City Council · 2024-10-29

Socializing so well. We'll get started on the meeting.

Everyone come on up. Hey, so we have Taylor Draney with MAG. She is our administrator for our CDBG program, and every 5 years HUD requires our— is it regional, right? Us regionally have a consolidated plan.

Yeah.

And so 2025 is coming up, and this is our consolidated— we have to be a part of this consolidated plan. Um, just take notes if you want. Sure.

All right.

Hi everybody, my name is Taylor. Jessica is my boss back there, so if you have any questions, direct them to her at the end. Okay, so just to remind everybody what CDBG is all about, first of all, um, it was administered Okay, so MAG took over administration of the OREM CBG program last October. As a reminder, it's a federal grant. It's distributed according to population size. So Orem is an entitlement community, meaning that they get their own funds that we are administering. You get about $600,000 each year. And then in prior year funds, we're actually gonna have an additional about $390,000 that's gonna start becoming available next year. So we're gonna have a lot more to allocate than we normally do.

Um, sorry, is that $390,000— that's, that's a total that's going to be distributed over potentially the next year or multiple years?

Correct. Yeah. Okay.

Yeah. Um, yeah, the $600,000 is annual, but this is just like prior year that's right now, and it can start being allocated next year for the next couple years.

All of it or part of it, or—

Uh, depends. We could do all of it in the one year next year if we wanted to, but we don't necessarily have to.

Okay, thanks.

Um, this is a grant that is for the benefit of low and moderate income people, and these are the general categories that it goes into: housing, public services, public facilities, and economic development. So we're here today just to talk about the next 5-year planning process that's coming up. Every year we do an annual action plan, which just budgets what we're going to do with the funds for that given year. But every 5 years we have to do a bigger plan, which is the consolidated plan. And that's coming up. It's going to start in 2025. So we're just starting kind of the drafting process right now. We actually recently did a community survey to gather their input about the priorities they have for these funds. So we're just here to ask you about your priorities. So that survey, we did it regionally. So we do collaborate regionally to write the plan. But we did get 59 responses from Orem residents specifically out of the 214 we got total. And we're just going to look at those results Real quick, just from Warren residents.

Great.

So we split the questions into the different categories. So for housing, this is the feedback we got. The numbers are the order that they were prioritized by people. So we had affordable housing first, making home buying affordable second, making renting more affordable, and then communities facing housing barriers. In community services, this is all the feedback we got. And then again, 1 through 4 are the order of priorities. So libraries, 1, parks, open spaces, 2, walking, biking paths, 3, and then senior centers.

We only had— we had less than 60 Orem responses.

These are just the Orem responses.

Right.

Out of a town of 100,000 people, how meaningful is this survey?

I mean, I know it's not a lot, obviously, in the grand scheme of things. To put it into a little bit of context, we've really struggled to participate in this kind of thing in the past. It's been like pretty much nothing, honestly, just because the nature of it. Well, it's been difficult to do some outreach, so we're just kind of starting to do that this year.

So we can't grab any statistical reliance on this, is that correct?

Probably not. I'm just telling you what the feedback was.

Thank you.

Yeah.

Taylor, if we, if we helped get the word out, helped make sure that it was among residents, could we— we don't necessarily have to say that this is just the end of it. We could do like a follow-up on this survey, perhaps.

Yeah, I mean, I definitely think that's possible. We started pretty early. So we have time for sure. I'll just, I'll just mention, yes, this is the first of kind of a couple of ways we're going to engage the public. There's going to be a public hearing at City Council in November. Then we'll get into the actual applications, potential projects. There will be more citizen engagement at that point. So yeah, this is kind of pass number 1, and we definitely love to work with you to get more, more input. We want you to see the initial responses we got from those who participated.

And this was about 50 out of 200, so about a fourth of the county's participants came from Orem, right?

I was 60, so, but yeah, about 4th.

Yeah, which is, I mean, it's a super small survey, but about 4th, but even more out of the entire county.

Well, and I think it's important to point out what the purpose of the survey is. This is part of just developing their 5-year plan, and it helps inform our priorities. But we also have a past history in our own work with residents to help with that as well. Yeah, thanks, Jen. As far as like statistically goes, it's not like we're putting these numbers into the And it's just like to get general topics that people are interested in. So it's required, but absolutely.

How do you gather— what's the form of the survey? How do you collect the data? I mean, where'd it come from?

Uh, it was online.

Um, so you just put on social media or something, or on your site?

Yeah, yeah, I believe it was on your guys' social media and then ours as well. Um, we sent it to like all of the nonprofits and other organizations that we've worked with or have applied in the past, so Is it a long survey? Is that like the security people, or is it just kind of the nature of it? I mean, I don't think it was particularly long. We're almost done looking at everything, and there were like some free answer stuff too that I didn't include here. But yeah, I don't know. We're definitely open to any feedback or any other way we can gather information.

It would be interesting to see where the data came from.

That would tell you more where we need to go forward.

Yeah, I mean, we can definitely push it more. Yeah, I'll also point out you get lower engagement when you don't have any actual projects to present. There's not a lot for people to respond to, um, so it's not surprising there's lower response on the general. I think I missed— how do I go back? Oh, just—

You could also send it out to a very robust email Citizen group, and we get surprisingly high kind of, I guess, open rate on our city emails. So yeah, we'd be interested in being more helpful and getting word out moving forward.

For sure.

Yeah.

Okay. Thank you. Okay. So just last few categories here. Streets and utilities. Number 1, street improvements. Number 2, sewer water. Number 3, sidewalk. And 4, accessibility improvements. And then for business and community support, we had crime victim services, senior services, neighborhood cleanups, and support for existing local businesses. Okay, and then we had a section for other where people could write stuff in, and that's what they had to say. Some of this is repeat from categories that were available to them, but some of it isn't. And then in the bottom, I just wanted to include some other things that weren't mentioned, but that warm city has either done in the past, or that maybe could do in the future. So there's some things available, and I only say this because we're about to do a prioritization activity with you guys, which is what this is all about. So I have all of the stuff that was on the survey in the top 4, and then these things here, and I'm gonna give you each— well, it's on the honor system, so— But I'll give you each a sticky notepad, and if you just wanna use 5 each. You can put them under any of these things, whichever your highest priority. You can do multiple in one category if you want to. We'll put those up here so you can refer to them. But you can do all 5 in different ones, whatever. And then if you want to do other, just write on the sticky note what the other thing is. And just like a little background, there are some things you can go back that I feel, you know, we've done this historically, but that are really important to the city, like code enforcement. The CDBG funds we, we give to code enforcement pays for salaries of our code— our NIT team. The critical home repair program is always very in high demand, and then victim services that heavily rely on that. The homeless services, those are like sanitary supplies, food, putting our library for operation. So there's a few things that are a little more crucial that we depended on. So if we did not allocate— not that we're saying we won't do this here, but it would be worth it. We would have to find other funds to pay those salaries, for instance. Yeah. Okay. Is it all right if I just pass these around?

Okay.

You're wearing them out here. All right, I have 7. Do we need any more than that? Is this just for council or is this exec staff too? I was thinking just for council.

Then we take how many? 5 each?

5 each, yeah. You're welcome to like carry them around, you know, but just only put 5 on your computer.

And we're just sticking them on our top priorities.

Yep. Yeah, I'll get out of your way up here. And maybe can I just clarify in the comp plan process, so we get citizen participation, we'll do this work with you. We'll also use census data to do a market study analysis. We'll bring that information back, so you're not locking yourself into funding these projects.

Right.

Just love raising money.

Try it next year.

Thank you all for your input. We're going to take that back and add in all of the information. Next year, this body as well.

And then you're going to help with the survey?

Yep. So we're going to keep doing outreach. We will be reaching out to school staff, etc.

And I think you're posted.

Oh yeah, there's some over there. But if you have any questions in the meantime about CDBG or want to talk about priorities or projects, Taylor is your first contact, but I'm also always happy to take calls.

Thank you.

Thank you. We don't mind.

Thank you.

Thanks, Fire Chief. I know that.

I thought it was fine in my previous—

if I had to do more Yes, make everything in a certain—

all right, well done.

Moving on to item number 2, uh, Bay Street Bike Park.

Pull it right up and we'll dive in.

So we got this, this will be a lot of fun, right, Tyler?

Looking more spiffy than—

I know, I know, losing endeavor when I see one. Don't compete with Tyler.

It's a lot of pressure to type in a long password in front of everyone. I think it took me 2 tries to get that. Okay, for those of you who don't know me— I think we do— but my name is Tyler Payne, Assistant Public Works Director for the City of Orem. Um, you can see that good. Um, before we get started, I just want to express my appreciation to Councilwoman Jen Gale. She's been instrumental in helping And connecting us with some influential members of the mountain biking community that have been helpful in this design process, and it's been a good process. I'd like to kind of start with just giving a little bit of a background on the progress of this project to bring you all up to speed as to where we're at and where we're going. Many of you already know we've got a Phase 1 and 2 that's directly across from the main parking lot on the hillside there by the main entry. We're looking at a location here that's outlined on the hillside below the 70-foot-tall water tank. What we're hoping to do is do a phase 3 of our mountain bike skills course here. And to kind of go back a little bit, this plan was conceptualized in July of 2022. I recall walking through the park with Bryce and Bren and Chris and myself. We had one of the local mountain bike coaches there as well. there was an interest expressed in how cool it would be to have some trail systems that provided an opportunity for our riders to advance their skill set, have some intermediate, some advanced obstacles and things that they could do. And we kind of identified this location as a great location to do this course. So we went to work in that. We got Central Utah's approval. to use a portion of their lands. You can see I've kind of got a shaded green area and a shaded pink area. That's the property line. That pink is Central Utah Water and green is us. And so we're working together with them. They've been a fantastic partner to work with. They've been very supportive. In fact, Chris and I had an opportunity to meet with them today to iron out a couple of details as we're working through finalizing the agreements with them. And they're actually really excited about what we've proposed, and they've even said that their employees are looking forward to using these very trails with their own families. So that was kind of exciting to hear how supportive and excited they are about this project. We went ahead and got funded for this in FY25. We were hoping to start construction this fall, as it's taken a little bit to sort out some of those agreements with schedules with Central Utah Water. We're actually, actually going to plan to begin construction in May.

