City Council · 2024-11-10

This feels like a Knights of the Round Table kind of a setup. It's not true. So I'm sure most of you are familiar with the agenda, but essentially we've got it just scheduled out here and it's pretty self-explanatory. We're going to go through a number of things, but we're going to start out with Carrie and we've just got to let her go with her Activity.

All right.

How much time would you let me take, man?

Do you want me to go to 1:30?

Half an hour?

Twister takes a long time.

I don't know if we're going to have time.

We'll try.

Maybe you have 20 minutes.

20 minutes? Okay, we'll go fast. Thank you for letting me be the first presenter at this.

I appreciate it.

Most of you know that I'm the fluff person. I love culture and engagement and fun things. So for our get-to-know-you— Tess, will you go to slide 5? We are going to— you're gonna have to have a piece of paper.

I know you don't want to sit on your desk.

I want you to think of your favorite Disney conglomerate. So it could be Disney, Pixar, Marvel, or Star Wars. And I want you to pick your favorite Disney character. And then write down as many of their character traits—

you've done this before, Dave—

your favorite character traits of that character. Okay, so I'm going to only give you like a minute and a half.

Ready?

Do I need a piece of paper?

Oh, you should have a notebook.

I'll help Tom out.

Oh, that's just so nice.

There you go, Tom.

And write the person, the character, what else about them?

Your favorite character and the traits of that character, why you like them. And you're down to a minute. So write fast.

Nice.

Okay, 30 seconds.

Okay, we should have done Disney music is what we should have done. Okay, so when you go to—

oh, one slide is on the turn-take.

So I'm going to tell you what—

oh, sorry.

Did it stop? Interesting.

Number 4.

So that was—

this one's mine. I chose Elastigirl, and that's because I actually have a Jack-Jack type personality at my house. My 16-year-old son, from the minute he was born, was boop-boop-boop-boop all over the house. But that's not the only reason. I think that she's very fiercely protective of her family. She's passionate and driven with what she does. She cares deeply about everyone around her. She's unwavering with her integrity and her honest— and she's stubborn. Which, that's, if you ask my husband, that's probably my best trait. And then her, my favorite quote that she says is, girls, come on, leave the saving of the world to men? I don't think so.

I don't think so.

So that's my favorite Disney character. Josh, you get to go next.

I thought we were doing that one.

Nope, we're going—

Carrie, did the shoes have anything to do with it? Oh, that was a good point.

I didn't put that in there.

She does have great boots. I think I have Cinderella because the glass slipper.

That's true.

Great.

So I, it took me a minute. I've been out of the Disney loop for a significant amount of time. Star Wars, I've always liked Han Solo. He was kind of a wise guy, smart-alecky, but wisecracks, things like that. But he was also, as rough of a person as he was, he was pretty genuine duty, things like that. And he was attentive to detail, wanting to know what was going on and trying to influence you in the right way.

Thanks.

Thanks, Josh.

That was really good.

Brandon?

Well, that's why me and Josh get along, because that's who I chose as well.

Yeah.

I wrote rogue, rogue but honorable.

So there you go.

Kind of has some rough edges to him, but in the end, he's a guy you can rely on, you know. Even though he doesn't come off that way, you know. And I always loved him growing up because, you know, I'm not a terribly funny person. And so I thought he was that guy that was kind of, you know, Rough around the edges, but quite pretty funny in his kind of sarcastic-y kind of way.

So I always admired that.

I love it, Brendan.

Thanks.

And he liked Princess Leia.

I was gonna say, he did get to get the girl in the end, right? And had a really cool ship.

That's true. All right, Brian, you're up.

I picked Yoda. He's green.

I should have picked that one.

But he's a small stature, wields a big stick. But he's wise, positive, nurturing, caring. He's a mentor and he's experienced.

Nice.

So good are you.

Yeah. Good job.

All right, Justin.

So this was really tough because I was looking at Tigger and going, man, I love everything about that guy. bundle of energy, and knocking people around, and having fun through life. But then I looked at Belle, and I thought, you know, I love, I love the characteristic of Belle that she didn't care what anyone thought. She kind of marched to her own drum. She followed her own path. And when it was time to stand up to the Beast, she did it. And anyway, I just, I—

Thank you.

Yeah, I mean, there's so many great choices there, but for some reason I focused on Belle. And the fact that she honored her father, believed in her father, no one else did, and she stuck with him, stuck with her family through the thick and thin.

That's awesome.

Those are great traits.

Thanks, Jack.

This was easy because Mulan is my little thing on Roku on my little Disney Plus thing.

That's my—

what do you call it? My avatar. Yeah, I like Mulan, and it's because in our house we get down to business, you know, we gotta get things done. And I like— she's hardworking, kind, persuasive, respectfully non-traditional, innovative, brave, athletic, courageous, and driven. And I don't know that that necessarily describes me, but those are Traits that I admire in a poster. Thanks, Elaine.

I'm afraid I'm going to fail this because I'm not even sure if this is a Disney character. But going back in time, this was my childhood. So Superman, is he a Disney character? Marvel.

He is now.

He used to be Marvel.

Okay. But I'm okay. Anyway, Superman. I always liked, you know, Clark Kent. He was mild-mannered. He was kind of out of the spotlight. But then when he turned into Superman, he always stood up for right. And he had the ability to do anything with his powers, but he always chose to do the right thing for the right reason. And he had an ability to overcome evil all the different ways it was thrown at him. So, Superman.

That's beautiful. I liked it, and when he wore his glasses.

Hey, Brad. I chose Iron Man. He was my nickname when I did wrestling in high school, and it was because I had to wear this brace on my leg, and they didn't want to call me Iron Leg, so they called me Iron Man. I like him for some of the same reasons that Brandon and Josh like him. Solo in terms of, you know, he's real genuine, doesn't take himself too seriously, kind of funny. So one of my favorite quotes from him is when someone tries to say, hey, you know, you don't have any superpowers, and he's like, oh yeah, I should feel so sorry for myself, I'm a genius philanthropist billionaire. So I think it's cool that he quickly identified, even though he didn't have something like biologically superpowered, he knew that he could still do super things and hang with Well, since I'm not really a Disney person, but I picked Yoda.

Nice.

And the reason I picked Yoda was he's wise, caring, helpful, very straightforward, small in stature but very big presence. Everybody likes Yoda. And he had a purpose. One thing is he's very knowledgeable, and nobody doubted Yoda. I think it's indistinguishable.

Okay, Tom.

I'm picking one that goes into public domain now.

Okay.

You know who that is?

Mickey.

Mickey.

Yeah.

Oh, okay.

He's friendly. He handles defeat with optimism. He smiles. He leads others with kindness, and he laughs.

Those are great traits.

Love it.

Okay, Chris, you're up.

I served my mission in Disneyland area, right? So, Mickey Mouse was— I was a Mickey Mouse missionary.

What mission?

Asperger's. And so, Mickey Mouse, I mean, it was one of those things, just since I was little, I've Friendly, inclusive, outgoing, positive, problem solver, energetic, willing to help others, a good friend, and he would lead kind of his team of buddies. So that's kind of why I chose him.

I also picked Elastigirl.

Yay!

And for a couple reasons. One, because I feel like I identify the most with her, the mom trying to do all the things, and she's so boss. But also because when the movie first came out, my husband looked just like Mr.

Incredible.

Like, people would stop him on the street and say, But you look like Mr.

Incredible.

We had 2 kids at the time, so Violet and Adash, and our 3rd child was Spencer. We named him Spencer Jack Gale after Jack-Jack.

Oh, that is awesome.

Yeah, but she's determined, she's got grit, she's a problem solver, she's flexible, independent, diplomatic, smart, protective, caring, forward-thinking, creative.

Kindred spirits.

All right, Jesse.

I picked Gilligan.

Just kidding.

The guy was a genius.

He always figured how to stay on the island with the cute girls, okay? But is Maui—

is Maui— is Moana at Disney?

Yeah.

I picked Maui because he's overly confident. He's got all these traits that we look at in society and say, you're arrogant, you're overconfident, you think the world revolves around you. And that's the character that was portrayed. But if you really look at the movie, he was teachable. He was willing to learn. He was willing to help. He was willing to serve. He was willing to stand up for his family's traditions. And so he was portrayed as this arrogant, you know, buff guy. But if you look at the softness of him, and I think we all have that softness, and those are traits that we could, we can strive for.

Originally when Carrie did this training, she said just pick your favorite character, and I picked a villain.

So I was like, oh no.

Well, I love Cruella de Vil because of her luxurious fur coats, and I think she's unhinged and funny.

But if I had to pick a hero, I guess I'll pick Mater, like Tow Mater.

Oh yeah.

So I just think he always makes light of hard times and situations.

He has a really funny humor, and he's the rustiest and trustiest truck in the yard.

And he doesn't even need rearview mirrors because he knows where he's going, and it doesn't matter where he's been kind of a type thing.

I don't know where Ryan Reynolds falls in with Deadpool, but he's my guy. I mean, he's a badass that always gets the bad guy no matter what body part gets cut off. He just is— he's the ugliest successful person that you're ever going to meet when it comes to characteristics. But then on the shallow house side of me, I've loved Ariel my entire life. The red hair, the singing, so—

Good, you married her.

I've got the two, so—

Yeah.

Okay, Chris.

So I guess I'm a kindred spirit with Jeff because I picked Belle.

Nice.

Yeah, and I, I like the portrayal of Belle. She's a strong woman. She was a faithful daughter. She stood for what was right and what was good in the world. She didn't put up with others and temptations and so forth. And she stood on solid ground. She could also see the good in the beast. So I kind of compare her to my wife a little bit. Because I'm the beast that she marries.

She is a reader. She does work at the library.

Yeah, she's a reader. I don't know. I was attracted to her portrayal.

Thanks, Pete.

I went with Woody from Toy Story.

He's loyal, he's brave, he's a great friend, and he learns a lot about being a leader of the fellow toys. So my all-time favorite character.

He's also very resourceful.

Oh, absolutely.

I picked Jack Skellington from Nightmare Before Christmas.

A dreamer, an innovator, a leader, a collaborator, and a great singer.

And kind of a showman. All right.

Okay, well, um, like Jeff, I, I chose Tigger. Um, I chose him because he's fun, he's funny, he's got a great laugh, a funny laugh. Um, energetic, optimistic, he's got a springy tail. Uh, cheerful, and the most wonderful thing I love how you paused.

So we did this activity about a year ago with all of our employees. It was required training. We talked about, you know, just the importance of not always viewing yourself as the hero. Maybe sometimes you're not everybody's hero, but you can find good traits in other people all the time. So it was a really fun training for our employees to look at each other in a different perspective. So in the interest of time, to stay with where we want to be, Mary, I— we did what's called Orem Listens yesterday. It was another of our BABO, Build a Better Orem, events. And we call it Orem Listens, and it's where our fellow employees from all different departments. They can volunteer to come up and do a really short, like 5 to 10 minute TED-type talk on anything that they're interested in. And the presentation that I want to share with you is about 8 minutes long. It's the very— it's slide 13. This is from Tara Kalancha, and she is from the police department, and she gave a really nice present— talk about why we should love Orem. She's a resident and she's also an employee, so I just wanted to close the presentation out with slide 13.

So one more down. So go down one more.

Oh, down one more.

That is not Tara. There we go, yeah. Thank you.

We are going to switch places.

You guys probably don't know this about me, but I love Orem, okay? Yeah, give it up for Orem! And I also love Babbel Bucks. I don't know about the rest of you, I've been willing to even pay for some of them in order to get some You too could look like this. Just saying. And if you are lucky enough to get this backpack— by the way, this is not a paid advertisement, but they did say— I'm sorry about all the rest of you who just got emails— they told me I would get $25 Babbel Bucks for doing this speech, so that was worth it for me. The rest of you guys, too bad. You could have an Orem Stanley. All kinds of things. A Carhartt with Aurum. A jacket with Aurum. So next time, I think every last one of these people is going to volunteer to be in this fashion show. But I'm here today to tell you that investing in Aurum is investing in yourself. A lot of people said to me, hey, you are doing the wrong speech. You're supposed to tell us how Aurum invests in us and what our employer should do for us. If you want that kind of a conversation, go over to HR and they will tell you all the cool things that you can get for working for Orem. We've heard about our 401s, that kind of thing. You probably didn't know this, but free checkouts from the library— that's a big deal. We have one of the best libraries in the state, all kinds of great things. But I'm here to tell you that if you can learn to love your employer and love Orem the way that I do, you are going to have a really successful career and you're going to be really happy. So we're going to start. Oh, I gotta find the clicker. Okay, here's some of the reasons why I love Orem. Oh, most importantly, by the way, this is how you say my last name. Kalancha. Okay, I was impressed with Amy, she got it right today, I think for the first time in 15 years I have been here. Not just her though, I've been here 15 years and very few people can say it right. So after today, you will all speak a little Romanian, okay? Kalancha. That was worth spending a minute on. Next. I was born at Utah Valley Hospital. Did not look like that, but that's what it looks like now. I went to Bonneville Elementary School. Go Broncos! Back in the '70s. I went to Orem Junior High. Go Jaguars! Better than Lake Ridge. I also went to— I went to Mountain View. Oh, I know. If there's some Lake Ridge people out there, I'll take you on. Out by the bleachers, 3 o'clock. I also went to Mountain View High School. Go Bruins! I can still sing the fight song. Ask Chief Adams if he can do that because he was the same graduating year as me. Anyway, these are some of the reasons why I love Orem. It is a fantastic place to raise your family. It really is, and I'm doing it. I'm raising my family right here in Orem. My first job, 12 years old at ZCMI. That's at University Mall. Some of you have never seen it or heard of it. Back then you could work when you were 12 stocking shelves. I love Orem so much that I literally have my cemetery plot in the Orem City Cemetery. That's my mother-in-law's. That empty space right there is going to be me. Right over there is my mom and where my dad will be. That's how much I love Orem. You guys, I don't think there's anybody out there. But I want each of you as employees of Orem to love them almost as much as I do. Because you work here, then you matter to my family. As the residents here, we're grateful for each and every one of you. And if you have a bad attitude and you don't love Orem, go work for Provo.

Okay.

Thank you.

One of the best days of my life was when I got hired 15 years ago, almost 16 now, for Orem City. I was hired as a dispatcher, and right after I got hired, found out I had a hearing problem. Orem did not say, too bad, so sad. They found another place for me, and I went to work in records. As I worked in records for a while, then they needed some help in evidence, and I got to start spending some of my day there, and that turned into an actual career I love. And I'm sorry to tell you this, but I have the best job in the whole entire city. There used to only be one of us, now there's 2, but it's big competition if you want to get in. People are dying to get in. Okay, little joke there, right? Because I work for the police department. Anyway, but here's one of the things really and truly that Oren did for me that helped me learn— and I'm gonna get emotional too— how to invest in myself. Because I got to a place in my life, I've been here for more than 10 years, my kids were growing up. At 45, my husband decided he needed to go back to He'd been an electrician his whole life and suddenly wanted to become an engineer. I don't know why anyone would want to do that. So he decides to go back to school and it takes 8 long years for him to get his 4-year degree. And meanwhile, I'm supporting the family so he can work full-time. He is from Romania, English is his second language, so it's a lot harder for him. Plus, I mean, math is hard for everybody, right? Anyway, along comes this idea from Oren that there's a Women in Leadership Scholarship. I had started my career— or excuse me, started my degree in 1995 at Snow College, ended up leaving school, never got my degree, raised my family, all that kind of thing, and then taking care of my husband. We know how much that takes, right? All of the women here that are married can attest to it. And I know you guys are helping out your wives and stuff too, so thank you for that. Anyway, the Women in Leadership Scholarship, when they announced that the first year, I thought to myself, you should go back to school. And I was like, what? You are crazy. Really, I thought that. But I kept— they kept sending out those emails, and I kept thinking, you should go back to school, you should go back to school. I finally decided, okay, here's the deal. I will apply for the scholarship. If I get it, I'll go back to school. And if I don't, then I am not meant to go back to school, and I never have to think about it again. And you know what? I think it was the socks, but I got the scholarship. Women in Scholarship. So the first year I just took like 1 credit a semester, and I realized I'm going to graduate from college right about the same time that I retire from Orem. What happens though is that you start doing these kinds of things and then you realize, hey, maybe I want to do this a little faster, or maybe I don't want to be in school forever, or maybe, just maybe, I am capable of more than I thought I was capable of. This is what I looked like in 2020. I was morbidly obese and I was worried about the fact that I didn't know if I was going to live to see my kids grow. This is the worst picture I have of myself. So there's my vulnerability because I'm showing it to all of you on the big screen. Okay? But a year after I started with the scholarship and I was going to school and I was starting to feel like I can do something, I realized, you know what? I can change myself physically. I can change my habits. I can do all that kind of stuff as well. A lot of people have asked me if I had gastric bypass. I did not, although I tried and I I wouldn't have been ashamed to tell you that. But I went to a doctor and I hired a nutritionist and I did all those kind of things. I still have a long way to go, but as you can see, when I celebrated my 15-year mark this summer, I was also down over 100 pounds. That's like an entire Ashley. Thank you. And I still have some of that cake that they gave me. Mel too, right there. My entire life I have stared out the window at Mount Timpanogos. That's the view from the police department. As you can see, the parking lot over there. I never thought there would come a day when I could climb that mountain. But after I started losing weight, and after I started getting closer to my scholarship, and after I started improving my relationships— went to a therapist to learn how to be a better mother and better, better spouse— I decided I could climb Mount Timpanogos too. So not this past summer, but in 2022, I climbed to the top of Mount Timpanogos.

Thank you.

Okay, yeah, give it up! I know a lot of you have done that too, but these are some major challenges that I really and truly— I really do credit Orem City for. I know people think, oh, I hate the job, I have to turn in a blue slip to Shirley, or I have to call Thane and Fleet and I'm gonna die about the cars, or whatever it might be. But the truth is, we are really lucky and really blessed. And again, this is not a paid advertisement. I have this excitement about the city. I love the city I work for because the city really is just people that care about other people, whether it's the residents, whether it's each other. So when you have a grumpy chief like maybe we do sometimes, and you feel like, hey, nobody likes me, I want you to remember some of these and think, no, we are what makes Orem Orem. Got my graduation— I mean, I got my degree. I graduated just in August. One more clap.

