City Council · 2024-10-08

Wow.

Did you hear from Chris?

Turkey?

No.

Oh, come on. Yeah, no, I was at the fire. Yeah, he didn't tell me he's not taking this floor. You have to put one of us here, so I don't know if he's coming.

Warm water?

He's here in a few minutes.

No, I thought we just tried to talk.

They didn't respond.

Anyway, what did we just— what did we just buy? Probably like 10 fish. I'll let you know.

Well, there's a line for telling them.

Oh, it's only the 3. Yeah. So I need to look and see when the 12th is, which way. Yeah, it's gonna be much easier for the first one. If you put a mental calendar, the 25th of October. That's good stuff.

Pixel, the Amazon.

Yeah, yeah, cool.

Have you been to Shake Shack? I never—

where to?

Shake Shack.

Um, I got one last week.

You should go in the Zoom.

I don't know.

Should you go up to your project or you should project?

Well, it should come across.

I only did the one because I—

it should be on the TV, but Do we have to recharge it?

I guess so.

I see her. Are you muted?

I am.

Oh yeah, let me figure out my guess.

This is Courtney Flint on Zoom. I'm just trying to do a sound check. Can you hear me at all?

We can hear you. We're just having trouble with visuals.

Thank you.

Okay, sorry for the delay. This is Dr. Flint, Courtney Flint with Utah State University. She's a researcher in the sociology department, correct?

Actually, Department of Environment and Society in the College of Natural Resources.

Okay. And she also has a research team who does health research for different municipalities across the state. And you've done over 40 municipalities. Is that correct? Or about just 60?

We're actually over 60. We did 49 this year.

49 this year. That's right. So basically the way we got here doing research with Dr. Flint and her team At Utah State is we wanted to apply for the Healthy Utah Communities designation. And as part of that, we had to come up with goals to improve the health of our city. And in the course of that research, we realized that Utah State has this awesome program where they do surveys for cities to research the perceived individual health of our residents and the societal health or the communal health of the residents. And so Dr. Flint and her team created the survey and helped us distribute it. And then we ran all of the data analysis on that, and it was a big success. We had way more respondents than we expected. So Dr. Flint is here today tuning in for Logan, and she's gonna present the results. And then it should only take about 15 minutes, so we'll have plenty of time for questions at the end. Okay.

All right, great. Can you see my slides okay?

Yes.

Okay, fantastic. Well, sorry I couldn't be there with you in person today, but thanks for letting me Zoom in. I'm just so pleased to be with you and have data to share with you from your survey on wellbeing. It's actually quite a bit broader than just health. We understand wellbeing as everything that makes up a good life. It goes all the way back to Aristotle and ancient Greece. And so we'll— I'll present some of those findings with you. So the overall project is— It's been going on since 2019. We've worked with over 60 cities and towns throughout the state. You can see our geographic dispersion throughout the state over time, where, as was said, we are up to about 50 cities and towns in the survey this year. Um, so we provide, uh, you know, it's basically living out the land grant mission, right? Making sure that our expertise is usable, uh, by those throughout the state. Uh, we work to provide leaders such as you with, um, information on the well-being and other perspectives of your residents. It helps, can help to inform planning processes. We also do some comparative research, and we are increasingly collaborating with statewide and regional interests. UDOT's TravelWise program, Get Healthy Utah, and the health district health departments around the state as well. Okay. So all of the reports from this year are all online, all on our website here. If you just Googled USU Utah Wellbeing, it would probably pop up, and Orem survey is there as well. So, we did the Qualtrics online survey in spring of this year. And we are grateful to the 5— for the $500 contribution to the project. Otherwise, it was a no-cost involvement by the City of Orem there. The way it works is that we operate on a pretty small budget here, so we collaborate with cities and you— the city led the survey recruitment for the effort. largely through social media and newsletters. And you had the project record of having the most surveys received in our 6 years. So 1,361 surveys were received this year. So that is just a really great turnout, leads to some great data for you. So one of the things we really work hard to be is very transparent about who we're hearing from and who we're not hearing from. Every survey has a source of error, and this is not unique. unique to that. We, um, largely your full-time residents, average length of residence is about 24 years. About 17% had lived in Orem 5 years or less. So we are tapping into those newcomers, but we have lots of longstanding residents, um, from a variety of lengths of residence. So, as I mentioned, there's always a source of error in surveys, and we do underrepresent, um, those in the age 18 to 29 age bracket. Those who do not have a college degree, those who are not married, and those who rent their home. But otherwise, we really have really good coverage on those who are age 30 and over. We have great coverage on income, really good on gender, though many cities struggle with that. You guys were really pretty close. Whether people have children in the household, we were right on the money there, and on employment status, we were pretty close. Close as well. There's no comparable data that I can use on disabilities and chronic condition. This is just a self-reporting of that. And then we also include religion. It turns out to be a very important variable when it comes to well-being and local perspectives. So we've included that as well. In Aura, we also had the map where people could indicate which of the 9 neighborhoods that they live in. And we also had the zip codes represented as well, so that we can use that in some spatial analysis should we want to. And I will share some of the findings by geography as we get a little further along. So let's just dive right into the results. So personal well-being in Orem, this is just kind of an individual's overall characterization of their well-being, however they interpret that to be. The average was a 4.5 out of 5. point scale. The other way to look at that is that nearly 80% said a 4 or a 5. That's just great. Orem was right on the average for— in comparison with the other cities of the first and second class. We use the caucus groups from the Utah League of Cities and Towns to organize our communities, so we're just showing that comparison group here at this point. For community well-being in Orem, for every city, this score is always lower than the personal well-being. A lot of times respondents feel their well-being is perhaps better than the community as a whole. Orem's again right here on the cluster average as well, with more like almost 60% saying a 4 or 5 on a 5-point scale. So when it comes to this personal, um, well-being, uh, we had the area number 3, um, that Northridge, Heatheridge, and Windsor neighborhood had higher overall personal well-being scores than area 2, but otherwise there were not significant differences across those neighborhoods. And there was no difference on the community wellbeing scores, not statistically anyway.

Interesting point.

So we also look in, zoom into wellbeing across 12 different sort of what we call domains or categories. And for Orem, we, so, well, for every city, we ask folks to rate their wellbeing in these different categories and also indicate how important these this category is, because everybody has their own personal bundle of things that make up their well-being, and communities also have a bundle of things that overall make up their well-being. And the most important categories of health were mental health, safety and security, physical health, family life, and living standards. And the highest-rated domains were family life, safety and security, living standards, and education. Then we have this red zone, which is those domains that are getting quite a bit of feedback. I'm sorry, I don't know if that's on my end or on yours.

I'll just keep going.

Interrupt me if I should stop. The red zone is where we have the more important categories. that are rated a little lower than physical health ended up in this category, which, which means that that pursuit of that Get Healthy Utah designation is a great thing and probably appreciated by residents. Could somebody give me a little sense of if you're hearing me okay? I'm just getting a lot of feedback.

Good on our end. It sounds great here.

Okay, great. I'll just power through it. Another thing that we have learned over the years is a very important part of wellbeing, and that is community connection. The idea of sort of how connected do you feel to Orem as a community? And you can see that we get a variety of responses on this. For such a large city, you can see that Orem is really rather high compared to some of the other larger cities in the survey project. Here with about 41% saying a 4 or 5 on a 5-point scale. There is really quite a striking difference across our 50 communities, our 49 communities that participated. Why does this matter? Well, you can see right here in the Orem data that community connection is really strongly correlated with overall personal well-being. Those people with the highest community levels of community connection or that feeling like they're connected to Orem as a community, they also have high personal wellbeing scores. It's also true for mental health. The higher the community connection, the higher that mental health rating for the respondents. So this shows that putting that time and effort into building that sense of community connection pays off for those who experience it. When it comes to community connection, Area 1, the Canyon View, Oregon Cascade area, Did have significantly higher community connection scores than areas 2, 4, and 5. So that cluster over there a little bit further to the east. Um, and, but the others were not significantly different.

And when was this survey done?

Can you—

I'm sorry.

Oh, yeah, we did this survey. Well, in the spring between— it was about, about March, I think. I think Orem was pretty Pretty early on, Heather, you might remember it was about March.

March.

Yeah, I think March was our window for the survey. Okay, we just have some brand new findings on some of the demographics for Orem. So these are the data, these are hot off the press. I'm sharing only those demographics that turned out to be significant when you account for the other demographics. So this is from a multivariate analysis. You can see that overall personal wellbeing increases with age up to about age 60. You can see that there's some differences. The community wellbeing is also a little bit higher for those age 60 and over. And those feelings of community connection are equally high for those above about age 50.

Okay.

And they are considerably lower for those Lower age groups under about age 40 really kind of stand out as less connected. In terms of religion, it does come up consistently across the state as an important variable with regards to well-being and community connection. You can see that folks who identify as being from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, their well-being scores and community connection is significantly higher than those who have another religion or those who have no religious preference. Income, also pretty strikingly significant across the state. You can see that all of these indicators increase a little bit with income. We also see that those who have a disability are 30% less likely to indicate, you know, have a 4 or a 5 on that 5-point scale for overall personal well-being. So disability does seem to inhibit personal wellbeing. And then on length of residence, and I'm trying to get my team to look into length of residence with a little more specificity, but those who've lived in the ORAM less than 5 years or less do have a significantly lower level of community connection. I think that kind of is a little bit— that makes sense. We want to break that down and see where the threshold might be, but we can try to get that data to you at a later date. So there's a lot going on this slide. I'm not going to go into all of it, but the bottom line is you have a very active community of lots of folks, almost all of our respondents walking or biking, recreating in parks, gardening, attending community events, using trails, and so forth. Many of these activities are associated with these different indicators of personal wellbeing, maybe community connection, and oftentimes mental and physical health. So for those efforts that you put into, especially with your parks, your trails, your community events, they do pay off for those respondents, so those participants. So kudos to those who put on those activities. We also asked some questions about the rate of population growth, We had— Orem had an 11% population growth rate from 2010 to 2020, and 66% of our respondents indicated they thought that was too fast. We also asked about the pace of economic development, and 43% said it was just right, with a bit of a mixed response for the others. We went a little further this year and And said, you know, if you describe your— the pace of economic development as too slow or too fast, we asked for a little more of an open-ended question. But keep in mind that the largest group did say just right. So that's important to note. For those that indicated they thought economic development was too slow, they indicated sort of a need for more local businesses, revitalizing State Street, or job opportunities. affordable housing, and attention to infrastructure. For those who indicate that it's— indicated that it was too fast, they talked about the explosion of housing, the traffic, the congestion, the turnover in businesses, and some concern about infrastructure and resources keeping up with that development.