Okay.

So this spring, we will plan to break dirt on this project. We did receive a grant award for matching money to help us pay for this project. And then we engaged with Avid Trails to help us with the design, and I'll share a lot of those details with you as we get a little further into this. But next step going forward is to determine which way we want to go. I'll express some of— or explain some of that and what that means for us today. We were real close to finalizing agreements, and then of course we're going to begin construction. They told us that if we started, maybe probably having an opening ceremony in end of July, early August. So kind of exciting to have it ready for this upcoming season. So this is currently funded in the idea that we started with. It's kind of hard to see that small thing, at least on the back monitor. I'll try to explain it as best as I can, but it's essentially a 3-trail system. The yellow line to the far left is a climbing trail that will be open to hiking and biking.

Yeah, let's do that.

So this is our climbing trail. A lot of trailhead here with signage and everything. They'll climb to the top. This is a lookout destination. Where they'll be able to start the descent. We've got a blue line and a black line, and all of them are designed to loop back in where they can session that for as long as they want. Just keep going around.

Is it one way or can go either direction?

One way downhill, one way uphill. It's all unidirectional, but we are considering having the yellow line because it's going to be really slow bike traffic as they're making their way up the hill. But this would also be open to foot traffic and hiking. Only on the yellow lines. And we'll share a little bit of details on some, some cool ideas that I would propose for maybe what we could do with this space and make it an Instagrammable one, or, or a programmable space for an outdoor yoga class, or some cool ideas that they shared with us that other communities are doing. But so we've got a blue line that would be more of an intermediate leading into advanced, and a black line that would have some really fun Um, upscaled enhanced features that would make that exciting. Over here is what we're calling the Skills Meadow. This is a much more gradual slope. It kind of flattens out there. This is above our Canyon Springs area. And the focus on this is to provide different types of terrain. We'll have flat turns, we'll have berm turns, we'll have maybe some rock gardens and some things where riders can work on their technical skills. And we want to implement Some specific areas that make sense for our coaches to be a lot closer to the action and instructing the riders as they work through that course.

Yeah, let's go to the next slide. Thanks, Chris.

This is just a little bit closer to show what we're looking at. So you've got some flat turns and some berms. You've got these coaching zones where they'll be able to be close and give instruction to the riders. This is what we're calling a drop zone. And if you can kind of envision, and I'll show pictures to give an example of that. As your riders are advancing through their skill set and building confidence, it's kind of cool to have maybe a blue dot ramp next to a green square ramp next to a black diamond ramp, and they progressively get a little more, a little more challenging, and it allows them to kind of work up in that skill set. So there's some really, really fun, cool features that we're looking at and implementing in this plan. Now we're going to go to Option B. Option B is exactly what you saw in Option A, but this is going to be implementing prefabricated features. And what that means is you'll see stuff that is built and installed on the thing, like the wood ramps, the aluminum frames, and things like that. There's a lot of benefits that come with having that. It's less of an impact to the environment. The excavations don't have to be quite as big. It requires less maintenance and longer longevity in the trail. Because they can prefabricate these features over the winter, it's going to mean we can open sooner. I think the investment in these enhancements is well worth it. I think that we've found within our own budget that we have the funding to enhance the project a little bit and have a little bit more to get more out of what we're planning here. So our hope would be to go to Option B. That's the decision we're making.

Thank you.

Yeah, that's the decision we're bringing to you as a council.

Yeah, I said we're doing this.

That's— we're bringing you up to speed to see that you have— that we have your support to do this. I think we found the funding to do this, and I think it would be well worth it. But ultimately, you need to give us your support.

So thank you.

This is just a view looking up the hill towards the water tank. You can see there's a lot more grade. There's actually some rock bands and stuff that would be cool to implement in the trail system. But this is just going to kind of give you an idea of that grade. These are our trail designers up mapping out the course. And as we get into this in more detail, Option B would provide these kinds of things. These are some of the things that they're planning on putting on that steeper graded slope.

Just take all that in for a minute.

Um, and on the next slide, I've got some examples of what these features would look like in real life.

Wow, looks like a Hot Wheels track.

What's that?

Said it looks like a Hot Wheels track.

Okay, yeah, now these aren't exactly what we're planning on putting there, but these are ideas and concepts that have been used in other trails that they think would be a really awesome add to this. And Jen, please feel free to say anything you want. You're doing great.

Jen will be the first one down.

Yeah, I will.

So these are some berms and some flat turns. These are some of the jumps that they're talking about implementing. If you can imagine Not having those wood planks and those prefabricated structures, we're going to be dealing with a lot more erosion and wear on those. It's going to require a lot more maintenance. And currently our local bike teams do most, if not all, of the maintenance on these trail systems. And as it gets bigger and bigger, I'm, I'm a little bit concerned that their bandwidth is going to kind of run out. And by implementing these features, it'll be a lot more enjoying and less maintaining and working on the trails because we are expanding the system quite a bit.

Well, I'll just add to that. I do see erosion in lots of other places, and it is a real thing, and it happens pretty easily. So I think it might save you guys a lot of energy to put those in.

Yeah. This is over on the grade where the skills meadow is being proposed. It's a much smoother grade where we would be doing that technical course with the coaching zone. I just wanted to give you a visual of what that area looks like. We've seen this already. And this is an example of those ramps that kind of grow as their confidence grows. And some of those coaching opportunities and zones that we want to put in. This is a few concepts and examples that were being proposed to be used in that overlook space at the top of the first climb. You can see this is just kind of a platform. People can do their photos, and maybe we do a yoga class during Arm Fest, early morning canyon yoga or whatever. There's options, some cool ideas out there that they were kind of sharing with us. And then we don't have to do anything at all if we want it to just be a flat where people take a break and grab a drink from their water bottle. That's fine too. But this is an option if we want to have that at that hotel.

Well, and I just want to add to that, on the call that we had with them, he was saying, oh man, I envisioned something kind of cool, like, like iconic. Like you go to Provo and you see the Y, this would be like Orem's thing where you can see it and you can see other places. I know the spot he's talking about, it's got a great view of the canyon. So I think that was also— we can do this later, we don't have to do it now, but just something more fun that says Orem, but just, you know, community identity kind of things.

Yeah, to speak to that point, he mentioned as they've been working with a lot of the other communities that everyone seems to be seeking in the world that we're in, social media, everyone's looking for those Instagrammable moments. And to have an iconic feature up there that people— this could be our why, I guess. It's much shorter, easier hike, but it could be something.

So that top left picture, I think, also represents really closely what that actual overlook would be like.

Yeah, because it comes down sharply from the top.

And then the canyon opens up as you look down. So So, so, Tyler, does the money that you have found, does that encompass that lookout?

If we choose to, we can do it. So it's kind of costly. I checked on pricing to add something like that, and it varies anywhere between, depending on those options and what we want to do, it could be an add-on of anywhere to $10,000 to $25,000.

Chris, can you go back? So the one on the left and then the yoga space, you think you can do those 2? So you do have a lookout, or would you—

Yeah, I think we could.

You have enough space that—

Yeah, I think we could. They'd level that out. Um, this, this, these 2 are probably the most expensive of the 2. Keep in mind, this is stuff that's kind of up on a high slope. I'm not even sure if they're hiking this lumber up there or what they're doing. There's— well, there's access from the road too. That wouldn't be too far of a thing.

But anyway, so that's just more of a bench on the left, right? Just a—

yeah, just a bench. It looks like an elevated platform.

Perfect. Because they're sitting— they may need Indian style, right? And here. Yeah, so it's big enough. It's not like just a bench.

No, I think that looks to me like a big piece of engineered lumber, like you do big lumber trusses out of.

That would fit the yoga space that would fit next to it or whatever?

Well, I think we would be looking at one or the other. You want a yoga platform or do you want a bench? We could probably do both. It would just mean we're doing a lot more earthwork to kind of flatten out that space and give a little—

I think, I mean, right.

Well, in my sense from our discussions with them at the time, I was like, this is probably open to a lot of brainstorming. This is like, you could do like 1,000 varieties So, I don't know that we're constrained to this, and I would actually hope that we are not constrained to this. I think there's probably other things that might be better suited to the space, kind of in that line, but not that specifically.

I mean, you definitely want to have someplace you can sit and look out over the thing.

Yeah.

And if the yoga thing is just an added benefit, then it's okay.

Yeah, I think this was the intention with these, or were just to get our minds thinking of the possibilities. We could tell them we want to do something entirely different, what would it cost? We could have to do it.

So if you just— something you were talking about, making it identifiable to Orem, how would you envision that? Sorry, by, by colors or by doing certain things a certain way?

You could implement their logo in a piece of art. You could do—

there's a—

I mean, we, we could do like a kiosk and they, uh, they could have The wildlife and the plantings around it, there's actually a pretty amazing view that looks across the canyon, and we could point out places for people to look or get into their picture or hashtags to add.

Yeah, you've got those major cliffs looking out the canyon, up the canyon. We've, we've gone up there and done maintenance on our springs and stuff up there, and the view is awesome. I think there's a lot of things we could do to make it unique to Orem.

