement.

Refine, optimize, make more efficient, effective, elevate.

We have 7 commission members that are up for renewal right now. And so we also wanted to maybe get this one 2 months ahead of that one so that as they get a chance to come back and say, is this what I want to do? We would much rather do it at the beginning when it's a clean start. They have an understanding of this prior to them signing on so that it feels like a nice clean process.

So, thank you.

We also want to have a— basically, I mean, Karina has really upped our game as far as events, and we've done a lot of, you know, she's done amazing things. And so we kind of want to, like, start to institutionalize a lot of those practices and a lot of those improvements. So they'll become just the way that we do things, right? So this, this helps make that happen.

Yes.

Could you stay another year or 2?

Yeah.

It's in her contract.

Yes.

I really wish. I have loved, loved everything about Orem City. And so I get emotional because I love Orem City and I love Being here and being a part of the events. And I really hope something like this is going to start the ground running of like the future of Orem City and the events and the consistency. And like Bryce said, involving more of the residents and giving them more of the jobs that really, you know, matter to them of like, we want to have an opinion of, you know, the theming, or we would love to add in these aspects. And then that's our job as staff of making their dreams come true. And like, For bringing the community together. So I've been so, so honored to be a part of it and to serve with you guys. And it makes me sad, but I'm also excited for the new adventure that we have ahead.

We're not.

Yeah, yeah, I get it.

So we're excited for your family.

Just not you.

Again, it is a small company.

No one's ever heard of them before. So if you come back, hey, there you go.

Yes, we're excited for you. Thank you.

Okay, there's something that Karina has taught me from, from day one, is, uh, adding bougie.

I know she's gonna stick to a budget and a standard and a framework and have things organized, um, but also add that Lean, that extra, you know, intangible to just make sure everyone loves it.

Thank you.

Okay, I think that is everything.

Thank you guys so much.

So I think we're probably anticipating what, next meeting to bring this to a regular meeting for adoption? Is that, is that right?

Yes.

Yeah, if that works for y'all.

Great.

You guys are all okay with it?

Thank you.

Thank you.

Hey, next up, next up we've got item number 2, presentation on West Point Park boundary line agreement. Ryan, would you like to take that? Yes, thank you, Mayor.

All right, perfect. Here to talk to you tonight about Westmore Park and Westmore Elementary. Uh, this came up, came to our attention a couple weeks ago. Alpine School District has been going around and securing their sites, um, with fencing under new state law. They now are required to make sure their campuses are secured So they're going to be installing a fence along this property line here. And what they have found out with the surveyor going out there is that the deeds overlap, the record deeds do. And so it's not really a very clean property line right now. So the solution is to come up with a proposed boundary line between both parcels. And for us and school district to agree to that line, and then Alpine can go in and put their fence in. So you'll notice there's a pathway that goes into the park right here. The fence will not cut that pathway off. It'll go to this corner and connect to the existing fence, so the neighbors that live over here can still access the park. But the fence would run from that corner down to— there's a fence corner right here. So the neighbors can't walk into school property, but they continue to be able to walk into the park. Is that correct?

That's correct.

So here it is zoomed in a little bit better. So the proposed boundary line agreement goes from a fence corner with this home to a fence corner with this home.

Okay.

And again, that's about where the fence will tie in, leaving that path open. So they had a surveyor do a record of survey, and that's what this map shows. This is it kind of in its entirety, isn't blown up. So again, the boundary itself will go from fence corner to fence corner. The fence will not. But the description of the boundary line is from fence corner to fence corner. And then they say the purpose of the survey is to define an agreed-upon boundary line between Alpen School District and Orange City property. Are we gaining a little land or losing a little land? If anything, It's really unknown. This is kind of what we have occupied the entire time. So we've kind of honored this as the boundary between the 2 parties, and we've been maintaining it that way. The only thing that will have to happen is Orem has some sprinkler heads that we need to move, and the school district has some sprinkler heads they need to move. But for the most part, it's kind of been where we've all thought the boundary was the whole time. They have staked it, and I've walked it with Chris. And his parks team has looked at it. They don't have any concerns with what's proposed. So that if council is okay with this and there aren't any concerns, um, Seabrook is working on an agreement right now, then both parties will review it, and then Brent will be the one to sign it. But we just wanted to make sure you're all aware of it and it was brought to your attention. So any questions?

Is this something you're going to do with all the schools like Flip Mill that shares that park?

They haven't approached us with foot fill yet, but I would not be surprised. They did Sharon last year, and they did Centennial. They did Orem Elementary as well. And we didn't hear about those because there wasn't a property dispute. Yeah, yeah, because they have the right to go in and do the fence on their property. And we're not sharing the cost of the fence. We are not.

We're just moving a few sprinkler heads. Yeah. I'm still unclear from what Tom's question was. Was, are we gaining or losing?

Yeah. Um, when you don't know where the boundary line is, a surveyor is hired to determine where it is.

How about based on what we thought it was, are we gaining or losing?

I say it's about where we always thought it was.

It's negligible. It's pretty minuscule.

It isn't a lot of ground. If you were to— well, can you get it to—

Well, kind of, that's the question. How wide is that? Those 2 lines, what's the difference between those 2 lines?

Well, well, the border is 3 feet. So here's— this is a good example. Our grass is usually darker because Chris's team fertilizes it well, fertilizes it well. And you can kind of see the fence corner. It's really not that much different than what we've been occupying. Just because deeds overlap, record deeds, doesn't mean that that's true ownership.

Ownership is what's occupied on the ground.

A surveyor uses best evidence to determine where they think that boundary line is. Do we need to do a dollar and other value consideration on either side if we're just going to agree to the new line? Correct. Just agree to it. And our city surveyor has reviewed this. He doesn't have any concerns with what their surveyor has prepared.

So are you saying the line is the difference in the fertilization?

Yeah, pretty much.

Yeah.

So Brian has used the term used. But essentially what we maintain.

Yeah, yeah, right.

And after X years, that becomes ownership, doesn't it?

So, well, it depends as long as you've done something.

I'm not an attorney, but Steve can answer that. Yeah, more of a hassle at the moment.

Yeah, you have to go right up to the fence.

Yeah, so we'll be putting a mower curb under it. Oh, are they? That would be helpful.

So this is mostly just informational because nothing's really changing.

That's right, it's matching the application.

But the— so the fence to the school will be completely locked?

Correct.

But the park access will not be at all? We will just have an opening, is that correct?

Yeah.

Okay, park will still be— there will be no opening though between the park and the school.

And the school.

Just that state— that sidewalk will stay in prisons for your children.

Is that like a soccer field that you're using or something?

Um, they must have at one time. I don't know when this, this photo was taken. Well, it says '24, but when Chris and I were out there, there weren't any soccer fields marked. It looks like that, that it was crossing that line at that time.

We reviewed it with our rec staff.

We are not currently using the field for any youth or anything like that, so it will not impact our ability to run a program. Any other questions? There's an idea. There's a good—

I think we're good. Okay, thank you. Okay. Thanks, Ryan.

Do we need to do anything more? Do we— does this have to come to a future meeting? No, Bryn will be able to move the green tag. As always, if some sort of question or concern or clarification comes up, always feel free to let me know. Hey, you're doing good. Your back looks good. Way to go.

Worked hard.

You did a great job. I think to, uh, just take a 5-minute break, go and grab our food.

We got 45 minutes.

That's right, I know.

I never—

I just have to talk.

Serve it up today.

Let's go, let's go ahead and take a break, food, and yes, beginning prayer. Thank you, volunteers. Our Father in heaven, we're grateful we can be gathered under favorable circumstances to try to do some good for this city. We thank for the food that's been brought in, and we ask for a blessing upon it in the name of Jesus Christ.

Amen. Okay, we'll just break for 5 minutes and then come right back.

I'm glad you guys are eating to stay ready for this thing, but I, I just wanted to introduce Steve Cannon. Um, recently our IT division split into 2 divisions. It was part of our efficiency study, um, so that we could focus more on security and on the development side. So Steve Cannon is our new division manager over security and development, but with some new, um, bills that were passed in the last legislative session, he's also taken on the privacy role for the city as well, which is going to be a big responsibility moving forward, and he's going to discuss that a little bit.

Thank you.

long now. But I will tell you, it's getting the right people in the right seats to make this organization successful. And Steve Cannon is one of the most technically savvy, smart, intelligent human beings that you'll ever meet. So when he bores me to death, you know, shut up.