We add—

we have quite a long list of concerns that we ask about. This list has grown over the years we've done this survey, and cities have asked a variety of things to add to this list. Extension has added some things. You can see in Orem that the number one concerns were— number one was traffic, and then we've got air quality and water supply, then affordable housing and public safety. And then there's another set of things that are above 50% of the respondents indicating a concern for the future. We don't always know that that's a negative concern, just something that's a priority and top of mind. But, but certainly something that communication on these issues would resonate with residents, from water quality and open and green space opportunities for youth, homelessness, recreation opportunities, suicide, trails and paths, and access to healthy and quality food showing up on that higher end of the concerns list. Getting towards the end here. UDOT asks a variety of transportation questions. I'm not going to get into all of the details here. Of course, you've got across the state, we are primary mode of transportation is definitely the personal car. You do have some folks who are walking as well. Possible transportation developments folks would like to see, improving road services and enhancing safety were top of that list. In terms of things that take residents outside of Orem to another city or town, Family and friends and eating out sort of top that list. There are a couple of other things as well. We know that people don't live in a bubble. They do interact with, with other, other locations. Travel time and cost were the largest barriers, but under 50% for either of those. We ask a lot of open— a couple of open-ended questions. What do people value about living in Orem? They love the location. They love its proximity to nature and outdoor recreation opportunities. They really value the social climate and that sense of community. So we have pages and pages of open-ended comments. We make those available to you, so hopefully you've seen those. If not, I think I've sent them to Heather, but, but we can absolutely send them again if you need them. There are absolutely pages and pages and pages of these. They are loosely clustered by category, but So much of that, we don't share those publicly, but we do share them with city leaders. We asked what could be done to improve well-being in Orem. This is a question that was initiated by Get Healthy Utah. A couple of the dominant things that come out, public transportation and attention to city image, particularly State Street. As we look at the additional comments, so many people writing comments on this survey, like 60% of the respondents, so it's really, it's striking because most surveys don't get a lot of response to open questions, but this one did. Folks would, they'd love more communication from you all, the city leaders. They do have concern about the growth, and there is a lot of discussion about that Family City USA, that it's important to folks and that there's different debates about this, but it's definitely on the top of people's minds and they commented on it a great deal. And so with that, I will say thank you so much for being a part of the wellbeing survey this year, and I would be happy to answer any questions that you might have.

I have a question.

Can I ask you? So you said, um, they wanted to improve walkability. How did you define that in the study?

We didn't. So it was— I mean, there's a lot of comments that the people wrote in themselves. Sometimes they just want more sidewalks. They want— so that question that you might be referring to on the transportation list, improving walkability is just the statement there. We didn't define it for people, but we do know from the open comments, they talk a lot about safety of sidewalks. They want You know, more trails and access for, you know, making a more walkable community. So if you do read those open comments, you will see that there are some that relate to walkability. But for this question, this came from UDOT and it wasn't defined.

Okay, thank you.

Is there a place where we can access the comments and read through them?

Yes, I can get those.

Okay, great.

Where did you get your feedback on improving State Street? Because that is a priority for us. Currently?

In the open comments, a lot of it comes up in terms of the answers to the question of what could be done to improve well-being in Orem. There was some attention, you'll see in the comments that there's some attention to State Street in the comments itself.

And there was enough of that that it made it to the top of your list and recommendations?

It did.

It was mentioned. It was one of the more dominant themes that our coders found as they went through all of those comments. There's thousands and thousands and thousands of them. So it is by no means the only comment, but it was something that was brought up a fair bit in the improvement section.

Does it—

in your— if we look, when we look over your packet, does it say what percentage, like, what percentage of a comment, of the comments does it have to be to have it rise to the top?

We're not— it's not that specific. We would have that information at some point. I could get that for you if you wanted it. But essentially what we do is I have a team of students, they literally read every comment, and they put it in a set of codes or categories. And then they, they, we do track that. And then at the end of the day, after they've coded a city like Orem, they will go through and they will pick out the things that came up repeatedly over and over again. We, we haven't done a lot to quantify or, or to present those data. If that were important to Orem, we would certainly be able to do so. It would take a little time, but we could do it.

And can I ask one more question?

Sure.

So I was very surprised at the water quality being high because we have stellar water quality. We win awards for that. So to me, that— what questions were asked, you know, were those specific for Orem, or did they educate the people at all? Or where are they getting this impression that there's a water quality issue?

Was it water supply?

I believe it was water supply.

There were 2, water supply and then water quality. Yeah, which both of those are—

I mean, we need to do a better job of informing our public then, because we are stellar on both of those.

So I will, I'll just jump in and sort of say, water supply for a couple of years has been a very high top. It is across the state, water supply is our top concern in all of the aggregate data, and it's often in the top 3 if it's not number 1. Water quality, I'm very surprised with. We did surveys 10 years ago in northern Utah on water, and water quality was just nowhere near the radar screen. And this year it is floating. You can see all the different comments, the concerns that we ask about. And in terms of rating, water quality is coming up very continuously in the top 10. And I'm not quite sure what's going on there. Now, remember, we don't know whether— The question reads, as you look to the future of Orem, How much of a concern are the following issues? And water quality is just listed as one of many items. And so we don't know if it's something that's just— it's a priority for them. It's something top of mind. And they would, you know, it's a priority looking forward, or that they're saying there's a— The question did not say, where is there a problem? But it does mean that communication on water, water supply, water quality, would resonate with residents, and they would probably very much appreciate, you know, hearing the status of Orem's water circumstances.

I mean, I know last year there was a city to the north of us, he who will not be named, that their water was— they had problems. They couldn't harvest their gardens like that. So do you think some of that news media could have been, you know, creating angst in our public?

Absolutely. Everything from other local news to, you know, statewide news to national news. Anything, of course, is gonna affect someone's mentality. So definitely could do that. We know people don't live in a bubble, so they're very aware of what's going on around them.

Okay.

I have a question. It's, you talked about how the survey underrepresents the people ages 18 to 29 and the renters, et cetera, et cetera. And I think that's probably fairly common. And how do we tap those people? Do you have any thoughts on how we get feedback from that population?

It is not unique to Orem. That is an increasing problem. 10 years ago, that was not as much of a problem as it is now. If I had— boy, if I had the answer to that, I'd probably not be an academic, making a fortune. I think that, you know, and the fact that you guys used social media to advertise the survey means that your social media is not the social media that they're spending time on, or they're getting it and they're ignoring it. And I don't know the difference. You know, I think that it's— that includes a lot of people in young families, right? So they may be very, very busy raising young children, or they're footloose and fancy-free and going about their lives. And this kind of survey is not top of mind. I don't have a very good answer for you on that. But rest assured that if we are able to secure enough funding to do this survey again, in 2026, we're going to spend some time trying to help cities reach that demographic.

I think this, the last parts of what you said, you know, are the most accurate in terms of why. I mean, I think that demographic is, is generally, that's not a priority for them. I mean, if you think of our group here, a lot of people don't even think, start caring about politics until they're in their 40s. And so I, I, you just got other priorities. You've got young kids, you're just surviving and figuring out your life, you're going forward. So last thing you want to do is take a survey about things that you don't really care about. So that's my take.

Even the census, my daughter's apartment at BYU got their census and none of them filled it out and we were getting phone calls. Please, please fill this out. They could, they can't get them.

Right.

I mean, that's anecdotal, but, you know.

Yeah. Yeah, so I think the survey probably represents those who care about the topic, you know. I mean, you can push harder to find out what, you know, to try and go further down that path, but I'm not sure how valuable that would be because if they don't care, they don't care.

I also think that that demographic, they're kind of moving around a lot. So they think, well, I'm probably not going to live in Orem for very long, or, you know, when I get my job after I graduate from college, I'm probably going to move to Wisconsin or somewhere. So I don't think that they're as invested because they are still very They're not settled down.

And almost to their credit, right?

If they don't want to influence something, then they're not going to be there.

They don't feel they're going to be here for—

I mean, I know I didn't care about all this stuff.

So, doing magic with David Copperfield.

Um, as far as our conversation here today, we should probably look at this, but I mean, so this is like a fire hose of information, right? But it's a lot of really good information, and it's information that we could use to make decisions with. But I think we need to, you know, as opposed to just listening to this today and, you know, and then going our way, I do think we have to have some follow-up.

Yep.

Um, so far, some follow-up with the city council to basically kind of dissect this and drill down and what's important to them, to us, and what What's important to messaging. And I think we could take this data and do some good things with it. So I— we need to carry this further.

We can, we can create some action items based off of the things that are the most, I guess, concerning on this and, and maybe do some more follow-up with Dr. Flint and see what kind of action items can we really take from this that are, um, that are proven to work.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I just think we need to go to the next level with it. Yes, I'm just going to suggest for Ryan and Bren that maybe we could review this as an exec staff and determine which categories fall under which departments, and then, uh, we can provide feedback, follow up on that, provide some responses, and then maybe get that out through social media after you and the council have had a chance to review the responses. Yeah, I think that would be great. I think ultimately wherever we go with it, it winds up going to our communications department to let the community know, because that's really— that's The essence of what we gotta do.

And this really goes hand in hand with our Healthy Utah Community designation, where we identified some action items that we can take to improve worms' health. And we can dive deeper also into that and the research that's there, and, and basically combine what Dr. Flint has with what we did with the Healthy Utah Community research and create more action items.

There was a concern expressed. I know, and I, and I built It stood out to me too, and Dave, regarding water quality and water supply, for example. We, we around the table here in this room understand where we are right now with supply and quality, and we're at the top. And so our messaging— we produce documentation and consumer confidence reports required by the state and the US EPA. We do that annually. We provide that information to every, every citizen in the city every year. So there's something where maybe there is something where maybe we can lean into social media perhaps and advertise that maybe on a regular basis. I don't know, but we have answers to a lot of these questions and concerns. It's not surprising to me that there were some questions about water quality. For example, PFAS has been a concern, microplastics, things of that nature. There are movies that are made about dark waters and so forth. And so I think it's Things are rising to a level of concern by many people based on information they're getting fed from state and federal sources.

So—

And I think it's important for us to get our message out, which is we just built a 10 million gallon water tank. We've got a 1,000-foot well feeding that. You know, we've got— we just spent, or we're in the process of spending $20 million on a water conservation project to reduce our water usage by at least 10%. Right. So, I mean, we're doing some really cutting-edge things. We just need to get the word out.

Lost in translation, right?

Yeah.

So did Pete.

Excuse me.

More interns.

Yeah.

Okay. Maybe we get it out.

I'll just add real briefly that if there's any area of this that you want us to dig into the data a little more further, or You know, as you digest this information, if further questions related to the data come up, do let us know and we'll do our best to respond. A lot of cities do take this as a point of, you know, departure for dialogue with their residents. And then lastly, the only thing we can give back to the people who take the time to take the survey is letting them know the findings. The findings are available publicly on our website. I have sent flyers up to, down to Orem so that you guys can send it out to your respondents with the link to the reports. You're welcome to create your own communication, obviously. And, but, but that is a great thing to do to folks. And it really helps if they do see the results come back to them because it reduces that survey fatigue. And then the next time a survey comes along from the city, they're more likely to take it if they think that they're actually gonna be able to see the results. And so we do encourage that when the time is right for you, of course. And I'm grateful to you for the time today. And again, if there's anything more that I can do to support more with these data, don't hesitate to let me know.

Thank you so much for your time, Dr. Torque. Appreciate you.