I don't know.

I think we ought to have you guys tell us what you want.

I mean, I think that's definitely something we should do, is to have that impact wherever we can and tie it back to Orem.

We can have like a historical marker up there that points out on a map, maybe it's a bronze map or something like that. Where you can have points where we can speak to these things and even the historic history of, uh, of our water and so forth that's coming out of the canyon, or fill in the blank.

The gun range is over here, here's Timpanogos Park, here's the Alta Spring Line, here's where there was a lookout for Indians coming in the late 1800s over here, you know, all of these different things. There is a lot of history.

You can see the Tin House from everywhere in Utah County. About the top 10 minutes. It's gotta go vertical. It's gotta shine if you wanna be able to see it. You couldn't see it better though.

Yeah, you wanted to do like, I don't know, my initial knee-jerk reaction when you asked what I would do, I thought all you could do, you could have a platform, a bench, you could have all that. But if it's like an iconic something that people know, oh, that's Enorme, I've seen it. Maybe we implement like a stainless steel because it would be reflective, a big stainless steel 3D something that looks like our logo. We do implement family City. Yeah, we're really leaning into that now. I think we could do some cool things and brainstorm on some cool concepts.

Yeah, because they—

the most beautiful viewpoint in Provo Canyon is actually in Orem.

I think you lean into the Orem respite, you know. This is an area of reflection, of education, of contemplation, you know. And just put the logo up there and this is, this is Orem, you know. Because really, the Provo Bench, right? I mean, you just showed the difference between Orem and Provo. I think if you pull in the, the, um, um, oh my gosh, what is it called? Um, geology, you know? Yeah, with the, with the fault line. That's what I'm trying to think of, you know, that kind of stuff.

You could put— do a whole lot.

The springs, make it an educational mecca.

We could.

Tyler and I had a chance to visit, uh, up to Salt Lake 3 weeks ago and looked at some of these ways that they are activating conservancy and ecological, even the new river delta that opened up on Utah Lake this past week, I think, is dipping into that and recognizing where this is at. I think in terms of wildlife and wild plantings, part educational, part walking trails, and can't deliver the passive parks experience. I think it would make Mount Timpanogos very accessible to a lot more residents. Yes, the 10 Like, for those that want to hike a mountain, they have that. But I think we have a chance right here, one road up to create a lot of access to our mountain and our wildlife right there. And then they could look over to the Provo side of the canyon and see the gravel pit. Sort of point that out like, hey, here's where I'm living.

There's Provo.

Let's just sort of see what happens.

Yeah, a lot of attention.

You think we could have a flagpole up or something with a US flag and a city flag? You bet we can.

As we, as we have a chance to design, not to jump ahead to sort of Phase 4, but we've talked a little bit about what comes next. I know Councilmember Spencer and I, with our Recreation Advisory Commission, have talked a lot about how does the county, or how do we pull in a partnership to make this and recognize what this spot can be. Being at the mouth of the canyon, you think about the Olympics, you think about that iconic moment, you think about coming down 89 and into our city or something like that. I think there's a lot of excitement and opportunities. We are not there yet. We don't have land agreements or partnerships, but I think we have a lot of energy for this park. Even going back, you know, to 3 or 4 years ago, we've, we have been talking nonstop about how to activate Mount Timpanogos Park. And, you know, as it has been demanded to take on a new life, how do we bring people up there? And I think the 3 phases of bike park are the start, and that's what makes this sort of a regional draw. This is going to be a unique asset for our community, not just for our teams and our riders. but for those that will come from around. And as we do that, I think we'll have a chance to make a pitch to say, can we make this a tourist destination where we could receive funding from the county? We can sort of track the data. So I think what we're doing right now is establishing use count. We are bringing events and mountain biking events. We're doing those types of things that will get us the critical mass of traffic. We will, and we're able to track that right now. We're able to look at the number of participants in downhill Mountain biking, it has been exponential since COVID and it has not slowed. We can see that traffic at the park and see that footprint. And so we get really excited about saying, let's build something. I think there's the ability to build something that would be a nice Phase 3 bike park. And then there's sort of the longer plan to say, let's build this in a way that this could be a, just a jewel for us at the mouth of the canyon. And we'd have some funding sources or some partnerships that we feel like we could make a really strong pitch to. Mayor, you and I had the chance to do that for Lakeside 3 years ago.

Yeah.

And I would say I think we're due. I think it's time for Orem to make a strong application again to the county, to the TRT funds and, and make a pitch. And I think like this, this location, this site with the demand for mountain biking makes a lot of sense. And we could do a really, really neat project right there at the entrance of the city.

Yeah.

Mayor, could I make a suggestion? This be our O on the mountain.

Yeah, I'm just saying you have to do a stainless steel because they don't let you paint them anymore.

What about the Gold Star Monument?

Maybe tie something in, um, spray paint, you know, maybe as a freedom tree. We have a freedom tree here, maybe that's a freedom tree there. I don't know. I mean, if you tie in with the flags, I don't know. But I think we need to remember. So pretty good, I think.

And that's what we— I think we were pre-designed on that process. But knowing that what is iconic, what complements and celebrates The natural sort of diversity of the location and the wildlife and the plantings, what is also iconic and visible. And I think, you know, in the coming years will— or months, I mean, this, this will be wrapped up in August. And then, you know, I think we're excited to design something that we feel like we could go and get funding for and support.

So it's not just, just our budgets. Have you—

and this is all about the bike park, but you're talking about it being a regional destination. Um, I mean, you, you, and you probably got this in here somewhere, but it seems to me like, I mean, if you're gonna build this whole thing out and it's named as a bike park, but it seems like you should have a pretty good hiking trail there too. That's a meaningful hiking trail. That, I mean, because if you're gonna make it this nice and have this much going on, there's a lot of people that don't bike, but you go over to the Y, you know, and I mean, every single day there's lots of people hiking up and down, but just because it's a nice workout. We could have something like that in this, maybe.

I think as we walked, we looked on our walk up and saw our walk, our walk up and saw it. It's Tyler and I hanging out as we were going through.

There were many other people.

Yeah.

As we were trying to understand like the idea of viewsheds and, you know, the reveals, and we kept coming back to this location. There is so much natural beauty. We just need to frame it. We just need to create the pathway that gets you around this ledge. And then we have the conservancy message, we have the ecological or educational, the water message that's there. So I think, you know, you look at the physical park itself and a hiking path, I mean, we sort of mapped out, I mean, up to a mile, mile and a half of different trails and different things you could do right there. And then the yellow map that he had showed could get you the elevation up to that next layer, which is what, Alta Springs Road?

Yeah.

And so, yeah, I think there's a lot that, and again, for the ROI, what Tyler is His pitch today is in the world of recreation or park amenities, this is a really great bang for your buck. This is iconic. This is really cool. And, and really, I think, affordable. So yeah, I love the idea of multi-use creating access to the mountain.

Yeah. And where would you put the pump track up there?

Okay, so this is looking forward to a phase 4 potentially. We wanted to wet the whistles in here, so to speak, and then be looking forward to maybe an upcoming phase. We've seen a big draw and a big interest in these. In fact, I think Bryce mentioned in a previous council meeting, we had a young, young man that came and expressed interest in doing something like this. So, and we're seeing a lot of other municipalities just beginning to install these. For those of you who don't know what a pump track is, it's essentially a circular course that you could ride forever. Where you don't have to pump or kick, you just use your, your mass in motion and And kind of gain that momentum to flow through the course. They're a ton of fun. They're, they're a big draw right now. We are still working on a location. We, we felt confident that we had a location, and there's some other things that have come into play where we've got to push pause on a few things for a little bit. Where our hope is to keep it up here in this area near the park, because I think Being so close to the Provo River Trail with as many cyclists and longboarders as we already have there, this would be so awesome for the people that use that system already to just pull off into a grove of trees and enjoy this. This track would be really cool. So, location, we thought we had it dialed in, but we've, we've got to go back to the drawing board and maybe rethink that before we make the firm commitments. We'll keep on that.

things progress.

So there's probably a few locations in the Timpanogos Park area.

Yeah. And phase 4 is online. Yeah, a couple of years.

It's really exciting how quickly the first 3 phases have gone.

Yeah.

And again, when you look at the affordability, I know some, you know, other cities, you know, a city just north of here just built the state's biggest splash pad, and the price tag on that gets so expensive so quick. I think what's great about this is these projects. A pump track is what, $275,000 to $350,000 all in? And that's a really affordable amenity for our residents.

Well, and I like how ours are throughout the community. So you don't have— you can walk to it. You don't have to drive, you know, you can just take your kids down the street on North and South Orange, at least for sure. On your trail. So I don't know how to ask this, but I've walked on the Bridal Veil, and it's challenging with the bikers and the borders. It's scary.

So how—

is there a way to separate the mountain bike— I mean, do we need to separate mountain bikers from trail runners from walkers?

On this, it would all be unidirectional, so no hikers are allowed on the downhill slope. That's way too scary to be in conflict with a downhill speeding mountain bike. The idea would be you can hike on the uphill climb only. And come back down the uphill climb only. Does that make sense? So the yellow lines would be hikeable.

All hiking, no biking.

Downhill only for bikes, period.

And for what it's worth, we just really don't see a lot of hikers in these bike facilities, and that's true in any city that we bike in.

So that trail would go up to the lookout.

Aren't they making it for that though? Well, that, that yellow one, they could go up to the lookout, but that's really like—

Well, isn't that how you get to the lookout?

I guess so. You are separating it basically, right?

That would be the main, main thoroughfare.