1995.

1995, I started that and I finally finished it in 2023. It is thanks to Orem in large part, but it's also you guys believed in me, but I learned how to believe in myself too. So if you are one of those people who wants to go back to school or lose weight or do anything inspirational, even if you don't want to be an inspiration, just know you can do it. And if you don't believe in yourself, come and talk to me. I might consider sharing a Bible book with I will certainly believe in you and be willing to help you help yourself, okay? We can do it, and we can do it together. Thank you.

So I just want to close by saying the decisions that are made this weekend—

Can we get another round of applause for all of our presenters today?

They did a fabulous job.

I just want to say that the decisions that will be made by you all in the direction that you give these city employees really do make a difference to the employees' lives and the citizens'. And so we're really excited for the excitement for this weekend. We as staff— I'll speak for us— we've been really looking forward to this opportunity to get together with you so that you can give us the direction that will take the city for 2020.

Thank you.

So thank you, Mayor.

Thank you, Carrie, for that. I think that presentation by Tara really shows the heart of Orem employees, and she's been here for a long time, but just to see how excited she is, how working for Orem has changed her life, and, you know, it's awesome for our employees. Next up, we've got Review of all 2023 accomplishments with Families in the USA as a benchmark by Brent Bybee and Pete Wolfley.

Thanks, Mayor.

So Pete and I are kind of teaming up on, on this one. Um, yeah, I love that presentation with Tara. I mean, I think going along with the theme that, uh, Carrie was sharing She considers leadership, people she works with, her heroes. And I think it's super great to look back every year on the major things that we accomplished. And then, I mean, even last, you know, different exec staff members, when you get to your department, shared the top accomplishments as we come up to them. But I find It's very motivating for me when you look back on what you've achieved, and it helps give that sense of gratitude, of feeling complimentary and feeling optimistic about moving forward. As the exec staff this year in the summer, we got together and came up with kind of a a full list of, a detailed list of accomplishments and some ideas for kind of departmental goals moving forward. This handout has a full detailed list of those accomplishments and goals and some additional detail compared to the presentation here. But so yeah, We'll leave that with you. And if you have, as we go along, if you have questions or highlights or whatever on any of these, please feel free to bring them up. But the idea is that, you know, to start off with this kind of discussion, this kind of presentation, because it sets that good framework, that good foundation for hopefully all being on the same page and then defining a a path forward, a vision for moving forward all together, to make sure that we're— we as staff are aligning with you as council, and we're as an organization aligning with what this is— the residents of Oregon want, and making sure that we are promoting Phoenix City USA. This year we tried to Take in then, I guess, 4 different perspectives on what we've accomplished, what we've achieved. So we have done it from the perspective of what we feel is— what we've heard has been important to you as mayor and council. And then, like I said, we have stuff from us as exec staff. And then Pete will focus on some of the awards. So he calls it the outsiders, but basically other organizations, other entities, what they've said about us, which is, you know, pretty fun. And then of course how the residents have graded us, primarily through the level of interaction on social media. So, So this is a reminder, and again, it's in your packet as well, that these are the areas of focus that were identified this time last year. That we wanted to emphasize Family City USA, make that kind of the benchmark, the foundation, the reminder we kept in mind on everything we do. And then although there are always tweaks on the areas of focus, pretty much always covered these general areas. So safe and livable neighborhoods, dependable infrastructure, community-focused and effective government, thriving business environment, and talented workforce. So something that's been neat is, is both working on qualitative things and quantitative things. So there's, there's a nod to, you know, working together to achieve grants or to find savings, operational savings, but also promoting and proliferating the Family City USA brand, finding a peaceful, legal, ethical way to be able to display the national motto We continue to improve our transparency portal online. We've been starting an operational evaluation and making a series of structural changes. This year, unanimously passed with no new taxes.

And then we're in the middle of big construction projects like with City Hall and with You've kindly given this to the mayor and city council, but the vast majority of those we would not have done without significant support from staff. So thank you for giving us the credit, but we share that with so many of you in this room. So thank to the staff who, who doesn't have their name up there but are a significant part of what's happening.

Appreciate it. Perfect emphasis. Yeah, I don't mean this to say that you as a council were the only ones that did it, but just the thought was this is maybe a little bit from your perspective of what we heard was important to you. And you'll end up seeing a lot of crossover repeats as we kind of go along.

I think what this shows more is, you know, we do have a lot of crossover repeat, and absolutely the city staff is the one who's implemented a lot of this, but a lot of this direction came directly from the city council.

I mean, the direction, the direction, the But the implementation happens because we have Zach who helps us.

Exactly.

But the ideas are what—

Yeah, he shares us.

We share.

Beautiful. And these are things that, I mean, really you're already familiar with, so I won't spend too much time on it. So these are things that we've tried to emphasize in our communications effort to make sure that the residents are aware of the different things we're working on.

So, you go back to the bottom right. I thought the Christmas lights this year were above and beyond. I think we need to increase that for next year. But I mean, a lot of comments, people are sitting there parking in the parking lot, looking at the lights and thinking, really? But it's amazing. And it was great, great job.

Brian and I talked about maybe an ice skating rink based under those trees.

which would be pretty cool.

I don't know how pricey it is.

I actually— we can talk about that too, but I just gave him a name of some person I came across that was significantly less than what we looked at before. So I think that's absolutely—

We're already on it.

We just signed that up to Carson Hardy to work on.

We'll show some concepts and some research even in the major project. Recommendations.

And I guess the choo-choo train or whatever goes along with the Christmas display. That was a hit big time.

Yeah, absolutely.

So it was—

we decided— well, Pete and I decided though, as we were putting this presentation together, that one main goal of this presentation was to make sure that Bryce didn't get too big of a head. So let's move on from the Christmas display.

I will actually I will totally admit that I was against the Orient Express choo-choo train. I will gladly eat crow.

I can't believe how true it was.

So what do I know?

I did not even know that. See, you didn't even have to say that.

I wanted to see how it played out first.

I want to say, when we first started talking about this, I thought we were insane.

To be honest.

Truly insane. Not just the train, but the whole theme. To start when we started, right? Not so much that the thing itself, it's just it started in November, basically October. You know, you're going to put this together, that big of a thing together in a month, basically 2 months. So, so Bryce, I'm with you on at least thinking that way.

And that is a perfect example of C-Staff in action.

Yes.

Because that was a monumental project. And so there was a vision to make it happen, but then we had a couple months to make it happen, and they broke their necks and worked overtime, did all kinds of things. They made it happen. Exactly.

We did miss the white star on the Freedom Tree, but we found it.

Initially. Yeah, it fell through the cracks, and then we found it.

Well, and even the creativity with the snow globe. You know, you go take a picture here, and it looks like you're in a den. That was awesome. And I can't remember who it was that came up to us. It was, who did it?

It was Byron, wasn't it?

Rich Wilson on our staff that works for Byron.

Okay.

And he was so proud of it. And he's like, go take your picture. I promise it'll look cool. And it did. It was awesome.

When talking to people who came from other cities to ride the Worm Express, and they waited in line for an hour to do it.

I mean, people were very focused on the And, um, in the interest of full disclosure, what I also love about it is that it shows that from us as staff, we don't always have all of the best ideas. We don't even necessarily have all of the best recommendations. We do want to try and, you know, help make sure that you're aware of things and have all the information you can.

Thank you.

get, but we want to do what you direct us to do. And I think, Renee, we were able to then implement that Worm Express, and you didn't even know that we had our concerns and doubts.

I didn't know.

There was naysayers.

You're on a list. Yeah, I know.

You can send me my high praises though.

All right, all right.

And Santa does still come to your house?

Yeah, for my kids.

Thank you.

So I wanted to make this a little bit interactive, and we have some, some fun questions that everyone on the council will get a chance to respond to.

Okay, who do you want to take the first question?

Why don't we start with Jen?

Okay, let's see Okay, so favorite ribbon cutting or grand opening? And since, you know, you didn't do one on the council before, you can just tell us maybe one of your favorite new ones.

Well, I can tell you what I'm excited about.

Oh, there you go.

I'm excited about Cheesecake Factory. Yeah, way to go.

Yet to be done.

Yeah, yet to be done.

Okay.

That's awesome.

They've been working on that for a long time.

Do we need to do 2?

We'll do 2 going forward now.

Okay.

All right, so here I'll ask for tech staff's help to speak to these.

All right, first up, City Manager.

First up, I already spoke a little bit to National motto and the new seal. I'll just briefly say a huge highlight of mine was having Jenny Taylor come and talk to us about our Gold Star family. And one thing that she's talked to me about and that her husband Brent would always talk to me about in just sort of everyday ways was pursuing, you know, your core values in your life, which included God, family, country. And so that, that's had kind of a fun personal connection that I really enjoyed being a small part of. And then I think it's been fun to proliferate, like I said, in terms of Family City USA branding and adding the new entrance signs around the city and being a part of that And then being a part of what we've been talking about in terms of bringing everyone together, collaborating on Team Orem, and everyone sort of the good to great, getting everyone on the bus and in the right position, in the right spot. But for us, it's getting everyone on the Orem Express train. With no sound effects, Pete.

And everyone believing.

And moving all in, out of, for connection.

All right.

All right, anybody hitting yours?

Yeah, so I cheated and actually put 4 things up. I have 5 divisions in our department. I've got to give as many as I can credit for what they've done, but planning rolled out the public facilities and In record time, with assistance from our legal staff, and got that approved and through the process.

Just put that in perspective, what was the timeframe on that?

Oh, God.

Remember? Probably it was a matter of weeks.

Yeah, a month maybe?

Yeah, at the most. And normally something like that would take? 6 months.

Right.

Number 2 was the traffic signal installation. The installation of 4th South, 4th West after the young lady was— and crossing guard were hit. This was a joint effort between engineering and public works staff.

And that was accelerated as well. I don't mean to interrupt, but just to add on too, that was a great example of proactively making something happen. That's another thing that was like maybe 3 or 4 years out, and you guys saw the need, you saw what it took, and you guys worked your tails off to make it happen.

Yeah, the staff was awesome.

And, um, now it's a 3-way intersection for the next year.

Yeah.

Before South Close. So that's going to be turned into a war zone down there. Well, I think, you know, uh, number 3, this is the other things that not a lot of people see, but our facilities team did a great job on the court remodel. They had to remove all of the furniture for staff out, do new carpet, New paint, coordinate all of that. And that's a lot of stuff that nobody really sees at times. That's what our facilities staff does.

Do we own that building now?

We do not, but we lease it.

They wanted a higher price than we were willing to pay, was the last I remember.

Okay.

But we, but we still remodeled.

We remodeled it. On our nickel?

Our nickel, yeah.

And Byron did a great job keeping it within budget and Coordinating. And we need— it's hard to close the course down for very long. So it was a great process. And then the deluge recovery. This was the flooding of the fitness center. Byron and his team working with Jason Adamson as well with insurance, getting the recovery done. There's a couple things left to do, but the majority of it's been redone. The floors in the gym are refinished. The stairs going up were finished last About last week, right before the holiday break, and the deluge—it's a long story—but the the devices that caused the flood through human error have been removed now, thanks to Chief Sanderson and his team working with us on fire code. And then last of all, the Orum Temple State Center project. This was a joint effort across the entire department and also public works. team with just plan review coordination, building inspections, engineering coordination, site design, plan review, and then also helping the church with the open house. And they leased— ended up leasing Riverside Park for overflow parking. And just a lot of behind-the-scenes stuff. Chief Adams' team as well with traffic coordination and A temporary signal, put it down there. So, those were kind of the big highlights.

That was a lot of coordination, getting that many people through, through that whole process. And from what I saw, it just went seamlessly. It just— the coordination between the city and the church and residents, it just was amazing to see how well that went.

They've been very accommodating to our staff as well, and responsiveness in helping making it smooth.

Thank you. No, and I just keep making a point that just from what I've seen in the past from a lot of different government agencies, I mean, normally you go into the abyss and you ask for something to be done in like 6 months, 12 months, 18 months, and then add COVID in and now it's all double that. No, Orange City is not that. Pharmacy's on it, they make things happen. They're extremely well managed.

So it helps when your employees hate bureaucracy.

That's good. That's how you make things happen.

Brandon? So as accountants are, mine will be pretty boring. Number 1 and number 3 would be on this list probably every single year. Number one, our annual financial report, which we just presented in December. We obviously do that as part of the state law requirement, but we take our financial report a bit further than what's required. We have a— GFOA is the Government Finance Officers Association, a national organization in the United States and Canada. And they have some parameters with which things that you need to include within a financial report that qualify you to then submit your report for them to review and obtain an award for that, for excellence in financial reporting. My predecessor, Jeff Peterson, started that program some 35 years ago and when I came on board. Obviously continued to see the plus side of that. Whenever we go to bond ratings, that is one of the first things that they comment on is that they see that we have that award. And so it's one of those things that's almost become now like, oh, I'm scared to be the one. Who's the one that's gonna end that streak, right? It's kind of that kind of thing.

Pressure.

Yeah.

But it does provide a lot of information in that financial report that I think is very helpful. Not only for me from a reference standpoint, but hopefully to the entities who look at our financial report for whatever reasons they may be looking at it. Obviously, number 2, the funding of the city center with no debt. We've worked tirelessly over the last few years. I didn't say last few, probably the last 7 to 8 years, thinking down the road, this is something we need to do. How are we going to do it knowing how citizens generally feel about debt, especially debt related to a city center? That a lot of the times citizens don't Think of a city center as a necessary thing, and so when it's not, when there's going to be no debt associated with that, it makes that a little easier to be able to get accomplished. And so with that target in mind, as we went through each year, especially as sales taxes over that time period continued to be very good, and we kind of had that. target on it. We never kind of came out and said that that's what we were kind of targeting, but it was always there. And then luckily, when we had the opportunity to bring that forward as a suggestion, the mayor and council at the time said, you know what, I think it's time we do something about it. Especially because we had some building issues. It was, you know, if we were going to remodel versus Build new. And we did an evaluation of that and obviously we determined, you know, it was going to cost almost as much to remodel the buildings as it was to build a new one. And so, so that was awesome to be part of that over the years and to have that come to fruition. And as I mentioned, passing our budget every year is a lot. It's a long process every year and my team and our committees that are involved in that. It's always quite a thing to sit down and talk with everybody and then, you know, take all this information and put it all into this— boil it down to this one document that we operate on every year. And so every time we get that done, it's like, whew, all right, we get a couple days off. Anyway, so those are the things that we had this year.

Thanks, Brennan.

If I may say too, the finances and debt, City Center, those sort of things, budget, those are things that can often quickly become heated or emotionally charged or even divisive. And what I've loved is that Brennan and our finance team have helped us be able to— I mean, this is One of our clear team of things where there's far more that unites us than divides us, because these have been all unanimously supported things by the entire council.

And I will say, as far as the city center, from a mayor-city council standpoint, that was really kind of a no-brainer because one of our core values is we want our city employees to be the best they can be, and for that to happen, we have to provide them invest resources to make that happen. And that city center just fit in there automatically. So that's why after, you know, 10 years of talking about it, it became a real reality.

And it is much appreciated.

Well, and I think that to credit the mayor and the people who— Tom, you know, everybody who's been involved in the city issues— there was some lobbying. I did it with groups that I knew that would complain about it and why are you doing this or whatever. And when you You sit down and you actually educate and inform and say, well, do you want your emergency response to be in a building that will collapse on top of them during an earthquake?

You know, no.

We want them to be in the best position to help the public in a fire emergency.

Do you want—

I mean, you just go through and educate and inform and you get the support from the community.

Are you close to the clock?

Yeah, thanks, Mark.

Yeah, our number one thing we were able to accomplish this year was the administrative restructuring, um, with all of our positions. With Chief Earl retiring as a deputy fire chief, it gives us the opportunity to review the job description and the actual responsibilities that he had and Then taking into account Citygate study that was done just as I started, this was the this is the last component of us to check all the boxes of their recommendations that came out of that study. The city paid a couple hundred thousand dollars for us to to review the fire and police side of things. But this we we took one position and we were able to bust it into three division chief positions. Positions, which has allowed us over the course of this last year to start doing things administratively that we just weren't able to do. We didn't have the people to do it. We're just putting out fires every day with 3 of us in the office. Now with 6, it's made a huge difference. And they've been split up into an administrative role and then an operations role, which would be your fire and EMS divisions. So that's been very successful. This— the fire engine, why it's on here is because if you look at all of our different fire apparatus, it's exactly that. They're all different. And depending on Chief Earl puts it together or who the administrator at the time is that builds the fire engine, there's significant costs that come along with simple changes because working with Pierce, they take every piece of metal and bend that into this fire truck. They start from scratch. So what we did is we reduced the overall price of fire engines, even though they're currently escalating. We were able to reduce it and create an Orem spec that basically is just a workhorse fire engine that doesn't have a lot of bells and whistles, even though it looks really nice. A lot of our guys don't like previous engines that were built because If it's brand new, if it was the new shiny thing, then for some reason past administration felt like we needed every shiny new thing. And those are the things that we continue to take to the shops and have issues with, because when you buy the first one out of the market, there's always something wrong with it. So we've developed a spec. It saves us a couple hundred thousand dollars on the engine, and it's just the spec that will be—

Standard.

what we use for every fire engine from now on. So that's why I feel like this is one of our accomplishments. And then this Vineyard contract, and this is— I'm glad that we did this. They just lost their city manager. I've had 3 city managers now in Vineyard since I started in the last 3 years. I've had really good relationships with all 3 of them, and it was just nice to get this contract underway, signed, supported. They feel a part of our fire department, and we're gonna— we're actively looking at building their fire station now and then producing a staffing model that they can escalate into to support the services out there.