Have a great day.

Thank you.

Bye-bye.

Okay, very good. So you've got our marching orders, right?

Yes, I do.

I have a lot, so we'll get it—

we'll get it out to you.

Okay, appreciate it.

Thank you. No problem.

Thanks, Hillary.

You're welcome.

All right, good. Item number 2, uh, memorialization and facility naming policy. Uh, this would be Bryce Merrill and Tyler Payne.

Mayor, Council, thanks for, uh, letting us come and speak with y'all today. Um, the goal today is, um, to look at how we handle requests for memorialization of an individual, to an individual that has passed, uh, within Orem City public property. Um, if you want to go to the next slide really quick. Uh, these, as you can imagine, are unique situations, unique requests that come in, and we want to make sure that we are handling them with sort of the utmost care. And often, as these requests come in, this is a pivotal moment in that family's life, and they have an idea. And as a city staff, we love the idea of being able to get to yes for them. We also want to make sure that we are providing a solution that we feel is sustainable. It is productive for the city. It protects the primary purpose of our public parks and facilities and make sure our staff that are trying to execute some of these requests for memorial to be able to do it in a way that does not negatively impact maintenance, park safety, equitability, or anything like that. Fortunately, we have a couple of really good existing codes and processes that are on our books. And so our goal today is to talk about how we might adapt some of those processes and have a memorialization policy. Or actually 4 pathways for a memorialization request that comes in and go from there. So we want to present that to y'all today. We have a working document that with your feedback today, we'll get with our legal team and put into an official policy and be able to circle back with you at a time that works for y'all.

Bryce, can I ask a question? How often does this happen? Like, how often do we get requests?

Enough that we thought we should do a policy and come speak with y'all. Not daily, but But several times a year, and sometimes it bubbles up organically, or it doesn't get all the way to the finish line, or it comes— we can talk about how some of the requests come in specifically for the street naming policy, and how we're sort of looking at that to say, what about if they want to do something in a park?

So, man, I'm gonna make a request before you even start this, because I know I'm gonna need this. I would like to watch this today. This is the first exposure we're having to this. To me, this is very, very important. to have consistency here, and to do it in the right way. So I'm wondering, I don't— I would like to have some time to really look it over and review it and not have today's discussion be the—

We could not have agreed more. We actually prepared a full policy to look at the process and the forms. And we thought, we got to make sure we're barking up the right tree right now. And so yeah, I'm probably not going to say too much right now. Right?

I want to digest this and think about it.

Because I don't know, it's brand new for me. Great, perfect.

So what we have is we have 4 pathways for a request that comes in that we think gets us to a yes. The first is a public memorial on public property, maybe the option that we are most excited about. We have our existing street naming policy, we have a facility naming rights and sponsorship opportunity, and then finally we have the request for a personal memorialization on public property. I think these are easiest to hardest in order and what we, we think would be the biggest bucket down to the smallest bucket as we go from there. So right now the city is engaged in public memorials in Orem City. We currently have one that exists. We have 3 projects that are in some sort of design phase. I'll let Tyler take us through a couple of these and where they're at and what sort of how they've been imagined to be used for different cases.

The one that we currently have that's been well established for many years, and you guys are all very familiar with this, is our Veterans Memorial up at the city cemetery. It's in the far northeast corner, and it's specifically focused on our fallen veterans. As you know, we have some annual events where we pay tribute to them and honor our veterans by some things that we do on Memorial Day and so on. So we have the Veterans Memorial in place. We are working on a Gold Star Family Memorial. As you know, it's well into the design phase, and we're currently raising money to help make this come together. An exciting thing and a nice feature that will add value to our city for our residents. Um, we're looking and currently have identified some space that is funded. It's not going to be a big elaborate thing, but there are— I'll actually let Bryce speak to this a little bit. He's a little closer to me.

Attached to the Orem Senior Friendship Center, we have an area that has been, uh, in the process of being designed to have a tree and some memorial benches so that those members of our, uh, Orem Senior Friendship Center who pass are able to have a space, we're able to commemorate and celebrate without getting into specific individual members there. This would be a place where everyone can come and gather and celebrate.

Can you explain that a little bit more? Celebrate what?

We get a number of requests when a member— when a resident who is a member of the Orm Senior Friendship Center passes, to do some sort of celebration. And so we're hoping to create a space that would be a memorial to all of them. And so having a tree, having a bench, having an opportunity to celebrate all of those who have passed without having to get into celebrating and trying to find a space or a tree or a plant for every single member of the facility that passes.

So I'm still unclear though. So is it— is a place that you're talking about having Like a celebration of life? Or is it a place you're talking about putting these different things? I guess I'm just not clear.

Are you saying naming a bench after someone?

Or we would— these are public ones. So there would not be any individual specific, we would not have a bench, bench for this individual and a bench for this individual and a bench for this individual. We would recognize this as a public place of public memorialization for the Friends of the Fordham Senior Friendship Center.

So are you going to be putting people's names on there?

Probably not.

It'll just, just be a place to go and remember those who have passed and their contributions, friendships, things that they've done. Some of the concept I think that we've discussed internally as staff— you'll see this highlighted place on the map there, the gate— is an idea of what we could do to kind of segregate that off and close it in. Maybe we have some benches, maybe we have some elevated flower gardens and And the members can go out there and plant some flowers and do some things and just have a space that they can kind of call theirs to memorialize their friends that were part of the center and have since passed. I don't think we want to personalize it to anyone in particular, just give them a space for memorialization and they can make it what they want. We have a small budget that we thought that we could put into gating that off with a nice ornamental iron fence. Maybe we plant a tree, put a few benches in there and some flower beds. that is easily accessible and easy for them to work in because it's elevated and they can kind of make it what they want it to be. In memory of everyone who's been at the senior center kind of thing.

The goal here would be, as requests come in, we are able to guide most of these requests to one of these existing public spaces for a celebration or an event without having to create an individualized memorial, um, on city public property.

So it's where they can gather and they could They can remember a friend in this spot.

So it's more of an event than it is a name or an object.

A space. And that's why we think this is one of the best solutions for how we move forward because of the number of requests, the divergent needs of the requests that come in. The space is permanent. The event, the person is temporary, specific to an event as the request comes in.

It's just like the Gold Star Monument. It's for People that have lost their loved ones in war or, you know, in battle. And then senior center, same thing. They attend the senior center, they want to be able to remember them, and they'll have a bench and a tree. So, you know, it's just a place they can go to talk to them, I guess.

So you're—

I've been—

tell me if I'm— it sounds like what you're saying is you've received requests for, can I have a name on a bench? Can I have a tree planted in honor of—

can I do this?

And our response, we're setting this policy that says our response is going to be we actually have this wonderful area set aside for us to celebrate the life of that individual in whatever way you want, or whatever. Is that kind of your approach?

That's a good way to look at it. I think this is our, yes, alternative to naming the whole facility after someone that's played a significant role in being a part of that program, right? I think we're trying to find a space to meet those requests without it being something really— well, the Gold Star Monument, you know, people's names on the monument.

There will not be names on the monument. Just the sponsors, right?

Whoever sponsored, you know, the 3 levels, their names somewhere there. Yeah, but not the individual. It's just too many.

And that, that, that is the goal, is these are sensitive conversations, and as a city, we want to be very empathetic. We don't want to get into a bureaucratic back and forth of what doesn't and doesn't happen, but we still want to have a yes. And so the idea is we can guide them towards— maybe we book it, maybe we schedule it so they can come and have a time, maybe we do something that can have a personal element. But the goal here would be the public facility is a public memorial and not an individual private memorial.

Are we doing a small garden there? Yeah, there's gonna be a small garden so they can use the food for their kitchen at the senior center also.

So we showed these 4, looking at the investment we've sort of made over the last year and a half trying to design these types of facilities, knowing that the requests are coming in and knowing that we want to have that. Like we talked about, we have the Veterans Memorial, the cemetery, we have the Gold Star Monument, we have the Senior Memorial Garden, and the Women's and Children's Family Memorial Gardens. The last 3 are in design, they are not yet done. We are preparing a policy ahead of these so that we're able to shepherd in some of the conversations and go from there. So 3 of them in design, we're very excited. One of them is built. And most of our buckets, most of the requests of people that have those questions, we would guide towards one of these facilities for their use for an event, for a scheduled something, maybe we guide them towards our Memorial Day and Veterans Day events and go from there. So that's our first hopeful solution that will be in place as these facilities—

The The area we're making up at the cemetery for cremations, that's going to be a part— not a part, but a more later kind of situation. Um, this is actually different from that. This is a different thing. Now I'm going to provide just a little bit of context to kind of bring you up to speed on this. This is a new thing. It's currently in design. Lynnae is very familiar with it. She's been a part of this, uh, group that's been helping lead this design. This started originally with the Pioneer children that were needed to be recognized over at the Well Tent site off of 1600 North just east of the Carvel story. Um, we had some requests to look into maybe doing something to memorialize those children on that site. And from there, it kind of grew into, well, maybe we can provide a space because we're very limited in space at that site. Uh, it, it first needs to be a well and water asset. Um, if we wanted to do anything more than what has been proposed there, maybe there's a space at the cemetery, um, that we can design that's all-encompassing for our entire community because We've got a lot of families, a lot of diverse situations where maybe it's not just infant loss. Maybe it's also teenage suicide. Maybe it's, you know, loss of a grandparent or a mother. There's a lot of pain and mourning that goes on in families, and we recognize that. We get a lot of requests. I wouldn't say requests, a lot of requests. I would say a variety of requests. And we thought maybe, maybe a women and children's slash— we're still working on the name. We're welcome. We want all of your suggestions, frankly, on how do we, how do we brand this to be all-encompassing for all of our residents. But the idea would be maybe we can create a sacred space, a nice garden up at the cemetery that we can kind of say, let's, let's use this facility. We've put a lot of thought and design and maybe even some money into this to provide a space for these families to go and memorialize their loved ones as they pass, rather than the alternative that we're getting more and more requests from, and that is— well, we're gonna get there. Yeah, we're not there yet, but do you have any questions about this particular one?

So this is different than the one that we reviewed at full last week?

Yes, the one that you reviewed. So if you can kind of see the area on this, this would be the very northwest corner of the lower section of the cemetery, just below the Murdock Trail, right?

That brown building is up in the corner, but we're taking that out to put—

Yeah, so there's kind of a grove of trees that we can't really use for burials because of the space and the way the landscape is. We thought this might be a really good location to design a garden like this. The, the cremation area is actually to the far east that runs along that eastern border. Um, yeah, thank you. Very early in design. In fact, we're still meeting with the designers and getting feedback. This isn't— these are just concepts, one of many that he provided. We just thought we'd provide a visual.

Okay.

The idea, I think, that we're trying to say is we get these requests, we would like to defer them to these public spaces rather than individual memorials. However, we're open to that suggestion too and want to provide a yes, and we're trying to provide a process for them to go through to get that that's consistent.