But that's kind of what was my point earlier, is, I mean, I know we've designed this all for mountain bikes, and that's the point, but it's a nice enough amenity that it might be worth spending more money and figuring out a way for just hikers to go up and down and do their own thing. Because going back to, you know, the Y, you go over there and that's packed with hikers almost every day.

The uphill climb on this is not going to—

for a hike but there's trails, it can be scary.

Yeah, yeah, the uphill climb on this is going to be very slow. It's very steep.

Steeper than the what?

Maybe.

I think, Jim, if you remember, did they say they try to shoot for like 4%, 4.5% max grade on the bike climb? That's going to be harder than that.

4 or 5% got to be—

well, they mapped it all out and we were talking about that very thing because they do the little switchbacks to keep it Climable, right?

It'll be up to 10%, probably.

But I'm just saying, I think that is something to really look at, is a dedicated hiking—

And that's where I think if we use Mount Timpanogos, you have so many retaining walls, you have a lot of those lower roads, you even have the Canyon Glen that swoops down to the other side of the river with the 2 pedestrian bridges.

I think that's—

that would be the infrastructure that I would look at to start for the pedestrian access to the river. Even sort of heading further west, I think, is where I got excited about thinking about the pedestrian access, but still getting them— you're in the mountain, you're in, you know, you're up on the side of the mountain, still getting those views and that experience.

Yeah.

Aren't there already some existing hiking trails in that area?

No, there's deer trails.

I think they created their own trails.

Oh, there's people that hike trails. Yeah. The race does not connect to the race track. We use the bike trail for our race, so yeah, it gets used.

Yeah, the particular part that we're looking at doing a bike trail is not currently hiked at all. The part directly adjacent to it is fenced in with our canyon springs. If there's any hiking going on, it's up on BLM land where people are accessing the Bonneville Shoreline Trail.

That's right. Yeah, so maybe part of what we can—

how we can manage what The council's feedback is giving us is through signage and a way to identify these trails and then both in like a kiosk or map type format and just wayfinding signage throughout the—

So Bryce, you were talking, okay, if there's canyon land or whatever and you have a way to get up to the lookout, then yeah, if you parked over here, you could walk up that way and maybe have a way down or something. Is that what you're thinking?

Or— and I think to Brent's point, once you go above, then you are on BLM, and that's where the users figure it out themselves.

But you're gonna— we're gonna try to find a pathway up to that point, or no?

Yeah, I—

the yellow path, Tyler, but that's at the park, and that goes up to the— you talked about Candy Glen. It's way up the canyon, 2 miles up the canyon. But that—

no, no, that's— that's—

what do you mean it's 2 miles up the canyon?

That canyon is right next to Timpanogos Park, immediately south.

It's just the county's property.

No, Canyon View, that's like the canyons. Yeah, there's another park here that's also next to it.

I think the—

oh, I think you're right, but the, the county park that's right next to Timpanogos Park, that's what I was referring to. Oh, Canyon View. Canyon View. Sorry, sorry. So Canyon View, that would be You'd make a road, a path trail up there, and then you'd also have that yellow trail you could walk, and maybe you can make a circle.

And that, that's kind of to Tyler's point that we can't commit those—

not our property, not our park.

But that's what, as we look to Phase 4, that's what I think gets exciting, is to say what makes the most sense for our users.

There's a bridge across the river from Canyon View across to the trail, and that general location is where we are looking at for a pump track. which is right directly below this overlook is what we're looking at. And as we've been talking, I've been thinking about, you want to activate that hill, that wall, you could do some climbing wall, you could do rappelling over there.

We could do something that we haven't really thought of before in this location as well.

That's a big open question.

It's not our land.

So yeah, we can't commit to that. But that's, I think we are creating, Tyler and his team are creating the critical mass and the momentum for the location. And then once we have this activating the county, activating partners, activating shared land use, we don't know what will be available, but I think that gets really exciting to start to talk about.

And our hope would be that going about this in a win-win type situation, aligning with the county, then they'll be more apt to want to give us the transit room tax funds that they control to go towards Phase 4 and beyond. But we want to show that we are doing all we can with, you know, making sure that Phase 3 is filling this critical mass.

They're serious. We're doing our part.

And is there a way we can make it more appealing for the wintertime, like wintertime snowshoeing activities? I don't know, Jen, maybe how much are these mountain bike trails used during the winter? Would they be able to snowshoe on them? or that room in the trails, or maybe a hiking trail like they said, snowshoe on those. I'm just looking forward to the Winter Olympics and how I'm trying to build that for everything it's worth in grant writing. Down to the canyon, you know, down to the great outdoors, into the great outdoors, help me use that for winter activities. Maybe in the park itself, this one that doesn't have a grade, could we set up a course of some kind? It looks like a— sure, you know.

We're very excited about this property. Ever since the Story Festival left, it seems like it's been under Because seriously, Costco sells snowshoes, right?

So let's tell her where to go.

We could do a cross-country ski loop.

Yeah, we've talked about cross-country skiing and snowshoeing and fly fishing lessons and lookout towers for bird watchers and all.

Are you doing those in your rec program? Fly fishing?

We do fishing.

Yep.

Not fly fishing, but fishing.

Because they— we used— there used to be that company that had um, guides all the time. I haven't seen them since COVID but not through the city. Could we do something like that? I think that would be a huge rec class.

Yeah, the fishing one, it's a youth fishing and it, it fills up every year and it's up the gang, so it's, it's a great spot to, to do it.

We've just got a couple more slides here.

Are there any other questions?

I found this particularly interesting and I hope that Pete Productions really likes what we're about to share. I know that he's convinced Mayor to give involved in a shining star moment in film before. Out in Cherry Hill, at the best real park you will ever experience.

Come check it out. She's the mayor. Mayor of South Jordan.

Right. West Jordan.

South Jordan is a lady, isn't it?

Isn't that Dawn? I like his shriek.

Definitely a stunt double.

More faith, Mary.

We'll have you ready. We'll have you ready. Ambulance on standby. That was so cool.

So personally, I'm looking forward to another shining star moment with our mayor and King Productions collaborating when this thing's done. We can also get a stuntman like they did too. So anyway, any other questions? We're excited about this project. We appreciate your support. We'd like to see this come to fruition sooner than later.

That's right. We'll keep getting it done. Thank you.

Thank you.

Appreciate it. Thanks, Dad. Thank you. That's exciting. Yeah. Okay, next time we've got item number 3, our presentation on Citizen Connect. This is Carrie, Carrie Brugg and Cody Stagel.

So Mayor and Council, while Cody's setting up, I'll just give you a brief introduction to the reason behind we have this new Citizen Connect portal for our residents. Um, you, as you know, one of your main areas of focus It is aligning the interests of the city council, city employees, and the community that we serve. And so by creating this new portal, it's been a labor of love by many, many in the, in the city. Cody and his team have been really integral in the build, as well as Jenica's strategy innovation team. Heather's done a lot with this group. So I'm gonna turn it over to Cody to explain that. Thank you, Jenica. This in no way stops you as a council member to, to take concerns from, from residents. This just gives you an avenue if you would like to have them, or you can put in a ticket for residents to get it into the system so that it goes to the right department quicker. So with that, I'm going to turn it over to Cody to do an explanation. Thank you.

Thank you.

Again, my name is Cody Stegel. I'm the GIS Division Manager at Public Works. We're excited to introduce this Connect. It basically is web-based software. You can see it's designed kind of for mobile phone. They, they really look at their mobile users. And some of the things that we're really excited about is it is a citizen engagement portal. But it also ties to our asset management, mainly at Public Works. So we're hoping that this— well, we know that this will probably streamline things a lot quicker through our systems, get it to the right people in the right hands, that kind of thing. And so what I want to demo today is just kind of the system side of things, how you would go ahead and create an account, sign up for it. Um, this is the, this is the homepage. It's basically, um, the URL is connect.warm.gov to get to it. And what you would do first is you come to this page. There's some icons on here that I want to point out right off the bat. You can see these little blue things, hard to see on that screen back there, little locks. And is this page live now? It is live. It's not advertised, but I could look it up just on my laptop.

Yeah, you can, or your phone. It is It is meant for mobile devices too, because that would be where the majority of people would attack this. That is, so if you go to connect.oregon.gov, you should be able to get right into this website.

It'll prompt you to create an account so you can start using it and interacting and reporting. So if you have a streetlight out or a pothole or a trip hazard on the sidewalk, whatever it might be, then you can report that.

Then you'll get feedback when it's completed.

So back to these icons, you'll see the little, the little blue lock that's by it. It basically means you do have to have an account for some of these things. It's, it's also not just a reporting place, it's also an information page. So some that don't have locks are generally just URL links, URL links to information. For example, if I wanted to go to utility billing, it's just going to open Okay, here, maybe.

Okay, there we go.

Utility billing. So it just takes you to a page that basically sends you to the utility billing site for a loan. Um, them are just kind of basic URLs.

Okay.

Just wanted to point out the difference. So when you get back into this page, the first thing you're going to do is if you did click on one of these with the lock, It's gonna ask you to log in.

Um, and if you don't have an account, go back to that first page.

Um, there's a sign-up icon. There was also a sign-up icon on that link when I clicked that. Can't you? So what, what the resident did, the first-time user would come to a page like this. They would sign up. They create themselves an account. Um, there's some required fields, of course, in there. Creates password. Once they— just like any other site, you create an account, it'll send an email to your email address that you put in there to validate that account. Once you have that account, then you can get in. So what I'll do is I'll log in because I have an account here.

You said you can do this on your phone, or you can do it on a web browser too?