With that, allow me to flop. So if you guys don't mind, I handle this a little better standing. That's, that's okay. So the 2 big topics that we're going to discuss is kind of a citywide overall general cybersecurity framework and what that means. It sounds big and ambiguous, and I want to make it a little more concrete for you. And then the second portion of the conversation is to talk about what the city is currently doing in response to the state of Utah's General Government Data Privacy Act, or House Bill 180. So that's kind of the Roadmap that we're going to follow today. Big idea is that the city is adopting— or, yeah, I'd say that's a fair statement. The city is adopting a framework of cybersecurity across the organization. We've chosen a framework called governance, risk, and compliance. The method here is to take governance, your policy, your procedure, your controls, right, to document all of those and bring them into conformity within this framework. Then to take a look at your risks, catalog those risks, and to identify which of those can be mitigated, the low-hanging fruit, and work your way up, right? And then compliance. We have a number of different businesses that are a conglomerate of the City of Warren, and they are regulated in many, in very different ways, from criminal justice information security requirements to critical infrastructure, water and wastewater. to now the state of Utah's General Data Privacy Act for things like citizen data implied library, right? We've got PCI or payment card industry standards for taking payments, right? These all are ways in which we are currently regulated in how we do business, and they can be a bear to try to attack. from individual positions. It's better to take a holistic approach. So we found that the management of IT departments does not effectively regulate an organization's data. This is why regulating the data itself ends up being the new standard. But why is it ineffective? And the answer is because information technology departments and divisions are no longer the only ones implementing information technologies in the organization, right? And we don't necessarily want to do that. Stymies growth and innovation. It leaves us, you know, at the whim of the available cycles of personnel in IT, right? And so people see a problem in their job and they go to the internet, they see potential solutions.

Right?

And what we're proposing here is a— forgive me, I need some water— a clear and consistent framework for evaluating the way in which we implement IT and really our data across the entire organization. So I asked ChatGPT to take the major regulatory frameworks That we are currently under, that fall under our ways of doing business, and to graph them. And this is the fabulous 3rd/4th dimension picture that it presented itself. So, to calm the chaos and to produce a consistent way of looking at this problem, the recommended solution is to use a single unifying Cybersecurity Framework. That's a whole lot of words. I want to back out of all of that real quick. And I want to talk about something that's maybe a little more concrete. So that this, this turns the right switch in your mind. Building code. I want to talk about building code. We have, and we adopt as a city, International Building Code, right? And that governs the way in which we build buildings in the city of Orem. Imagine if we said, International Building Code, that's nice and all, but we're going to do it our own way. And we're going to develop a new type of code each time we build a new type of building. And as people exit the role of code enforcement, they may apply a different code than the previous person, producing inconsistency across the board. So we've Adopt the International Building Code. So does International Building Code define how your buildings look?

No.

It defines what an acceptable height for a ceiling or width for a hallway or the run of some stairs. But there's a dance there, right? There's the creative input, and then there's also the Known measures to keep us safe. Adopting and inspecting to the International Building Code standard offers us as a city a level of indemnification. People can't come back on us when they fall or when the building burns down if we've inspected and that building was built to International Building Code. We can't be negligent.

About that, right?

Like, we, we can't say we adopt IBC, but then we don't really test or look at it. So there's, there's our part to do our due diligence, right? But, but ultimately, we don't make a decision every time a new building comes up. We lean on the International Building Code to produce hopefully a positive outcome every time. And in places where we believe it should not apply to us, We change our code, right? We acknowledge it. We go through a formal process of saying, this does not apply to us, or we're going to apply it slightly different because of where we live. What I'm asking for is the same thing in the way in which we build our information systems and the way in which we manage our data. So, In steps a very accessible data information and security framework. The Center for Internet Security Controls version 8 is what IT has been operating off of since 2007. But again, as we've discussed already, IT is implemented across the organization, not just by the Information technology department. So again, management of IT departments does not effectively regulate an organization's data, and that is why regulating the data itself is the new standard, and, and regulating it organization-wide. So what does this afford us? What are the benefits of doing this? Not only do we get a safer, more consistent product, But also based upon Utah House Bill 80, it, in the same way that building code offers us a level of indemnification, if we have adopted a cybersecurity framework and are actively building toward it, then we also have a level of indemnification if a cybersecurity event occurs. So, there's a— Verizon does this study internationally every year. It's called the DBIR, the Data Breach and Incident Analysis Report. In the 2023 calendar year, the average cost of a cybersecurity event worldwide was $4.5 million roughly. And the United States led the pack again, I think for the 15th year running. In which the average cost of a data breach in the United States is $9.5 million.

When you say that, cost to who? The cost to who?

The cost to the organization that was breached. So this would be data forensics. This would be buying identity management, or there's a better term for this, forgive me.

Would that be like individual companies? Would that be The software that's protecting against the data breach.

This would be the individual company that was breached in just managing the event, whether from a technical standpoint or from a social standpoint or from a legal requirements standpoint. We would be— let's say we were breached, right? Utah state law requires us to offer identity protection services to any of the data humans whose data was breached for a period of 2 years. That can be a hefty sum. That answer your question? Yeah.

Like your credit report, you know, I mean, I've had— I've gotten those emails. We've been breached. We're giving you free whatever. Yeah. Is that all added into that?

Yes. Yes. Okay. So, um, the Internet Center for Internet Security Controls is really good. I think that's kind of the— what's kind of the big idea from the Cybersecurity Framework standard. Any questions? There's my—

So where do we go? You're saying we don't have it.

So—

Yeah.

So—

We need it, obviously.

I presented, you know, Longer and more verbose version of this presentation to executive staff and put forward some documents that would kind of formally state our claim to a specific cybersecurity framework. Once adopted, we would be applying these policies, procedures, and controls, not just to IT, but organization-wide.

Okay. So you have a plan, you're implementing it.

Yeah. Yeah. So in the same way that there can be an awkward moment with a building inspector, as you build or have a contractor build something, and the inspector identifies some less than desirable build qualities that could impact life safety, right? There's that renegotiation of Particulars and changes must occur, right? Good example, your password. Password's one of those fundamental building blocks for security. And over time, there have been a number of different ways in which we've attempted to mitigate that issue, right? It has to be 8 characters. Well, it has to be 8 characters, and it has to be changed every 3 months. Well, actually, you can make it 12 characters, and we can do some security work on the backend, and then you only have to change it every year or every 2 years, right? These ultimately, these best practices govern in many instances some of the basic ways in which you interface with technology and actually govern some of the ways in which we are able to manage how we do security On the backend. Good example. We store a lot of data, and that data may be stored in clear text. And if that data were stolen, there is zero barrier to entry for a bad guy to have all of the information available to them to do whatever they like with it. A good security framework would identify that information stored at the core of your network should be encrypted. And if stolen, that encryption should be strong enough that it would be extremely difficult for bad guys to get access to the raw data. And so these would be some of the ways in which we can change things on the back end, but there definitely are front-end changes that impact employees and you guys as well. Does that help? So I just want to emphasize Adding more security will mean increased inconvenience for you on council and us as staff. It means— it'll mean creating stronger passwords, it'll mean adding 2-factor authentication, things like that. You've seen other organizations start— I use my same password everywhere. Do I have to change all of them? Get with me After this, yeah, I can show you something. I love orb is my password. It should be Tom followed by your birthday. Yeah, no one knows it. The 2 most common passwords: I love you and password123. So, uh, Yeah, good. Any further questions on that topic before we start talking about the privacy? I want to know, do you wear a tie every day to work or just for this? Actually, it's blaggy. Early on in my appointment here, I wore a tie every day. I was actually told by the previous development services director to lose the tie. So I lost the tie. That's again, right, it was administrative services. Maybe if you don't do it, Steve, because you'd be— Steve has actually been becoming, has been becoming a, I guess, a leader in this field in the state. So maybe you could just give an example or two of what you've seen, where you've seen failures by other cities. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So there was, there was the Eagle Mountain financial manipulation in which they lost a million. Actually, we've had the same type of tactics attempted and applied on us in the last 2 months. We were able to catch the scam. And we were able to notify the company that had been compromised that the scam had been running through, that they were compromised, to help them resolve that. I want to say it was West Jordan or West Valley, forgive me.

It's West Jordan.

West Jordan.

That place where I lived.

Yeah, so we actually, we had a sit-down, maybe not from the advice of counsel. IT, local IT directors had a sit-down. We talked about the particulars of that breach. And how many of the particulars of that breach leaned on the fundamentals of these cybersecurity frameworks, the hottest topics within these frameworks that you're supposed to address almost immediately.

They love me.

What they—

and, you know, they had haphazardly applied them because some of the engineers knew best practices and some of them did not, right? And again, the beauty of a framework is not to make a unique and bespoke decision every time you need to build something, is to be able to turn to the framework and say, these are the standards by which I need to build this, right? And then you both agree, 2 engineers or 2 different cities, you both agree on what best practices end up being. And then we did have a meeting with Salt Lake. Salt Lake actually had an intrusion. I wouldn't— they wouldn't call it a breach, but they, they did identify a malicious actor who had gained administrative access to one of their systems. And again, by implementing best practices, identified an anomaly in their system, were able to quarantine that system, and were able to remediate it before it turned into something nasty.

Sure.

And then I do spend a bit of time with the Department of Homeland Security, CISA, the Critical Infrastructure Cybersecurity Agency, where we go through on a week-by-week basis, really right now, the hot topic, the hot button item in cybersecurity in relation to the United States' critical infrastructure and Chinese state actors. obtaining a foothold or obtaining access into critical infrastructure and remaining there, not doing it, not exfiltrating data, not shunting data home, and not bringing down the system, but leaving a door open so that if geopolitical— and the argument right now, or at least the general belief by the US government, is that they, they're lying in wait so that if the geopolitical tension becomes less than desirable, they have the ability to shut down water, wastewater, electrical, and transportation infrastructure.