Options 2, 3, and 4 are much smaller. Uh, the street naming policy, again, is an existing policy. Uh, mostly comes to y'all as a council. It has a number of votes it has to get. Uh, we're glad to share a copy of that policy with y'all if you haven't seen it or it's been a minute. Uh, those requests do not come through very often, but that is a tool that is available for those that request memorialization. The third is a facility naming rights or sponsorship. That is an avenue as well. It's not something we advertise or see Seeking out, but there are those who choose to donate in a foundation's name to Library Hall or to the fitness center lobby, or one of our city center baseball fields was historically had been named. So there are opportunities to do that. This is not that. We don't— again, we're not really seeking those out, but sometimes those requests come up. So finally, our question for you all today is an individual memorialization policy on public property. Our goal, just to restate it one more time, is to go to that first bucket as much as possible, just from a sustainability standpoint. And the individual memorialization has some potential challenges or concerns. It doesn't mean it's impossible, but we want to sort of keep in check the purpose of a public park. We have maintenance standards, park safety, things that our staff are beholden to that maybe an individual might not understand, or the amount of time or the tools we have to maintain certain types of things. There are considerations that we've talked about, about if you do an individual memorialization, if someone wants to include a verse of scripture on it, or they don't want to do that, or they have a something that might be offensive to a portion of our population, that comes with some challenges if we allow customization of individual, individual memorials on our public property. And then it sets precedent. What do we do about the future maintenance? What happens if the tree that they really want is a species that does not do well here? And we have an ongoing challenge, maybe additional memorials. So these are some of the concerns that we feel that we have to navigate as a request comes in. And again, given the pivotal and very special and important time that these requests are coming in, we want to handle them with grace, but also think about our staff that have to be up there and maintain them, or the future staff that have to live with the maintenance of these. We do have multiple individual memorials throughout the city. They are not the same. And this is not— I am not upset that we have these. These are wonderful things that we have in our city. They look different. They are maintained outside of our normal protocols and practices. And we have been very fortunate to work with families that have been able to make these happen. The question is, how do we sort of set up policy to move forward and guide them towards that? So if we were to look at an individual memorial policy, We— what we have built out is based off of the street naming policy. How does an individual qualify? It goes through very specifically if it is a member of our public safety that dies in the line of duty, if it is someone that has made significant contributions to the city or significant contributions to a particular facility, someone who has had an impact. It sort of walks us through that. Once they make an application, then it has a staff review process. Where we talk about types of benches, species of trees, locations. And so we sort of looked at like the DRC process and said, okay, then it could come to a staff to see if that works. And then we could present it to y'all, knowing that it has been vetted based off of technical needs and go from there. So sort of combining the idea of the street naming policy and the design review process, we'd be able to just have a process that takes us through these 5 steps. And would ultimately end— we'd have a, instead of a Planning Commission review, we have a Recreation Advisory Commission review. The street naming policy requires sign-off from the City Council and from the City Manager. And then we would make sure that there was an agreement in place that outlined specifics about future maintenance, future replacement, or anything like that. I'd like to start or end where we started. We think the best, one of the smoothest opportunities is the use of our public memorials on public spaces. We would have the other 3, the street naming policy, the ability to name a facility, or the ability to fill out and have accepted a memorial individual memorialization request with y'all's direction. That's the information we have today. Any questions? Any concerns? Any— feel free if we can share the documents with y'all and let y'all sort of dive in and review.

So you're gonna send us the draft documents? We'll just kind of go, okay, I'll Awesome.

So, so with this process, what does that look like in 10 years or 20 years as far as, as far as memorials and street names and all the rest? I mean, how, how high is the benchmark to make that happen? Or I'm just trying to figure out where this is taking us.

Can run out of street.

How high is the benchmark to get an individual memorial? Is that what you're asking?

Yeah, for 50 million.

The street naming policy really focuses on members of public safety that have died in the line of duty. And then the second one is those that have made a significant contribution to the city.

And schools, we've changed names for schools with Tiger Way or whatever, right?

Street naming, yeah, it allows for some. Yeah. Or Boulevard, some of those types of things. I don't— I assume we could do that here if that was an interest of the council as well. But The parks are already named colloquially, so I don't know if that'd be enough need.

So, so back to my question, so how high of a benchmark? So how difficult is it? I kind of took the lead on the memorialization policy, and I have a copy here if you guys want to take a look at it in more detail after the fact. But I think the idea, as we kind of mentioned earlier in the presentation, is we're trying to set it up so that the path of least resistance, I guess, is to use the public spaces that we're trying to encourage them to go to. We're in the— we're in the interest of, you know, these are very emotionally charged situations. I, I dealt firsthand with the one that we just had down on 4th South. I want nothing more than to say absolutely we want to show love and support. It's a tragic tragedy that this even happened. Uh, but it is challenging because we have, uh, an issue with consistency. And is the city doing the same for the next family and the family before them? And We thought, you know, as we continue to get these requests, we need to formulate a policy that will help us be consistent and follow a process so that it's fair for everybody. We're kind of setting it up in a way that hopefully they'll choose the general memorial, the family garden, or the cemetery and some of those solutions. But we did want to have an option to provide a yes if they chose to go through the steps, wanted to go through the approval process. and city manager and you as council said, you bet, we feel like this is something that would be in the best interest of, of the city to move forward with what you've proposed.

So—

And we'll see what you've got. But I mean, my thought is, is that you want to have just in the process— that's, that's the most, uh, difficult path. Yep. Because once you get the city council, I mean, we've got big hearts, so we're gonna like probably go along with most things. We're gonna have memorials all over Were there several opportunities to say no?

Right.

We're on the same page. I kind of went about this in that very way that this path may have them reconsider the path they're choosing and hopefully kind of nudge them in that direction. Again, and there are several steps that maybe they decide to turn away from it before it even goes to you guys for an approval. We've kind of set it up in that way. And I don't want that to go on record that we're trying to deter people from doing that. We're just— we find that there's an interest and a need to be consistent and fair for everybody. We wanted to have a policy that we can follow, and we're building it in a way that the public memorial is definitely the easiest path for everybody. And this is an auction if they want to jump through those hoops. But yeah, it is a little bit more of a challenging process.

We'd be glad to change it if you wanted to. That suggestion's actually only come from y'all, rather than application to y'all. Yeah, we're glad to reflect that in the policy. I mean, and at your direction, if you just want us to say no to 100%, and we do not consider it, we're comfortable doing that too. I think we were trying to find the balance of respecting y'all's decision-making and also having a process that also doesn't put you in an uncomfortable—

I think the process needs to drive 80% of it.

Yeah.

And then if it makes it past the process, then we can talk about it. But I think if it makes it past, there's a high probability it's going to happen. Bryce, how would you— it's hard to, in an emotional situation, to say no. Yeah, it is.

And I would almost like to look for another avenue. I mean, I was at the book sale right at the library, and I found 3 volumes of a 4-volume set of World War II veterans, their stories, and it's from Sanpete County or something like that. And I just grabbed them, you know, they were a buck each. I bought them and I thought, I'm going to put these on FamilySearch or something.

I'm going to look and see if these histories are up there, right?

I also worked with Nathan at the library. He said you can do these in Utah Archives, stuff like that. So maybe there's a way too to create, uh, these ways, like a memorial page for families to write something about this individual who they feel was taken before their time, or something, you know, to help them tell their story and have it be archived somewhere. You know, I think that's really the goal, is to just make sure that that person is remembered.

You know, it's got a public library program written all over it. That sounds wonderful. I'm sure we could—

so I'm just— yeah, an easier avenue, I guess, is what I envision.

QR code it on a memorial and bring up all Yeah, something. Bryce, how many of these individual memorials do we have in the city? I'm aware of just maybe 2 or 3.

I think we're— I think we're aware of 3, you know, additional.

I want to say we're up to 4 now. We've got the 2 that we've, we've shown. There's one up at, uh, Timpanogos Park, and I think there's one other. There's a bench at Sarah Park. Yes, and a couple of other benches.

Northridge Park, Northridge, Northridge Park has a bench. So there's a couple and that bench is out of— it is not the same as our other benches. And so it doesn't have the same replacement pieces. So that's one of the ones where it's just a challenge. And you would hate to have a memorial bench be the worst looking bench.

That's the exact opposite of what we want to have happen.

I just have one thought to add. I think, first, I love that you guys are doing this because I think it's something that needs to be done. I mean, you I guess in the best interest of our city and us. But 2, I think when I think of these public spaces, I love the idea of public spaces. My only hesitation there is when someone asks that they want to memorialize an individual, they want it to be that individual. This person lived, not like, well, everybody lives and everybody dies kind of thing. So I don't know if there's a way we could do like a plaque wall where you can just put really tiny plaque with just their name and one quote. Like you could set aside this big. this big or whatever, you can just go to town, have a little service, get your name added to the wall, talk about the person, and then move on. So I don't know, it's just something to consider that marks an individual life as opposed to a public—

There's a small moderate mention into this. The idea is, when I was building this policy, is I don't know that the city should be taking on the costs of these memorials. It would be something they could consult with us and we can help walk them through the process, and they may see the cost of I didn't say— I didn't— maybe totally, there's an alternative in these public spaces that maybe we can make an offering of that. We haven't determined what that's going to be or what it's going to cost yet, but there is a nod to that in this.

And they can pay their $25 or whatever it costs to get the plaque made, or they could bring you the plaque, or just whatever. So I, I don't know.

We do something like that at the Veterans Memorial, right, with the names and dates inscribed on the stone there. So I think we're open to that, and there is a nod to that in the policy. So it's good. And I, I think what both these guys are saying, as far as— I mean, the essence of why people probably want to do this, I mean, they're— they've gone through a big emotional trauma, but then they also want to have a legacy, right? And that goes to an individual. And so whether it's through a book or through a wall, you've got the Vietnam Memorial in DC, right? Yeah. So it's just making something kind of memorialized. But then we go to the, the other problem, which is we can't have memorials all over the city. That doesn't fit. So if there's— there's maybe there's another step in what you're doing, but to get it to a wall or some other way to memorialize people that doesn't— isn't so intrusive that it is ridiculous.

It confines it to a space and the maintenance is easy and it doesn't cost a lot. Somehow in You know, they, they signify something, right?

We've got 3 of the projects still in the design phase. I think that this might be a good opportunity to consider that desire while we don't have to go and retrofit or rebuild something. I think we can just— one of them, not Gold Star. I think by design and purpose of Gold Star is to not have names on it, but maybe one of the other 2, we could look at that option.

Yeah, design. Any other questions?

You've got our general, general idea. We'll share this. We'll also share the street naming policy just so you can see that. And then we'll work with staff, we'll wait to hear back for a few weeks and go from there. There are no pending processes that are waiting on this. So we had it, we had a rush. Now we have some time. And so—

No, and I appreciate that. I thought you were gonna be very specific today and ask us to decide on it. So I appreciate that you're giving us a draft and letting us Ponder.

Okay, thanks, y'all.

Thank you. Thank you. All right, so next up we've got our event, Fire Safety Night. Does this start at 5? Yeah, probably. It's probably ramping up right now. We usually get people around 4:30 showing up, so— okay, we'll free you up. Everybody can set up because this one's 5 levels. Okay. All right, um, and then we got— so we got that, and then they'll probably bring some food at some point, right?