Yeah, you can, any mobile device. So when I sign in, I come into a dashboard, um, that's basically designed just for me. It's my account, um, and what I'm seeing here is you got, you got open items and you got completed items. And what this means is the open items are items that you've submitted, and you can monitor progress as these items go, go through the system. You can see I've got a couple here. I've got one that's completed. These are just past ones that I've done, um, testing the system out. And so I'll get into a little bit more of that in a minute, but I want to go back into— or go into these icons down here and actually walk through the process of reporting something. The first one I'd like to do is report a pothole. Um, most of my career here was spent in the street— in the streets group. I was the streets manager. And so Warren doesn't have potholes, so we don't expect this to be used Only on the UW part.

Can we allow Pleasant Grove to use the ride? Just saying.

Yeah, we can share this with people forward.

So when you come to this, this interface, when you click on Report Fault, and a lot of these, these pages are set up really similar. They're form-based, they're map-based. And this one right off the bat shows me, shows me a map. And so if I know where that address is at, I can do a search. So like, if I wanted to find that address, and what it's doing right here is it's searching the existing parcel addresses on the map. And so it has to be an existing parcel to find an address. Doesn't mean you have to report the pothole that way, but to find an address, that's what you have to do. So I'm just gonna find one here. I click the address, it zooms, and you can see it zooms to the parcel because it's trying to relate it to the resident. The other part of this reporting— Paul, now I could, I could hit next. It would just grab the address. I could go ahead and submit it. It would still send it through. But say I wanted to be a little bit more detailed on where Paul was at. If you've seen these These instructions, just draw a point tool. There's a little tool right here that I can grab and I can actually place a pothole on the road.

What would be nice is if we could just fix it.

Like I said, there is—

send the drone because that's a version 2.

We could draw a park on the hill.

We'd have drones come out.

Chris, I don't see your icon here.

Mine? Which one?

So, so you have my phone number. I know.

So once I get to this stage, I, I hit next and it takes me to a form and it's, it's filling out my information because it already knows who I am, my account, my email address, my phone number. It did take the address and populate this address field. If that wasn't correct, I could go in and overwrite that address for any reason. If I want to give any more instructions to this, and I like to do this because I don't want to freak all the guys out when they get this, but I like to put test in here. Um, then all I have to do is hit next. Um, if I want to attach a picture, uh, I can attach a picture. Um, we find that You know, pictures are great. They're worth 1,000 words, but most people are driving and they're seeing a pothole.

But you can't—

so they're not going to take pictures, what I mean. But you can attach a picture right here. I can just click it, browse for my pictures, throw a picture on here. It attaches.

Hit next.

Once that's done, It'll submit it. And then it sends me as a customer, it sends me an email that says your request was sent in. On the other side of things, it's sending an email straight directly to the streets group, to the manager of the streets division and his supervisors, whoever he wants on that list. The cool thing that we like about Connect is on the backside of things. Not only is it going directly to that manager, but as soon as he looks at it and wants to schedule, he can schedule it right in our asset management system, and it goes directly out to the crews. And so they can get there quicker. They can, they can log all their work in our asset management system, put all the details in there, say that it's fixed. Once it's completed, it's integrated into this system so well that it just completes it in this system. Nothing else needs to be done. And so, um, as I finish this now, as a, as a citizen, I now have another activity here on my page that I can watch and monitor.

Um, see, another one.

We'll do another one. Garbage can request. That's pretty common for 311 staff. So if I need something done with my garbage can, I can Click that. It tells me the code that I need to have at least one garbage can. These information pages are just— they're set up the way we decided to do them, but they can be changed if it's not working. They're pretty easy to do. Click next. This one gives me the option, do I want to use map to find my home, or do I just want to fill it out? And so it's got a dropdown box. I'm just going to say no. Click through it again. Here's my form, so I can go in and I can put in an address. So, and it has some dropdown boxes that are easily filled. If I'm looking to have a garbage can delivered, I can say I need 1 garbage can. I don't need any recycling, and I don't need any green waste. And I can again put a little bit more information in there. I click next. Just like the pothole, that one just got submitted. Now 311 staff just got all alerted with emails and, and they know about it so they can handle that request.

Um, Cody, the one thing people sometimes like to remain anonymous on is a parking— is a property concern or code violation.

Is that—

is there an option to remain anonymous?

What they decided is to have everybody log in on this. Um, that's how it's set up right now. So if they want to remain anonymous, they call 311. Yeah, and that's, that's always the option. And I think it says it on that first page.

Yeah, it does.

If you want to always call.

Yeah.

Okay.

And, and the, the cool thing about that too is they can call and then 311 staff can log this in with whatever, with their information. Let's go back to the homepage again. I want to go through this a little bit. So now, if I've done that pothole, I'm going to go back and I'm going to see, you know, I've seen that it's pending. And I can go into the details and I can see what I submitted. I can go in and I can see my attachment of the pothole, say, took another picture. But the really cool power— the powerful thing to this is I can start having a discussion with, with ARM right now. And so say, say I wanted to ask about how's it going? Are you going to fix it?

I don't know.

Add message.

It records the message in there. Um, again, an email gets sent.

I'll get his.

Um, an email gets sent to the, the staff that says, hey, there's a message in this request, follow up with it. And again, on the back side of things, they have a way of going in and typing in a message. Back real quick.

I'll just— Jody, could a user enter in like a newly created anonymous type of password then to try to remain anonymous? Would that work?

Yeah, it's not— it's going to validate an email address.

They could create it though.

Yeah, say Tom McDonald's anonymous email at gmail.com.

Yeah, right.

That's not too anonymous, though, is it?

Yeah, but I mean, we could do that.

All right, the, the biggest catch to that is you have to validate your email.

So, so yeah, yeah, so you can't just put a fake email in there.

You wouldn't have an account.

I'm not really crazy about anonymous, um, just because, I mean, just imagine, I mean, say you've got people who just want to mess around or mess with you.

Yeah. And they just start sending stupid emails about all kinds kinds of things.

Whereas if you've got real people, you've got accountable, then you know you can have a conversation and it's real.

Yeah, and that's kind of how we felt when we were talking about that. We went through that. Do we want to be anonymous? Do we want to make them log in? And I think that's kind of how we felt.

I think if they want to be anonymous, they can make a phone call and have a conversation, right?

I had a question.

Go ahead.

Instead of reporting on sidewalk rip or pothole, I actually reported a dropped sidewalk about that far over at Cherry Creek Park. The reason why I reported it, because I'm just wondering if you have the manpower. People start reporting dropping sidewalks because they're all over the place. Personal history on that is we have a family member up at Utah State in Logan, and there was a dropped sidewalk right by the college campus, and she tripped and smashed her nose. Had to go to the city. City had to defend itself. It was out of court. It was like $20,000, $30,000 because they established that they knew about it. They didn't know about it. So I'm just thinking maybe analyze this a little bit more. If you get a ton of calls, you have manpower to fix sidewalks, potholes, the legality of somebody reported and you didn't get to it. And then they tripped because you went and painted orange on the thing that I reported. It was awesome. But it was 6 weeks ago and it's still there. My granddaughter plays in that park. So, I mean, I'm just saying, you're opening yourself up to more problems.

Yeah, on the sidewalk, just— I know I have a lot of background with this, been the streets manager for quite a long time. When we went through the process with reporting a sidewalk, I'll tell you, we inspect our sidewalks, we keep them current within every 5 years. Um, which it's, it's really a cumbersome thing to do, but we have all the, all the data on all the sidewalks right now. Um, trip hazards— when you talk about manpower, we've really implemented a, a trip hazard removal program that we, we have a company come in every year and cut a lot of trip hazards off. We have machines back at the shop that we do send people out, but you're right. I mean, our first response is to get out there and paint them and make sure people are aware of them. It does become a liability. But, you know, we were trying to respond pretty quick.

Yeah. Yeah.

So yeah.

This is like a bigger funnel.

Yeah.

To get in information. Ignorance isn't a defense. It isn't bliss either. And so as long as we are getting the info in, this allows us to make sure it gets to the right people, allows us to make sure that it's not going to fall through the cracks. And then we implement it as part of our planning moving forward and set a prioritization schedule based on timing and/or severity of the issue. And then, and then we get that into our expense and budgeting plans. And we show that we have a plan and that we have a— that we're making a concerted, reasonable effort to fix it.

Yeah.

So there's the other tab I had a call. This was shortly after Carrie sent out the email announcing this. I thought, oh, this will be fun. I had a person that called about this population explosion of raccoons.

So I went on and there wasn't anything for animal control, but there's a nice other button that you can put anything in there, any concern that you have with anything.

And, and the other cool thing that I noticed as soon as I opened this up, the first thing that popped up was my request. So that was the first thing that I see that it's still pending, but it's like we haven't forgotten about you.

It's still in process. So—

Did you just report it on your account?

I just used my Orem City login email and password.

What I would recommend, Jeff, I love that you did it through your Orem City account. What I would recommend, since you're residents here too, is use your Orem City email if you're— if you are doing tickets on behalf of other residents, and then do your personal one if you're doing them for yourself. And that way you can keep them separate.

Just to clarify, we're able to log in with our Orem login?

Correct.

Yep.

No, you—

I can't. You have to create an account.

Is there a way to have it so you can use your login?

Yeah, go warm email.

Use your warm email and then it will send you a link.

Now the back end.

Yeah, so I know IT is trying to get all of us, all of our— that we use the same login for everything. So that's why I was asking. So we don't have to track multiple passwords for city staff.

I logged in through my city email and used my city password and it worked.

And it worked. I still had to create an account with those credentials. Oh, okay.

Gotcha. So the backend to this is single sign-on. So, you know, there's ways we could, you know, if you really—

on the employee side to pick up the tickets and you—

and this portal is meant for citizen.