Right?

So these are some of the ways in which— and we've banded together as IT directors around the city, or sorry, around the state, and we are currently sharing our policies our procedures and our controls with each other so that we can build better policies. Because the hive mind, the group mind there, we see so much, so much differently than one another, because the way in which Salt Lake is attacked is not the way in which Hurricane Utah is. But we also get to build up the service that gets provided in Hurricane because we're sharing information. So, I mean, it's, you know, Like, so I know in business today, you know, an employee will click on an email and then all of a sudden, you know, so is that the main thing? But I'm assuming that they're a little more technical or advanced. It's not through an email.

It's maybe—

Actually, so there are a number of stages within the chain of a compromise, right? And the number 1 method right now that malicious actors get into a secured network is actually through We don't compromise. Okay.

So, okay. It's still open.

But, you know, these frameworks allow us to identify methods of building layered security on the ways in which we do business so that if we are compromised at the— It stops the next one. Exactly. We have mitigations in place. They're in the doors. Exactly. Sales specialists. Like, like what used to be referred to as a man trap in data centers or in banks. or in vaults where you have to step into a room and the door closes behind you, and that door has to be closed before you're capable of stepping into the next room. We do that digitally. Can I give an example of what happened recently?

Please.

So I'm a part of the Toba River Water Users Association, and their, all of their networks was hacked by a group of people in China. Where they had access to gates to control water. Sorry, in our state, in our water system, they took everything off of the internet and just did a— they did everything. They communicate through their own in-house network that's not connected to the outside world as a result of that. That happened about 6 years ago. So it's real. Yeah, I mean, that's crazy. And, and Dave, also, if you— but we were having kind of a sidebar conversation here, but we have required training that comes out very regularly and automatically that teaches and trains our employees on how to identify and protect the city against the latest strategies to attack.

Many people love to click, you know, and then you're screwed. Well, they are getting better and better. What they're putting out.

Actually, so what Brent was referring to actually ends up being 2 different interactions from the same product. One of them are required videos of, hey, this is how you spot something bad in person, right? The other side of that is that we actually send some emails that look bad, that are bad in the same ways in which malicious actors gain access to your network. And then when you click on it, it notifies you, hey, this was a scam email. These are the things that you probably should have caught. Better luck next time, right? So we are attempting to not only, like, offer educational materials, but also engaging hands-on training. And again, all of this is prescribed in these cybersecurity frameworks. And from an IT perspective, this is kind of the— these are industry best practices. These are the ways in which we want to build. Again, again, going back to the earlier conversation, this has to be regulated organization-wide because it is no longer just IT that implements information technology. So, Stephen, as part of this, correct me if I'm wrong, we'll be coming back with a resolution. as part of those house bills. It kind of helps us meet those, indicating that we as— you as City Council agree to these frameworks. Probably not, probably not a resolution. This is just going to be a policy that is adopted by Brent as city manager.

But I think this is to kind of let council know that this is the direction we're So where, where are we at right now as far as where you're trying to go on with our budget?

Uh, so the foundation of any good cybersecurity program is making sure that executives are on board. Uh, this presentation was given in exec staff 2 weeks ago-ish, and I think, uh, unanimously interested. I think the conversation from that presentation was that this presentation should go to the council as well. well, just to make sure that we're all on board so that there's a level of transparency so you guys see what we're doing, uh, to ensure that— listen, I'm a citizen of Warren. I want my data that is held by the city as secure as anyone else. I'm personally invested in this, right? And, and I think it's the right conversation to make sure that, uh, the council is aware of the efforts that are being made by the city to secure the city's data. And I want— and we as exec staff want you to be aware when there's a policy that rises to this level and, you know, the standards and practices that intended.

So, so I'm still a little confused on— so we got the city board currently has no official adopted framework.

So where are we going? We have, uh, the documentation already handed to exec staff, and I think this kind of— this conversation was just the final Final step in ensuring that we put that stamp of approval on it. Address any concerns that you guys have.

Any—

I think the big conversation here ends up being that there is usability and there is security. Anything that is completely usable is not secure, and anything that is completely secure is not usable. Right? And so, as we move the needle, from usability into a little more security, there may be some frustration. There may be some friction. Now, we'll attempt to apply technical solutions to those problems as much as we can, but ultimately, many of those frictions are unavoidable. I mean, did you have something?

Well, I get you kind of answered it because I was like, is it a— this thing, it's not about— I mean, it's more tightening down privacy. by tightening down the usability? Sometimes it's not going to open us up for privacy concerns. If not, if anything else, it would go the other direction.

So actually, this dovetails beautifully into the next section, which is the privacy conversation. Because yet, yet again, one more way in which we are now regulated in the way that we do business as the city is Utah House Bill 491, which regulates how we engage in privacy of the data that we hold, right? It identifies a couple of big ideas. Number 1 is that the subject of the data, you, right, each of you natural humans, are actually the owners of the data. Because we have it in our care does not mean that we own that data. It does not mean that we can do as we want with that data.

Right?

So this is, this is one of the ways in which the Utah State Legislature has changed the Conversation about how we acquire, how we store, how we process, how we delete that data. And this supports that cybersecurity framework, supports us in doing the next step.

That was my question. You're wanting me to support something that, that represents— that is what you just represented. Then I'm good with that, right? As long as the privacy is also protected.

So that's the second part of this conversation. I'm just gonna close on this because I didn't— I don't have a presentation for the privacy. So privacy side of the conversation. So House Bill 491 was passed, and there are provisions that are required for us to be compliant with beginning May 1st of this year. And we have a runway of up until May 1st of, I want to say, 2027, 2028, I think it's 2027, to be compliant with all of the provisions identified in that bill. One of which is to have a written privacy program that identifies the values and the vision and the particulars Of the way in which we secure people's data and ultimately keep it private. So a couple of things that we've done so far is we have adopted a citywide privacy notice. This was part of the legislation. What we did was, rather than have each kind of business organization draft their own privacy statement, we look to do one holistically. So we wrote one that we believe fits almost every way in which we're currently doing business within reasonable limits, right? And that is now available on OREM's website. Ultimately, to be compliant, we're going to have to post that either in physical form or in linked form anywhere which we acquire. Let's see, the language here is very specific. Where we collect or acquire citizens' information, but not just citizens. I want to be clear about the types of data that the city holds, right? We have citizens' data. We have employee data, but we also have non-citizens and non-employees' data. These would be people who run or who build things in the city. Or who—

Vendors.

Vendors, another great example of that. We need to make sure that we are engaging in proper categorization of that data and making sure that we're compliant with the ways in which the state has asked us to manage, maintain, store, and ultimately delete that data. So in addition, right, we've also implemented at this point a uniform Contract addendum that is also required by the state bill. When dealing with vendors who will store or transmit citizen or employee data, any contract that has a— that has been signed post-May 1st, we've implemented this contract addendum. A couple of the items in that addendum identify that the data in which the third party will hold is not theirs. It's the City of Lawrence, and ultimately, that citizens have the right to correct and audit the data that the city stores. And therefore, these third parties would need to be compliant with those requests as well. And that that data cannot be used for a different purpose than what was stated at the time the data was collected.

Okay, so that's in our policy right there.

That is— so that is in the contract addendum with third parties.

Because that's key right there.

It is. Let's see, what's the— and the last kind of big step that we're working on right now is we need to have a written privacy program in place before May 1st, 2025. So the big ideas that are currently contained in the draft version of the strategy identifies the different types of data that the city holds. It identifies the different lifecycle events that occur within that data, whether that's acquisition, the storage of that data, the processing of that data, and ultimately the deletion of that data as it outlives its retention cycle. And then the values that the city— and I think the state's done a really good job here of encouraging us in the right direction for these values, but I also think that, you know, we should affirm them individually as well.

Yes.

Collectively, I mean, as a city. And those are the right of notice. So the right to— for people to know that we are collecting information about them, the right to choice, the right to correct, and the right to audit that information. Now, the bill does not offer citizens the right to delete that data. But I think there's a discussion there. Ultimately, that comes down to the retention cycle. And then finally, the organizational values of Data minimization, meaning we are collecting only the minimum amount of data needed for us to complete the task that we are attempting to accomplish, that we are going to limit the purpose of that data only to what we collected it for and what we disclosed that we were using it for. And then data safeguarding while it is in our custody so that it is encrypted at rest and encrypted in transit. So we're being good stewards. With the data as we hold it, and then ultimately reasonable retention and deletion. So those are the big ideas.

Questions?

Hearing none, I'll show the first one. Thank you.

I just have one question, please. And it's kind of a trivial one, but I'm just curious as far as our system here and where you're going as far as security, if you're able to have Apple, like an Apple laptop, integrate with the system okay?

That comes down to more of a technical limitation than a privacy one.

Not privacy, but just as far as this new format that you're talking about building.