Of all the city managers that Mark has worked with, I'm his favorite.

Are they paying for that facility?

Yeah, they're paying for it. It's going to be just like Linden. Linden bought the building.

They'll buy it and we'll just manage it. Forgive me, I mean no offense.

We'll just— With the apparatus and staffing.

Okay, thank you.

Right now we include in our contract essentially the cost of what a station would be. You know, we look at full light, right, and divide that all up into a yearly charge. Once they build the actual— build the fire station there, we'll take that portion out of it.

Okay.

The charge.

And then they'll just pay for operations, manpower, and trucks, etc.

Yeah.

Okay.

Thank you.

One thing that Mark always says too that I love is that firefighters hate 2 things: the way things are and change.

That's the only thing you need to know about firemen. They hate the way it is and they hate change.

So what I love about these accomplishments is that it shows that, um, yeah, I mean, they do want to keep improving and increasing the standard of service, and, and they are accomplishing it. They are doing it.

And, and did you say Chief Earl?

Yeah, Jason.

Is that a new title for our legal counsel? Steve, I'm good with that.

And for shock value, can you tell us how much a new fire engine costs?

Yeah, so the tiller that we just bought, we paid with it equipped, was $1.5 million. We just specced it out, prices have gone up 40%, they're over $2 million now.

That was amazing to see that on that large fire we just had, to see the firemen in that basket Drenching that fire. I mean, that was— I mean, I was touched. I really felt for their safety. But I mean, just what happened there, that was—

Yeah, big fire.

Yeah.

It's amazing that we can do it, even with the cost. Because when we need it, we need it.

Next one.

So we're to current Chief Earl.

Chief Counsel in the room.

So, uh, yeah, our biggest accomplishment this year, first, is right development settlement. This is a very recent occurrence.

That's signed? It's sealed?

It is signed. We're still waiting to get the fully executed version back from them, but I expect that'll be any day now. So that was a long time coming. We, you know, As you probably know, we've been talking about settlement and working on a settlement proposal for over a year before it came to final fruition, so that was very good to get that put to bed. Number 2 is a CARE tax renewal, obviously another big deal. That's something we do every 10 years. The state law only allows us to do a CARE tax enactment for a 10-year period maximum, so every 10 years we We have to go through the process of renewing that. And that involves a lot of different notices, notices to the county, making sure the county isn't doing their own caretakings, which would preclude us from doing ours. And, and we also got that one finalized at the end of the year as well. And so that'll go into effect April 1st, 2024, which is the day after the last CARES tax enactment back in 2013 expires. And then number 3, the resolution of the threatened fire litigation. This was back in, oh, I don't know, early to mid-year, and this concerned the library and concerns about the library's display policies. We had a pretty significant threat from a national organization called FIRE. It stands for Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, something like that.

Sometimes I forget the exact—

They don't like the way it is, and they don't like change either.

Yeah, yeah, exactly. And so that was, that was a pretty significant threat. They basically threatened to sue us if we didn't change the way we were doing some things. And Bryce was very instrumental instrumental in that as well, in coming up with a very well-articulated policy that outlined how we were going to do displays going forward, and who makes the decisions, and where they will go. Probably the best display anywhere, I would guess. And so that satisfied their concerns and basically took the legs out of their threat to sue us.

Thank you.

I will actually add one more, even though we're supposed to be limited to 3. I found out about 26 minutes ago that we just had a major win in our most significant lawsuit that's out there right now. That involves— Josh will be happy to hear this— the Reno Wind case. This is a case where a young BYU student—

This is a public meeting, you know that, right?

Yeah, yeah, this is all public information.

Shed light.

Young girl, BYU student from California. Basically, she was in a very troubled relationship with an abusive individual. She had to call 911 on a couple of different occasions to report incidents of domestic abuse. She indicated she'd been abused, she'd been threatened. She stated that her boyfriend had threatened her With guns, things like that. At one point, ultimately, the police department got a text message from her friend where this young BYU student said that she was holding a gun to her head and said that she couldn't take it anymore, essentially. And so the police responded. They talked to the girl. She said, I never sent that message. I'm fine. You know, I don't need any help, et cetera, et cetera. And so the police basically said, okay, didn't take any further action. Well, about a half hour later, she was shot in the head. And it was unclear entirely— not entirely clear whether she shot herself or whether her boyfriend shot her, but there was not really enough evidence to charge the boyfriend. It looked like she had shot herself. And so ultimately, the parents ended up suing the city police department, claiming that we should have done a lot more to intervene, that we should have arrested the boyfriend even though we had no basis to do it at the time. We should have confiscated his weapons. We should have, you know, done other things essentially to prevent her tragic death. So ultimately, they did file a lawsuit. We filed a motion to dismiss. And so this is the ruling that I just found out in the last half hour that the court ruled in our favor on everything that we argued in that motion and dismissed the complaint against the police department. So that was— that's a really big deal because, like I said, that's probably the most significant case we had out there against us. And so that's great news.

If I can also add pretty much everything we do has a legal component to it. So for our legal department, that is, you know, a relatively lean department, for them to be so productive and in a quality way and to do, you know, these additional things that Steve has brought up, it really is impressive. And doing all of that while there was different People in different roles, you know, new people that we've hired on over the course of this last year as well. So it's been an incredibly productive year for me.

And unless you get the wrong impression that we did this all ourselves, we actually have outside legal counsel that we work with on cases where we have lawsuits for, you know, tort claims or large damage claims. And so we work with them to talk about strategy and arguments and things like that, but they do most of the heavy lifting. Yeah, but we have, we have really fantastic outside legal counsel defending us on this and other cases, and they just are continually producing outstanding results for us.

So.

I just want to say, to Steve's credit, I mean, everyone knows that you've gone through a quite difficult health challenge this last year, but just over the time that I've known you this entire time, The thing that I've been really impressed with is that you— I mean, there's always a bias in every decision that anyone makes, but I see Steve to be very even-keeled and not really bring a bias into it and to try and be fair and look at both sides regardless of if it benefits him or not. And so I just, I think Steve is a great person to be in charge of the legal department.

Well, I want to thank him personally because the fire threat, the that attacked me personally, unfounded accusations that were found to have been taken out of context by an organization in Utah to slander and malign me. And so I appreciate the, the, you know, deliberate nature in which you approached some of those accusations to help to clear my name when I was misquoted and mischaracterized. So, you know, nobody likes being called a bigot, and I appreciate your standing up for me in that particular instance where there was a lot of misinformation out there. So thank you for doing that.

Yeah, thank you.

Well deserved, Chief Earl.

Chief Earl, yeah.

All right, next one will be libraries.

All right, I think we've talked about number 1 a lot.

I thought number 1 would be leisure.

No, the library— I really felt like nothing this last year could get started until we addressed, you know, the elephant in the room. And so a lot of work up front Went into the display policy and into some of the internal mechanisms and forces at play in our library. And so, as most of y'all know, I started with the library in February, and so it was a really big challenge to have to start with some really unfun work right off the bat. I think it would have been really cool to, you know, in recreation, we— I got to jump into a brand new rec center when I started. It's like, oh, the energy was already in the building, everyone was so excited, and the library was the exact opposite problem. A lot of people were frustrated on every side of the issue, and so we had to sort of jump in and say, hey, what if we wrote a lot of bureaucratic policy together, you know, and it just didn't quite fill the space with a lot of fun. But I was really proud specifically of the division managers, Mike and Anthony, And it's now Mike and Linda, for jumping in and getting their teams to sort of understand what we were trying to accomplish and why this was the best, you know, possible path forward for our, for our staff and for our residents. And, and they, they really just jumped right in and were really integral to our success there. So we have a new— Had a new display policy as of this second week of April, and what's great is you probably haven't heard about it since. And that for us is the best, best news to come out of it, is the news of the library is again focusing on the incredible performers or authors or people coming through. It's on our summer reading program and some of those types of things. That's where we want the news to be, is those services and those opportunities for our residents. And, and that great work has been happening. You just That's what everyone is talking about again, so we feel really good about that. Number 2 was sort of the phase 2. Once we got, you know, once we were able to work with Steve and the legal team and get some of those items addressed and out of the way, we knew we wanted to implement a sort of a strategic plan. So that's what's been happening this late summer and fall. I've had a chance to meet with a lot of y'all on that, but really setting, sort of setting the stage for the next 3 years of what the library will be doing. We're sort of transforming from a, uh, our current operating model into an experience library. We're going to have an emphasis on community space, uh, and programs and experiences. Uh, we have a really talented and strong and smart staff, and so we know that we want to create relationships with our residents, uh, rather than have them sort of just wait for people to come in. And so we introduced that model for some— over several months, you know, through a strategic plan and a mission statement and values and culture process. We introduced that to all of our staff just in December, and we'll sort of finalize it here in the next couple of weeks with those rollouts. But it's been really well received by the staff. We've been able to adjust our staffing models so we don't have so So many hierarchical, you know, sort of the vertical nature, a little bit to like what Mark was saying. We have the right people in the right seats. So rather than putting out fires, I think we were just better staffed for how libraries are being used in 2024. So we're really excited about that. And then number 3 was the launch of our new ILS system. The library is run, we have 400,000 Pieces of unique pieces. We have 785,000 titles and different things that you can check out. Some of them are checked out hundreds of times a year. It's a lot of data and information to manage. And so we got a new system, Koha, that was implemented right actually before I started. And so I would say one year in, it is now finally like implemented. What's the system?

What's the system called?

Koha. And who did it replace?

Horizon.

Horizon.

New Horizon. Horizon.

It's a Dynex product.

Yes, Dynex.

Yeah.

And so Koha is a, is a brand new one. And again, this sets us up really well for the future of just how people check out. And so some of the things that we want to be doing where we'll have like a, we'll have a library locker over at the Hillcrest Park. And so you'll be able to check out books and check in books there that we can then, if you know, if you have a transportation barrier to getting over to the main branch, you know, and a couple of these sort of forward-looking things, getting Koha in place is going to make all that possible, so we're really excited about it.

I'll just add that some things you don't want to be the exemplar, but some things you do, and fortunately our library has an extremely productive This last year, and we are the example in these different major accomplishments.

And Bryce, we've had lots of conversations, but he's understated the enjoyability of the position he was put in back in Burbank. But he rose to the occasion, and I mean, he's taking something that You know, you talk about accounting, boring. Well, you know, library operation, you know, a lot of times it gets in a rut and it just stays there and it stays there for years and years and years and years. Well, Bryce's task was basically taking that library and bringing it into the future. And that's exactly what he's been doing. And he did that with the rec center. That's why he was chosen to do this for the library, because he proved with the rec center he had the capability to make this sort of thing happen. He's doing a phenomenal job with the library too. So we thank you for all your efforts and think you're doing a great job. Thank you, Mayor.

Can I add something to that too? I appreciate that, Mayor.

Those are great comments.

And the fact that, just to go along with that, the fact that your outreach to kind of that teenage, you know, that age group that a lot of times don't really want to be seen in the libraries, you tend to make some things that really make the library Thank you. It's a fabulous place to go and to be. And I was really impressed the other day with the training that Nathan and Holly did on the art collection in the library. I had no idea that, I mean, I know I see the things in Library Hall, but it was just fascinating to learn of a little bit of that history and, you know, local Orem artists. and, you know, to be able to have that QR code that you can click on and go learn more about each of those pieces. I've never— I don't know how I've missed that gigantic mural, but I can't wait to go to the library and go find that and take that in. I thought that was— I was just, I was blown away.

Thank you.

That element of our library and the height that that is, it's first-rate.

So thank you.

I know that's been a lot of work over a lot of years collecting all of that, but I just, I, something that I wasn't aware of. I'm just grateful to know that that's available to us as part of our library experience.

I'll pass that along to them, and I mean, that's exactly what what we're betting on. It's the Hollys and Nathans. It's the connection with the librarians that people really love and cherish, you know. And so we're going all in on that. So I love hearing that story because that's exactly what we want our residents to, to get and to feel when they come to a library.

I made note to get some hats that say, Making the Library Fun Again.

Unless anyone thinks that Bryce is just a rec guy. I mean, I've sat in meetings with him and heard him speak about authors and literature, and I'm thinking this man has it all. He's a Renaissance man. He's got it all.

Fake it till you make it.

No, you're pretty convincing.

We'll get an extra big hat for Bryce.

There you go.

Next one, please.

Okay, this one's my man puts It was hard to put it down into 3, but you cheated, so I'm going to cheat.

No, no, people want to hear it.

The first one was really driven by you as the council and the mayor. You really wanted to get the pulse of where employees were and how they were feeling about their, their happiness as employees and making sure that they felt that their voices were heard. So we did an employee survey. We're still in the process. What we did after that, we created what we call an I-team, an innovation team, where we had volunteers from all the departments come together and we went through the entire survey and they came up with some suggestions on things that we can do to improve the working environment. One of them that you guys will be directly involved in is on March 7th, what they really asked for was more communication with the executive leadership team and with our elected officials. So on March 7th, we're going to have an employee town hall. We'll put it on your calendars. It is optional for you to be there, but we'd love— not for you, not for my coworkers, you all have to be there— but for, for you council members, we'd love to have you there. It's in Library Hall from 9 to 11 that day. It will be where employees can send in questions before Okay. And then we'll answer any questions that they have live. But the employee survey results were really well received. Employees seem to be really happy. They're happy with their pay, with their benefits, and with the support that you and we as the executive team give to them. So we appreciate you letting us have the opportunity to do that survey. The next one is Something that will be an accomplishment for this year and for last year, we are doing an efficiency study where we're looking at every single department to make sure that any ways that we can be more efficient or ways that maybe we need some additional help. So we're going through each department. Starting on the 23rd council meeting, we'll be bringing in department A couple at a time so that you guys can see what the results are. So the 23rd will be police and fire, and then every council meeting and work sessions will be showing you some other departments as well. And then we have brought in over $21 million in grants in 2023. And the difference is, is that grant writing used to be very decentralized. Each department would go after grants that they were interested in, projects. And we brought that all in-house into the Management Services Department. And we have a full-time grant writer, Heather Cox, who has, with the management analyst, been able to bring in a lot more money for the city, which improves the lives of our residents. So really, really proud of that. And then the last one is that we rolled out the hybrid step program to more departments. So for you council members, what we have used to do in the past was just a merit-based system where you were evaluated by your supervisor and your department director, and then that determines your pay increases. And the ranges in those salaries were really wide, and you could work in your entire 30-year career and never get to the top of your range. And so we heard over and over again, especially in police and fire and public Public Works is that it was really confusing for employees to know what their career path was. So a few years ago, we started a hybrid step program where they automatically get a step every year on their anniversary date, but then after every 3 years, if they meet certain requirements and educational certifications, they can go into another range. And it was wildly successful with Police and Fire, so we expanded that to Public Works. There's several positions in development services, finance, in my department. The goal is after a few years that we will have all employees in that system except for division managers on up. We feel that division managers on up should be more of a merit-based program. So we've moved more positions into that and that's really helped us with our recruitment and also with retention. So we've seen a lot less turnover in this last few years.

Thanks, Carrie.

Thank you, Carrie. And your grants, I mean, that's understated. I mean, what does $21 million in grants for the city do? Well, it eliminates $21 million in taxes that taxpayers would be paying, right? It allows you to take your services and everything else to a higher level without increasing taxes. So that's huge. That's amazing you guys are doing that.

I was in a— at my mechanic, and the fire came in for an inspection. And one of the firefighters came up and gave me a big hug and just said, thank you so much for that raise. You just made a difference in my life. You just changed my life. And I— it just touched me, right? It just really touched me. That was—

thanks for what you do.

I think too that on the STEP program, I think it forms a destination in all departments. You know, I think it started in the police and fire, and we're not losing the experience. It's not going out the back door. We trained them. We lose $700,000 back in the day because it was— we trained them and they just walked, you know, they just left. And I think the culture's changed so much that it's a destination. We're getting lateral moves from the police police and the fire. It's amazing. PG and all over West Jordan. And it's great that we have that experience because our citizens deserve experience because they can save lives. And we have that experience. I think it's great. I think all departments in the city has benefited.

So we need to keep it going.

Thank you.

What I super appreciate about Carrie and our management services team is that they're dealing with a wide variety of subjects. And so Carrie says that, you know, she loves the fluffy stuff, but obviously we're dealing with a lot of financial, you know, hardcore data subjects as well. And I mean, Carrie already shared a wonderful example in Terra— Kalantia.

Formerly known as Kalantia.

I like collagens, so. But early on in the year, as Carrie and her team were helping us incorporate a bunch of changes and structural efficiencies and improvements, I got a really nice thank you card, and it was from an employee who has been a long-time, very productive, high-performing employee, but someone who is kind of known for sometimes being a little bit impatient, a little bit grumpy, a little bit glass half empty. And she wrote this handwritten note. I mean, she addressed it to me, but really she talks about the whole team. She said, I was driving into work today, I was thinking about how grateful I am to have a job I love, and part of that joy comes from the leadership that helps to make Forum a great place to work. Thank you so much for your efforts to get us to see the city and the council differently, and you truly are a good leadership team. And so I've been really appreciative of Carrie and her team, again, helping with the qualitative stuff and the quantitative stuff and seeing measurable differences between both of those areas.

I want to say one other thing, and I want that to be my B, not an A, is that we did hire Theresa as our city recorder, and I think everyone at the table would agree that that was a I'll give you anything for that.

I don't agree.

You took her from my department.

Can I, can I say something? Um, Public Works hired her originally, then she was poached over here by Brandon, and then by Karen.

But you notice where they all land. They all stay. They don't leave me.

Coach.

Bigger and better things.

Having been in many organizations, it's difficult to restructure an organization, and it's not luck, it's talent. Carrie's brought a lot to the city and a lot to the table, and this whole restructuring issue, it's a, you know, people want to know where they're going to land. They want to know there's security, security in their job, and I think she's done a fantastic job of communicating the structure change, implementing it, and making people feel very comfortable at the city. And I think, I mean, I know I saw in the public people were criticizing the survey. When I talk to people individually, it's the survey. So this was not a doctored survey. The survey reflects what this leadership in here does for the city.