I do think what Brent was saying, I mean, and what Greg was saying, as far as there's potential liability, you know, somebody Send something in on this and then it gets ignored and then somebody falls in and then after that there's a lawsuit or whatever. But I do think the way to protect that— Steve's much more the expert than me on this— but is to have a really well-defined process. So as these come in, they go into a queue and they're prioritized, and then you've got standards that you're going— that you're doing whatever you're doing when you're doing it. And I think as long as you've got that— but I think that's really important to follow that process.

So, you know, I just reported something to a cable company and they had me mark, you know, is there a safety issue involved here? Do we have something like that we could put on to help prioritize?

That's an idea. I was going to go back to the sidewalk thing because we really thought about that, um, the way, you know, reporting trip hazards because of the manpower, because of that.

Because—

and what we did is we, instead of reporting that, hey, this needs to be cut Say fixed, it actually activates somebody to go out and inspect it. So it's kind of a different approach that we want. We want our eyes on it. We want to get out there and make sure it's in our system, everything. And at that point, they would identify whether it was a safety issue or not with that. But that's a, that's a great idea. We could probably add some things to that, like, you know, trigger us.

Mayor, about 5 years ago, the city was sued in a lawsuit that we had to defend, and I was deposed in that lawsuit.

And through Cody's help, we were able to demonstrate that we have a very robust state of the sidewalk program. We, we go out there, we survey, we monitor, we mark, we repair, we replace, and so forth.

And so they failed in their lawsuit against us because of that very reason.

So that's in response a little bit to this gentleman's concern.

And so it is a concern we have, but we do have a very active program, and we have to prioritize everything that we receive.

We can receive hundreds of these requests.

We obviously can't do them all on a day or a week or a month. Sometimes they take over several months.

So, um, we can demonstrate that we are actively, you know, striving to make it better. Yeah.

So is there a way you'd respond back to the person making that complaint, say if theirs falls into, well, It's not a huge priority, but we will get to it.

Yeah, that's that discussion portion.

Records are a bigger problem because they multiply fast. So better get it taken care of.

That, that is that discussion part that I was trying to show.

Yeah, right.

Um, if I go back in, if we go into the other system that staff uses, they, they see this, they respond to it, they can add comments. One example was like, you know, on a pothole, you couldn't find it. Maybe you would ask, hey, can you attach a photo so we can see? Give us more description where it's at. So having that communication back and forth is really a great tool with this.

And is the person signaled that there was a response posted?

Yeah, so they'll get an email, and then when they log in on their homepage, there would be an icon next to the request right here of a red bell.

Okay.

And they would go in and read their message. So yeah, a lot of things just, uh, through the change of status is email notification. Um, is there any other questions? I could do another example, but I think maybe we got the—

Yeah, I, I think this is okay.

Oh, sorry, Mayor, I just wanted to mention too that to If you're, if you're interested, we will have an extra laptop that's logged in so that if residents come to city council meetings and have a concern and we want them to get into the ticketing system, we will have the ability for them to do that tonight and all the council meetings moving forward.

Awesome.

Nice.

I just want to say I'm really excited about this because Brendan and I talked about this a year and a half ago because I kept getting different problems sent to me, and my protocol was to send them to Brent. And so, but I just thought it's a big city, there's a lot of things going on, and that's pretty— I mean, if it's a big deal kind of problem that needs more attention than normal, that's fine. But there's all kinds of stuff that there could be a much more effective way to do it. So Brent and I started talking, and we actually talked through this a year and a half ago. So it's been a long time coming.

Yeah.

But it was a big goal to, I mean, number one, get a really robust transparency portal, which we've done in the city. So our citizens can see everything they want to see about our government, but then also to have a direct connection to the citizens. So they have a pathway that they can reach out and express their concerns. And so, as far as council members, this is not, this is not to replace what we do at all. This is just to make it a lot more effective and create a better pathway. Because in this, I mean, instead of somebody contacting me, me contacting Brent, Brent contacting whoever, and then following through, and then it comes all the way back.

Yeah.

This takes it direct to the department, direct to the person. I think it's— I'm really excited about that. As far as the council, I would, uh, that other is probably where a lot of stuff's going to wind up too, uh, because we get a lot of really unusual sorts of things. Um, but I would encourage the council to use this, get involved with it. And this is like version 1.0. So I hope next year we can make it even better and more robust. And really, another thing that I thought would be a good thing, maybe that falls in other, but I get all kinds of— everybody's got a suggestion on how we can do things better. And, you know, a lot of times there are things that we've thought of and we're doing, but then sometimes there's some things that you think, oh, that's a really good idea. And so I really like the idea of allowing citizens to throw out their ideas.

Mm-hmm.

You know, why don't you try this? Why don't you try that?

Do you have an extra tank?

We don't have any extra, but I see that we're going to be creating—

this is going to grow.

Yeah, um, there's other cities out there that use this product. There's one, Cedar Rapids, something that's got like a lot of the—

maybe we could do other suggestions and have them use that. Can I ask a question related to what you said? Sometimes we get emails that are addressed to the whole council and it's, you know, whatever it is, you know, they say traffic in my area, we need a stoplight, whatever. What is the process then? Because we're not all going to respond and be like, okay, you solve this, or, you know, like then 30 of us respond. Like, can we have a process for that?

No, that's a great idea.

Yeah, we could—

one thing we could do with that is maybe include Uh, in that email, if it goes to 311, and if it's something that we can create a ticket on, then we could, uh, essentially respond with, hey, just so you know, Council, we have created a ticket on this, and we'll get it, you know, routed to the right place.

Or maybe we, uh, can assign it to the mayor pro tem. Starting in January.

I would try and encourage citizens to create their own account though. That way they don't have to go to you and wait for you to respond and wait for you to put the ticket in. If they're led to learn how to do this themselves, they might be more encouraged to get their answers quicker if they get in as fast as possible.

But going back to what Jen said, we do get these and we kind of need protocol for this because we get an email that's got like 6 things on it.

Who's supposed to respond?

If we all respond, it's kind of like chaos.

You need to think up a protocol.

We get those emails, so they go somewhere.

I've made note. We'll define that better. And I'm just glad that the Citizen Connect app won't replace me. You'll still need a citizen. One other point of emphasis over the next weeks or month or so, Pete will be getting with you about a new mayor council business card.

Oh, good.

And the idea here is to have your preferred form of contact, city contact, but also have a QR code here that would then go to You know, the council areas of focus and the transparency portal and the Citizen Connect app so that someone just, you know, puts their phone camera to it and we can get to it. We can make that connection that Carrie's talking about with—

Getting rid of the—

So be on the lookout for that communication interaction with, with Pete so that we can make a business card actually helpful and Probably more applicable to you.

That'd be great.

Thank you.

Any other questions?

Thank you.

Okay, thank you.

Well done.

This is great.

Thanks, Cody.

All right, um, let's go ahead and grab our food, and then we'll come back down. I remember Paul will go through the agenda. Uh, do we have a volunteer to— Father in heaven, we love thee.

Thank thee for the opportunity we have to gather and to discuss important matters that concern our city and the citizens here. Thankful for this food, bless it to strengthen us and nourish us and help us through the remainder of the evening and the meetings that we are Participating in that will go well, discussions will be productive. We pray in the name of Jesus Christ. Amen.

Amen.

So just so you're aware, we had a birthday.

He's trying to leave, so we do have a birthday treat that I'll put out for Tom's birthday. He's not—

he's just trying to kid.

Is that—

he said he's lying. How old is he?

We've actually got— okay, just a big question.

Item number 4.

Yes, City Council meeting schedule.

So just really quick, I gave each of the city council members and mayor the proposed, um, 2025 schedule, um, and that's what will be, um, it'll be a consent item in the next meeting.

So just like over—

it's the same one that I sent and emailed out. And then the pages behind will just be, you know, your pledge.

And it looks like it's a consent item today.

Yeah, today. Okay, so later today.

Okay, I thought when you said next meeting, I wasn't—

sorry, the next meeting.

Yep.

And then the other thing that we're going to be talking about is because of the Alpine School District meeting that was in conflict with our November meeting. We wanted to make sure that the council had an opportunity to attend that if they wanted to. We are proposing a change from the 12th to the 19th. That also will be a consent item today. And so if, um, if you guys are good with that, then, uh, we'll just pass that off. If not, you know, of course. Does anyone have any questions? Pretty easy.

Thank you.

All right, let's run through the agenda real quick. This will be easy too. So we don't have any— one reported—

any council members.

Uh, yeah, item number 2, city council reports, none.

Okay, now items are 6 through 8, call to order, invocation.

Whose friends are these?

Yeah, mine.

These are yours, so I'll let you say something about them. Um, and then we've got item number 6.1, uh, a report on the North Warren Neighborhood Commission. And then item 6.2, Heritage Advisory and Better Real Estate Program. Item 6.3, uh, presentation on the Green Business Award that we received.

Excuse me.

Pretty darn good and amazing.

Uh, item 7, uh, personal appearances.

Uh, item 8, consent. The consent items are approval of meeting minutes, reappointment of Hillary Hungerford to Natural Resource Stewardship Committee, 8.3, approval of 2023 City Council schedule, and item 8.4, approval of the change of the November City Council meeting coming up Those are all consent items. Item 9, uh, see mandatory information items. And then if anyone wants to make a wager on how many council meetings—

what's the over-under?

But before— 45. Okay, but as far as if you do this, go ahead and place your bet, because then we get to item number 10, adjourn to a closed-door session. Just when you thought we were done.

Our meeting is 6:45 for both meetings, right?

That's what you're saying? Okay.

All right, so we'll adjourn this meeting and, uh, start city council meeting.

I'm not a gambler.