Yeah, let's see, how can I I can approach this from many different levels. I think I'm going to try to keep it super high level. The investment that the city has made traditionally in our operating programs and the way in which we leverage computers to do business more effectively and efficiently and share data across the organization has uniquely been tailored to Windows operating system because it has traditionally been the operating system of choice inside the enterprise environment. Bringing the body of programs and software that we have developed over the last 20 years onto a completely separate platform is a Herculean undertaking. And that is why the new applications that we have begun to develop, the new class of applications that we've begun to develop, have been based in a web browser. So that they are platform independent or agnostic. Now, the next question invariably would be, what would be the timeframe?

Right?

And again, a Herculean effort. So it depends upon ultimately, unfortunately, the answer to your question is it depends. It depends on what services you rely upon and that you use within your job function. And then the kind of the second component of that is compatibility with the security products that we buy. Ultimately, the more— the larger number of platforms that we need to support, usually ends up meaning a larger number of dollars that we have to hand to vendors. And so we reduce, reuse, and recycle by keeping a consistent and narrow standard. I'm not sure that that answered the question that you really wanted me to answer.

I guess, in short, when maybe it's not changing, but where we're at right now, and then this new platform that we're talking about establishing, right, going into the future, that that new platform, you know, will work the same way as this one as far as Apple products, I guess.

Yeah. Let's take a look at the city 15 years down the road. 15 years down the road, we are platform agnostic. There's no other way. Reasonably continue to offer the level of service that we offer if we don't choose a platform agnostic development method moving forward. But unfortunately, that timeline sucks. You finally said something that is music to Pete's ears because he loves Apple products for design and communication. I actually originally got into IT managing fleets of Macs, fleets of Apple computers. Pros and cons, most definitely. But unquestionably, the foundations that we have built as a city that make us as efficient as we are today were built with the dependency level we most probably—

All right, thanks.

Any other questions?

Just a comment. Thank you for your work on this. It's probably well beyond most of our collective abilities to understand, but we really appreciate that you're working on it for us. Thank you.

So do you see an additional cost to do this, to move into this direction?

On the security framework side?

No, no.

But as we go deeper into the— good example, let's go going back to construction, right? Is it cheaper to have no fire Small farms in Japan. Is it cheaper to build a building that doesn't have seismic? Yes, exactly. Yes, invariably the answer is yes. But I think actually the low-hanging fruit as we implement these security frameworks, it doesn't cost us necessarily anymore to make sure that a hallway is 3 feet wide, right? It doesn't necessarily cost us to make sure that stairwell is not too Our stairways are not too pitched that, you know, people are likely to fall down. And initially, I think the same economy will play out in this arena. We can make subtle and reasonable changes to the way in which we do business that does not change the cost conversation. However, as we go further down, alarming systems, security systems, safety systems ultimately will end up being a change— meaning a change in the dollar amount allocated.

So it seems like the last 3 years we've upped our IT budget. Am I not— am I remembering correctly here? Is this an addition that you're saying, or have we covered some of this in that— this budget, these improvements that we've made with that? For this budget year, it's included for what we're doing here. Okay. One thing I would keep in mind too, as, as Outside vendors get more expensive because they inevitably do. That's why our budget has to increase with the market. But I would also say too that as, as the bad actors are getting more and more savvy, we have to be more savvy too. And at some point, this privacy and security is probably going to be more than Steve can handle on his own. So in the future, it might might take another person. But that's not something that we're looking at.

And another really big idea here is that we're in a transformational time. IT is a really young discipline. I mean, almost every different business unit in the city is engaging in some type of digital transformation right now. And our appetite for that change far exceeds the size of our stomach. Striking a balance and making sure that we are being responsible with the dollars that we're spending and that we're saying yes in the right ways and no in the right ways, I think will ultimately define the amount of budget that needs to go into this. But I do not believe— I don't see a future 10 years from now in which we're using less technology. And so I think invariably the budget will grow.

And we need to keep in mind too, the depth of our responsibility with our critical infrastructure, just in Chris's department alone with the water and treatment plant. That's, that's very significant to the entire community. And so it's very important that we protect it.

The other side of that coin almost has to be criminal justice information systems. Because of the type of data that is stored in there, we need to make sure that we are good custodians. Well, thank you guys. I appreciate it. Thank you. Sorry I went a little longer.

No, you're good.

It just cuts down on Chris's, uh— Okay, let's move on to Chris.

Would you like to give us a presentation or commission?

Yeah, thank you. So the commissions that I've been working with, um, you'll hear, uh, actually meeting this evening by So, uh, the libraries and some of the major innovative activities that they've been pursuing. And the other is the, uh, Orem Fest slash events, the Orem Events Commission, that we're considering that, uh, revision just to create the amount of effort that has gone into creating Orem Fest to create that foundation for all of the other events and activities for the city, but at least have that city staffing support for that. And, um, it's, it's going well. But right now, you know, that it's been a lot of festivals, those on that commission, as we renew, as was mentioned, will be aware of that. So it's going to be more of a help with more of those things that the citizens need input. The other area that I'm working on is, uh, the Heritage Commission. Heritage Commission right now is, uh, has a contractor who is looking at various neighborhoods within the city in there.

So we allocate resources to particular neighborhoods, and they've—

the commission's chose, uh, chosen a particular neighborhood to look at. They evaluate that, see if there's anything that needs to go on their preservation, uh, recording, those kind of things. So that's in process and regularly on that.

The final area that I've been helping on is, uh, this—

the Utah League of Cities and Towns on the Legislative Policy Committee. I know that there's several staff at the city that are working on that, and then I just participate. That's one that's critical to the future of our city as legislature and what they do to impact all of the cities in the state. So been very vigilant on that. I was in a meeting for a couple hours yesterday, so it's an ongoing effort.

We're continuing to focus.

That's probably the fast version of what we're doing. Um, several others on the council, some of the other committees, these committees that I am as well. So those are the—

Okay, you feel good about where we're at with the legislature and monitoring that, working with them?

Actually, I've been working with Brent also. He's— he has some of his, uh, employees that we're looking to create, um, representation from the city that will be actively pursuing all of that. Well, so there's a plan in place and we're pursuing that right now.

Yeah, no, I, I agree. I mean, that's, that's a critical piece as far as to make sure that we have a voice at the table of what's getting inflicted on us.

We always feel good when they're not in session. Well, yes, for example, yesterday's meeting, lengthy. We were talking about a lot of subjects that when they go into legislature, they will have already had bills prepared.

So we're—

so it's in the middle of reviewing all of those bills and getting input and saying, yeah, right.

And sometimes we have some major bills that we want to proactively take to our legislators and push. Yes.

So, so all of that.

And I just want to say thank you for doing that, because even going up to the League meetings— was that last week? Remember when we went? There was one large—

The annual conference one.

Yeah, on housing. And they flipped up a bill that is— they've opened a bill file on, and they were saying some of the things. And there was, um, I, I don't know if there was any— I didn't get the vibe of any city in there that wanted that housing bill. Did you? Because that one was so extreme. Oh yeah, unbelievable. And I'm like, are they doing that to start here so they can get what they really want, or where— what is going on here? That was— thank you for representing what's going on here in Orem.

Housing, every time we've had that discussion, it's pretty obvious that the 2 groups are pretty far apart.

Yeah.

And as soon as we say yes, they say, great, here's the other 6 things.

Yeah. Well, and there were other city leaders that were just being quite vocal in those meetings. I was, I was grateful for that to see.

Same, same.

It just made me think, let's join together here and really communicate that.

We would again, we'll get to it. I'm gonna call at 10.

Yes.

Yes. In terms of staff support, as you're kind of saying already, Big focus and increasing focus of our state legislature is on development, planning, zoning, housing subjects. And so I'm hoping to bring in Steve Earl, Brian Clark, Gary McGinn to— because there's a lot of information and concerning information that's coming in hard and fast. And we also want to as mayor is talking about, get ahead of leading some of the narrative to some of that narrative that you've been hearing some of the other cities now talk about is the idea of promoting, I guess, renewal and revitalization efforts for what, what we term as legacy cities. And obviously, it's sort of one of those legacy cities. So the fact that we're starting to hear that from others, Is, is kind of positive. Starting that narrative and having those conversations is building momentum. And we're starting to hear an interest that, I guess, from the state, that they may be willing to do legislation now is hopefully positive and helpful in what we want to pursue.

Right. We've started that conversation. So it's nice to see other people coming in too.

Can I ask a question?

Yeah.

So, you know, some of these— I've been involved in some of these meetings, as has Linnea and the mayor, I know. Um, and, you know, some of these issues that come up and they, you know, the league, for example, will ask how representatives from cities feel about a certain position, and sometimes there's not unanimity, right? There's differing opinions on some issues. And sometimes, you know, I'm like, well, this is how I feel, but I'm not entirely sure how council might feel about this. So I mean, just to give you an example, one of the proposals that's out there is, um, a potential bill to allow detached accessory dwelling units. So by right, so that the legislature would say you have to allow it detached. Right now they say you have to allow an internal accessory dwelling unit, but allowing it detached is a very different animal.