Thank you.

And so I think you're a big part of that.

Carrie makes change fun.

That's what I like to do.

And I'm grateful that you're comfortable. You've called me a few times, talked to me, what do you think about this, what do you think, you know. I appreciate that there's that relationship, right, that you're comfortable enough to say, hey, can I float this idea to you, you know, and you're very Creative in your ideas. I just love it.

So how do you create—

how do you improve just by thinking outside the box and bringing new things to the table? And you do a good job of that.

Thank you.

Yeah, and I'll just add to that that I think Carrie's thought worked with you quite a bit. But I mean, prior to this, it was a lot more of a work, you know, a straight-up vertical management style, and everything was very top-down, you know, and then very controlled. And what we've tried to do is we've tried to change that to make it not top-down, but make it— I mean, Brett's definitely in charge. We try to make it wide. And by making it wide, I think that's where you excel, and a lot of people excel, and a lot of employees underneath that excel. So I think it's been a great thing for the city.

The best ideas rise to the top.

More collaborative, for sure.

Josh.

It's hot.

It is hot.

You want me to grab the straw?

We just—

it's cooling right now.

Give it a minute.

I think we should open the back door, but whatever.

No, it's dangerous. Outdoor.

You have to come back in, though, Pete.

We can get a chair.

Yeah, you can feel that pretty quickly already.

It's a refreshing—

So it's not ironic that the breath of fresh air is the healthiest part of the day?

Oh my gosh, that's funny.

Okay, now you stick a little heat in me and turn the temperature up, I can't hardly stay focused.

Okay.

3 of the ones we wanted to list—

well, let me preempt that.

Our most, uh, our most celebrated accomplishment of many years is what you're not involved in, what we don't accomplish during the course of the year. And so we had a very successful year as far as being able to reduce a lot of things that we won't go into, and it's, uh, some of it's a little bit subjective as well. One of the major One of the major accomplishments we had is we— there's been an issue in Orem for years and years and years with our E911 system, our dispatching system, where we were staffed with some incredible people in a poorly functioning facility, hard hours, things like that. It was not the dispatch center of the future. It wasn't even the dispatch center of the present. And And we made the— what in some senses is still a wildly unpopular decision to merge with Provo as they build out their new city hall and incorporate our physical dispatch center down there. Again, it was— and I think pretty much everybody can speak to this— wildly unpopular with our own staff, the ones we still have. But I very much appreciate that we were able to We were able to present this initiative to the mayor and city council members who were able to listen to it and look at it from a pragmatic standpoint versus a popularity type of an issue, and we were able to move this forward. I am very satisfied to be able to report that the levels of service have not diminished in any way, and a lot of us, particularly on the fire side, have actually been able to be enhanced.

Thank you.

So we're very, very happy with how that has functioned so far, and we have equal governance involved.

We didn't kick the can down the road.

It's still very much ours as well.

And Chief, just 6 months later, or however many months later, you're still very happy with the marriage? Yeah.

Okay, thank you. The stakeholders are very happy. We still have some people that we can't, you know, again, change and lack of change are the problems in life. So, yeah, it wasn't smooth in that there wasn't some issues, but we successfully navigated those. A lot of work with Carrie's office as well to make that stuff go through well.

Community outreach.

Which is something we've really increased over the last couple of years. We have several branches within our department that focus on mental health, on disabled people, our schools. We have a number of Title I schools. We actually have one of the only Title I high schools in the district.

Hmm.

initiative with Alpine School District. We're working very closely with the feeder schools, so the Title I schools, elementaries and all secondary schools, working to achieve higher retention and grades and so forth with these kids. It's very exciting to be part of that, and we've dedicated a lot of assets to that during school hours and after school hours. And You know, one of the things that we found is in policing, our interaction with children is very limited unless we make it happen ourselves. The easiest basic thing that we— and we actually love to do it now, now that it's kind of caught on— is we'll go read to these schools with, you know, 3rd graders and so forth. And, you know, as much as sometimes, you know, you have a big tough cop somewhere that's like, that's not part of my job. And then he goes and does it, and you're reminded, well, you got paid the same to stand out on the street.

And then you were a hero to 30 kids for half an hour.

It's been a little bit of a heart softener for some people, where that's actually something that's quite popular now and catching on more and more all the time. We work very closely with our NIT people and so forth do with those things. Our National Night Out, our autism picnic that we created, everything's just been— we've got some party planners on our hands. And, you know, the nice thing in my position is they're like, this is what we're going to do, and then my job is to basically shut up, pay, and get out of the way.

I'm probably a good dad.

I like that. been very good to have those people there. Also, one of the challenges that we have in our police department is we're fairly youthful. We've got a lot of young people, and retention and development in a high-risk, high-liability profession is something we're constantly trying to stay ahead of the curve on. One thing that we've been able to develop in our training and career development— so the state mandates we have 40 hours of week— or 40 hours a year, excuse me, of in-service training. And we mandate 120 hours to our police officers. So they're getting 3 times what they're required to have. And it's very much enrichment stuff to try and make up for the lack of the wisdom of experience, so to speak, so that they become better decision-makers and stuff like that. And being— some of those things we've been able to implement with a lot of success is Find your funding. We also have a dedicated defensive tactics area. Bryce loaned us a big chunk of the rec center that people probably don't even know exists. Moved a couple of racks of toilet paper out of the way and so forth.

We got a great little spot where we were able to construct—

we've got a very professional defensive tactics area. We have weekly training now. So where we have some of our, you know, we have some diversity in our size and capabilities and stuff like that for our—

Is that the unfinished part up on the second floor?

Yeah, it's it.

Oh, cool.

Good use of it.

It's our black ops site. Anyway, we're having that constantly, and that's been great. We've been able to update a lot of our equipment. And CreateSync brand is available to help us create syncing funds and stuff, so we have basically perpetual funds to be able to draw from to make those updates in equipment and so forth. It gets ever more expensive every year. It's incredible how much the infusion of technology into our job has become expensive. And also, I think I'm supposed to—

Thank you.

Just throw— well, anyway, presentation upgrades, I think we're going to talk about that a little later.

Okay.

So, I'll kind of fast-forward that. But, no, what we have been able to do is we've been able to upgrade our training room facilities and so forth. So, ourselves, fire department, and frankly anybody else that needs, we have the capability to web remote a lot of our training and stuff like that too. So, instead of saying, hey, all of you come in here and sit in a classroom setting, you know, our mothers and dad that might be babysitting on his days off and stuff, they can actually attend their training from home and stay home and have that time that way, which has been— our people have really appreciated that. You know, to get the training, it's been very well embraced culturally.

You know, we—

I think that's—

I think that's a great thing. directly impacted just as much as the compensation thing. The ability for people to feel like, hey, I'm a professional, I'm going to be treated like a professional, I'm going to be expected to perform as a professional, has had a significant impact. So we do definitely appreciate the support we've had that way.

It truly is unique to have a police department with a culture of putting training as such a high priority and also putting community outreach and being with the public as such a high priority and working with other jurisdictions successfully. I think historically, traditionally, these departments can maybe be a little bit more militaristic in nature. And while there is absolutely a place for that, of course, in law enforcement, I've been super impressed with our community outreach efforts. Department's ability to accomplish these very things as part of our department culture. It is unique. It does set us apart. Chris?

Well, the fresh air is gone, but okay, I'm good.

And Chris, we're out of time.

I know.

So what would you like— you would like to come back to this later, Brad, or— Okay, I'm Chris Shirkey, Public Works Director. I have not met with Jen or with Chris yet and look forward to meeting with you as soon as we have a couple hours to give you some tours of some significant projects that we have underway. We have 3 areas that we would like to share with you and focus on. at this moment. One of our biggest projects we have going on right now, it's not the biggest, but it is a $20 million project. It is our water reuse project at our water reclamation facility. What this project is and allows us to do is it'll allow us to treat our water to a 3rd degree or a tertiary level to be able to land apply that at Lakeside Sports Park, at Springwater Park, at the treatment plant at Sleepy Ridge Golf Course. And so what that will allow us also to do then is not use drinking water quality level water and applying that and throwing that on the ground, but we would use this water which comes out of the effluent of our sewer treatment plant, and then we can process that to another degree or level, not for drinking but to— allowable for recreational purposes at those areas. This last year there was a bill that came into play with the legislature about 10 months ago that suggested that if you don't have your application in and approved by October for a water reuse project, then you can't do it heretofore moving forward. And in an attempt to help save the Great Salt Lake, that was part of the reasoning for that. We had our application in back in 2002 and it had been approved for many years. So we could actually reuse about 6,700 acre-feet of water. You might ask, what does that mean? 1 acre-foot of water is about 9 to 10 inches of water across a football field. That's 1 acre-foot of water. That's about how much water every one of us needs at our properties for drinking and for irrigation. creating in our yards. We're trying to drive that number down to less than 1 acre-foot, which it is, but that gives you an idea. So it helps translate, you know, tens of thousands of additional people that could be able to access the drinking water that we have. So we're not wasting that drinking water, but we're using this water instead. There's also what we found to be a market for that. And we might be in partnership with Central Utah Water Conservancy District to expand this facility above and beyond what we're at. We're allowed to use federal water, which we do have access to through Central Utah Water Conservancy District. This particular project was estimated to be $9 million 2 years ago. When the bids came in, they came in at $18 million. So you've heard of inflationary forces. Well, we're not looking at 5, 10, 15, 20%. We're looking at 100% inflationary forces in the construction industry to a large extent in many of these construction projects. We're not alone. Everyone that's expanding their water reclamation facilities or larger projects, for example, the Central Utah Water Conservancy District, they're experiencing the same kind kind of pressures as well. Fortunately, we were able to, to tap into $13 million of grant and federal earmarked dollars for this project. We could thank COVID in part for that, for the inflation, but also for creating the money tree that we were able to tap into. I know I'm being a little bit snarky on that, but it's, it's the reality of what the game that we had to play to make this work. And, uh, thank— we're thankful to Carrie and her staff that assisted us. And also the mayor that helped us, Mayor Young, with his relations with Utah County, because we got $7 million from the county for this project for water quality. So that is a huge project that's underway. We look forward to taking you on a tour of that. Another project that we have that's very significant and a part of our results of our 2016 Water Master Plan is our Heritage Park 10 million gallon water tank. This is a snapshot of that under that of that project that's underway. This is a little bit older picture because right now about half of the the tank itself has a roof over the top. It's not completed yet in terms of that roof structure, but it's been amazing to watch this process underway. We've had to export about seventy. Cubic yards of material to be able to dig the hole that is about 30 feet deep and about 320 feet in diameter. We look forward to taking you out there. The picture is amazing to look at, but really it's awe-inspiring when you go out there and you're standing underneath that and looking at these columns that are this big around, 24 inches, and you have, you know, 188 of those columns throughout the tank supporting that infrastructure. This will help us well into the future for our water supply and demand and being able to make water available for the central part and the west side of our community. We were deficient about 10 million gallons of water under the state rules and regulations. With this, we'll be able to come up above and beyond that requirement, and we'll be able to provide better flows and better pressure for this area. This, in conjunction with the Water Reuse Project, is a great boon for our community well into the future for generations to come. So we've appreciated your support on that. We did have to do a $30 million bond for this and other similar related projects. And that is— it's a challenge, but these are projects— and the magnitude of these types of projects are what we deal with in our Public Works Department.

What's the timeframe on this one?

Timeframe on this, we started over a year ago, about January, December, I think it was January this time last year, where we started excavating. This will be completed in 2025.

Nice.

Yeah. And there's a lot of disruption with utilities in that area. Ryan mentioned that we're going to essentially shut down 4 South between 4th and— might be shut down. We're shutting it down now. between 4th West and 6th West, we're blowing up the whole area, just so you know. And we've had an amazing collaborative effort with our Sid Jackson Associates, our PR firm, that's been out there. We're meeting with the school, the school district, with the neighborhood, local leaders in the area. They understand the magnitude and the need for this project to occur. And we're going to give them some car wash tickets maybe or something like that. We talked about giving them a fitness center pass or something to help. Significant project. Altogether Playground refresh this last year. So in our department, we have 7 divisions. Our Parks Division is one of our 7 divisions. in our department. They construct, and we team together with Bryce and his recreation team and vision to refresh facilities, to put in new playgrounds. In the last 5 years, we've done more positive good and spending positive dollars through CARE tax and the support of the mayor and city council and our exec team towards a lot of really good recreational type projects. and park facilities. The Altogether Playground is how old now? Is it like 6 years old? I'm not sure. Was it a 5-year?

Yeah, 2016.

2016. So that's 7 years old. Believe it or not, we just did a refresh on it. We put in all new material on the ground, on the floor of that facility. The material that was underneath, it could get worn out, it could pop out, and it could degrade and so forth. Those are the kinds the challenges we live with. We operate and maintain things like pipes and tanks and playgrounds, and then when they need to be repaired, we repair them. When they need to be replaced, if funding is available, we replace them in a prioritized approach and not too soon, but in an appropriate timeframe based on feedback from the community and based on safety of the infrastructure that we maintain. So if you haven't been there recently or seen I don't know if you've seen that, it's really nice. It is an artificial turf material, same kind of material you'll see at Lakeside Sports Park at the new soccer fields that we're putting in now, as well as the 5 softball fields that we have over there too. I think it turned out nice.

Yeah, it's always super impressive, and it's been impressive to me since day one here at Irvine, is that the Public Works Department, our public leadership just have a really high level of sophistication, even though much of what they have to do is maybe manual labor or has a manual labor component to it, for them to also be able to implement and engage and be a part of multimillion-dollar detailed complicated projects as well. It really is impressive to see the scope of the company and the ability I would like—

Brent, I would like to add, so Tom and Dave were on our council back when we adopted these master plans. We hadn't had a master plan adopted in the 16 years until that point, but since that time, they identified significant projects where we had deficiencies. So we've appreciated having a collaborative effort with the council, working together with our Public Works Advisory Commission and others in the community community to identify the needs that we have, not just for us today, but well into the future for generations to come.

Could you refresh our memory?

You've always had a strong advisory committee. I may not know all the players.

Could you refresh our memory?

On who's on that commission today? Okay, so Robert Moore, who is a former Utah County attorney, is on there. He's now the legal counsel for Central Utah Water Conservancy District. Casey Shaw was on that. for 7 years. I finally let him go because he was called on a mission, and so he's gone. Mike Wimpey is his replacement representative. He took Casey Shaw's place on that commission, or yeah, on the commission.

Jim's still on it?

Jim Michaelis is on it. He's the chairman of that. He was the Utah Valley University facilities manager, I believe, for many years. He was— he came and left and now he's back again and we tapped him again to help us out. He has a great— he's a great resource, great background.

Yeah.

We have others that have been involved with technology such as computer and IT that involved with evaluating Utopia back when we were having some significant discussions with Utopia. We added 2 new commission members on that board to evaluate evaluate all kinds of variety of solutions. So we interact with a variety of people with a variety of skill sets, laypeople and so forth. We've had Carol Walker on that. She's been involved with several commissions and committees in the city. Todd Hadley, others.

Brent Tobler.

Brent Tobler.

Gary Morley.

Gary Morley. Gary Morley is our lay citizen that retired, lives on 2000 South. He gives us great feedback on things that he observes. He goes out and walks the streets and picks up litter and tells us about it and says, you need to get out here. So we get out there. Or, this speed limit's too low, you need to raise it on 2000 South. That's a discussion we'll have at another time. But Lynnae is our liaison on that commission. She's been great to work with, and we appreciate the support that you've given us.

Very informative.

Thank you. Chris, just one thing. As far as the water reuse project, I think Brian, you and I were talking about this, but maybe just to clarify if I've got this right. My understanding is that this water reuse project will reduce our water usage about 10% in Orem.

Okay.

But it's a sliding scale. It depends on how phase has been and that sort of thing. But is that—

Chris?

I'll let Chris know the details.

Right, so what we're permitted to do and what it's designed to do are 2 different things because it's expandable and scalable. We didn't want to do too much too soon with that, and it's a function of what we have water rights to, what we actually own water rights in, which is our groundwater. So we're limited by that. I mentioned that we are permitted to about 6,500 acre-feet a year. Last year we used around 28,000 acre-feet, so it's 25% that we were— we are permitted to go up to that. It'll be up to be seen how much we're going to be producing from that facility. When we team up with Central Utah Water, we have 7,500 acre-feet of water through them. We could reuse 100% of that as well. That would have to go through a federal permitting process through the state of Utah and Central Utah Water Conservancy District. We might be able to double our capacity of that facility and stretch that even more.

So just to break that down a little bit more, so if we did reduce our water usage by 10%, I mean, that's a possibility, right?

Yeah, it's about 20— yeah, it's 10% for sure, yeah.

Yeah, 10% for sure. So if we just reduced by 10%, you're saying it could potentially be a lot higher at a That's effectively the same as the 100,000 people in Orem. So would that be like getting rid of the water use of 10,000 people on a big picture as far as overall?

For winter use, or excuse me, for summer use water, that would be irrigable water. We couldn't do this in the wintertime because our process, we don't produce enough sewage in the wintertime like we, so We treat 3 billion gallons of water at our reclamation facility, whereas we are producing about 9 billion gallons over the course of the year. So there's 6 billion gallons that are— it's going to be thrown on the ground. People are using it that way. So we're going to benefit the summertime usage. It won't have an effect on wintertime reductions. But the summertime is the most significant portion of our water consumption.

You're thinking about drinking water thrown on your lawn.

Golf course, big place.

Yeah.

But my point is, is we tie ourselves in knots to do all kinds of different water conservation things. This will have a bigger impact on us. This is fantastic.

This will have a huge impact.

Yeah.

Yeah. Well done. Thank you.

Thanks, Chris.