He's not a winner.

He's 0 for 2, isn't he?

0 for 2.

Can't take any more bets until you pick them.

I'd like to call this meeting to order and welcome all of you here tonight. We're going to start out with an invocation and then followed by a Pledge of Allegiance, and this is Conrad And Jay Guymon. And these are friends of Jen's who's invited them to come. So if you'd like to introduce them, Jen.

Yes, Conrad and Jay Guymon, uh, have lived in the city of Orem for a long time, and they are super, super involved in the community, uh, the city, and they volunteer all the time. They spend hundreds, I would say thousands probably, of hours helping the youth in our community. And I'm just so grateful that they came today to help us out. So go ahead.

Our Father in Heaven, we're grateful to meet here together to open the city council meeting. Thankful for the citizens of Orem who serve so willingly. Grateful for our city leaders.

Pray that we may be able to make good decisions here tonight that will benefit the city and our citizens and preserve our quality of life and provide for future generations. And these blessings we pray in the name of Jesus Christ.

Amen. Would the audience 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, thank you for helping with that. We'll move to item number We'll move to item number 6. Uh, item 6.1 is a report on our Orem Neighborhood Commissions. Uh, our first presenter will be, uh, I can't see very good, Debbie Amica.

Dimmy.

Okay, come on up. And introduce yourselves, please.

Well, thank you, Mayor and Council. I'm Debbie D'Amico. I'm one of the newest additions here with Orem City, and I'm the Community Connections Supervisor, and very pleased to be here. With me, I have Amy Green, who's one of our commission members from District 5. She also lives in the Geneva Heights neighborhood. We are super excited to have been able to watch the group grow and learn and serve in the community, and I'm excited to have the opportunity to work with them. So with that, we're going to go ahead and share some highlights from the year. Thanks, Debbie. Am I on? Can you hear me? Okay, great. Uh, glad to be here with you tonight. We're going to talk a little bit about the Neighborhood Commission. This year we officially expanded the Neighborhood Commission from 9 members to 18. That's 2 members per each of the city's 9 neighborhood districts. We have 9 brand new Members. Jenny Scribner has been able to serve as the chair. Reed Farnsworth has been able to serve as the vice chair. Unfortunately, neither of them could be here this evening, so Jenny owes me big. I'm doing this for her. Um, uh, and then we have 16 other wonderful members who served on the commission. If there are any of the neighborhood commission members here in the audience, we invite them to stand. This year, our commission has learned a lot about communication from our city communications team, and we have made an effort to increase communication within our individual neighborhoods. This is based on our goal to build connections and share accurate information within our community. Within our individual neighborhoods, we have created strategies to communicate in the way that works best for each of us. As we have served at city events, which I'll share a little bit more information about later, we have directed people to sign up for the city newsletter, follow the city on social media, and use the city website to get accurate information about what is going on in the city. In addition, many of our district partnerships groups have created neighborhood social media pages where we share information about city events and projects and direct residents to city information and resources. The city has a neighborhood webpage, aurum.org/neighborhoods, to share information about neighborhood resources and events. There's also an email address, aurumneighborhoods@aurum.gov, and a quote-unquote seamless doc contact form on this website for residents to submit questions or concerns about their neighborhood. The email and form are directed to city staff who can help resolve these questions and concerns and share information with us as needed so that we can communicate directly with our neighbors. We have also been able to assist the city in sharing targeted information For example, with the opening of the first Orem My Hometown neighborhood in Geneva Heights, our District 5 commission members, me included, were able to help share flyers to all homes within that specific neighborhood advertising the city's focus group for neighbors to provide input on the opening of the new My Hometown Community Resource Center, which provided to— which proved to be a very effective way to get residents to sign up for the focus group. We had more residents than we could handle at that focus group, which is very unusual. It's tough to get focus group people, so it was very effective. Um, here are a few other highlights from the year. We have learned from and worked with several city departments/divisions, particularly the Police Department's Community Oriented Policing Team, the Neighborhood Improvement Team, and the Communications Team. which we love all of them. They've been fantastic to work with. I just have to put that plug in for them. Learning from these departments has allowed us to be— to better communicate and share accurate information within our neighborhoods. We helped with the city's Kindness Week during the first week of May by sharing information about the daily kindness themes and the city's birthday service day project at Nielsen Grove Park, and by advertising the annual kindness awards for the Kindness Ambassador, Kindness Business, and Kindness School. Our commission was also able to review all of the award nominations and select some very deserving winners for each of the categories. The winner of the Kindness Ambassadors are Ballard and Leah Mary Peed. The winner of Kindness Business was Cutlers, and the winner of Kindness School is Noah Webster Academy. We also provided feedback on, shared information about, and served with the new My Hometown Initiative in Geneva Heights, which has been extremely successful. Each member has also been assigned to review and provide feedback on our individual neighborhood plans as the city prepares for a general plan update. We continue to review these plans and gather input from our neighborhood about priorities and strategies. We have been able to provide input on and support for city grant applications. For example, we were able to provide suggestions for the electric vehicle charging station locations throughout the city for one of the city's largest open grant applications. We staffed booths and served at several city events to share information about city projects books, resources, and events. We had booths at the Orem Fest car show, the My Hometown grand opening celebration, and the Harvest Festival. At these events, we were able to engage with hundreds of residents and inform them about our commission, city resources and events, and more. We also served breakfast at the Come Together Rock Festival, where we were able to bring many residents and families together. Here are a few photo highlights from the year. We enjoyed working together and serving all year long. And thanks to whoever picked that really bad picture of me, but it's awesome to be with Lynnae. Here are a few— or as we look ahead, we have a few goals. We want to continue to build neighborhood connection and unity. Beginning next year, we would like to hold events, uh, in our individual neighborhood districts To foster casual connection among neighbors and continue to share information about city resources, events, projects, et cetera. We have several examples from some of our neighborhood commission where they have held community picnics right within their neighborhoods. It's been very effective in bringing neighbors together and creating that sense of community and a good way to get information out because people know each other. We would like to continue to improve communication efforts within the city by being part of the city's key communicator network. We would like to help and encourage residents to find accurate information about the city and develop web pages for each of our neighborhoods to continue to spread targeted information. This will be a good way to get information out about emergencies, about anything that's happening within that specific neighborhood, and did get information back and get feedback back from our residents. We want to continue to serve. We love serving at city events and engaging with our neighbors. We are also excited at the possibility of expanding the My Hometown initiative to additional neighbors— neighborhoods in the near future. We look forward to continuing to aid in the city's kindness efforts throughout Planning Kindness Week Mm-hmm. Partnering with the One Kind Act a Day organization, and more. We want to thank you for letting us serve. We enjoy serving on this commission, interacting with our community members, and being involved with the many wonderful things the city is doing. We want to thank each of you for your service and for the way that you support and, uh, promote these wonderful neighborhood commissions and the programs that we have in our great city of Orem.

Thank you.

Before you leave, does anyone have any questions, comments?

Okay.

Do you have questions?

No, I just want to say we really appreciate what you guys are doing, and we think you're doing a great job, and you are a big part of our focus. I mean, we've doubled the number of— we've gone from, what, 9 to 18 people on the neighborhood commissions, right? So we've doubled that because one of our big focuses is to bring community together, and we think the neighborhood commissions are a great way to do that. So we really appreciate it.

Thank you.

Okay, next up we've got item 6.2, a report from the Heritage Advisory and Veterans Day Program.

This will be Pete.

Yes, it's always a pleasure to come here and Starting to feel like it's a second home. But we have a great program planned for Veterans Day, November 11th, starting at 11 AM. I would encourage everyone to invite people of all ages out to this wonderful day to celebrate our veterans and their service and our heritage. For they're the ones that are preserving our heritage and helping to preserve it. The Orem Post 72, which is a major part of helping to preserve our heritage, was chartered in 1948. We now have over 80 members, of which about 14 are very active on our honor guard. We have served military rites to over 100 people or more per year, and we perform flag ceremonies for Orange City senior living centers and schools, especially around Memorial Day and Veterans Day. We also offer help to fellow veterans and their families. Now, before you, you have a program And inside that program is a little biography about Lieutenant Colonel Edward Dan Patterson. He is fantastic. Served a mission in, uh, Brazil, I believe. Yeah, in Brazil. And received his commission in the United States Army from BYU.

ROTC.

His first deployment was to support Operation Iraqi Freedom as a sniper platoon leader, where he cleared hundreds of bombs from the road— roadside bombs. He also has served in the Military Intelligence Corps and in special operations as an intelligence officer He also has commanded the Military Intelligence Detachment and has been a foreign area officer. Currently, he is serving at the post in Utah, where he will be retiring this coming January, but he has already been called to a position in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. As the military relations manager. I'm looking forward to hearing from Lieutenant Colonel Patterson, and I know that it'll be a wonderful day and a wonderful event. And I want to thank those that support the Heritage Commission, especially McKenna.

Thank you.

Didn't she do a fantastic job on the program? Sure did. And Pete, who keeps me on my toes. So thank you very much.

Thank you.

Oh, did I invite you to come?

Yes.

Be sure you're there.

Yeah, we'll make sure we're there.

Absolutely.

This is a great event. Okay, next up we've got item 6.3. Pete Wolfley, Communications Director, about the Orem Green Business Award.

Yes, so we just wanted to bring this before you. Uh, this last week, the City of Orem was—

Can I say one more thing?

Yeah, go ahead. I forgot the trophy.

We're going to be presenting a trophy at Veterans Day for those that have served at more than 100 funerals, and we'll have 5 there that have served for more over 1,000 and a couple that serve at more than 2,000 funerals in their life.

Almost forgot.