It might be.

I don't know, would there be some value in having discussion among council about how you collectively feel about some of these things so that we can sort of represent you in our— not talking about a united front. That takes a long time. I mean, that's just one. There may be other issues that we'd want to talk about and make sure we— and that might help us also if we know that everybody kind of feels the same. That might help us as we approach our own legislators. Can I give you a couple more examples?

Yeah.

For every—

everything that's approved, X number of acres, they want to say no, there's 4 more than whatever you provide.

Right.

All right.

We'll agree to only 1 more.

Right.

So if the housing is approved for 5 or 6 acres, let's say 6, they'll say no, we automatically approve for 10.

Yeah.

Okay, how about just 7? You know, it's right.

Well, they start with the ridiculous. So they will—

Even the infrastructure, even if you just say 1 more, we don't have infrastructure in all these areas to provide for water, sewer, roads, etc. And then off-street parking, you know, that's a big issue. Every one of these developers pretty much say the same thing. And the Utah League of Cities and Towns and various of us who are on that committee say, yeah, we don't— that doesn't work for us. And Steve and I sometimes are on the same call, and you're kind enough to text me so that I can be the voice, or you can give—

or in fact, we were all texting.

some ammunition so we can look as smart as Steve. I mean, that's an example of how we were kind of collaborating. And it might be helpful to get, you know, the entire council involved in knowing where we are. Yeah, I'm assuming that you don't want to have late patented approval for— if it was 6, you were okay.

Yeah.

I'm also assuming you want to have a parking limit that's similar to what we have. What was the first one you mentioned? The external ADUs. The external ADUs. I I think, I think I know the council's decision. So happy to hear that. I mean, just to give you an example where there's maybe a little bit more ambiguity, you know, one of the proposals there, the developers are asking for is a requirement that you can't require more than 2 off-street parking stalls for a residential unit. Well, my opinion is that doesn't really bother us that much because we only require 2 right now. So if they're saying you can't require more than 2.

Well, we're already there.

We're already there. Right. A lot of other jurisdictions don't like that, are opposed to it. And that's where you kind of teed up at least Renee and I on another call. That's kind of helpful to know that. Yeah. But so I mean, that's kind of, you know, maybe it would be helpful to know if the rest of the council has a concern with that before I say, oh, we don't care.

Well, I don't know how we— I mean, so how do we make that happen? Yeah, the way we would make that happen would be if if there were concerns and staff wanted to put those together. What do you think about this? This—

we could have a conversation, work sessions, work sessions, or even small groups.

Because there—

I mean, just another example, guys, they put out, you know, we should charge for parking in front of your home, the street parking. That was one of the things put out there. I'm like, really? Is that—

well, so some, some of the projects down They charge— if you live in a multifamily complex and you have a driveway, you don't own that. You either pay for it or they'll sell it to your neighbor to live in your driveway.

Wow.

It's ridiculous. So there's some interesting stuff going on. Yeah.

Maybe we do.

Maybe we bring some of these things from these questions they give us.

Yeah. Right.

We kind of know what the issues are. Yes, maybe we turn some of those polls into a survey. And if we do find that we have consensus among council on these issues, then I think it's easier for us to go to our own legislators and say, look, we really want you to oppose this or to favor this. We have, we have come to an agreement on several things. The one that sticks in my mind right now is if you're doing manufacturing at a central location, And you're putting parts together, you know, maybe walls or whatever, that cities will accept that inspection so they don't have to do an inspection there. And when it goes to the city, I thought that was, you know, for prefab portions. I think all the city got together on that and said, yeah, we have a unified inspector. We're okay with that. And that was one of the few things we brought to the governor that they said, great. we've got developers and the cities that were okay with that. But after that, most of them are further apart than some of those things. You might think of others, Stephen, that I'm not thinking of, where we came to an agreement, the governor was happy, and on it went. Or the governor's committee. I mean, I think there have been a lot of those things that have happened over the years.

Right?

That's the most recent. technically, ADUs in basements is where there's been something of an agreement.

Yeah.

And so one thing that I'd love to get your opinion on and ideas on is, how do we, how do we flesh that out and address either positives or negatives related with that?

Yeah.

So that it is, so that that's used, and then we can say, back to the state, hey, look, we're being a good actor in relation to basement ADUs and, and still try to ensure that they are safely implemented.

Because we modified our rules where it used to be you had to have your own HVAC in that separate location, different entry. I mean, we modified all that to coincide with the state code, right? And so now I want to make sure that the state— our state legislators don't forget To give us credit for that. Ultimately, that plays into the total future.

But you know what, Tom, I'm not gonna stop saying it. We did, because when we start acquiescing, when we start, you know, when we stop saying, look, we've done this with Penn, they did takes and takes and takes, right?

So, well, I hope you're talking about when you're there, you know, each city, like, Orem is different than, say, Alpine or Mapleton, where we are built out, right? 95%. So one, the glove doesn't fit everybody, right?

You provide a lot of rentals.

So you can't just do a bright red, you know, swastika and say, hey, this is what it's going to be. It doesn't work. Well, and that's a, that's a point that the league hammers on a lot. They're one size fits all. Yeah. So, and the thing is, the narrative from the state that there's this big housing shortage problem, they're going to keep They keep continuing to communicate that. And so we, I think we need to continue to communicate the solutions that already exist and/or can be improved.

And we want to put some things out about the solutions we're doing here.

Exactly.

So we can proactively show what we're doing here to solve these problems.

And correct their data, because I appreciate it, you know, where they say you're short $200,000. And you're like, We have entitled 180,000. So we're not short 200,000.

That's what you mean. Yes.

Yeah, when they say we're short 200,000 housing units, there's been 180,000 that have been entitled. So stop making it look so dire. We got 20,000 we got to work with.

And then how many of those will add internal ADU?

Yeah, that is 10,000 maybe, right?

But it's, it's a very active conversation. We're in the thick of, so we do want to make sure we can share information.

I think a Google Doc or survey among us would be very helpful. And I think within co— legally, we can do a survey, can we not? I'm sure we could do a survey among council. Sure. Good. I think that would be very helpful. Okay, Ryan, Ryan, I'm going to say you as to what's legal or not.

The only tricky thing about a survey We can do basics on survey, but the only tricky thing is some things need an explanation and a conversation. And that's what we're going to have to end the meeting.

Right. So I think, I think we can get 8 of the 10 things pretty darn unanimous on them. Some of them are going to be obvious. Yeah, yeah.

So we're going to—

but I think the spirit will be seek input, not make decisions, right? We bring back Data.

Yeah.

So that we're not making a decision on a Google Doc.

Okay.

Let's— sorry, sorry, that pulled us off.

There we go.

Mayor, and arrange for Laura. He's not going to be here to give the opening. Either Chris or I understand he might have sent you the information. Jeff sent Chris and I both the information about this.

I didn't see it today, but maybe he sent it.

I'd be happy to introduce her. You want to introduce her? And I don't think that you can introduce the American Legion who's doing a pledge.

So by American Legion, we're just doing the pledge? Not any person?

No, they're all— they're 3 or 4 people. But we could probably find out right before speech. 80% of the audience.

Okay, am I right?

You're shaking your head. There's more than that.

Sorry. Okay, so going to item number 6, we've got a proclamation, uh, from the Daughters of the Revolution on the, uh, I believe Constitution Month, I think. Uh, item 6.2, uh, presentation of Constitution essay and award winners. I think you all voted on that.

Are they presenting tonight?

Are we just—

are they reading their thing? Perfect. Thank you.

Item 6.3, the Library Advisory Commission report. Item 6.4, uh, summer reading wrap-up presentation.

Who's doing that? There's a bet going on.

You're slowing it down, dude.

Gambling on elections or not.

Blowing this down. Um, so that's the library twice, is that—

Yes.

One's the summer read program and one is the library commission. Okay, so it's 2 separate.

And then item number 6.5, we're going to table. Uh, that's not ready right now. Item 6.6 is a report on employee giving. Dan Carey, that's going to be Karina. And then we go to personal appearances. And then we've got item 8, consent items. We just got 2 things: approval of meeting minutes and reappointment of the Public Works Advisory Commissioner, Jim Michaelis. Skip item 9. Officially, for everyone's knowledge, that's going to be on your agenda, but we are generally going to skip it. Because it's informational only. Um, and then item 10, I'd like to add an employee journey. So this should be a fairly— Okay, so thank you for coming.

So these recommendations Uh, we'd like to welcome everyone here tonight and call this meeting to order. We'll start out with an invocation by Laura Redford. And Tom, would you like to introduce Laura?

Where are you?

I'm sorry. Thank you. Jeff Lamson gave us a little information about you. We understand you and your husband Kevin have 3 children in each age group in the Alpine School District— grade school, junior high, and high school. that you teach U.S. history and city planning at BYU. She's also taught transportation history to urban planning and civil engineer majors, and she currently serves on OREM's Transportation Advisory Commission. Would you please give us the invocation? We're grateful for the beautiful surroundings in which we live and the beauty of nature thou hast provided. We're thankful to live in a country that enjoys freedom of expression and freedom of belief, and we're grateful for those who defend those freedoms and those who frame them and those who continue to advocate for them. We are thankful to live in a community full of Kind neighbors and pray that our community will have the things that it needs to thrive. We ask for a spirit of cooperation, um, to be with us in this meeting today, and a blessing on those who serve and make decisions for our community and for our city. We're grateful for those who work on behalf of our city and the fine effort that they provide. And offer this in the name of Jesus Christ.