All right, we started with Hillcrest Park Phase 1. If y'all have been over there, or maybe you had a chance to go over there during Christmas break, I— it made me really excited that we chose to move forward as quick as possible with the outdoor portion to get that all the way done. Just so many families over there during these nice 4 and 50-degree days to just take advantage of that. I also think it shows, you know, Chris mentioned this, and the amount of collaboration between our 2 teams, Tyler Pay and Jim Orr, and the work that they do with parks and parks maintenance and park design, and us with the programming and recreation, you know, management half of it. I just, we have a great team in both departments that have the same vision for what our residents want and how we want to build and maintain. And the Hillcrest Playground shows off a lot of that. We'll talk about it a little bit more tomorrow, but with the CARE tax passing, we now have 10 years again of planning and runway of those funds and allocating and making sure that they're going to the right places. And playgrounds is right at the top, that these neighborhood playgrounds are new and modern and safe and being— having that replacement schedule built in so that any one neighborhood doesn't have to wait too long to be able to get those new features or just to have a functioning and high-quality playground.

Bryce, if I could add to Hillcrest was built based upon the neighborhood input, what the residents wanted, and the way the designs were Yeah, it was driven by the—

Was that Reed that had driven that process?

We had a public outreach process.

And we've copied that for several other of the larger playground processes. But to take out— we helped define it down to a workable group of options and then take it to the particular neighborhood so they could sort of weigh in on, you know, option 1, 2, or 3, or what they like about it. And so At Hillcrest, you see sort of the 3 different neighborhoods in the playground, and that was, yeah, the direct feedback of the residents. Number 2 was the Lakeside Sports Park enhancements. That started a year and a half ago. Again, Mayor Young lended his talents to helping us get those grants with Utah County. It was the first time in a decade we had gotten grants from the Utah County Tourism Tax Advisory Board.

How much was that?

$2 million. $2 million. And so—

I don't think people understand how huge that is.

It had been a minute since Oregon had gotten those dollars. And I think what's important about that—

That's why we pay you the big bucks. Thank you, brother.

I think what's most exciting about that is it did sort of start that process looking at our 10-year plan and some of the things that we wanted accomplish. I think those things are most accomplishable when we have access to those TTAP funds. And so I think, you know, now that we've grouped that process and we've delivered a really successful product to the county TTAP board, you know, at Lakeside, I think it gives us a lot of confidence that when we go back to them, they'll say, just like we delivered last time, here's our next project. But Lakeside has had the 5 softball turf infields replaced. We added lights to 2 of the full fields. And if you've driven by there in the last month, they have worked at an insane pace to do 2 turf soccer field installs over there. And so we're ahead of schedule on those projects as well. Our rental numbers have skyrocketed, as our pro forma required for these projects to make sense, but we're able to To have really cool amenities for our residents. These are not just going out to tournaments. Our residents, our kids are able to come and practice and play here. And that park is going 7 days a week right now. If you're over there on Sundays specifically, now out at the turf, we have an adult Latino league. And it is— I mean, the park's busiest on Sundays, which is really exciting for us to see that we're able to have a facility that can handle that and provide different resources and go from there. So really excited about Lakeside and where it's at right now. And then the third one, we've touched on this a little bit, but the Lights On experience. We added an event— a dedicated event staff, Karina Ekern, this last year to help with Orem Fest and some of these municipal city events. We're able to sort of take that and replicate that to some of our other marquee annual events like the Touch-a-Truck and the Lights On experience. And so we're excited to have sort of a year-round deliverable on these major events and then supplement it with dozens of other smaller events and the ribbon cuttings and neighborhood size events and everything like that. And so I think we've built some really good policies and best practices and we'll be able to more readily deliver on The next big event idea that y'all have. Some of it again are events we run as a recreation department, others is supplementing like police National Night Out, you know, an event that they run. We can at least provide some behind-the-scenes support. And then we've even talked about how we can better support residents that want to run an event. You know, Jeff, you and I had a chance to— We were both gone on a day of a community-driven event, but now we have sort of the resources or infrastructure to say, hey, if you let us help y'all, it can still be your event, it can still be this wonderful event, but we can help it be a little bit more in compliance or a little bit safer, a little bit better. And so we're excited about that as well.

I'll just emphasize, Bryce quickly mentioned pro forma. Something that Bryce and our rec leadership have— has been a massive change that they continue to implement Even in current projects is the idea of looking at both sides of the ledger, revenue and expense side, and making sure that then additional revenues get used to reinvest into more investments. And since the mayor's not here, I can say that no good deed goes unpunished, so we're constantly leaning on them to be involved in helping us with that revenue or grant side of things.

Thank you.

We have more ideas coming your way, by the way.

We're excited about them.

I was just talking with someone Wednesday night about some ideas, so.

All right, excited to hear them.

Um, why don't we skip the spin the wheel because we're going a bit long.

Okay, well, I will make this— these second 2 portions quick.

So the first, first thing I want to talk about is the outside accolades we've received.

And these are not things that we applied for. They're not people we paid to say these nice things about us. But these are 9 things that outside agencies, publications, other organizations have said about us. So the biggest one this year was the number 1 performing— best performing city, and that was from the Milliken Institute. And that's 3 years in a row. So we share some of these awards with Provo, and that's one of them. But some of them are all our own. So this top 100 places to live from this livability organization. There's 33,000 cities and towns in the country, and we're in the top 100, which I think is just incredible. And one of the funny things about all these lists that we end up on is residents, they kind of get upset because they're like, you know, we need to keep it secret. Don't let Orem— don't let people know that Orem is such a great place because they'll move here. But it's just, you know, we can't help it.

You know, we're not, we're not out there like promoting this or anything.

It's just This is what people, they look at our city and this is what they say.

How many of the rest of those top 100 are in Utah?

I think there's 3 others. So I think Sandy was on the list and there may have been one other city.

And I assume it's the Provo-Orem metro, isn't it?

Not, not this one. Oh, just Orem, which is always nice when we get our own because a lot of times we do have to share with them. But so you can just kind of look through there. It's a very diverse list, you know, it's everything from, you know, like running the city really well, to, you know, quality of life type things like learning playing and learning pickleball. The one I was really surprised about this year was first-time home buyers. They said it's the number 2 place in the country for first-time home buyers, which, you know, we always think about home values here really expensive.

Wow.

But what they say is that the values hold, and so that's why you should invest here and live here in Orem, is because your, your home value will not go down. So get in early and stay. And then And then just the most recent one was number 3 best place to live in Utah. So both on a national level and the state level, Orem is awesome. And then we'll skip that. And then this is what the residents said was some of the best things they saw from us in 2023. And this is all based on our social media, uh, likes, loves, views, uh, hugs, hearts. You can pretty much send any type of emotion, I guess.

One month old train gets a lot of love. A lot of attaboys up there.

Yeah, you'll see on the list that it shows up, I think, 3 times. The funny thing to me was the number 1 video, which I just looked, it's been viewed 129,000 times, was this Redline Racing video that we did. It's a new business down on Geneva Road. And we did a deep dive on why it's been viewed so much, and people just wanted to see the mayor whoop Dave Spencer.

No!

I started 5th and he was 1st.

Plus I had Puff Puff Lorraine. Can we expect David to win?

That would be great. That would make for a great, uh, a great event too.

Bring it on, man.

Yeah, get training and we'll schedule it.

You lapped Debbie Lorraine and somebody up at—

what do you call her?

Puff Puff?

She was driving before.

You didn't lap me.

Nope.

You never lapped me.

Well, that's the problem is we have the full video, so—

You never lapped me. I finished 3rd.

We love giving Dave a hard time, but that was— that was a fun, a really fun thing, and surprisingly number 1 video or number 1 post of the year. I think we already have our number 1 post for 2024, Cheesecake Factory. It's doing insane business online. And it's just fun to, you know, a lot of times social media can be really a negative place, but, you know, to give credit to Brent, his outlook on life is so positive, and that's what he's encouraged us to do from the social media standpoint. So the positivity that we've tried to do online has really won out because this is the top 25. This is an unedited, unfiltered list.

Yeah.

So the top 25 things are all extremely positive, extremely unifying from the stance of the community. And this is what people love. So if we can kind of keep this up, I think we're in a good place. And then this is just kind of a summary of the things that our residents seem to really love getting information about, seeing events, seeing posts, seeing videos. And so we'll just, we'll just keep going. We have some new ideas for 2024 to show more of what Orem is all about. My whole thing with social media is showing our residents the value they get for their tax dollars living in Orem is an incredible value. It's an incredible deal, probably one of the best deals in Utah as far as what you pay versus what you get.

And, you know, we've done this campaign, Orem Gives You More.

When you mix up Orem, it spells more. So Orem gives you more in everything. You know, it gives you more recreation opportunities, gives you more fun things to do with your family, gives you more bang for your buck. It's, uh, it really is incredible. And so that's kind of our mission, is just let people know that they live in a great place. They are They have a city that they can be proud of. The city's in good hands, and, you know, we're just going to keep marching forward.

Thanks for your efforts on that, Peter.

You do a great job.

Well, I appreciate it. Yeah, I got a great team. Thank you, Mayor, for the interns this year. That was an experiment that's really paid off. We have an incredible communications team now, and they, you know, they're all Gen Z. I remember when I was the youngest one, and now there's a whole generation, and they have such fun ideas. They do an awesome job helping me out, so I appreciate that.

Have you done this before?

The top 25?

Yeah.

Similar things, but not like this.

This is great.

You're doing a great job.

Thank you.

I gotta say this, Pete, because I work with Pete probably more than anyone else on the executive staff, just because there's so many events and so many different things going on. And so I've seen Pete do a phenomenal job. I mean, we went from not really having a legit communications PR presence, in my opinion, to where we've got Pete, who's risen to the top, headed this up. We try to figure out ways how can we enhance this and make it better without spending a lot of money. That's where we brought in the 3 interns who've done a great job. And you've got— you share Karina, you know, on the event staff, and our events have gone to a whole new level.

Yeah.

So overall, I mean, if you compare where we were just a year ago to now on the communications side, these guys are doing a phenomenal job. Thank you, Mayor. Appreciate it.

If I can just conclude, I just want to emphasize, top 25 things were positive, kudos, you know, great things about the city. And during an election year, And so truly, I think— well, Chris, you mentioned in your remarks how we stand on the shoulders of giants. So as we kind of continue forward in the retreat, I think that, again, taking a minute to recognize this— sorry for going a little bit longer on the agenda, Mayor, but I do think it makes a difference to set the right tone.

Thank you.

And being able to look forward because we have a great foundation where we're all on the same page in making Owen better and making it a thriving environment for families. I appreciate you as a council letting us try and create this tone or start this tone more in our council meetings and recognizing staff and teams and groups and residents. It does make a difference when— if things are getting negative or glass half empty or concerning, you gotta fill that with— that there's so much for us to be grateful for and so much for us to recognize and remember because we really are doing phenomenal things.

Thank you.

Yeah, sure.

So yeah, we had on— again, and Steve let us know yesterday, so the idea of a closed session is this is purely optional, and it's only if a question or concern comes up that would fall under what is legal.

Discussion under those items.

Okay, so, so then we put it early on here so that then you can address it whenever you want. So I guess at this point, maybe Steve, logistically, the council would just decide if they want to go into a closed session now or if they want to delay it to later on.

Right, so yeah, if you want to do it now, we can, we We can have a vote. It takes 5 votes to go into a closed meeting. Or if you want to delay it, you know, for example, after the roundtable or whenever, then probably just take a real quick motion to bump it to whatever point in the agenda or schedule you'd like to move it to.

Is there a problem with doing it now, Mayor or Brent?

I think our idea was—

We have to leave.

Room, right?

Yeah.

Or we can go where we had lunch or something.

You can go look at the boutique.

Do some shopping. Yeah, who said anything about coming back right now?

Blew it.

So when we set this up originally, when we talked to Steve, he said we should put it, uh, early so we can do it anytime during the meeting, right? And so I think the idea When we put this on here, we don't know if we need it or not. I mean, it sounds like you've got something you'd like to talk about.

I do.

I have some legal questions that I'd rather discuss with you and—

And that's the whole reason we have it on here, in case there were legal issues.

Yeah. And I think, so we've got that. But I think what I'd like to— I mean, what I'd recommend, we can vote and see what anybody wants to do. But I think we should go through some of the things we've got as far as on the existing agenda. So I think that will take us down the path of whether or not there's additional things that we want to talk about in closed meeting. I don't care when since we haven't talked about it yet. I think we'll talk about it. I recommend we talk about that. And just strategically as we're going through conversations, if Steve feels like there's something that's being brought up that needs to go to closed door, then we can— what I would do is if different things come up, put those things on some list and at some point we We can adjourn and we can go through that. Yeah, that sounds good. Okay with that?

Yeah, yeah, yeah, sorry, Mayor, I already said yes. Sorry, I have to adapt.

That'd be great.

So Steve, we need a motion to, uh—

Yeah, if you know what you want to do, then we just have a quick motion to move it to wherever you want to move it.

Mayor, can I move that we move to closed door after the City Council roundtable?

Is that what we need to—

Move agenda item 2 after the roundtable?

Yes.

Did I word that okay?

To sometime after round 5.

Yeah.

Right. So the way I see that happening is we're trying to just defer until it's deemed necessary.

Yeah.

Okay. So does that work?

Yep.

May we have a motion?

Okay.

Second.

Okay.

Would you like to vote?

Aye.

Yes. Aye.

Aye.

Sorry.

Aye.

Aye. Aye.

Yeah, you'd like to take— okay, let's take an early break right now. Let's try and keep it no more than— as quickly as possible, no more than 10 minutes.

So it is 3:09.

We're going to go to a break.

Recording.

Okay, thanks. I'll never, uh, look at you the same. I'm just a little gorilla to Bill.

I'll do your taxidermy for you next time too.

It's a whole nother side.

All right, so welcome back. And we keep going. So in your packets, there's 4 handouts. And what we've got— so there's one that says 2024 Schedule for Council Report Newsletter Message. And so especially for those of you that are new, every Every month, a different council member does a message on the same newsletter. And so it just kind of rotates through. And so you've got a date assigned to you. Sometimes if people are going to be out of town, they do it ahead of time and create it. And then if you need help putting together the feed stream, you can help the report users try and, you know, finish up whatever you're working on. So keep that in mind. And then we've got the inspirational thought, prayer, and pledge assignments.

David, before you came in, I flip-flopped one of my dates that I was going to be gone with Jen. The 23rd and the 14th, we flip-flopped. Plus, I'm assuming you're going to let people know who need to know that.

But I got there. Yep, you did.

Just so you know that you were out of the room, but we took care of that, as others will do for Right, that's fine.

Okay, yeah, just cards. Yeah, let Theresa know and she'll update the list.

And the council report?

The—

that's for when, um, at work sessions once a month, uh, everyone reports on how things are going with your sort of liaison assignments.

It's gonna take like 1 minute.

Yeah.

You can take as long as you want.

Yeah, whatever you need. Probably under 5 minutes, but whatever you need.

Under 5 minutes?

Like 1 minute.

Well, if you only have easy commissions, then you take 1 minute like they do.

Okay, so we got that. And then this one brings back memories. This is the 2024 inspirational thought, prayer and pledge assignments. So this rotates through also, and Steve's supposed to reach out to you. Essentially, each one of you are supposed to make recommendations. Just want to do a prayer and a pledge. And just people in the community that you know or would like to be involved, whatever. So you've got that latitude. I never— I've got so many things going on, I didn't put a lot of focus on that. I will warn you. So one of the times along the way, it pops up, I'm supposed to assign somebody to run the pledge. I didn't have time. I reached out to my wife. I said, call somebody. She called somebody. They called somebody. And then my dad and my sister called up. And then my dad gave probably the most famous prayer. It's all over the internet.

I don't even remember it.

So you might just want to give it some thought. Don't talk it out.

I know next week when I didn't— a couple weeks later I didn't have one, you said, we can call my dad to come in. I was so grateful for that kind offer of yours.

Well, just here to help. And then we go down to city council assignments, and these are all the different Boards, and I don't know if you've had a chance to look at that. Some people here think they own boards, and they try and lobby to like own them forever. But anyway, we try and divide them up, and sometimes we change them.

It's called seniority.

Yeah.

And if we've got a you know somebody has like you know a special thing that they like. Work towards or whatever. We just kind of took these based on people going off council, people coming on the council, and this is where everyone's assigned right now.

So Chris, I'm with you.

Lovely.

Getting the band back together.

Is it morning still?

Yes.

Is that good, 7 o'clock?

I'll be there about 8:30, but yeah, don't wait for me. No, please, I'll be happy to be there.

You know what I'd like to do over the course of the next while, because sometimes some boards are more effective than other boards. And so I'd like to get feedback. I'd like all of you to jump in, work with your boards, but then give us feedback like in 6 months. You know, is this worthwhile? Is it helpful? How can we improve it? Should we change it? Should we get rid of it? Is there other things that are more important we should add? Anyway, so I just expect feedback. I think like this is where, you know, unless anyone has any objections, we'll start with everyone going on the shoot.

I do have one question. I will be gone, and I'm gone every year at an international conference the week leading up to Summerfest or Oremfest now. So I don't know how much— what my role is or how important that is, but I will not be here. So I don't know if that may affect that assignment.

Yeah, um, I think you're planning for—

you're planning it ahead of time.

I was going to say, hopefully We've really left you out to dry if you're busy the week before. So really it's monthly leading up to that that you would be most involved and most busy.

And didn't Debbie offer to be a citizenly member of that committee?

Yeah, we paused that until we were going to find out which one of the council would be the—

So she'd be able to give you a fair bit of help on that.

But Armfest, you had Chris and Jen, so you have a dual.

Yeah, we kind of beefed up forum class because it takes a little more time.

We put both of them.

We used to just have one person run a combo.

So you'll be able to help each other out. This year it's a little bit earlier.

Is it still accomplished?

I'm gone though.

I'm—

yeah, it's like 10 days almost. And I'll be gone during the summer classes.

Yeah, if you have any concerns like that, let us know. We can figure something out.

It should work.

Mayor Bryce begged me to stay on.

Right, Brad?

Because he begged me. He asked me if I could possibly replace you. I can't lie on that. Bryce, I told him to keep that confidential.