Are we early for the other event?

Well, I mean, it's, it's just starting to—

so it starts at 5 though, correct?

Yeah, but everybody will be there. Got that on there?

Got 20 minutes.

Food's probably here. He's going to go get it, so it should be here any minute.

Okay, sounds good. So we'll have Jen do a report now rather than later.

Great. Um, then I'm just going to go through really quick about what's happening with these commissions. I have 4, and we'll start with the easiest ones. Um, beautification— we just met, I guess, last week or the week before, and they're wrapping up their beautification awards. You may have seen signs around the city that says your yard is beautiful, and they're looking towards the holidays and doing awards for those. So if you happen to see recommendations and you want to call them out, we'll plan to the committee. Um, they also talked about potentially doing Halloween decorations, maybe not this year but going forward. I guess that's become a bigger thing, people decorating Halloween. So, um, we have an opening on this commission, so if you have any recommendations of things you think would be awesome, send them my way.

It's for—

it's for the Commission of Beautification. Uh, I love that floor.

Another reason for the new building, right? Yes. Good morning.

Okay, the Orem Fest Commission, um, as you know, we're talking about that tonight, and we just heard about that, so that we're just in the midst of a shift between Orem Fest to, um, what do they call it, their events?

Orem Events.

Orem Events.

Orem Events.

So we will be talking about that tonight, and if it passes, we'll be inviting members of the community to join that commission. Um, then NRSC, the Natural Resources Stewardship Commission, we have a reappointment tonight, um, in Hillary Hungerford. And I just have to say, she's been on the commission for the last— she served this last term, and I've been to meetings. She's a professor, and she was, uh, on sabbatical in Mongolia. And I'm in a meeting and she is on Zoom in Mongolia at our— it's 5 o'clock our time, mostly like 3 in the morning her time. So she's really dedicated towards this. So, they are doing a tour of the Provo Delta October 12th. So kind of get to know that area a little bit, and they're going to do a service project afterwards. And that's actually open to the public as well, but they're not necessarily publicizing it. Are you going to that? You know about that, I guess.

I need to. Yeah, I've been down there. It's pretty neat.

Good.

Well, they're excited about that. And they're also working on a birding event. Those points are so key.

They—

and I guess I want to talk with Bryce and Steve about this later, but they're looking to maybe get some more subcommittees involved. And so we're just wanting to talk about what that might entail in terms of do we need to train them, or are they agents of the city and those kinds of things. So we'll leave those later to talk about. Okay, CDBG, let's talk about that for just a minute. That is Community Development Block Grant Commission. And they are coming to our next city council meeting to talk about— well, MAG is presenting at our October 29th meeting, and they're going to talk about consolidated plans. So the consolidated plan is something that is required by the federal government for each entity that administers the funds to put together every 5 years. And the idea is that they survey the needs of the community so that they can make sure that how we're spending our funding matches what the needs of the community are in specific areas. So they're working on that right now. They're going to present about that next week, so we can expect that. Um, and then in November, we'll have our— uh, they'll come back and there'll be a public comment meeting. And so the public will have a chance to weigh in on that, and then they'll make—

they'll start writing the plan.

Um, as you know, we awarded contracts earlier this year for CDBG funds, and for the most part, those have been administered or in the process of being administered. There was a few Hiccups with some of those. Uh, one of the entities they awarded a contract to actually went under, so they had to reassign those funds. One of the entities, um, is for a building, and they had to get an environmental study done. There were some hiccups with that, so they're in the process of distributing those. One of note is Senior Friendship Center flooring, and maybe you know a little bit about this, Ryan. That one, we got funding approved to do the flooring in the Senior Friendship Center, but it's on hold currently to make sure that the process was bid correctly. Because if it wasn't bid correctly, the federal government doesn't really like that when it comes to reporting. So they're working on it. You know what that's saying?

I do not. Christmas break. The bid was resolved and install is scheduled for the last week of December.

So it was done correctly.

I think like the 21st to the end of the year.

Yeah. So the way Gina explained it, we had actually done it correctly. We have not filed this paperwork. Chuck had done it correctly. Cancelled it, we resubmitted.

That's been excellent. CDBG accounting and reporting is very, very challenging. So that's good.

Great.

Okay, then let's see. Oh, just so you know, the Critical Home Repair Fund used to be administered by the city, but it has— or by the— what do you call it?

I'm just guessing.

No, it's not.

It wasn't by MAC before.

It was by Consultants. By consultants.

Yes.

Um, and that transferred as of July 1st, and now MAG administers the funds. So just so you know, they do the same process, but they are doing that rather than Interior, and they actually make decisions about where those funds go. But if there's a tricky issue, they come to the commission, and commission will help resolve them. So just be aware that that happened. Um, and then also the process for next year's funding cycle has started already. They are going to host a meeting if for, for any entity to be funded, they, they're required to go to How to Apply seminars. So there's one October 28th and there's one on October 30th. Um, if they don't attend that, they aren't eligible for funding. So I guess Heather and I had a debate about, do we help— should we post this publicly so that everyone knows? Or does that just open a can of worms? The people that need to know about it already know about it. Do you guys have any thoughts about that?

Do we have connections to nonprofits in our city We have any kind of a list.

So everybody that has been awarded funding was notified at the meeting. It would just be the people that maybe don't know about it. Or I guess what I'm saying is, if there are nonprofits that haven't ever—

are they— is that searchable?

Do we know?

I'm sure we can work with Pete to get it out on the social media channels about noticing.

So my only thought there is, does it open a can of worms? Oh, we qualify. There's a requirement that was so narrow so strict. Is that open can of worms or not?

I think so. I mean, they're going to find out really quick. Yeah, try to apply. But, um, can we put requirements in the notice? Yeah, I think we could just work with Matt, filter this. Yeah, I'll talk to Pete about that.

Yeah, so that would be good to get it noticed until the end of this.

So yeah, we'll figure it out. Definitely be noticeable.

Well, it's not required.

I know it's not a requirement, but we had people last year who didn't know what happened.

They—

how I do it. So be nice to get it out.

So then let that—

that is okay. Good job. Look, food showed up while you're talking. Manna from heaven.

Is it on?

Okay, do we have a, uh— so yeah, we're, we're done with this for now. We'll go to the fire event. Uh, who's here? Somebody want to bless it? Our Father in heaven, we pause at this moment to bow our heads and thank you for this beautiful day. Grateful for the opportunity of meeting and serving together. We're grateful, Heavenly Father, for the privilege that it is to live in this community. Grateful for Our good friends and neighbors. Father, at this time we humbly ask a special blessing to be with our friend Bren. As we have been celebrating this, he's going through some specific challenges, and we pray that thou would bless them with courage, health, and strength, and that they might feel of our love and support and the support of so many others. We pray that thou would reach out to them and bless them. Help them to be able to have the strength as they navigate this challenging time. We pray that that would bless Ray, that he might be able to continue to carry on and that he might be able to be healed and strengthened through this, through these processes. Father, we're grateful for this food that thou hast blessed us with and pray that thou would bless it, that it will nourish and strengthen us, and that we might use that strength to do good. To serve thy children and to serve one another. Say these things in the name of Jesus Christ.

Amen.

So, um, somebody had a birthday.

Yes, so the cheesecake down here at the end is in honor of David's birthday. Did you say 45?

He's finally made it to 45.

Yeah.

Oh.

I'd like to cut. Do we have?

There's more than one way to silence the mayor.

Testing. Okay, we're good.

Yeah, that's—

I thought they do that on a show, all the debates, they cancel people's mics.

Yeah, you got it.

Anyway, like to call this meeting to order, and we appreciate y'all coming out tonight, and we welcome you here. We'll start out with an invocation. by Elaine Hewish and a pledge by Craig Hewish. And Tom McDonald invited them to come tonight. So Tom, if you'd like to welcome them.

Welcome to the Hewishes. They're very active in the senior volunteering over there. Uh, uh, Mr. Hewish, Craig worked in the hospitality industry for 112 years, I think you told me, something to that effect. Retired from UVU, and his sweet wife Elaine retired from BYU, and they're happy being grandmother and grandfather And active in our community, and we invite you up to give the prayer and then the pledge respectively. Thank you. Yeah, if you'd come up to that mic. Peter, will you make sure that's on? And we do have a 12-minute limit on the prayer length. Okay.

Our Father in heaven, we're grateful for the opportunity that we have of meeting this evening and discussing the needs of our wonderful city of Orem, Utah. We ask thee that we will be open and respectful to the things that are discussed, and that we will come to conclusions that are best for those that reside here in the city. Father, we ask at this time for a special blessing on any of our citizens that might be suffering, or those in the county or state, and especially those throughout the country that are suffering from the floods and Wahoo fires that are. going on now at this time. We're grateful for our military and first responders and all those that serve others, and we're grateful for all of our blessings. And we say these things in Jesus' name. Amen.

Amen.

Please rise for the pledge.

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

Thank you.

Move to item number 6, 6.1, and we'll invite Adam Robertson to come up and do a presentation for the Sarah's Annual Report.

Adam, anybody going to come with you? You a little lonely by yourself or Okay.

Oh, Pete's gonna help back there.

Pete?

Hey, Adam, if Lisa and April, they want to come up, or your team can come up.

No, they're happy in the back.

Seriously?

There. Well, thank you. I don't know who your bet is against. I just have to go past 6:45, right? Okay, I'm just kidding. Um, I do want to recognize, uh, we have Lisa Pullum in the back there. She's worked at CIRA for 48 years.

Yes.