Amen.

Thank you, Laura. Next item, number 4, we'll have our Pledge of Allegiance, but we're going to do something a little bit different this month. We're going to have our American Legion lead this and make it more of an event. And we're doing this in honor of Constitution Month. And then David Forsythe, did you want to Say something?

No.

Why do you don't present color?

Oh, sorry.

I'd like to do reflective wages now. Those of you who have served in the military, the Congress would authorize— if you're in civilian clothes, it's still proper to salute the flag. We're doing a little different thing today. There's 13 folds in the flag, and each one represents something. And I'll read that as these guys ready up to do the pledge of allegiance. Use this mic here.

I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands, One nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Thank you. The flag is first— when we do this, any time kind of ceremony, it's folded twice, and then it does our 13 folds, which I will read here. Oh, I'm sorry, I can, I can do that up there. The first fold of the flag is a symbol of life. The second fold is a symbol of our belief in eternal life. The third fold is made in honor and remembrance of the veterans departing our ranks and who gave a portion of his or her life in defense of our country to attain peace throughout the world. The fourthfold represents our weaker nature as American citizens trusting in God. It is him we turn to in times of peace as well as in times of war for his divine guidance. The fifthfold is tribute for our country In the words of Stephen Decanter, our country is dealing with other countries. May she always be right, but if she is not, our country is still— if she is not right or wrong, it's still our country. The sixth fold is for where our hearts lie. It is with our hearts that we pledge allegiance to the flag. of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. The seventh fold is a tribute to our armed forces, for it is through the armed forces that we protect our country and our flag against all enemies, whether they be found within or without the boundaries of our Republic. The 8th fold is a tribute to, is a tribute to the one who entered into the valley of the shadow of death that we might see the light of day and to honor our mothers for whom it flies on Mother's Day. The 9th fold is a tribute to womanhood. It has been throughout their faith, love, loyalty, and devotion that has molded the character of the men and women who have made this country great. The 10th fold is a tribute to Father, who has also given his sons and daughters for defense of our country since he or she was first born. The 11th fold represents the lower portion of the seal of King David and King Solomon and glorifies the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. The 12th fold represents an emblem of eternity and glorifies God the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost. The 13th fold and last fold, when the flag is completely folded, the stars are uppermost, remind us of our national motto, In God We Trust. Flag will now be represented to our commander. And we'll now have Taps.

Ladies and gentlemen, we offer Taps to all who have served in the United States military. We consider it a sacred and sentimental goodbye. We encourage all of you, put your right hand on your heart if you have served in the military. Congress enacted a law in 2005 that said You may salute me whether you're in uniform or not. You've earned that right. Present arms. Sir, you are sound on touch.

2. Thank you. Flag detail dismissed. Our commander has a few words. The flag is folded in a triangle. And if you can imagine, the reason it's folded this way is in honor of the colonial warriors who wore hats shaped kind of like this, that fought for our freedoms, our liberty, and our independence. The points of the flag represents the Godhead, the Eternal Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost. Now, to many of us Americans, the flag is a reminder, reminder of the sacrifices of many to bring about this great nation and to protect our Constitution, our liberty, rights, and freedom. The Constitution of the United States was created by inspired men. I read in Doctrine and Covenants 101:79-80: It is not right that any man should be in bondage one to another. And for this purpose have I established the Constitution of this land, by the hands of wise men whom I raise up unto this very purpose. May God continue to bless the United States of America, I pray in the name of the Savior.

Amen.

Thank you.

And thank you, Post 72, the American Legion. We, we really appreciate all that you do, and we appreciate you coming here for this presentation for Constitution Month to remind us. And, uh, that, uh, playing of Taps was, was really inspirational. We appreciate that.

Mayor, do you think we could give them a round of applause?

I think so.

Okay, moving on. We'll go to item number 6, 6.1. Uh, we've got a proclamation that the Daughters of the Revolution would like to make, and Diane Nelson, if you'd like to come up and present that.

Thank you.

Here? Okay.

Mayor Young, council members, and guests, I would like to thank you for giving me this opportunity to remind you and all of the guests about Constitution Week, which you are aware of this week, September 17th through the 23rd. The Daughters of the American Revolution helped create this week of observance for the foundation of the American form of government. They created a resolution in 1955, and it was signed into law by President Eisenhower on August 2nd, 1956. The commitment of the National Society of the Daughters of the American Revolution is to encourage study and educate the public about the Constitution, which was adopted by the American Congress of the Confederation on September 17th, 1787, so 230 years ago. I have some handouts for everyone I can put in the back of the preamble and lists of ways that people can celebrate Constitution Week this week. The United States Constitution stands as a testament to the tenacity of Americans throughout history to maintain their liberties, freedoms, and unalienable rights, and the Daughters of the American Revolution hopes you have a fun time celebrating our nation's framework of government. So I have the proclamation here. Did you want— do you read it or do we just—

wasn't sure.

I can read it if you'd like me to, or you can read it either way.

Would you like me to read it?

Okay.

Whereas the Constitution of the United States of America The guardian of our liberties embodies the principles of limited government in a republic dedicated by— to rule by law. And whereas September 17th, 2024 marks the 237th anniversary of the framing of the Constitution of the United States of America by the Constitutional Convention. And whereas it is fitting and proper to accord official recognition to this magnificent document and its memorable anniversary, and to the patriotic celebrations which will commemorate it, and whereas Public Law 915 guarantees the issuing of a proclamation each year by the President of the United States of America designating September 17th through 23rd as Constitution Week. Okay, thank you very much.

Okay, thank you, Diane. Is that something that, that you need us to sign or need me to sign?

Yes.

Okay. Yeah, thank you for so much for coming tonight. And, and, uh, I knew this was Constitution Week, and actually in Orem we've, we've, uh, designated this Constitution Month, uh, but I didn't realize September 17th today was The 237th exact anniversary of the signing of the Constitution. So that's very cool, but I appreciate you coming and, and sharing that with us.

So, Mayor, if this is something that you and the council would like to sign, you could make a motion just approving that proclamation as it has been read to you. Okay, may I make a motion to approve the proclamation that's been read to us?

I second.

Aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Aye, for sure.

Resolution passes.

Thank you.

Let's move on to another Constitution event. Uh, we've had a lot going on this month, but now we've got item 6.2, which we had a Constitution essay and art, and, uh, There were a number of people who entered this, and then all of us as city council members voted on this as far as the winners. So, Pete, if you'd like to make that presentation.

Yes, thank you. I am still— I have the chills a little bit still from Taps. But this is, like you mentioned, Mayor, this is wonderful that we're having a city council meeting today on the exact day the Constitution was signed. I mean, what a more fitting way to start energizing our rights of government. So this is wonderful. So I'm going to present with some of our award winners, or contest winners were able to make it, some weren't. So we'll just present everybody, and if they're here, we ask that you come up and be recognized, and then we will take a picture with the council. So we'll start with the Youth Essay Contest winners, and it was won by a trio of sisters. So Zoe Erickson, Hope Erickson, and Jane Erickson, in that order, won first, second, and third place. They weren't able to make it tonight, but we congratulate them. and they'll get their prize in the mail. Now we'll go to the adult essay winners. So the mom of these 3 sisters won first place. That's Charlotte Erickson. So she was the first place winner, but I believe our second and third place winner are here. So if we can have Devin Jensen come up and Brent Eliason. Congratulations on your essays. They were wonderful.

You're a branch.

And now we'll, um, let's see, I don't think it's pulling up. I have the art contest winners. I wanted to show the work that they did. Let me see if I can get it pulled up. All right, so we'll start with our 3rd place winner. This is Eleanor Short. Come on up, Eleanor. And this is what Eleanor drew, or painted, I guess, watercolor.

Excellent, excellent jobs.

Congratulations.

You know, just hang out with these guys here.

Next up for our 2nd place winner is Melody Allen, and this is what she drew, a nice Mount Rushmore scene. And it looks like she even brought the original. Stay up here, Melody, with us.

Yes.

Come stand with us. And our first place winner on the art contest is Melody Crockett, and this is what she drew—

or painted, I guess.

So we'd love to get a picture together. Thank you all for participating. Excellent work on both the essays and the art. Uh, let's get, get a picture with the mayor and the council, and then Um, and we'll— then we'll send your, uh, your prize money through by email.

Go on up there.

Just go on up there. Any parents, come on up there. Is there what you need?

Yeah, okay.

All right, so the essays and the art will be posted on our website as well as on social media so that the rest of the city can see, uh, the awesome work that they did. And, uh, it's, it's fun that we had all kinds of different ages, uh, participate in this. So thank you all.