I can neither confirm or deny that.

That's what I heard. Mayor, you have a whole bunch.

I'd be happy to give any away.

No, some of them you have to, but if you're absent and you need one of us to attend and we can help, please spread that out. I mean, you— some of them by definition it's you. Yeah, but if you're going to be absent and think we can be of help, well, mostly your mayor pro tem, but any of us, I think.

Okay, I'd be happy to fill in. Now that would be great because there are a multitude of MAG meetings particularly. And yeah, so I appreciate that.

I think I speak for all of us.

And you did a fair amount of that at the end of last year. I know Tess reached out to me a couple of times, and I think Renee, to fill in for you. So please let us help shoulder some of that burden for you.

Well, Scott and I was great. We definitely got that. And Ryan covered for me on— we got some magnates we had to vote on at the end of the year when I was gone.

Happy to do that.

Can I ask you a couple questions?

Yes.

Um, one, at the— on, on the 2023, it says there's ULCT, Legislative Policy Committee, and that is not on this.

That's East LA and Cities and Towns.

Is it not?

It is.

Did I miss it? It's just spelled out. Okay, and then the next one was, I don't see ASD on here. Do we not have anybody responsible for that?

For what?

Like, I know there's a, you know, our community partners. like the hospital, we have somebody with you, we have somebody with Greenock from the ASD.

In the 10 years we've been on, we've never had an individual, but we've had meetings with the Alpina School District.

They won't, they won't meet with us.

They requested not to have meetings in the future.

But we can ask them.

Only for particular—

Oh, Brent, you want to clarify that? No, they just don't meet with us.

We have.

Let's ask a dense question. In the past, it's just been the entire council meeting with their, the school district. Board members would represent more. So as far as there's not been really a council member assigned to that.

Yes, so I can give maybe an update on that. That is what they've said in the past, that where they typically— they said typically with cities they have school district board members that are more closely associated with the city, try to work with the city on their end in a more direct basis. However, most recently they did a meeting with, you know, city managers and mayors throughout the district and said that in that meeting, Ada Wilson— board members Ada Wilson and—

Sarah Hacken.

Sarah Hacken said that they were interested in looking at doing joint meetings for our entire council and anyone on their board to attend. And so, and I've obviously, I think I've heard—

So that's a different message than we got from Shane Farms last year. He said not to, that they weren't interested in meeting.

Or as a whole council.

They didn't want a public joint—

Open meeting, yeah, public meeting.

Public joint meeting at the time.

I think they're willing to do that now. That's what they told me Wednesday night.

So yes, so the biggest problem is— From my understanding, that's a change that interests—

Sarah Sundberg, okay.

Jason?

The new CFO?

Jason Sundberg's the new business administrator.

He's the new Rob.

He replaced Rob Smith. So, uh, and I think I've heard at different times, I think from everyone, interest in trying to meet with the school district. So Tess, over the last couple weeks, has been in contact with Rhonda, who's the executive assistant of the school board, and, and offered a series of potential dates for them to choose from. Obviously, they, they have longer periods of time off during the holiday season, so we haven't heard back from them on confirmation that it's able to be like—

Yeah, yep.

So they'll be back next week, and hopefully we'll respond officially in writing formally with whatever their availability is.

This is from whom?

I didn't see it yet. Sorry.

Rhonda.

Rhonda is the executive assistant for Shane Farnsworth and the school district.

Gotcha.

I did send the email to all of them if that helps.

So when was your meeting, Brent? You did have one about a month ago, right?

It was about a month ago and we had invited all of the Mayors and city managers of the cities that are within this group. They just kind of gave a high-level overview of what they think the reconfiguration study, how long that will take, and gave, I think, a financial overview Budget overview, we solicited questions. No one really asked very many questions other than I think there was a little bit of interest in like safe routes and busing.

Wonderful, I welcome that.

We've been trying to do that for over a year, so you're going to have to— We used to do it anyway. I think we were going to do it over lunch in the middle of the day. We're still thinking that same thing, kind of like quarterly.

So did you want to do that?

Yeah.

Did you do that before COVID Because I know—

Yeah.

So before COVID hit, you'd had one of those meetings?

Yeah.

Because didn't you get put on right at the beginning of January 2020?

Yeah, we only had one. We didn't go one in January or February of '20.

We did give them options for around the lunch hour to do that. I think we also tried to give some other options as well. Again, we wanted to show our willingness and openness that we always have in meeting.

Those are all the options that you proposed?

Yeah.

That is the long list that says—

Only took me 2 hours. You should be able to find it in the games.

Okay. All right, any other questions about that?

Thank you.

Any other questions about the assignments? Okay. And if you have questions about your committees and who to work with and all that sort of thing, you can reach out to me or Brent. And I would probably push it back to whoever was doing it before you, although— and even you could reach out privately, that's a number. Although a lot of these are dynamic and we're trying to improve and change them all the time, so.

But again, perhaps a refresher that we don't lead that meeting. We don't vote at those meetings. We're an advisor to those meetings.

That's right.

We're there to support.

Liaison, yeah.

We're there to listen and bring needs to the City Council discussion.

Except that the Utah League of Cities and Towns, they'll have a— if we're pushing back against an issue and they'll say, well, we have 3 options to go back with, and they will have the cities vote. And I've asked Tess to include Chris on the emails so that— and it's a spot vote. They just put it up there.

decide, the 3 of us.

At that point, we actually will look at the council member— we represent the council— and say, what do you think is the best for the city?

And then we'll vote for that.

So there will be spot votes at that.

Jesse will be—

I mean, Jesse and Brent will be able to get more acquainted, get up to speed on that. There's usually a big thrust in the legislature session, and then there's other select meetings throughout the year as far as just as far as how our city's involved, but it's actually a pretty big deal because through the legislature is where the biggest impacts on our city come. And if we don't have a big voice in that, then things just happen to us. And so we've got to be super aware and super involved with that. Sounds good. Thank you.

Library, we'll talk if that's okay.

What's that?

I'm on library, so we'll talk to you.

Oh, I'm just looking on here, Mayor. So like, you put the That one where Jeff said they have, you know, they ask for, I think, votes for members of that.

And you're on the UIA?

And I'm on the UIA. Utah Lake Authority, I think you're technically a voting member of that group.

That's a very involved— I mean, that's another thing that's very political in the water. probably heard, so we called the Commission Chief about it. That would be an issue.

Yeah, Mary kind of posted that. And CDBG is probably some extra involved materials that get into the numbers and who they're providing grants.

And who had that one before? I had that one.

Yeah, it's not on the list, but I had that one too. It was kind of exciting. That one's really exciting and right up your alley, I think, based on the fact that it's—

And we've had a man who's come to as many of our city council meetings as almost anyone else, who comes every time to report on this.

What's his name?

Ken Renshaw.

Yeah.

Oh, wonderful.

Ken Renshaw.

Because, yeah, because there are certain benchmarks when funding happens and, you know.

And who's our new Kenna over that?

Heather Cox?

That's in my department.

Okay.

And we spread it out by a few people, but Heather's taking the lead. So I can work with you, Jim, right?

Okay, so we good? Okay. All right, moving forward. So I'd like to, in this roundtable, I just kind of like to get an idea of where everyone's at and talk about some things. Different things that I think are important to talk about. So, and where I want to wind up with this and where I'd like to go with this is, let's say we have our conversations, we go different directions, we have different concerns. I think the guideline that I've tried to make for this conversation is I think we should all agree that we need a And so it's unity built on a foundation of truth and honesty. I remember in both your inauguration parts, that was an important thing for you. So it's unity built on a foundation of truth and honesty, and I think that's the benchmark against anything that we talk about should be measured. I'd like to go around and just have each of the city council members and just tell the group why you ran for office and what's, you know, what's important and what's your priorities. You know, why did you do this? What do you hope to accomplish by being on this? And do we have a volunteer to go first?

Well, Jen did it already.

You guys are fresh.

She did it Wednesday night.

Yeah.

You know, she did the family show. It wasn't convenient. I need to do this. Summarize for anyone who wasn't here, if you don't mind me throwing you first.

Yeah, or if you have other—

Yeah, or if you have other—

Specific.

You know what, yeah, and I would be thinking, I mean, I think that's great, but I'd be thinking in terms of, are there any, you know, like when I ran, there was 10,000 apartments they were trying to put on State Street. I was completely against that. You know, so there's a lot of specific things, specific issues. Yeah, we're trying to basically boil it down. These are things that we can basically look at what every— why everyone ran, and then put these all into a hot version of things.

Yes, you want to go?

Sure.

And can some—

I guess this is recorded, but I would like to have so that we can make meaningful use out of these comments somewhere? Does it get reported and broken down so we can bring this all together? Go ahead, Deb.

That's a great question. It's a big question. So if you weren't there Wednesday night, why did I run? I ran because I feel like it's my duty and responsibility both to my ancestors and as a citizen of this great country to use my skills and talents in ways that benefit our city. That's my education, that's my background. So that's, I mean, that's the pie in the sky, why the vision of why I do this. As far as the practical things, I think like you said, my whole campaign was built on trust, collaboration, working together. And so I think I want to see some more of that. You know, we've had a really fractious couple years with the Alpine School District thing. I think now is the time to build the relationships there again and with other organizations. So stronger relationships with our entities. Like I talked to UVU Well, I— there's a course of the campaign, we haven't met with them in a while. You know, I'd like to revitalize some of those things. And some of that's a product of COVID You know, COVID happened and the world shut down and nobody was meeting with anyone. So I think let's, you know, let's spring up from the ground again and let's go connect and rebuild those relationships. So that's a big thing for me. Um, I think I heard a lot on the campaign trail, affordable housing. What are we doing with affordable housing? How are we going to address that? I think that's something I'd like to see us really focus on because on the On the one hand, we don't want 10,000 apartments on State Street, we don't want a lot of high density, but on the other hand, we have people saying, I need affordable housing, I can't even live in Orem because there's no place for me to live. So I'd like to see us address that. What else do I have on my list? One of the things that came up in the course of our campaign was Chris and I, and maybe Jeff too, met with the Latin population. We had several meetings with the Hispanic population in the city. These are great, wonderful people who I feel like we could do a better job of outreach with. So that's something I think I would like to see us look into.

What are the options?

What are the possibilities? What have we done? And I need to be educated on what have we done, what can we do going forward. So that's something I'd like to see us address more. That's my short list.

Thank you.

Chris?

Let's see, part of the reasons why I ran was just to provide, again, that continuity of ideas. And as we've all been talking about, the best ideas rise to the top. I mean, several of us have had those discussions. With that said, the same kind of positive feeling— I know that as a city in general, and just any kind of a public meeting, I personally feel, and I think I've noticed, that the public should be welcome, but there also should be a decorum in a public meeting setting. So, part of my desire would be for us to look at ways that we can, in an open setting, whenever we have an open public forum, to kind of remind everybody of the guidelines of we don't talk— bring any individual's name out, we don't— cause them to either clap or boo. And we all have opinions and we need to respect each other in a positive way. And then, so that would be one of those ideas along with, I've been to a lot of those same meetings that several of us have been to with the Latin community. And I even love the idea of, you know, having the city staff help create a successful event That's safe and organized well. For example, the ones in the park and other things that we can do. It would just benefit all of Orem. In seeing some of the neighborhoods in Orem and just driving around as a concerned citizen and other roles that I've had throughout the city in my lifetime, there are some neighborhoods that would be nice, and I know we're working on that because we have some new neighborhood enforcement officers that are doing such a nice nice soft-touch kind of approach. We have some neighborhoods that are scary because they're owned by landlords, and it's mostly— and it's a really dirty neighborhood.

I mean, it's a scary neighborhood.

I wouldn't want my children living here or anyone else. So those are just some of the concerns that I think I have just as a citizen coming in. I have no other agenda items other than wanting to contribute. My background and skill sets and look forward to ways that I can contribute and just help. And all of us talk and bring the best ideas and then get behind them together as a team. That's what I expect from my neighbors.

Okay, awesome.

Thank you.

I was given an opportunity to serve a year or so before I ran by Mayor Evans and the Finance Committee, none of whom are still here, I don't think.

But he had half a dozen people in the community who had business and/or finance backgrounds.

His partner from Squire was there and 2 or 3 other people going over their budgets because they were going through a drastic reduction, right?

That's in the, you know, '08, '09, and '10 year.

They were just coming out of that.

And so '11 or '12, I guess I got involved in working on the budget and got invited to consider running for city council by some of them on there and also by Karen McCandless, who had decided at one point not to run again. And I didn't have a detailed agenda other than they need decent management and financial focus on some of the things. And so that's what got me. And then the comment of, if not you, who? And if not now, when? And Which is to your earlier comment on Wednesday night, it's never particularly convenient to do that. And Mayor, I don't think anyone knows that more than you do as far as the inconvenience of service. On the flip side, if you're getting more from your serving than you're giving, it's no longer service.

It's called a job or some other opportunity.

And so, so good management versus leadership. I had a discussion desire to work with city employees to make sure they carry out good management, but hope that we can be part of the good leadership and make sure the direction was right. And to work with a bunch of colleagues that I thought would work better together. They say if you want to go fast, you go alone. If you want to go far, you go with a team. And so I'm looking forward to going with a team, which we've been somewhat the last little bit, and I look forward to going forward with the team that we can go far and better than we can. It's easy to get things done alone. If you remember teaching a child to do anything, whether it was mow the lawn or do the dishes, it would have been a whole lot easier to do it yourself. And I look forward to continuing to work with the—

that group.

And then I was so concerned— I'm going to steal from David— that they were going to put parking lots in where the ball fields were.

And they were gonna—

well, we were hot. The care tax was an issue, David. And the 360 was a big deal, right?

Yes.

The mall down, the little mall, whatever, what's it called now?

The Downtown.

Downtown 360 is what it was called.

I think it's called something different now.

And we were, you know, we had a great exposure as a city financially. And so anyway, those are some of the hot issues but they're a decade old now, so they're not as hot of an issue. So I think it was probably more important not to have a detailed agenda, but just a desire to serve.

That's, I think, what solidified me. Okay, thank you. Mr. Spencer.

Well, 10 years ago, 11 years ago I guess, the reason I ran was I was on Ormond baseball and I wanted to save the baseball fields because a thing called Center for Story, they were going to take out baseball fields, the 2 lower baseball fields in the park. I thought that was the most stupidest thing I've ever heard of. And not that the council was skewed arts, but it was.

It was skewed way arts.

It was 90% arts, 10% rec. And I think over the years, I think we've done a good job making it 50/50. And I think that's fair. That's the way it should be. Also, I mean, my 3 points were You know, save the ball fields or save, you know, the center for storage. I didn't agree with it. Now we have a library hall, which is on the ballot, and everybody voted on it, which was fine. I thought they should be separate on the ballot, not together, because I thought that rec center would pass flying colors, the library hall would not. So that's why they put it together, which is fine.

Thank you.

The citizens voted on it, we moved on. Midtown Village was another thing I ran on. The citizens didn't realize that we owned the parking lot, which to me was, you know, government should not be in private enterprise, period. We need to know where our boundaries are and stay in there. Stay in our lanes. Utopia. I think fiber is an excellent thing, but for it to have the city have something that could be done in the private sector is wrong. And that's why I opposed UTOPIA. We're $160 million in debt. You know, this should have been done in the private sector. Because the private sector, if they fail, what happens? They go out of business. Government, when they fail, they don't fail. They just keep raising taxes. So, my— so those are my 3 points on running back in the day. Baseball fields are still there, so thank goodness. And we have a nice park, you know, with the lights and everything. But I think the main thing I really like about being on the council is I like to help citizens solve problems. I like when they call me, that they can say, hey, you're a doer, not a delegator, you get things done. And that's the bottom line. I answer my phone. I always answer my phone. To address the affordable housing And that's been a concern of ours for a long time. The problem is you gotta have a subsidy, you gotta have FHA financing, you gotta have a developer that wants to, you know, build it and make less money, right? So somebody can go and buy it and then they can get equity and make the money. So I think it's a— I think it's just a— it's great to say affordable housing, but I think it might be a pipe dream in general. Because you have to have all these things come together, and I don't know if you can find a developer that wants to do that. I don't know, you know, because they want to make as much money as possible. And that's where, you know, I look at today's world and everything is greed. You know, the developers, hey, this doesn't pencil. I need to make a PRD because I need 15 homes instead of 9. Why? He says it doesn't pencil. It's because it's greed. They want to make 5 times as much money.

more money.

That's the bottom line.

So when developers say that, I'm like, it's baloney. It's just greed, you know. So I think we just need to get back to the basics. And, you know, Orem's a great place to live. We have very much— not very much land to build homes, so we have to be strategic and smart of where we put Housing and what kind of density, if it's by the exits or entrance or whatever, because we— Orem is different than other cities because we have 4 exits and entrances into Orem. Why? Because it's Geneva Steel back in the day. So look at Provo, where are their exits?

The south.

The south, right? And their mall died and ours didn't, so we're doing something right because Everybody wants to come to Orem businesses. And I think the Latino— I mean, I talked to a Latino lady that sells tamales at the market. And she wants to come to Orem, but she says Orem's difficult to get a business—

start a business.

I said, well, let me get you a different captain. Because I haven't seen that, but from their perspective, it's difficult. So I take that as a good point. We need to figure out how do we How do we streamline? How do we make it easy? The Bundt cake lady wanted to come into Ormond. I don't know if it's Woodberries or what, but it took them a long time, 2 years to come into Ormond.

She's in now, right?

Yes, they're in. But it's like, why are we— we've got to be more friendly, I guess, and make sure that we are inviting the people who want to come to Ormond because we live on sales tax, right? The mall on 13 South is our economic engine, and I don't agree with putting housing on 13 South because we need commercial. You know, we need that value and that tax dollar.

Which is University Parkway, if you don't know.