We have, uh, April Berlin, who's, uh, this year 40 years at CIRA. And Danielle Berry, who is the greenie at 18 years. So anyway, we, uh, we thank you for the opportunity to come and, and present to you today. And, uh, and we, we brought lots of pictures. If a picture's worth a thousand words, we have at least 100,000 words today. No, I'm just kidding. We, we, uh, We have— we just wanted to go through these and, and tell you how, how, um, proud we are to be part of Family City USA. And I did want to just talk real briefly about how, you know, Sarah was very much involved in, in helping to get the CARE passed again. And, um, and so we, we were grateful for that and for the citizens who help, uh, with the CARE program. There are many organizations that helped us distribute hundreds and hundreds of signs and, and to get this for another 10 years. So we're, we're grateful for that. I have— I've passed out a few things that you have. This, this last year we finished our 90th year at CIRA, and we've just— this is September 1st is CIRA's fiscal year. So we're just starting or just have started our 71st anniversary year. This last summer that we just completed— this seems really loud, is it really? Is it loud? This last year we just completed our 40th anniversary at the Shell Outdoor. So SIRRA's mission, for those in the audience maybe that don't know, is to enrich the mind, touch the soul, and unify family and community by producing and presenting wholesome and affordable arts, entertainment, and education for all ages in quality facilities. And we do this— our goals for serving the community are to produce, present, and provide a wide variety of opportunities for citizens of all ages to be enriched, entertained, and educated, whether it be as an audience member, a student, an artist, a teacher, a performer, or a volunteer. Uh, I, I— through these slides, I just want to talk about just some of the facilities. I think maybe not everyone understands all of the facilities and maybe some of the things that go in. We'll, we'll just skim through these. Of course, the Cirrus Center for the Arts, uh, inside our grand Clark Grand Theater and Theater 2. And then we have You know our lobby areas, our concessions area, lots of fun. And of course, the Sierra Shell again this summer, forty years under the stars. And you know, I thought it was maybe interesting to note that I don't think any other city, at least in Utah County, has entertained or I should or maybe. That's the wrong word, but had enough— as many entertainers and celebrities in our city than Orem has. And if you think about that, I brought a list just to show you the visual of all the entertainers in the 40 years that have been at the Sarah Shell. And these are big names. I mean, you know, that over the years, and they've all come to Orem and to entertain. And more importantly, all those that have come to the Sierra Shell and to the Sierra in that same time have come, come to our city to be entertained as a family. Anyway, real cool stuff. We did want to just have a small squirrel moment here and talk about the fence this year that we worked so closely with the city and Brynn and others I'll mention in just a minute here. Um, we— when we, um, it was a very cold rainy day, and so— and many of you had other things, but we had a real impromptu, um, fence cutting ceremony just to have it take a little piece of the 40-year-old fence that was literally falling down, um, and had been hit, who knows how many times, by lawn mowers over 40 years, uh, etc., etc. So anyway, we have this As I'm talking here for a second. Um, nope, maybe you're not going to work for me. There we go. Uh, it's a little time lapse over a few months in just a, a minute here, um, that you can kind of see the progress. This took several months. I do want to give a huge shout out, of course, to Brynn, our city manager, uh, Brooke at the city, at the Sierra Park gym, And Kyle, and a huge, huge kudos to Tyler Pay. I'm part of the Tyler Pay fan club now. And anyway, good, good, good stuff. Lots of fun. Of course, we were able to add some height to the fence, and surprising to all of us, we were able to do this concrete fence for the same price as some of the bids that came in with the plastic options and beautiful new main entrance gates and enhanced lighting all on the outside of the shell. You've just watched from February, March, April, we're now in May. Very, very long process, but anyway, lots of great stuff happened. Here we are just a week away from our first first event of the Shell. This is super crazy speed, but anyway, lots of fun. And a week later, we opened up and had a great opening, opening concert. Just brought one before and after picture here. You can see this is on the south side of the, the park by our south main entrance, and the after of the same, the same thing. Just really beautiful. That park light actually didn't do any good anymore, so they've since removed that. The lighting from the fence is plenty, and, and just very, very beautiful. We're so grateful for, for that partnership. And I think year-round beauty in the park for all who use that park— it's a very heavily used park— and safety, security for the Shell, and beauty for all those that come inside the gates. We had a wonderful 40th anniversary at the Shell, lots of great things. And for our 40th, we did all '80s movies. So this was our season of outdoor movies, all fun from the '80s. Again, Little Mermaid, Crazy for You, Fiddler on the Roof. I thought it would be interesting too to have you see kind of a little bit the process that goes through maybe just one production. So we have— this is just a very— it starts out with chicken scratch on a piece of paper, right? And then it goes to this stage, which is very rough Styrofoam and some color palettes and some things there. Then it gets real specific to more of a CAD program that is very specific to the size of that ginormous stage. And then, of course, to the finished product on the stage. And we did bring another fun little time-lapse here. This is closing night of the Shell. So we— you can see the Shell fills up. We have a 2.5-hour Fiddler on the Roof show, and then we clean up and haul it all out of there. Just 2— And just a day and a half later, we did Dancing Under the Stars at the Shell. Lots of fun concerts. Our opening concert, Jenny Oaks Baker, we, we did as well. Had some fun with— whoops, I'm a real awesome computer guy here. We were able to, for the 40th anniversary, we did fireworks for 3 of the, 3 of the shows, this being closest to the 4th of July. And then we ended the Shell as well with fireworks. Colin Ray was a huge hit this year, our, our 19th year of doing our Dancing Under the Stars show. Lots of great talent that came in. Richard Marx, it was his 3rd visit to the Shell. We love doing collaborations, one with the Utah Valley Symphony This was Laura Osnes singing her famous Never Enough song, and then we ended with Home Free and, and Out with a Bang again. Then I wanted to touch on some of the other programs and stuff. Centennial Elementary is one that we've had for many, many years. The entire student body comes to the Sierra all during the school year, and they have a theater experience and a dance experience and an art experience and the Orem Heritage Museum and, and a film experience. It's a lot of fun. There's some of the classes that they get to take and do, and then they also come to a tech rehearsal of our theater for young audience shows that we do, and, and they, they get a more in-depth Q&A with kind of behind the scenes. We actually do scene changes and, and things for them to, you know, get excited about the arts. Gallery 101 is very busy. This is a current show that we have. It's the Utah Valley Artists Guild. We have every year our public art show that we host, many community artist shows and BFA exhibits. 101 also is used for multipurpose. This is a piano recital Shell in the art gallery as well. Volunteers are awesome, right? We have these 12, 13, and 14-year-old kids that come and get their, their work experience before they go out into the workforce. They're just wonderful, wonderful kids. We have hundreds of youth and adults volunteering at the Sierra Center and at the Shell. Um, they really are just awesome, awesome kids. Lots of special events that happen. So many groups that use the Sierra that are not Sierra. In fact, we were happy to host the executive staff last week for a couple of days at the Sierra, and that was fun. Lots of great activities. Our annual Veterans Celebration of Veterans is coming up again, uh, the beginning of November. We do that every year. That's a lot of fun to, to celebrate. That's a free-to-the-public event. Our Christmas Makers Market every year is coming up again this beginning in December. Our annual Christmas display at the Sierra Center, trying to do our part with the, the community. Nothing like Community Park, but maybe second or third. Uh, our our fun every year participation in the parades locally. Um, again, I'm just highlighting a few. There are hundreds on an annual basis. We love the Colonial Days in the Sierra Park, and that is host to tens of thousands of people every summer in the 3 and a half days at the Sierra Park. Lots of workshops that are done at the Sierra. We host our annual gala with fun themes every year, and we honor great people in the state doing great things in the arts and amazing contributions that they make and our fun, fun themes that we try to come up with every year. We also have hosted for the last 20-something years the Zion's Indie Film Fest, formerly known as LDS Film Festival, and Room 201, which is host to so many events. events. This is where the Orem had their meetings last week as well. The Orem Heritage Museum, which we own and operate as well, is doing well. Lots of improvements have been made to the exterior and continue to make more improvements, and thousands of people get to visit free of charge to see the, the museum each year. The collections continue to grow as people donate things of significance or connected to Orem in some way, shape, or form. The shops building behind the Sierra is home to our scenery and our props and our costumes. Lots and lots of stuff. All of the productions we do has to come from somewhere. I might mention too that we literally work with all the elementary schools, junior highs, high schools all up and down the Wasatch Front. Way too many to mention. This is our staff working on our, our current production of James and the Giant Peach that they've loaded onto our stage, and it's coming up next. Arts education, another huge thing for Sierra. We, we report to you as a CARE recipient every year, but our last number was just over 30,000 that attended these wonderful camps, summer camps, classes, some kind of educational offering at Sierra. Lots of great voice lessons, choirs, dance offerings. Acting Up is the, the kind of the pinnacle of the youth theater program. This is production last spring of Shrek. Every year they go to the Music Theater Competitions of America and compete, and every year they take first and second place in so many different categories. This is just last spring when they came back from MTCA, and that's a fun way too to kind of see how do our kids bode with other youth theaters all across the United States and Canada that come to this event every year in California. And, and then the trophies speak for themselves, right? Our art studios continues to grow in attendance as well, and participants. All the studios that we have there and the pottery classes and the art classes and the summer camps and the painting. We have lots of offerings for adults as well. Our Paint the Night is a popular one. Our Our one-night-only dance classes are popular. Literally something for everyone. As I mentioned, we're getting ready for James and the Giant Peach, one of 2 of our theater for young audience shows that we do every year. These are open to schools that come in and get bused in every day at 10 AM. We do 21 shows for schools and public of of that show. And then in the spring, we're doing Cat in the Hat. These are fun too. We come out at the end of these shows with the cast, and we do Q&A for 15 minutes with these kids. It is— many of these kids, we ask them every night or every morning, how many are seeing live theater for the very first time in your life? And it's It's always amazing to us how many people raise their hand and say, this is my first time ever. And they, you know, and then it's fun. Now we've done this for so many years, we have parents coming to say, I came when I was in 5th grade, and now I'm bringing my 5th grader. So it's kind of fun. Our indoor season, which we just kicked off with Bright Star, very, very fun. A lot of great things coming for the '24-'25 season of events. I just highlighted just a few here. I don't know if any of you got to see Bright Star, very fun true story. We just closed that and are now getting ready for James and the Giant Peach. We also have our Sierra Cinema Classics. These are classic movies on the big screen every Tuesday morning. We started this many, many years ago with just just 12 movies, and it was so popular we added a winter-spring, and then it was so popular we added a summer, and now we do 48 movies a year, every week for 48 weeks of these fun classics. And we regularly get 200, 300, 400 that attend these movies every week. Night of Broadway is coming right up as well. This year we're saluting Disney. There's so many great Broadway Disney songs We've now cast that, and we're very excited for the offerings that we have this year at Night of Broadway. And then Tricks and Treats is coming up at the end of the month. That's always a fun one. And then we've got, as I showed you in that first season poster, so many more things coming up. Art has the power to transform, to illuminate, to educate, inspire, and motivate. That is what we get up every day and hope to do for our community. This last year, hundreds of thousands of people came to the Sierra and the Sierra Shell, and most importantly, to Orem, to be entertained and inspired and motivated in our great city, Family City USA. I just wanted to see if there were any Any questions or comments? And we especially want to make sure that we thank you for your support. We simply couldn't do what we do without your support of CIRA and, and our offerings.

Thank you.

Thank you, Adam. Any questions, comments?

I have a comment. Yes, I was a believer before, but I'm an even bigger believer now. I love what you guys do, and I'm so grateful Thank you.

Appreciate all you do.

Thank you.

I just want to say also, you know, it's, it's one thing to have a mission statement. It's another thing to live up to and beyond your mission statement. I can't think of a single time that I've ever gone to any event, movie, play, concert, anything that I didn't come away feeling better. than I did when I arrived. And, um, as you know, CIRA is my happy place. So thanks for all that you do. Really appreciate it.

Thank you.

And I'll just say, Adam, and you, you know this, you do an amazing job. We are a family, CityUSA, and you are the heart of that, making that happen. And, uh, I mean, the numbers you put through there, the tens of thousands of people that you benefit And bring together as a community is really impressive. And those are a couple of reasons why you, you received an award from Orem City a couple weeks ago for being an amazing volunteer, and you received another award from the Chamber of Commerce a couple weeks before that. So we appreciate all you do. You do a fantastic job.