So if I can add a little plug for our arts— our Arts Council, we're actually in the near future going to be considering local art to cover our utility boxes.

So you artists out there, watch for the announcement of when to submit your art.

We'd love to have you do something for that too.

Okay, thank you. Thank you to the winners and everyone else who participated. We'll go to item 6.3. Uh, this is a presentation from the Library Advisory Commission. And Bryce, if you'd like to come up and present that.

Thank you.

Well, Mayor and Council, thank you for the opportunity to be with y'all today as we report on our annual report for the Advisory Library Advisory Commission. We're excited to be here today. I'm joined by Katrina Brittner, who has served as our chair for the last year. And we are going to do 2 things. We're going to start with a brief video that overviews some of the really exciting things happening, and then I'll turn it over to Katrina for a report on some of what's been— oh, you know what? She would like to go first. So while I'm setting this up, she'll give us a brief report.

Okay, while he's setting that up, I just wanted to pull out a few things. Thank you again, Mayor and City Council, for inviting us here. You'll see in the video what the mission statement is for the library, and I'll read that to you just because it kind of goes fast in there. The statement is, we inspire lifelong learning, create enriching opportunities, and strengthen our communities. And as I've been on the commission and as I've been working with the wonderful librarians and staff there, I can see that that's truly their goal. And in fact, in At more than one of our meetings, we've had one of the librarians say their focus is they're actually trying to turn the word library into a verb. So when people ask them, what do you do? They say, we do library. And that encompasses so many things that we have in our library. And just a few little points. We have over 700,000 items in our collection in our library here. And the last year saw over 1.7 million checkouts of things, whether it be, you know, digital or books or makerspace. And I wanted to highlight some of those things. When you think of a library, people always think of books. And as the Library Commission and as the librarians, we want people to put books in their hands, of course, and to read. But it's so much more at our Orem Public Library. We have library hall events. We have musicians that come, entertainers that come. We have author visits and signings. We have youth game nights, youth movie nights. I mentioned the makerspace. I checked out a telescope and went up to Big Springs and got to, you know, look at the stars there. So there are just so many opportunities here at the library. And as I look at it, at our Orem Public Library. I see it as the hub of Orem, or kind of like the living room. I mean, this is the place you go for books and for all these activities, and if it's a hot summer day, you come for the air conditioning. But, um, this is just a key part of our community, and we're just grateful that we have the support of the mayor and the council members and of our community here. And I do want to say we have my friends from the Commission and the Library are here too. So we're grateful. Thank you. And we'll turn over to this video.

Mayor and Council, I'd like to just add a brief thought to the end of that video. We are about a year into our focus on transforming into an experience library, not an errand that people run to come pick up an item, but a place that people come to be. And to create community with us. Y'all know I love our numbers, and so there's a lot of fun in saying that we've had 20% more visits year over year from this year to the previous year. We've had more participation, we've had these circulation numbers, but the value of the library, as Katrina mentioned, is in those individual experiences, that living room, that third space. Just last week we had the Shakespeare Grassroots Festival happening in the back storytelling wing of the library, and a mother and child had come into the circulation area, and the mother, hearing a very fun time being had at the back of the library, leaned over and said, what are we missing? And I love that idea that she knew, she recognized that great things were happening, and if you're not at the library, I can attest that you're missing out. And so I love that sentiment from one of our residents, and I am just so grateful for our Library Advisory Commission, the staff that we have, that have just really dived into this idea of being an experience library and creating and improving our access to our collections. So thank you for your support, and we'll see you all next year.

Thank you. And thank you for doing a great job taking us to this experience level, library level. It's a whole new vision. It's a whole new idea. And we're gonna take all the good things that we have in the library and take them to the next level. So you guys are doing a phenomenal job. Thank you.

Thank you.

Next up, we've got another library presentation. This is the summer reading wrap-up.

I recognize when I said see you next year that that was very false. I was the next agenda item. I'm going to immediately turn it over to our program staff. Now our reference librarian, Megan Pay. Flinders Pay and Jamie Bartlett, who is our division manager over patron experience, to do a report on our 2024 summer reading program, as well as a look ahead and invitation for the upcoming, uh, Orem Reads Challenge this October.

Thank you. We're excited to be here with you this evening. Um, so we had a fabulous summer this year with the theme Adventure Begins at the Library. We had more participation than ever before, as we've said. And to complete that challenge, patrons needed to read a minimum of 10 hours or 600 minutes per person. And so in total, our community read over 3.8 million minutes, which is the equivalent of one person reading nonstop for 7.25 years. That's no breaks, no potty breaks, nothing, like just reading. That's a lot of reading. And we are so proud that our community was able to read that much in one summer. We're very excited about the growth we saw this summer. You can see in this slide the comparison of our stats from 2023 to 2024. Completion of the program, meaning those that finished those 10 hours of reading, increased from 58% in 2023 to 71% this year. Our participation numbers went up for the overall program by just under 900 patrons, and attendance at all of our events increased, including our kickoff event and our finale. And a special shout out to the recreation team for making our finale at the Sierra Pool possible. We had over 7,000 patrons attend the 75 library programs that we held this summer, and there was a lot of excitement about our programs. For example, our adventure escape room that we do every year was completely full within 2 hours of opening that registration, and we were actually able to open an additional day so that we could have more of our community participate. Um, and we saw a lot of that this summer with our awesome library staff going with the flow, adding things, and getting ready to, uh, continue bringing a quality program to this additional growth that we were seeing. We had story times out at City Center Park, movie nights, teen activities, and so much more. We were also able to give away more prizes than ever this year. We gave away, away roughly 4,632 prize packets to reward people for hitting different milestones in their reading, and we awarded 313 prize drawing items to patrons who completed the challenge. Many of these rewards were provided by the 24 businesses and organizations that sponsored the program. To wrap up this report, we wanted to share the information we collected from our participants. We did a survey at the end of the program, and this showed that 65% of survey participants were returning patrons of the Summer Reading Program, and roughly 30% were doing it for the first time. 96% of patrons said they were satisfied or very satisfied with the program, And 97% of patrons said they were planning to do the program again next year. The majority of participants also reported that the program helped them read, visit the library, and attend the programs more than usual. We also got a lot of very positive stories from patrons, and I wanted to share just a few of them with you. One person shared that my kindergartner just learned to read this past school year since reading almost Almost every day this summer, she has grown more confident in reading more advanced books. Her excitement that she can read to her 2-year-old brother is wonderful to watch. We've spent so much more time together doing activities and reading as a family. It's been really fun and so great to have all these free activities. Plus, it helps us learn so much more. We love the makerspace. And this last comment I wanted to share that goes along along with what Katrina shared. The events, book clubs, beanstack challenges, etc., etc., have helped my kids to realize there is so much more to libraries than books. To conclude, summer reading was wonderful, and we wanted to thank the mayor and city council and city staff, particularly our library staff, for helping make this such a wonderful year. And then we also wanted to share with you the announcement of our Orem Reads 2024 reading community read.

That will work.

Okay, so our read this year— last year we did Frankenstein. This year it's another F, Fahrenheit 451. This is a fantastic book written in 1953. This is kind of the seminal work of Ray Bradbury. This is the book that I got so absorbed in, I got in trouble many times at school because I would not put it down and pay attention in math class. And so it's well worth reading. This October, we're going to have all kinds of fun events going on to highlight the book and have a chance to talk about the book. We have a reading challenge on Beanstack, so you can sign up, track your reading on that app, and then you can enter prizes along— for prize drawings along the way. And at the finale, we're going to have some prizes that we give away, possibly also for the best costume, because it does happen on October 29th, right before Halloween. So we have a Titles and Treats Gala that's going to end the event where we're going to come together. It's trick-or-treating for adults with books and autumnal delectables. I like that phrase that they put on here. And costumes are optional, but there will be prizes. We're going to kick the whole thing off though on October 3rd, so we invite you to come to the kickoff at 7 o'clock in the auditorium in the library hall. We have an award-winning author, Shannon Hale, who's coming to speak about her experience, her personal experience throughout her career with book banning and how it's affected her. And then she's going to be there for a book sale and book signing. In between those 2 events, we have things like a murder mystery date night, lots of snack and chats or chat and snacks. I can't remember which way it goes, but food and talk. That's what we're after. Just talking about the book, geeking out together about all the wonderful things that Ray Bradbury foresaw from 1953 of our day in time and how it applies to us. We have a film screening as well of the 1966 classic film version of this. For those who come to those events, you'll get a free book for your household to read along with us. And if you're like, books, I, I do audiobooks, that's my jam, we have the audiobook free on our Hoopla app at the library. So you can come and grab a free copy of that to read along with us. So we invite you all to come and join in.

And we have some books.

And you get a preview.

Yes.

Very nice.

You too can avoid math class. Avoid dishes, avoid laundry, all those good things.

Well, thank you guys. That was great. And just like I said a minute ago about the library, there's great things happening in the library. We're very excited about that. I think of it in terms of, you know, we have a rec center and that's our bodies, and our numbers are through the roof at the rec center. And we've got a library and that's for our minds, and your numbers are up 20% for last year. That's amazing. You're doing a phenomenal job. Thank you.