Correct. So, I mean, I'm rambling on, but I think, you know, there's a lot of, you know, this past election, there's a lot of stuff on Facebook Facebook, and how this council is moving Ormond in the wrong direction. And I disagree. I think that's a blatant lie. And just look at the accomplishments. Take it to the Facebook people and say, you know, this, this is what we need to talk about. Because I'm proud of this. You know, 10 years is a long time, right, Tom?

Mm-hmm.

And I don't have a problem going another, whatever, 24 years with I don't know what Tom said, but I'm an idol. But I just think that we, if we can come together as a team, we're not going to all get along. I mean, personalities, you know, blah, blah, blah. But I've known Chris and I've known Jen for a long time, and we can all work together, and we can always think of the one and make sure that we don't leave anybody out. And that was from a babbo, I think. I try to go to all the Babos because they're amazing. I mean, she got— I got to speak yesterday at one of them, but I was just giving out Babo Bucks. But Jeff was there and it was great because employees were able to speak what they wanted to speak about and talk. Some people were scared, some weren't.

I think everyone knows, but Babo was building at her home.

Correct.

And the Babel Bucks are a big hit, but I just think that if we can keep our citizens safe and have a quality of life, you know, I think we've done our job. And that's why I'm here. That's why I serve.

That's it.

My 2 cents. I don't want to ramble on, but I'll turn the time over to somebody else.

Good job, Paul.

Not as bad as me.

Thank you. Thank you, Nick.

Hopefully you got my list.

Um, yeah, so, um, first of all, I want to make one comment. I don't think we are a divided council. I don't think we have been. I think our community has been divided through social media nastiness. I don't know what other word to use. Personal attacks, unfounded personal attacks based on innuendo. I think it's healthy from a legislative perspective to have some of those tight votes, you know, and I think if you look at the record of our votes, we have agreed 98% of the time. But that 2% is why we're in office and why people get elected to make those 2% decisions. And I'm I mean, I will— there's one decision when I— the first council meeting I think I was at, maybe the second one, and Jeff voted a little differently than I did. And because I thought he had a different opinion, but then the vote happened and afterwards there were some questions about that, right? And when we walked down the hall, I was like, no, Jeff, you're good. You know, we vote however we vote. we're up there on the dais, and then we're friends when we step down. That's a healthy legislative process. So anybody who calls that divided and divisive, in my opinion, doesn't understand the making of the sausage, you know, and how it's supposed to work. That's how the cream rises to the top. So you've got to be able to set that aside when you leave. But anyway, why did I run? Well, 3 things were my platform, right?

To strengthen families, to protect neighborhoods and to prepare Orem's future.

I have near and dear to my heart is the disadvantaged members of our community. I served a Spanish-speaking mission stateside with the Hispanic community, saw the challenges, and I've seen a lot of those challenges today. I've spent 20 years volunteering in schools and Where my kids have been tutoring and assisting other people's kids because I believe that if you can lift them and help them to succeed, that's how everyone succeeds. So I really wanted to be a voice for our disadvantaged population and also for our busy parents. You know, I have a lot of people call me and say, what do you think about this? What do you think about this? Thank you so much, I just don't have time to research it. So I've really tried to really play that, do that role, whereas I dig in and research and try to figure out what's best, rely upon our staff, but also the things I'm hearing from the community. From protecting the neighborhoods, I live in an area that we have had persistent and still continued difficulties with high-density housing, high-density apartments. and coaching in our neighborhoods and the challenges that come with that. I've got one over my back fence right now that's going to be coming before us on the council. It concerns me a lot. I like how Councilmember Spencer has said, and I agree with this, if it's zoned residential, it should stay residential. It should stay the zoning that it is. Now let's think— I'm a business management graduate. you know, from BYU, got my finance degree. Let's look at supply and demand. If we're continually reducing the supply of our homes, the prices are going to go up. We're not going to have that housing affordability. So we have to be wise in balancing this affordable housing with housing affordability for our future, which then goes into the next thing. Really, the key to preparing for Orem's future is identifying who we want to be as a city. We don't— we shouldn't let outside forces determine that. We should, as a legislative body, decide who we want to be through feedback from our residents. That's key, in my opinion. And we can push back on the ideology that has been in the past that says that Orem should be the high-density housing hub of Utah County. There's, you know, Envision Utah. That's their— that's what they have said that we need to have all the high-density apartments in Orem because of the infrastructure we have in place, and, and then people will travel from Orem to Lehi or to Spanish Fork to the commercial districts that will be established there. I disagree with that 100%. I feel like that's not who we are, that's not the culture that we want, that's not the neighborhoods that we want. We need to have our Family City USA motto It really means— is near and dear to my heart because it helps all families. It helps our community. We can keep our costs low. We have fantastic amenities. We just really need to decide who we're going to be. And like Dave said, we are going to be seeing this pressure on University Parkway that we really need to address. And that's something I want to really be talking about in the future. Last thing I want to say say. I feel really an improvement in the culture of our city right now through the staff, in our staff environment compared to when I was a resident. And I'd like to continue that, to have great interaction with our residents through our meetings. I feel like one thing that we have done as a council that I really appreciate is the public comment. When I would go as a resident and make public comments, the comment would be made and okay, next person, right? So what happens now, we have our executive staff there in our meetings sitting over to the side. So if there's a comment about Public Works, you know, mayor says, well, you know, we have Chris Berkey here, our Public Works director, he'll step out and I'll and talk to you about that. We have our chief of police here, he'll step out and talk to you about that. Those residents are feeling heard, their issues are being addressed, and I love it. I love that direction that we're going in and would love to see if we can even figure out more ways to keep those conversations open, keep them through kind and respectful conversation. I feel like that's— that environment in our city council meetings has just gone through the roof. So good, and I commend all of you guys. And we'll just— would welcome that feedback because that was one reason why I ran. It was so frustrating to go to a council meeting with a concern that I had for my neighborhood and felt— and then feel unheard. So I don't know, that's kind of what I think we've done, what I want to do, and, and, um, what I feel Thank you.

Jeff?

Thank you, Mayor.

I—

well, the reason that I ran, I had the opportunity as a young man, a young married guy, to serve on the Summerfest committee, and I was hooked. I just love working with different people and making friends, and it's Had the opportunity to serve in different aspects and different positions, and then eventually being the chair. And I just loved that whole process of working with the city staff. We had a great city council liaison, and it was a fun experience. Did that for several years and then had the opportunity to serve on the CARE Commission and loved that. I got to serve as the main chair. I've worked with Mark and Dave and Sam and Debbie at different times. And just, I loved the whole opportunity of, as a citizen, working together with city employees and the City Council. And somewhere in that process, there was a seed planted that I thought, you know, someday I would really like to serve on the City Council. I thought with any agenda, not with any— anything that I really wanted to come forward with, but just the opportunity to serve. Because I love that feeling of being a part of something big and seeing it succeed. And so that was kind of my main thrust when I began the campaign process originally. As I jumped into that ring, I became aware of some very serious concerns with our first responders. And we were losing our police employer, and losing our— some of our best. And as Dave mentioned earlier, the investment in the training and all that was going on. And I think And so that became my, that became my staff, my flag. We need to change that. And I've always admired and looked up to these great men and women, and it's been a privilege to get to know them just a little bit. And I'm grateful to see the work that happens there, and especially the care and the concern that those 2 departments take For those individuals and their families and the love and concern shown for them because of what they do for all of us. Anyway, so that was, that was kind of a, you know, something that I didn't realize was going on, but as I jumped in, I'm like, okay, this is a cause that I really want to be involved in. So moving forward, I absolutely love That we are Family City USA and everything that that implies. You know, families come in all different shapes and sizes and varieties, and the fact that Orem is a welcoming place where people can come, whatever their family looks like, as Lynnae was saying, we want them to be safe, we want them to feel valued, we want them to know that they're a part of our community and that they have something to offer.

And that we want them to feel safe.

offer, and that we value them, even if they have a different perspective or look at things differently than I do. And I love Family City USA. I love the fact that we wear proudly that we trust in our God. And I just, I think that's another banner that I will carry. Thank you. And wear proudly. So things that I would like to see moving forward, and this is one that's, you know, we've talked about this when Ann and I went and met with the realtors, and I'm concerned about some of our neighborhoods and the way that they're just kind of falling into disrepair. No, no lack of— I don't want that to sound harsh, but it's a reality. And I would love to talk with people that are smarter than me. I know that it's happening in other places, ways that we can revitalize those neighborhoods. I love what our first responders are doing, going into those areas and reading books with kids. And, you know, some of those things that strengthen those communities, and I would love to see us work on that. I was talking with Mayor Lundberg recently from Lyndon, and I had heard somewhere once upon a time that we met occasionally. I didn't have the opportunity— haven't had the opportunity of doing this because of COVID but I think I think it would be great to meet with Provo and Lindon and Vineyard. And we have some overlapping concerns. We have fire stations, we have police, and, you know, our public works that we just overlap. Our schools, so many ways that we overlap. And so, you know, maybe on an occasional basis to kind of come together and to share concerns and ideas.

Thank you.

not only strengthen Warren, but how we can strengthen each other as a community. Also, the Spanish or Latino community, I've had those same conversations. And we have some really amazing people that have come here from other countries that are struggling. Entrepreneurial, they're very sharp, but sometimes they have a hard time understanding, and the whole communication process can be a challenge when they come in to get a business license or seeking guidance on how to handle a certain thing with the city. So I don't know what kind of communication Spanish speakers we have on staff, but maybe that's something that we can look at, or having someone that's available to step in as an interpreter in some of those kind of higher-level situations where we've got somebody that has a great idea and they've had a business that's been successful somewhere else. They want to come and implement it here, but they don't know how to jump through the hoops here in Orem and in the United States. And they have so much to offer. I think that's a great idea. And then the other thing with that is maybe, you know, some things on the website that are in other languages so that they can go and learn how to get a business license in Español. That's the only Spanish that I speak.

Okay.

But, you know, some things like that that I think would help kind of give them a helping hand in that process. And again, anything we can do to help Anything we can do to celebrate our culture, their culture, the diversity, and bringing those cultures and that diversity together in a celebration, I think, is a wonderful thing. And then just one last thing. I can't read my note here very well. Oh, 2 things. So first of all, consensus as a council. It feels like there have been some times in the past, and I know we're all short on time, and sometimes it's felt like we— the process has been, let's get to a vote of 4 and then we'll carry it forward. I would love to see us come to consensus where we come together as a group of 7, working together as a group of 7. I think that's the whole point of this, man, you know, that we're all— that we're a council, that we're a team, that we're in this together, and And so, that might require a little more time and communication and getting together as a group of 7, working together a little more. But to get to that point so where we're not just, it's easier to get, let's get 4 of us and we'll move it together. But let's work, let's bring consensus. Let's get to a group of 7 and work together. Anyway, so that's, In a nutshell. So the one last thing that I want to say is I would love to work for any one of you at the City of Boardman. I mean, I have to tell you, I look at the way that you run your departments and the way that you interact with your employees and your staff, and I think, man, this would be such a great place to work. And it's just So I just want to say thank you for your examples and the work that you do in your departments and the way that you work together as departments working together to move things forward. It's inspiring. I really look up to each of you for that.

Chris, you need help on the grounds, don't you?

Sign me up, brother. I'm not applying for a job. I appreciate your leadership and the way that you lead your departments.

We'll give you a— we need help with anti-graffiti probably as well, and security.

Brandon's not hired until Thursday.

Yeah, you'll interview him.

If I hire Jeff, you'll take him?

I'm not applying for the job, I'm just making an observation of how great you all are.

Thank you, Jeff.

I've just got some things I put on here last night at midnight. So why did I run for office? I, I told some of you this before, but I've lived in Orem for 30 years. I've been here for 30 years and I tried to move several times and my wife will not move. So we came to the conclusion that we're going to die in Orem. I thought, if I'm going to die in Orem, then I'm going to do whatever I can to make it better. And I felt like things have been kind of going sideways in different areas. I mean, overall things are good, but in different areas things have been going sideways in the previous 10 years. And so one of the things I really believed when I ran was that we need to define who Orem is, and we need to basically define that now or it's going to be changed by people around us or other people. And so that's where I pushed for taking Family City USA to the next level. It had always been a thing out there, but I really wanted to push and make it something serious. And that's what we evolved into. Creating a city motto, which is create an environment where families can thrive. Because I think that, that gives us a mission, it gives us a motto, it gives us a benchmark which we can measure our success or failure against. Another thing, big thing I ran on was to preserve term representation of the people of Orem. Like Lynnae said, it used to feel like you had some issue, in your neighborhood, whatever, you went to city council meetings, whatever you said didn't matter. It was just going to happen regardless.

And I just—

it just felt like it wasn't— the representation wasn't there. And so with that in mind, I wonder— I felt like in the city council, the city is supposed to be run by the city council. I mean, that provides the direction for the city. And the reason that works is because you've got the city council, which is directly voted by the citizens, and so you have a direct-to-the-citizens path to make sure the city's going down the path the citizens want it to go down to. And so, so I, like I said, is the elected body ensure the city council drives the direction of war on drugs? As a council to citizens, and to put that in context, when I first got elected, in our very first meetings, I was told that I needed to back off, that the mayor was purely a ceremonial role, and I needed to get in that box and be a ceremonial mayor and write praise and wave to people and go to ribbon cuttings. And that was the role. And we've since corrected that because we. We now have a city council that is the legislative body of the city, and I think things have changed a lot between, you know, the staff and the city and just where we're at right now. So I just want to bring that representation back to the citizens. And I feel like, you know, where we're at right now, we've aligned the city council and the city management so that they can both fulfill their individual roles and work together and ensure that serving citizens is both of our first priority. Another big thing I ran on was to stop the 10,000 apartments that were scheduled to be on State Street. In the previous 10 years, out of nowhere, there was about 3,500 apartments that had been built in Ormond, and that was pushing back against the basics of the neighborhood and how Ormond, you know, what kept it a whole.

Thank you.

Value system in the world. And so essentially I just came out hard, and that's what I campaigned on, was to stop those 10,000 apartments, and we did that. I want to protect the city and its citizens, and that's where we push hard for the core values of God, family, country, and we've done meaningful things to make those our benchmarks. I worked ensure that Orem has strong representation throughout the county. Before I was ever the mayor, I knew a lot of people throughout the county in different positions, and so that was my job. I wanted to protect the citizens from unfair and unnecessary taxation. There's the classic thing that, you know, how much should taxes be? And they'll be as much as you let them go. At some point, somebody has to push back. How much can we tax? I believe that, you know, that that needs to be checked, and I've worked hard to make that happen. I've worked hard to promote development that benefits our residents and maintains the integrity of the community. I've always believed that we needed to, you know, like Dave Spencer always says, we've got roads, protection, the basics that a city is supposed to provide.

Police, fire, water, roads, and sewer.

Thank you.

Exactly.

And I believe that that's, you know, in order for that to happen as a city council, we've got to provide the necessary support for our first responders. And I honestly believe and have been working towards not just being okay or not just being whatever, but actually creating the best fire department and police department in the state, if not the nation. And I think, you know, we've had a lot of conversations about that. I think we're I think our first responders are doing a phenomenal job. And then to that, provide every department in the city with adequate resources to be able to provide outstanding public service to our residents. I always have kind of a vision of operating our city with the same level of accountability as private industry has. Because, as you know, government, if you don't do things right, you know, people are disappointed, whatever, but there's always a tax, you know, there's always a tax base to fall back on. And so a lot of times they're not, you know, in private industry, private company, they don't do things right, well, they go out of business. And so if you don't focus on it and make it happen, a lot of government-type entities go down. The path of they don't have to try. Now I think, like I mentioned a half dozen times, in Orem City we've developed a culture that's phenomenal. We're almost running Orem like private enterprise as far as the amount of accountability and responsibility. I want to create an employee structure that encourages every employee to excel. And I've really seen that over the last year as far as within the ranks of the employees and just talking to different employees, people are excited and people feel like they're rising to the top. I don't want to go on forever, but as far as one big thing was I never felt like you could get decent information about what was going on within the city and as a citizen. And so that was why one of the first things that we did, and Pete's done a great job setting up and will continue to expand, is transfer Transparency portal because it provides the citizens vital information about their government. So that's a list of reasons I ran. Yeah, yeah, and what's amazing about the transparency portal is other cities have reached out to us and they're imitating our transparency portal because it is— It's a sincere form of flattery.

Exactly.

That's cool.

So, as far as, you know, I think we've got a lot of common goals. I think we need to take and break this down and take it apart a little bit to kind of prioritize things and lift things up. I'd be curious just quickly if there's anything that comes to mind in terms of collaboration or common goals. One thing, a couple of things. A couple of you mentioned is affordable housing, and affordable housing is from a practical standpoint a very difficult thing to do. The I think it can be wrapped into revitalization of neighborhoods. I think there's possibility it could be wrapped into Spencer Cox's 35,000 homes they want to build. But essentially what you have to do is you have to figure out what you're trying to do, but then you also have to figure out how you fund it, because that's the big missing gap, right? So anyway, I think that's— I think we're at a point, you know, you talked about neighborhoods around Orem that are not in that great of shape, and if there's some sort of path that we could very creatively work together to figure out a way to upgrade those, that would be a huge win for Boston.

Are there grants? Can someone on the team Have you seen research if there are grants available for building that? From federal grants to—

So the issue that I— on CDBG, one of the things that we talked about, because there is the one section— I don't know who knows about this now, but there used to be these grants available for down payments to homes and things like that. But the problem was is it's tied to the median income within the community, and it's just so not there with the price of the home.

It's—

they're just not—

you can't get—

you can't afford the home. Yeah. So I, I think we need to push to bring, bring recognition to that and kind of see if we can work with Governor Cox because you're working on that.

I'm on the Governor's Committee, you know, right, Mayor?

I think.

And, and the process, we have people from From industry who want to build homes and basically want to say, do away with all your rules and we can build an affordable home, right?

Yeah.

I mean, that's one extreme. And we have a project coming in Orem that wants to build a bunch of cabins, small little homes in southeast, southwest Orem. And just, I don't know that that's the way we want to embrace it, right? They say, we'll do away with all setbacks. you can have, you know, a home on a much smaller lot. Well, I think we need to do something smarter than that, just not cram it in. And I don't know how to get there. Yeah, well, you go ahead.