Thank you, Mayor.

Adam, as we spend CARE dollars, I don't know of another place we get a better ROI than at the Sierra. Our return on investment is phenomenal. So thank you for your effort. And the people who are too shy to come up front, thank you for your effort. You guys make Adam look good. Thank you very much.

Yes, they do. Adam, we appreciate what you do. And as you know, I'm a rec guy, but he's brought me over to the arts side, and I appreciate the Sierra and what you do for the community. Also, I'm still waiting on the 38 Special.

Add a little Aldo Nova to that too. Aldo Nova to the 38th Special. I saw them when they were in concert together. I just want to say yes to all of this. As I've gone to the theater, the thing that has touched my heart is I can look on the stage at the Shell performances, even indoor, and see kids, Orem kids that I know. And that opportunity to be able to be on stage and to form relationships with other kids who are— my daughter's a theater nerd, so she said to have that opportunity to do that. She was in a couple performances, and with Jerry Ellison, right, the, the iconic director there, um, you guys have just touched so many lives and done so many good things. And then I'm just going to put a plug into your— for your costume shop. That is amazing. So Halloween's coming up, and I think you rent costumes, don't you?

We do.

We do.

So yeah, if you don't know what you're going to be yet for Halloween, go check it out.

Thank you.

Thank you. It is an amazing staff. I have to say, we do all that we do. If you think about the quantity, With 9 full-time staff, 26 part-time staff, and then of course we have our education department and, and a lot of contract staff and hundreds of volunteers. But we could not do it without your support and without them. So thank you.

Thank you, Adam. Okay, next up we've got item number 7, personal appearances. And maybe I'll just read this. Time has been set aside for the public to express their ideas, concerns, and comments on items not scheduled as public hearings on the agenda. Those wishing to speak are encouraged to show respect for those who serve the city. Comments should focus on issues concerning the city. Those wishing to speak should have signed in before the beginning of the meeting, and please limit your comments to 3 minutes or less. So we've got 5 people today, and, uh, we'll start out with David Richardson.

Good evening. This is my first, uh, foray into being— participating in your city council meeting. So I come tonight with a problem in my neighborhood. I live on 1695 North, 240 West. So, um, with the ex— you know, the high rising costs of housing Homes on my street have been sold to people that are investor types and others that come and have businesses. And my home is in an R-8 residential zone, and I have a neighbor across the street that has a lawn and garden business. He owns 2 trucks and 3 trailers, has 5 people that work, uh, for him every day. They come and they park on the city streets, and they park in front of my house, and not my house only, but also my 2 neighbors who are widows. And his equipment and the cars are not— he does not have enough space in front of his house To accommodate all of his equipment. And so I have checked with the zoning department. And the reason why I'm here tonight is that I, I believe that we have some loopholes that need to be closed to help us preserve the residential, the family area of our neighborhood, because it is definitely changing the dynamic. Thank you. And the, the big problem that I see, for example, in one of— in the rules right now is that, first of all, a vehicle cannot be more than 20 feet long to park on the street. Well, these folks have a truck and a trailer. One measures 40 feet and the other one measures 30 feet. Okay. When they're hooked together. But when you unhook them, they're not 20 feet. So it's a loophole. The, the other thing that I find kind of strange about the rule is that people can come, a person can have their business at home, and as long as they don't work in the house, they can come, they can park their own personal cars on the street, and they can go out. And like in this case, he can park, he can do his lawn business outside. They They come in the morning at 8 o'clock, their cars park on the street from 8 to 6 or 8 to 7, and they go home. And then I've been told, and I guess it's completely legal for them to do this. And, uh, and so I come tonight because I have a wife who's an invalid, who's handicapped, and I have— she's on home hospice. I have nurses and doctors that come to see my wife, and Unfortunately, a lot of times they're, you know, they can't park in front of my house 'cause they got cars parked in front of my house. And so I don't understand why we can't have some updated policies to not, well, to protect us. My neighbor to the north, as I said, she's a widow, their trucks are parked there and sometimes she can't see when she backs out of her garage because the truck is there and she's worried about running into somebody. And so, uh, I'm not sure I understand what the justification or the rules are, why, um, the current legislation permits these kinds of things.

David, it's well past 3 minutes.

Okay.

Um, but I appreciate you coming. And Ryan, who should he talk to?

Oh, we'll discuss it in the next staff meeting. Yeah, it'll be on. Teresa's got the list.

So, okay, so we'll have somebody reach out to him.

Yeah, and somebody will call me.

Yeah, so we'll have somebody reach out to you and, and try and gather more information to see if there is something that can be done.

Okay, well, I, I would appreciate it.

Okay.

I want to be a peacemaker like we've been told, but it's kind of hard to be a peacemaker when you don't have people that want to collaborate.

I understand. Thank you. Thank you for coming tonight. Uh, next we've got Bill Stay.

Hi. I've never done this either. Um, but, uh, oh yeah, so My wife and I are, are getting ready to sell our home, and we have 4 homes within— right, we live in a cul-de-sac, and then off of 1000 East that are— and we talked to Alan that's over the city beautifications, and they're aware of this, and they've been aware of this for years, of the, the blight that's starting to happen on 1000 East. We have cars That have not been driven in 20 years that are parked. One house has 14 cars on the property, no fence to hide them. A fire truck there, um, that's an older fire truck, you know, and it's rusting away with the weeds growing up around it. We have another house that the owner is renting his property to people to park their trailers on. And, and, and, and also to live in some of those trailers. We have another home with a family that lives out in the parking lot, the— on the, on the— in their driveway, you know, in a small trailer. And they have 4 or 5 other trailers, um, on that same property. Um, and what I'm concerned about is that when we're selling our house, this is devaluating our And we've talked to Alan. We've done it. We've been working on this for several years. The last 4 months I've been calling every week to update my complaint, and he also agrees that this, this is a blight. But they said that there is not enough staff. There's only 2 people on your city beautification, uh, payroll that, that try work on enforcement.

And they—

he told me the rules. Okay, so they have 30 days to comply. They don't comply, then they start— then they, then they are given a fine. And the first fine is $50. Then the fine can go up, you know, if it goes on longer than that. Well, it's obviously gone on longer than that. There's been no fines. They dropped the— they dropped the complaint for a couple of— a month. And I found out about it because I called and there was no No more complaint on the, on the properties. And then I called Alan, who, he said that they want— they had staff that left and it was a mistake that, that the complaint had been dropped. So, and I don't want to take too much time, but, but we need to get this taken care of and we need to get more staff on your city beautification program because we can't have the city of Orem become blight areas. We, we all love our city and we all want the best for people in our city, and, and this has been going on for quite some time.

So what's your address, Bill?

Oh, it's on that sheet.

It is on there.

Yeah. Um, Ryan?

Yeah, I can follow up with NIT and, and see where we're at with it. We, we are down one person right now, so he is correct.

There's—

we're down to 2 staff, Becca Recently switched jobs, so we're backfilling that position right now.

Okay, thank you so much.

Okay, thank you. And Ryan, this— these would be both— these would be cases that we should incorporate into as we're looking at NIT and what NIT does and what NIT doesn't do and how this fits in and if we need to be changing anything.

Correct.

Yep.

Thanks.

Okay, next up, Ashley Taylor.

Thank you so much for your time. My name is Ashley Taylor, and I'm the executive director of The Refuge Utah based here in Orem. And October is Domestic Violence Awareness Month, so I just wanted to come tonight and share a little bit about what we do and bring a little bit more awareness to domestic violence and the problem that it is in our community. At The Refuge Utah, our mission is to empower survivors of domestic violence and sexual assault, and to provide services through things like a 24-hour hotline, emergency shelter, transitional housing, hospital response advocates, therapy services, support services, support classes, and also prevention education so that we can stop the cycle of abuse that's happening in our community. This month, we really want to focus on spreading not only the message that domestic violence affects every one of us, Whether it's happening in our home or in our neighbor's home, it affects all of us and it affects our community. But more importantly, we want to spread the message that there is hope and there is help for those that are going through these issues, and that we at the Refuge are here to support that. We're grateful for our partnership with Orem City police officers and the victim advocates, that they do wonderful work to support survivors of domestic violence as well, and we're grateful for the work that they're doing and our partnership with them. We're also grateful to the City of Orem as we work with you to expand our facilities and expand the work that we're doing in the community here. We're really grateful for that partnership, and we're excited to continue that partnership moving forward. I just want to encourage everyone as we're going through the month of October to be aware of how we can help support our community, to be able to work together to build a safer and more resilient community, starting with our homes. And allowing survivors to know that there is help there is hope, and there is a way for them to reach out and to be able to receive the support that they need in their community. Thank you for your time.

Thank you.

Next, we've got Jessica Ballard.

First, I wanted to say I didn't know what I was getting myself into coming here, but— and they made me come first. So I live next to Trader Joe's, and here's the mall and Costco. So we get a lot of people coming down our street thinking they can get to the mall. And on our— my road in particular that I live on, they turn the corner, realize that there's no Costco entrance because it's gated off, and they fly by. And it's a concern not only for those who live in our neighborhood, but I'm especially concerned because I have 3 little children and, um, they fly by my house and they go to the next entrance, realize they can't go that way, fly down all the way to the end, and then they leave our neighborhood. Um, so I would love to talk about solutions, um, on how we can stop people from coming into our neighborhood trying to get to the mall, to stop the speed going down our road particularly, and just making a safer place for us and not having so many random people driving by. That's— yes, but my part is the speed. So that's all I have to say. Thank you.

Thank you.

Uh, next and last, we've got Debbie Lamb.

I'm a bad influence on people in my neighborhood, I guess. Um, anyway, I'm here obviously for the same reason. I did provide you those 2 forms, one of which is a map of our neighborhood that I've highlighted where there are stop signs, and those stop signs are not Visible. They need to be flashing. There needs to be trees cut around them, whatever we need to do, because I live on a corner and I just watch people fly through my stop sign all the time, constantly. Along with that, I've also put a star on there of we need more signage to show that there is no mall or Costco access. We have little signs right now, can't see them. By the time people see them, they've already passed it. There's some stars on where they would Um, and then also, we've been talking about doing speed tables. The 500 East is horrible. I clocked somebody— we do have signs that say your speed is— doing 50 the other day in a 25. That's just unacceptable. I've been working with Councilwoman, um, Lynnae Millett and also Dave Spencer on this, and I need all of you. This is not something that myself can handle on my own.

Thank you.