No, that's wonderful. That's one of the exciting things we're looking forward to in the Veterans Day program. So this is the Green Business Award and it's presented by Utah Business and Rocky Mountain Power, and it was presented to the City of Orem for several green initiatives that we have. Going currently in the city. So the first one that we received the award for was the solar panel project that's happening on the new city center. 65% of that project is being paid for by federal grants, so we're super happy about that. And our city portion of that will be paid off in roughly 9 years on the savings that we get from the solar panels. We also hope to expand that program as well to other city facilities. We also are— we received the award for our efforts in getting vehicle chargers throughout the city. The city's been involved in placing some here and in other locations, so that we were recognized for that. Then on the waterfront, we were recognized for our water reuse facility that's being built down by Sleepy Ridge Golf Course to save about 175 million gallons of water every year, of drinking water, and this will be a better, more efficient way of watering the golf course and then some of the parks down in that area. We're also— they also awarded us this for our materials efforts with waste management, We're the first city in Utah to be part of the plastic film recycling pilot program. Waste Management, we heard it straight from them, they came to us with this program because they knew that we were innovative and forward-thinking, and they thought we'd be a great partner. And so that's been going on for about a year, and we've had a lot of promising success. The pilot is continuing, so people can continue to put the wrappers and the plastic bags and stuff in their recycling bins, and it's showing great promise. And then finally, the last part is kind of our tree planting and green space preserving. They were very impressed with our commitment to parks. In the last 18 months, we've planted over 300 new trees in Orem on public property. And so all 4 of those things— energy, water, materials, and the tree planting green space— were the reason that we got this award. So I was hoping we could just get a picture together as a council and just document it. And we thank them for their award. Mayor, did you want to say anything? You were at the banquet.

Yeah, no, it was, uh, it was a, a great event that I was excited to go to. It was interesting because there's something like 285 cities in Utah. There was one at this event getting an award, and that was Orem. So congratulations. And getting a green award. So that was exceptional. The only other thing was our solar project that you're talking about. It will be paid off after 9 years, but then it will continue to save money every single year after that because we're going to be generating a lot of energy. So Yeah, and, and, and that we're looking at also expanding to what, Public Works, Rec Center? Yeah, the Rec Center, Senior Center, some other places too. So, uh, we've got it pre-dialed as far as how to make that a really cost-effective thing for the city. So good job.

Congratulations, Oram.

Is it on?

Can you see? Perfect.

Thank you.

Thank you, sir.

All right, next up we've got personal appearances, and tonight we have 2 individuals who have signed up to make, uh, a public statement. And, uh, the only request we have is that these statements are less than 3 minutes and, uh, they pertain to issues here in the city. So I've got 2 people we'll invite up. Uh, first of all, Ann Werner, if you'd like to come up.

Okay.

Hello, my name is Anne Werner. I live at the intersection of 50 East and 1200 South in Orem. On October 13th, 2024, there was a fatal accident involving our dear friend and neighbor Jenny Quick. The accident happened in front of Carolyn Court Apartments where we live. There are 16 units with 16 elderly citizens. The driver of the truck was involved in the accident, and Jenny might not have seen each other because the street was so dark. The streetlight was not lit that night. The light has been replaced, but it is still not bright enough to light the sidewalk or the 25-mile-an-hour zone sign. Sorry, sometimes the tree branches hide the sign. We suggest that there be more streetlights installed to help prevent any more accidents. The street lighting is not the only problem we have on the street. The majority of the cars drive way too fast for the speed limit. We have many seniors who cross that street to go to church but are afraid to, to do it because they are not feeling safe. We suggest a zebra crossing, belisha beacon light on 50 East and 1200 South intersection. We also suggest a fluorescent crosswalk At the intersection. We also suggest a crosswalk at 1200 South that allows us to cross the street to walk down the path that leads to the church. That address is about 147 East 1200 South. We also suggest that 1200 South has more police patrolling the traffic. The majority of the vehicles are driving Way over the speed limit. It has been suggested to have more speed limit signs that are lit up and not hindered by trees. We suggest any radar capabilities that would help solve the problem with recurring speeding cars. Many of our friends and neighbors could not come tonight. We have written up a petition in support of these suggestions that have— we have discussed tonight. This is essential to enhance pedestrian safety in this area, particularly for children, seniors, and individuals with disabilities. Thank you for allowing us to come here tonight to express our concerns. By the way, we have— Okay.

Yeah, if you had something you wanted to say.

We have 46 signatures for the signed petition, and I have a photo on the street at dark.

Okay, that would be great. And I know we've, we've looked at some of this, but we were very interested in your suggestions.

So, Brynn, uh, Yeah, or Teresa there, if you could, our city recorder. And again, we appreciate the feedback, and I made some notes as well.

Okay, thank you for coming.

Thank you. And next we've got Richard Moser.

May I be permitted to sit?

If you'd like.

And just, just make sure that microphone is on. There's a button there, and then pull it close to you.

Thank you. Thank you, Anne, for your presentation. Greetings, Mayor and Orem City Council. My name is Richard Moscroft. And I also live at the intersection of 50 East and 1200 South in Orem. As Ann Werner said, we are here today with gravely serious concerns as we know you, the city, the Orem City Council and citizens of Orem are about concerned about the speed many people use when driving through residential neighborhoods in Orem. Perhaps unique among those streets is heavily traveled 1200 South between University Mall and Utah Valley University. We in that neighborhood have specific concern regarding the excessive speed people drive going east and west on 1200 South. On Sunday, October 13th, 2024, our neighbor and most admired friend Jenny Quick was struck by a pickup truck driving in excess of 25 miles per hour speed limit. Jenny was thrown in the air about 30 to 35 feet from the impact and died within a few minutes. I will never forget the sound of that impact. We're seeing Jenny fly through the air. We are asking the council, uh, to request Orem City Manager Bren Bybee— thank you, uh, Manager Bren Bybee— to authorize installation of 2 signs, stop signs, at 50 East Uh, going east and west on 1200 South with painted crosswalks across 1200 South. The 2 stop signs and marked crossways from traffic going east and west at the intersection of 50 East on 1200 South are critically important. And also noticed additional stop signs and crosswalks immediately east of 50 East. Uh, in addition, 1200 South is a very poorly lit street from Main Street extending east to 2 full blocks to 200 East on 1200 South. The streetlight at the immediate location where the accident occurred was not lit for some time prior. prior to the accident but was repaired immediately after Jenny's passing. Please don't bother to put the same kind of speed limit signs on the 1200 South because most drivers don't pay attention to them anyway. A high percent of drivers going east and west on 1200 South are traveling well above the speed limit posted. For several years During the end of each summer and throughout the fall months, people have sat on the front porch immediately, immediately across the street from the accident location. Enjoying the weather and observing the heavy traffic on 1200 South. And the most common topic of conversation was the excessive speed most cars and pickup trucks were going by at. Jenny Quick was one of those 3 observers, but unfortunately Jenny won't be there anymore. Thank you for your time and consideration in this matter.

Thank you, Richard. We appreciate you coming and sharing your concerns, and I'll just echo back to Bryn that let's take all the suggestions. They're fine.

Taking pictures and observe, and there's just—

it's a matter of time when the next person will be another victim.

So thank you for listening, and I hope we have some change.

Yes, no, we, we, we really do appreciate you coming in sharing that with us, and we'll take some action on that. And Bren, there's several suggestions there, but you'll meet with your, your teams and, and, uh, come up with an assessment and do some things to, to help make this a better situation.

Yes, as you know, we have our, our traffic team that's multidisciplinary, and we'll again take notes. And then of course we know that this is important and we, we care.

So we, we really do appreciate you coming and sharing your concerns, and, and we're really sorry for your loss. Um, let's move on to item number 8. This is just our consent items for a simple vote. We've got item 8.1, approval of meeting minutes for October 8th, 2024. Item 8.2, a reappointment to the Natural Resources Stewardship Committee of Hillary Hungerford. Item 8.3, approval of 2025 City Council schedule. And item 8.4, an approval change the November City Council meeting from November 12th, 2024 to November 19th, 2024.

Motion to approve consent items.

I second.

Aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Thank you.

The consent items pass. Next up, we've got item 9, city information items, or city manager information items.

Thank you, Mayor and Council. Just a few quick things. Um, 2 of some of our most popular, uh, events are coming up where we get a ton of gratitude expressed. One is, uh, November 25th at 7 PM at University Place will be the Giving Machine kickoff, and then our Lights On event will kick off on the following Monday, on December 2nd, here at our City Center Park. So we're really looking forward to that and want to make sure everyone has ample heads up of those exciting events. And then our fire department training facility has begun to be graded and utility work has begun. And so we're excited about that project. And then, of course, when it's complete, we'll do a big ribbon-cutting event and make a big deal of it. And then we also got news today, and I was surprised, but we got good news that Orem was just ranked the 12th most educated city In America. So, and almost as important, all my staff has— I've today, I had several people come up to me and say, it's National Cat Day.

Good for you, Bren.

And so I wanted to make sure that all of you, and especially Councilmember Dave Spencer, was aware of that.

Thank you.

That's all I have. Thank you, Mayor.

Okay, thank you, Bren. All right, uh, I think we've covered everything. If someone would like to make a motion to adjourn to a closed room meeting that we've got to go up to—

I think we need to say the room number too, don't we? I move that we adjourn to a closed session in Room 107 to discuss the property purchase or lease of real property.

I second that.

Aye. Aye.

Aye. Aye.

Aye.

Aye.

This meeting is adjourned.

Oh, Lynette, thank you. Um, we appreciate you piping in.

We'll see you in the meeting.

Okay, we appreciate you all coming tonight, and this meeting's adjourned. Thank you.