Thank you so much.

Okay, next up we've got item 6.5. Uh, it was a presentation from the Transportation Advisory Commission. We're going to table that presentation for tonight and we'll have that another time.

I make a motion that we table item 6.5, Transportation Advisory Commission report.

Second.

Aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Aye.

The presentation is tabled. We'll go to item 6.6, and this is a report from Karina Eckern on the Employee Giving Day of Caring.

You guys can't get rid of me yet. Okay, well, I am honored to be the one that gets to present on this year's United Way of caring efforts here in Orem City. It has been so fun to be a part of it and be a part of the committee and really encourage our employees employees to go out and donate, do a little bit out of the norm. And, you know, you work, um, at— you go to work and then you get to have this day where you get to still be at work, but you get to go and give, um, to your community. And so it's been such a fun, uh, project to oversee. But first, I want to thank, um, the committee. There's been a lot of staff members who get to be involved with all the projects. A big shout out to Pete Woopley, who is my number 2 on this project. I could not have done this without him. And so, um, just, it's been so much fun. So let's get into, um, uh, oh, let's see if that went. Are you guys good with that? It's a video. So this is just a video of some of the pictures of all the projects that we, um, did throughout the day. Okay, so this year was a pretty historic year for our employee giving campaign, and I think something that was really special. special with it is because we also were able to have the efforts of the Gold Star Monument as a donation item as well. This year we had the theme of back to school as we did a lot of school projects. And so these are some of the efforts that we did of our kickoff event. The silent auction is always a popular item amongst the employees. We had a tier-giving prize, which was, you know, a freshman, sophomore, junior, senior. And so depending on how much you give, you got a package of that, the package. And so we also got an amazing email from Bren Bybee, which was an encouragement to our employees to get involved and donate and then also be a part of the service day. And then internal marketing. And then something that was different from previous years is we had an exclusive day of giving event. And so you were only allowed to go to a very, very fun event if you donated, even just in the lowest freshman tier. If you donated, you got to go to this event. And I think that made a big difference. And it was so much fun. We went to a park, we got to do some mini golf, have some brunch. It was just a really fun day. So here are some of the numbers. And like I said, we were able to combine with the Gold Star, uh, monument. So this is how many people, uh, employee donations. So we had 34 in the Gold Star where it just went to the Gold Star, uh, 59 employees went to the United Way. And then we also gave the option of you can donate to both. And so we had 48 people donate to both the Gold Star and United Way. And then in total, we had 141, um, employee donations. Last year we had 104 employees, and so that went up pretty significantly. We got 37 more employees to donate this year. And so with how much we raised, we had a goal of $25,000 to raise. And so last year we had— we raised $20,000, and then this year we got just around $29,000, which is really exciting and really feels very rewarding because it, again, it went to both the Gold Star and United Way. And then just for the last slide, this is— these are the projects that we were able to participate in the day of service. We added one more project from last year, and we got a total of 131 employee volunteers. And last year we had about, um, just barely around 100. And so we got 30 more, um, employees to come over and to help, um, on the day of service. So, um, there's so many great things happening here in Orem, and I think every year we're just getting better and better. And, um, it's going to continue with Orem City, and I think that's because of the council and leadership that our mayor and city Council have, and then our amazing executive team. And so it's been such an honor to be a part of this project, and I'm excited to follow along and see where Orem goes in the future. But that is everything. Do you guys have any questions?

We have any questions? No, it looks like another fantastic Orem event, and again, it's up significantly from last year. So no, we appreciate that. And, uh, I just want to say something about Karina. Um, if Karina has been a phenomenal employee, uh, since I've been here, or just shortly after, but, uh, if you want an example of someone who's forward-thinking, hardworking, uh, a bundle of energy, and, uh, brings a ton of good into the world, That's Karina. And she's done a phenomenal job here in Orem. And we hate to see her go, but she's got to move with her family. So, anyway, but we appreciate you, Karina, and all that you've done.

Thank you.

Thank you. Okay, we'll move on to item 7, uh, personal appearances. We only have one personal appearance tonight, and that's with John Duffy. So, John, if you'd like to come up.

Okay, great.

Thank you.

I do have a handout to— but I only made 10 copies. I need one that to read, to go through with you. Uh, who would be the most relevant people? So, the topic is ADUs. Let you guys—

okay.

So, the use for ADUs, really, there's 2 main use cases. It's, I mean, it's a big issue for affordable housing, right? But ADUs, the big thing is if you've got aged parents or if you've got young kids that can't afford housing, can I put an ADU in my backyard or something like that? But, um, as I started investigating that and digging into what, uh, the, the rules are in Orem, uh, if you flip to page 2 and see that's what's highlighted in yellow in the zoning requirement, it says apartment must be part of the footprint of the primary structure/home of the lot. And I'm like, okay, that's got to be in the code somewhere. Where is that? And they said it's— the code is— and if you look at the bottom of page 1, It's code 2268F. And at first that reads pretty clear, but the last sentence on it— now remember, this is being interpreted as— maybe I should back up a little bit. I jumped a little ahead of myself. It's being interpreted as if you're going to build an ADU and it's not in your basement, you're going to build something outside of your home. It needs to be connected by one wall. And that's where they said, you know, it has to be part of the primary structure. You can't have something separate. It has to share the same wall. But when you, when you look at the law down there, one family, single dwelling, all the first sentences, like, okay, okay. And then the last sentence says only one single family shall occupy an accessory apartment. Like, okay, now how did that get interpreted as You know, it all has to be in one footprint, or what I've been told is it has to be a shared wall when you have an ADU. I have someone in my neighborhood who built one, and they actually went to the expense. They built a tunnel between their 2 structures, a structure in the backyard, and then they build a tunnel to their main house, to their basement. That's the Reds. Kelly Red built it for his parents, Bruce and Denise. But, uh, I just am scratching my head about this, having a separate standing ADU as opposed to having to have a wall that connects it. And I do not understand the value of that. And I also don't understand how that, that ordinance in the city code is interpreted as it has to be part of the same footprint on the checklist. So that's my issue. I'm just trying to understand that because, uh, it's a big issue in the state and the I don't want to live in California. California's got really progressive laws of this stuff, and it's like they're a little crazy, in my opinion. But, um, but yet we are way further back than what's happening in the Salt Lake area. I'm getting in the ADU business. I want to put one in my backyard, but I'm also going to get in the end of the business. But I can't do anything in my hometown. I guess I gotta go. Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you, John. Okay, next up we've got our consent items. Yes, John, have you, have you met with any of the city staff at all about this just to get more information?

I talked to Dave, but he wasn't aware of it.

Um, I went and talked to some staff. Uh, person I talked to was Jelena Van Wagenen. What then, Waggoner? And then she pointed me to another person.

I can't remember the other person's name, but that's the people I've talked to.

And they said it has to be a shared wall.

I'm like, why?

Say, Brent, was there anybody you'd recommend?

Ryan and Steve, I think we could assign Gary McGinn to reach out and hopefully help explain some of the why behind the current regulation.

Am I supposed to talk to one of you? No, I'll get your contact information here in just a minute if that'll work. Okay, it's on this. Okay, yeah, we'll reach out.

I just want to give somebody to follow up with you on this.

Okay, great, thank you. Thanks.

Okay, next up we've got item 8, consent items. Item 8.1, approval of meeting minutes from August 20th, 2024. the special joint ASD meeting and the August 27th, 2024 City Council meeting. Item 8.2, reappointment of a Public Works Advisory Commission member, Jim Michaelis.

I move for approval of the consent items, Mr. Mayor.

I second.

Aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Aye.

The consent items pass. Thank you. Okay, last up we've got item number 10. Our city manager, Brent, if you'd like to share anything with us.

Just 2 quick important events coming up. Um, this Friday will be our, uh, Volunteer Appreciation Gala. This is something we're excited to bring back, haven't had it for quite some time. It'll be at the UVU Grand Ballroom at 6 PM. And we'll be doing exactly what the title says, expressing that sincere appreciation and gratitude for the really the awesome volunteerism that we get here in Orem, and I guess receive here in Orem, that is really second to none compared to other cities in terms of the amount of volunteerism we enjoy. And then kind of dovetailing off of Karina's presentation. There will be another Gold Star Family Project fundraiser event. We're teaming up with Texas Roadhouse here in Orem on Thursday, September 26th, and we'll send out more info. But it'll— anyone who purchases food there at Texas Roadhouse between 3 and 10 that day, 10% of those proceeds will go towards the Gold Star Family Monument Project.

And I have personally used their takeout And it is very, very good. So you can do that on that night if you want.

Yes, takeout or to-go included. Yeah, thank you. That's all I have.

Okay, thank you, Bren. And likewise, I'd encourage you to— anybody who's watching or any of you here, uh, go to Texas Roadhouse that night. They'll help us out. Last item, like to make a motion, or somebody want to make a motion to adjourn?

Mayor, I move that we adjourn.

I second.

Aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Aye.

We're adjourned. Thank you so much for coming.