We need more help. We've got neighbors that are frustrated. They just are too shy to come and speak, so they've left it up to me. But it's a serious problem. So if we could get more— I've invited Tom MacDonald to have lemonade on my porch, and he has yet to take me up on that offer to just see what the traffic's like in my neighborhood. Second thing on the list is the illegal rentals. We have way, way, way too many. It's causing traffic issues. is causing parking issues. It's causing— um, we have no stability in our neighborhood. Our primary consists of 23 kids because we do not have, um, families that are rooted in that neighborhood because people are buying them and renting them. I've lived in that neighborhood for over 40 years, and it is not what it was even 10 years ago. The mall has taken over. Um, the high-rises are causing problems. We have got to bring that back There's an art— we're just a little island, and there's not much of the originals left because of that. So I've also provided a list of all of those that I know of for sure that are illegal. Um, we also have a problem with businesses. It seems to be kind of the, the topic tonight and the theme for tonight of getting code enforcement to do their job, to do what they need to do to hold these people accountable. We've got a dance studio right across the street from me that has 2 trailers. Has probably 50, 60 students that are coming and going all day long. The parking is a problem. They park in front of neighbors' driveways. They can't get in and out. They park in front of my house. I can't get my vehicles where I need to park them. Um, cars are stopping in the middle of the road to let their, their children out to run across the street to get to dance. So I know that, again, the zoning there is not for commercial, not for businesses, and it needs to She needs to move it. It needs to be shut down and she needs to move her dance studio. She's a great lady, nothing wrong with that. It's just the problem of all the traffic. And, and, and quite frankly, I have 3 little kids and they can't even go outside and play because of all this traffic. So thank you.

Can I just ask a quick question?

Thank you.

When you say current illegal rentals, is this like their illegal basement apartments, or what makes them illegal? Can you just clarify that?

The top and bottom is being rented by People that are not related to the homeowner. And then they're also— or people are renting homes to 6, 7, 8 college students. And now you have that many plus cars for that one little house, and there's no off-street parking. Thanks.

We have the same problem on our street.

Thank you. And we, and we have a, uh, an NIT squad that is Is— that's one of their roles is to deal with these sorts of things. Um, there's just been some questions as far as where we want to enforce and where we don't want to enforce.

Yes.

I got the answer.

My hands are tied because nobody will support me in keeping those codes up to par and being used, and it's all approved. houses that nothing's being taken care of. We have the Wright Development Group that they're not taking care of their property that's a fire hazard. I've told these people that have been living there.

I know you have the code set in place.

You just need to push them through and be more proactive to get this taken care of.

Thank you. Yeah, that, that— and Ryan, this is an area we need to follow up on, is taking some of these specific different issues that are being brought up tonight and looking at where we're at with our enforcement.

Yeah.

Because I think it's— we've had debates on do we enforce this, do we enforce that? But I think this kind of brings to light— I'm actually having the same thing in my neighborhood just down the way. There's 30 cars parked where there used to be 10, and it's just because of basically illegal rentals, I believe. So it's something we need to look at as a city council, but I need to give it to you Make sure you bring it back through, Bren.

Yeah, we're having that discussion right now.

Minutes right up there at the front.

Tell them about the complaints in your neighborhood.

Okay, well, yeah, and I just— I mean, Mayor, Ryan and I were in a meeting last week.

I called a meeting with Ryan and some other of our staff because we had another, um, some additional residents that had reached out to me for these issues. So I appreciate your saying there are loopholes we need to look at. Please know we're trying to look at those. And the occupancy thing, we're trying to look at that. We discussed those issues. Parking, um, yeah, it's, it's difficult. But thank you so much for bringing that, all that to our attention. I think we do need to do something.

Yeah, I know what that does is that helps us prioritize, and that's really where we need to go because we've got all kinds of demands. We just need to prioritize those things that important, and that's where you guys coming helps to, to have your voice out there.

So our staff has been working on it, I guess, is what I was trying to say.

Yeah, maybe I could add some background to that. So our Traffic Tiger team's been working on the speed table situation and signage in that area, and maybe Chris Shirkey could talk to Debbie out in the hall and give her an update on that process with those mall signs and whatnot. I know John Dorney's given direction. We have a policy to put in speed tables where a majority of the neighborhood needs to sign a petition for that to come to the council to approve that traffic calming. So we're just waiting to receive that petition, and we're happy to deploy any measures. We just want to make sure there's support from the neighborhood before we do so, and we don't have to go back and take them out like we've done on other jobs where some of those neighbors were silent when we put them in, if you recall. And so no one voiced their opposition until they were actually out deployed on the ground. So we want to make sure that's taken care of ahead of time. So we're happy to do that. We're just kind of waiting for that to happen. As far as the NIT goes, the challenges of multi-generational families, right now the only thing our NIT officers can do is take their word that they're related that are staying in these homes. So that's what we're trying to grapple with. With Council Member Millett here, we had that discussion. And so One of our management analysts right now is reaching out to some of our neighboring cities that grapple with the same problem to see if they have any ideas and solutions they're deploying that we can take advantage of.

And I'm just—

can I just add something?

Because the woman with the refuge, did she leave? Looks like she left.

But that's one of my—

that I brought up in this meeting last week, one of my concerns, because domestic violence, molestations, assaults, you know, that it's done typically by a known— someone known to the person, right? So we need to make sure that we're creating— we're not— the homes are a place where people are protected. So let's— I have some experience, um, I'm not personally but aware of some individuals, um, where those environments facilitated those actions, and that's something I'm very passionate about. So I appreciate Ryan. He is looking into that so we can help protect women and children and make our neighborhoods better too. So that's my take.

But Mayor, we will take back all of this feedback and, and add it to what we're working on and continue to work on it and try to come up with some of those solutions.

Okay. Yeah, like I said, where I'd like to go with is take all this but then come up with a list of priorities. And so we get— make sure we're focused on those priorities. And I do know that the illegal rentals is becoming more of an issue. It's just tied to housing affordability, right? So, right.

Yeah.

Anyway. Okay.

Thank you.

Okay, let's move to item 8, consent items. On the consent items, we've got 8.1, approval of meeting minutes for September 17th, 2024, and item 8.2, a reappointment to the Metro Water Board. of Rick Lewis.

Move for approval of the consent items, Mr. Mayor.

Second.

Okay.

Aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Aye.

The consent items are approved. Thank you. Okay, now we'll move to item 9, scheduled items. Item 9.1, an ordinance amending Article 2-20 of the Orem City Code to change the name of the Aurum Fest Advisory Committee in the Aurum— to the Aurum Events Advisory Commission, and to make various amendments pertaining to the commission. Bryce, if you'd like to present that.

Mayor, City Council, thank you for the opportunity to speak with y'all tonight. This is a follow-up to our presentation in the work session from last council meeting where we discussed what is currently the Orem Fest Commission, uh, transitioning some of the language to be the Orem Events Commission. As a very brief recap of some of the changes that were written into the code, this would allow us to align our volunteers with volunteer functions and city staff with city staff functions in the execution of many of our city events, specifically of Orem Fest, but of 4 other major events as well. This would also allow our resident commission members to expand their scope beyond just the Orem Fest and to provide their expertise and their input and direction to 4 other city events that we run. This is really useful for us as staff with an event like Orem Fest. We are typically pretty cautious to make significant changes to such a large event, and we will be able to use several events throughout the year to try out different things, to test, to work together, and to have our residents with us for that entire process, rather than going and operating many of our events just as staff and then coming back to the commission with those findings. Specifically, there are some highlights of the new code. Number 3 was amended with some updates. since we presented, where specifically it says, under the direction of staff to enlist the cooperation and participation of various volunteers, we would use our commission to focus on their relationships with individuals in the community and to continue to allow the staff and the City Council to maintain the leadership on working with other outside organizations that could potentially partner with our commissions. As part of the alignment, the commission members, our residents, would be able to help with the events calendar, event support. They'd be able to advise and make recommendations on city events. They would do their annual debrief and report to the City Council. They would focus on those volunteer efforts, community connection, and different event testing and theming. And the staff support, specifically our events manager, our events coordinator, myself, and, and many others that are involved— Pete, the communications team, purchasing, etc.— would be able to focus on these staff-facing policies. In the past, we have had some back and forth of city volunteers having to go through a lot of city policy, and this really takes those policies and those best practices and moves them to staff so that our residents can focus on those things that they are best equipped and probably most excited to handle. Um, there are, as we talked about in the last work session, a number of events that will continue to operate independently, those specifically tied to the Arts Commission or that are run with a partner organization. And so this commission would not, uh, sort of seek to mess with those arrangements, but instead focus on the 4 or 5 major events that our Orem Events Commission is currently running. They would continue to allow the staff to support the other 52 events that we are running each year, and then to continue to use the commissions as currently aligned for the events that the other commissions are running. Do you have any questions?

I do.

I think the public should know that we've spent a lot more time on this than this little 5-minute recap we're getting. We'd spent some time several weeks ago, but thank you for the reminder.

Do we have any questions?

I was gonna make a motion.

Chris, this is yours and Jen's, right?

You guys work on this.

Thanks for your work on that.

Well, thanks for Bryce and his vision on this. I think this will be a great opportunity to involve more residents throughout the year on some of these big events. I think that'll be a great blessing to the city. So thank you. Great.

I loved the minor events that we were able to test some of the things that became successful members of our parts of Orem Fest now that you were able to use on some of these smaller events by having those tests, you know, that test process happen and then see how successful they were, then implement them. So I think it'd be a great blessing to the entire city. this new process and allow everything to have that uniformity and that strength and capacity. So thanks for your efforts on this.

Great, thank you.

So therefore, so therefore, I make a motion that we approve the ordinance amending Article 2-20 of the Orem City Code to change the name of the Orem Fest Advisory Committee to the Orem Events Advisory Commission. And to make various amendments pertaining to the commission.

I second.

Aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Aye.

The ordinance passes. Thank you, Bryce. Okay, we're almost to the end, and Chief Adams should be very happy. Um, item number 10 is, uh, just for information only. It's our financial statement for August of 2024 that's available to the public. And that takes us to item 11, which is City Manager information items. And before I do that, so Ryan is replacing Bren tonight, and Bren decided Since it was Ryan's 50th birthday, that he was going to let him do it. And, uh, so anyway, all of you make sure you make a big deal as Ryan comes out of here.

Thank you, Mayor.

Thank you.

Um, Ryan, do you have anything you'd like to—

I'll just give you a brief update on a couple of our big projects. Our water tank is now full with water. They're doing the leak testing The leak tests are coming back positive for leakage, but within the parameters they're supposed to be. So that's good news. So they should be— they're doing a little bit of crack filling, and then they'll start backfilling the tank. The good news is the intersection of 4th West and 4th South has been paved. 6th West and 4th South has been paved, and westbound traffic is open again. So if you haven't been back there, down there for a while, you can now go west. Unfortunately, eastbound will be until next summer at the earliest. The pump station and well house should be going out to bid here anytime, and we'll get a contractor on board to finish the rest of the project. So that's the status update on that job. So far, under budget, things are going well. City Hall as well is under budget, or let me say within budget. Both projects are within budget, and City Hall's progressing well. Windows are going in brick. The metal siding starting to go up that looks like wood. The north side is where you can see it the best. We have lights in ceiling grid, tile, paint. It's turning out really well, and we hope to get you out there soon. Get it a little cleaner before we take you this time, or unless you want sheetrock dust all over you. But just quick update on that. Project's going great. So thank you.

Okay, thank you, Ryan, and have a very happy, happy birthday. We should be out of here in time that you can still go celebrate. Would someone like to make a motion to adjourn?

So moved.

I'll second.

Aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Aye.