Well, I was going to say, and I come back to when we did our— oh my goodness, what's it called— our medium housing station, Modern Income Housing Plan. You know, the emphasis when we— the meetings I was in when we talked about that as a council was homeownership.

Yeah.

You know, the middle housing.

And middle housing now is a half million bucks.

Yeah, but truly middle housing at half million at a 3% interest rate, if the rates come back down, is— when I bought my house, $10,500.

Yeah.

You know, of course I refinanced as things came down, but I mean, you know, the payments level out that way. So But there has to be that product that is provided and encouraged by us, provided by developers.

Zions Bank sponsored a thing that the governor spoke at, and various people who give money away, you know, the Eccles family and the Miller family, etc., were at. And one of the—

who's the woman from the U?

Natalie—

say it again.

Yeah, Gartner. And she said over the last X years, income has gone up by 200 and X percent, and over that same period, housing prices have gone up by 600-some-odd percent. And so if you're— that's tough. I mean, if you don't have parents who can help you with a down payment, it makes it pretty darn tough.

Right. No, it's extremely tough.

And Utah, they said, was the 4th most expensive place to buy a home in the country. United States per capita income compared to home costs.

Which is insane. It wasn't that way—

No, it wasn't.

No. 15 years ago, 10 years ago even.

And to Lennay's point, you're right, interest rate at 7 puts a lot of people out of the home buying where it's 3 and 4, but it has never historically been 3 or 4. 6 and 7 is the historical norm.

Right, that is the norm.

And when you probably built your first home like I, it was 9 and 10%.

Yeah.

But my house was $55,000.

Right. Not $555,000.

So, I had to make it work. It's one of the most complicated issues around there. And this is something we would have to spend a lot more time on, obviously. But to me, you know, Orem's 95% built out. So, we can either build on that 5%, you know, and whatever we're going to do on there. But then when you go into our inner neighborhoods in certain areas of town, they are old, they're dilapidated, and they're run down. And so the real opportunity to me is if there's a solution where you can go into those neighborhoods and start to revitalize some of those and do that in a more cost-effective way where it would take us into the future. But the only way I see doing that is to have outside money come from somewhere. Right, because the city doesn't know about nobody.

Even before David and I were on and 360 was being built, that was for homeownership.

Right.

It's now all rentals.

Yeah.

And when funding got tight for townhomes and condos, etc., they just said, okay, we're going to own it all and it's just going to be rentals. So that didn't— whatever the city council's goals were 15 years ago, whenever that was being approved, they didn't get— they weren't reached.

But we did have a— is it Wild Horse or Crazy Horse? What's still on Sand Hill Road? Okay, yeah, that was affordable condos for sale, for ownership.

And 80% of them had to remain—

Yeah, I think 75%, but it was FHA financing and you had to have, you know, HOA. I mean, but that was homeownership and that's what we're looking for. But I don't know, you know, we Dickerson, right?

Yeah, he does most of the work with the rentals.

Right, so if we can find—

if we can talk to him, maybe he can give us an idea, like, is it really feasible to build this and you make some money but it's affordable for our citizens?

I think we need like Chris and Jesse when we go up with the league, right? The pressure needs to be put on the legislature of, you know, we're giving urban housing loans For Eagle Mountain and Saratoga, those people are getting breaks on their building these $800,000, $900,000 homes, right? So can we have something for revitalization loans? Where does our older communities— where's the help for those?

We have some smart people in our community. Maybe we form a new citizen commission to say to say, how do we do this? That might be a good thing to have someone research how we do this and have one of us act as a liaison to that and just get some great ideas. Sorry.

I did—

I mean, this is several months ago. I was talking with someone from Provo. They were telling me that Provo is doing some things. I mean, they've got the same situation, older neighborhoods, and they were working with, I think they said, the Church of Jesus Christ. Christ of Latter-day Saints was being very helpful in that revitalization process. But, and I don't remember the other, the other people that they were working with, but perhaps you can talk with them and see what they're doing as well. I believe they're partnering with them and just kind of get some thought behind that. But I know that there's a way that we can get there. We just don't know how to make it happen.

Yeah. Yeah, no. So, um, yeah, so this is a camera.

Go ahead.

So, Mayor, I can summarize what I'm saying because you wanted to, uh, you know, address some common themes. I've been taking notes here and typing in a little bit of thoughts that are coming to me that we either do and could look to expand or add to. So I want you all to I don't have the picture yet of time to speak, but I just want you to know I'm taking notes and I can help us summarize here at the end, and then maybe that's something we can turn into specific tasks and things that will ultimately go long-term.

Okay.

Or areas of focus and goals.

You got it. I think that would be great. Let me— okay, go ahead.

Last thing is, and I kind of wanted— I mean, I probably in my comments of whatever I should have I'm glad you put this in here, the more specific is, I mean, I've heard a lot from students at UVU, right? I have nieces and nephews, kids that age, right? There's no student housing. So to me, if we can encourage and work with UVU and the state to get student housing, and this is different from an apartment building that's built, and then the students One student signs a lease and everybody sublets from that other student. That's not the environment I want my children to be in. And a lot of parents, you know, we have some issues in some of those developments. So I would like to see an emphasis or somehow some collaboration to that project.

President Tomenis is all over this. She's fighting for this.

Is she?

Because I heard they They didn't want to use their land.

They don't want to use their land. They want to acquire some land and put student housing on it.

Right, I don't know that we need to have more of our housing taken away for expansion of UVU. I think UVU needs to bear some responsibility here for that and collaborate with us to create that environment.

Lynnae, are you suggesting like freshman dorms like BYU has or full-blown—

Yeah, I don't actually—

Any class.

Kind of what they did at the U.

University of Utah has—

I agree with the U.

You know why they want to do it? Graduation rates increase dramatically if they live on campus the first year.

Yeah, well, I'm sorry, my daughter's safer living on campus.

How many of you graduate within 6 years or 8 years?

I can't remember.

I think they go 8 here because of the mission.

But you know what I'm talking about, Ryan? Collaboration with the University of Utah. They have those beautiful new housing units there.

Is that similar to the Green, or is it— are there specific differences from the Green?

Well, I guess I don't know for sure, but it looks like it was similar to the Green.

Okay, so I think— I mean, these are a couple— there's a couple different conversations going here. We've got, you know, as far as revitalization, revitalization of neighborhoods. You've also got what you brought up as far as student housing. That takes you to a bigger conversation, is where is UBU going? Which we won't go into right now, but that bigger conversation is where are they going?

What should they do?

Well, you're on that board now, right? Didn't I see you assigned yourself to UBU?

Uh, I—

You're on there, brother. Oh, is it you, Mayor? It says Mayor Young, UDU Community Outreach. Oh, that's different.

So let me—

so yes, that's a whole other situation, but I think it's an important one because we're neighbors. to understand, you know, what's going on. So I'd like to see more emphasis on that. One last thing on this. There's an area that I think we need to go, which is we stopped 10,000 apartments on State Street. That was huge. We've got some things going on on State Street. The market for things going on on State Street is slow. because interest rates have shot up, or that's all that— I mean, interest rates have gone up, materials costs have gone up, labor's gone up. It's made that whole thing more difficult. But I think, you know, I've talked a lot about this, but I do think we need a next vision for State Street and where we're going with that. And so, we've laid some seeds and we've done some preliminary work on that, but I think that will be an area that this council will review.

Thank you.

We're going to do a plan of some sort for Stage 3 is what you're talking about? Yeah, as far as the commercial retail side. So anyway, and we could be here forever, but I think what we should do is just kind of sum this up and then I'd like to take all the things that are on that list and kind of boil those down. down to the priorities, and those are things we can work on in individual committees, we can work on at the board meetings, but just, you know, and we're going to work towards the priorities by the end of midday tomorrow. So anyway, if you want to do that, then I've got—

So I just had one. So on our— we have the legislative session coming up. Were you going to meet with our legislators locally? We need to have their ear because we're— I'm concerned about that HB 62 and all that stuff and what they're doing in the cramming housing down the road. So is that going to be set up before?

Yes, we're working on it.

It's only next week because they start a week from Monday, right?

So we, uh, we've reached out to all of the local legislators. Um, we've heard back from at least a few of them, 3, right?

Up to 6.

Yeah.

So 3 are— would like to meet with us via Zoom during our next council meeting. So they specifically needed it after 6, so we'd make it part of the regular council session. And then I also got a text this morning with confirmation that there's a staffer from Utah Agencies and Towns who can join us on Tuesday as well to kind of present and talk, give an idea of trend, overall trends they're seeing from cities. They are willing to kind of come and present on that. And then of course tomorrow morning, Jesse is going to spend some time talking about the research that he's done. The legislature never rests during between sessions.

Yeah, since we've been sitting here, we have about 50 new bills I have to read that were posted today.

Yeah, it invariably gets to be a bigger list every year. But so in other words, that's what we work on, and that's what we've got ready for this coming Tuesday.

Okay, no, that's good. Oh, that was good.

We did that last week.

We hadn't— we didn't have it on our agenda yet because we're just hearing back.

So are you good, or do you have anything else you want to— before I go down another path?

Well, maybe I can just say quickly here, so a couple of common themes. So one, neighborhoods, and I think a lot of this could fall under revitalizing neighborhoods. Maybe there's even a quick path to taking our neighborhood commission, which recently expanded, create like a subcommittee, maybe bring in additional professionals or something to meet with them. But so a couple of things I heard and/or wrote down, looking at being mindful about ADUs and the place That those— how that provides additional supply, how do we want to continue to look at that, manage that. I wrote down, in terms of rundown neighborhoods, we've actually started to do— to finish sidewalks and curb and gutter. Sometimes at that same time we'll We'll replace or add 2 main lines out in the road and then refinish the streets. So we have different places where essentially the sidewalk kind of ends nowhere and isn't even in front of certain houses. So we're creating a plan where that— where we can continue to knock those off the list and finish that. So that's a way I see us revitalizing neighborhoods. I see another one being trails, and Chris sent us an email this morning about a potential new funding source related to trails and sidewalks and transportation.

That's awesome.

That where we— so we could look at a potential study that could help support or accelerate And that could be another neighborhood revitalization thing. Jeff, you brought up the home— it's called the Hometown Initiative, My Hometown Initiative that Provo's doing, that they've been beta testing. West Valley has also done that. We have— it's called our Management Services staff assigned to fleshing that out and meeting with those city staffers.

And I think that's a great idea.

And then meeting with the church, I think there are some not-for-profit organizations like United Way that probably has some interaction there. And then I think under Captain Mark Sorensen, he's in charge of our NIT, and I think he does a lot, some of the stuff in principle that my hand, My hometown initiative does, but I think we can essentially add to it and get more people involved. Essentially add to— I think he's got a great customer service-oriented approach, solution-oriented approach, but he just— and he'll even solicit, I think, Josh, right, other people in the police department to help sometimes, but I think we can I think we can add to it by getting— having more contacts with neighbors, churches. I didn't see any— I'll add something to that.

We have some other great friends of other faiths that I think would love to be a part of that. I don't know if we have ecclesiastical leaders in every neighborhood that would be behind this 1,000%.

And I had a brief conversation with the Provo administration, I guess, former Provo administration, and they said that they had— I mean, it started with the predominant religion, but they said they had added 2 additional quizzes to help teach more and more about it. I think that's spot on. Short-term rentals, we know that we've had some presentations and some research into that, and so I think we will need to continue to try and flesh out research. What is the right kind of short-term rental legislation for? Specifically, CDBG is kind of our primary way. We have formula-funded federal dollars that are supposed to go towards neighborhood block grants. But yes, we can look at additional grant opportunities and/or partnerships. When I spoke to revitalizing our parks and our playgrounds and continuing that effort now that CARE has been readopted, we've already been working on Essentially, the idea of if or when CARE is readopted, what are the projects that we think are kind of next on the list chronologically. And with the idea in mind that CARE isn't the only funding source, we would go after federal dollars with the Land and Water Conservation Fund that helps to pay for about half the cost of our park improvements. And then there's other external grants and things too. In fact, one of those grants is what we've done to continue to expand the bike park that we have. It's called the Utah Outdoor Recreation Park. I think I mentioned briefly that we've had a very preliminary conversation with Bill Holgerstrom with United Way of Utah and Shane Farnsworth with the School District of Sharon Elementary, and if there's a way to partner with us and our library and our recreation and our parks to, to get use out of that facility. And they seem very interested in teaming up together. To essentially provide additional, essentially after-school programming or extracurricular programming.

That was one thing that the Latino community had mentioned, that they would love to have some classes, something in that area.

Yeah, that's great. Bill Holterstrom has a lot of experience in working with Prop 11 to do some more of that.

If it's possible.

We do some of it in the roundabout. And expand the park. And then, of course, I heard a lot about when we're looking at housing and even where it's zoned for it, more higher density housing, that we want to emphasize ownership if at all possible. That's what I had.

Neighborhood.

It's kind of related to the subject of affordable housing as well. I think you're— we're right at the point now where we've updated some of our associated master plans so that we're ready to update our impact fee rates and then the impact fee plans that go along with those. Be aware that every year that That's always under attack by the state legislature because they'll say that it's the city's impact fees, development connection fees, that is the reason why housing is not affordable.

So expensive.

So we're going to have some education and kind of lay out a timeline related to that. Ryan has had some kind of a Preliminary presentation from a group, a not-for-profit group that has some amount of state support related for people to get basement finishing loans so that people can rent out their basements as an ADU and have that pay for the cost of construction. So that it's— they are looking for interested cities in that. So it's something to look into, flesh out, see if there's interest or applicability for homes specifically. And then, yeah, with student housing, I think I mentioned to at least some of you, I met with Al Peterson about a month ago, and at least What he indicated to me was an interest in— indicated that UVU was interested in looking at student housing.

To me, he talked about potentially on UVU property, but I don't want to put—

I don't want to put property we want to acquire right next to the deadline.

Maybe somewhere else too, I don't know.

You might know more.

He at least indicated to me that there was potentially some UVU property.

Okay.

So, yeah, those are at least some of the things that either come to mind or that I heard or encountered in conversation.

Okay. Thank you, Brent, for that. And we'll continue to work to put this together and come up with a plan for these things. There's a lot of things.

And we do have break treats over here. On the table here. We ended up breaking early, but please, anyone feel free to grab a room.

Okay, this next part is more difficult, but I think it's something we need to address. I think as a City Council, it's just something we need to address. need to address if we're going to lead the city and if we're going to take the city in a direction that we need to do from a leadership standpoint as opposed to like an echo chamber. I mean, I think as, you know, as members of city council, we have a real responsibility to lead. And I think one of the things I want to talk about, and I— it's a sad It's a sensitive topic, so I'm going to, you know, do the best I can. But I think, you know, I think we've made a ton of success in terms of bringing together the city council and the city management. I think where we're at now is a light years from where we've been in the past. And I think— and so the other piece of that puzzle is the citizens. And the citizens that have elected us. And so, if the goal is to align the citizens, the city council, and city management, the citizens are an important part of that puzzle. You know, it's probably one of the most important parts of that puzzle. And so, with that in mind, I go back to, you know, what I said was our guideline for this is unity, build on a foundation of truth and honesty. So I'll just try and go into this. Our city motto is to create an environment where families can thrive, and we've adopted the national motto, In God We Trust. So we need to bring up the elephant in the room. We're going to come together as a council and make the best decision for the people we represent, and we can only do that from a foundation of honesty. Before the past couple For the last couple years, our state's been plagued with all kinds of misinformation. If we can agree on what is true, and there is a truth, if we can agree on what is true, what is true, and we can identify what is important, then we can have real conversations. Because if we're going all over the place on things that aren't true, then we're not really having real conversations and we can't really have any meaningful impact. We can't make any progress. And by getting this foundation of truth, we can have real conversations about how to best solve the problems that need to be solved. In that spirit, I'd like to talk about, you know, just some things that I've seen out there that I'm concerned about. And as we go through these, I'd like to understand I want to do this from a point of help me understand. I want to know if anyone on the council thinks these are issues, and if you think these are issues, what do you think the solutions are? So we're not sitting here a year from now not talking about the elephant in the room and talking about everything else, but these things are a thing of the past. I think that's a great question. If that makes sense. And so I'm just going to, you know, and I'm just going to present this one way. So this is a document from a website and it talks about how we need to fix the direction the forum has taken in the past year. And so I want to know if some of these are things that we need to fix or if they're just noise. One thing is loss of— and this is off this website. So this is loss of experience to the employees. This is waste of money and resources. These are claims. This is the direction we've been going on. We've got abuse of power is a path that we have— that we're currently going down. We've got lack of representation. We've got foster contention and divisiveness. These were like the five pillars on on this website, and then I thought, well, you know, hopefully that's in the past. Hopefully we can move forward. Hopefully we we can build in a positive way. And then I was given this letter that shows up in the Daily. Just when I thought, okay, maybe we were ready to unify and collaborate and work together, this letter— I'll just read it. It says, we the people elect officials to represent our ideas and concerns in government. However, sometimes officials use power we grant them to pursue personal objectives. So that's another question. Are there personal objectives that have been pursued? James Madison suggested that it is human nature for people to form alliances with those who are like themselves.

That's pretty normal.

And sometimes work against the public interest and infringe upon the rights of others. This is what, this is what happened in Orem. An alliance was formed, personal agendas pursued, and the public interest neglected. So I just want to know, What do you If think? the public interest was neglected. Agendas foster groupthink, obscure reality, and eliminate flexibility and common sense. I just want to know if reality was obscured, you know, if we're less flexible because of this, or if this didn't even have any common sense. But the bigger thing was officials often feel justified in using unethical methods. If there were unethical methods used, I'd like to know what they are so we can solve them.

Yeah.

Because that's a pretty severe accusation, that there's unethical methods. And it goes so far as that eventually these people lose the ability to distinguish between ethical and unethical because they're so confused, apparently. But then these people can use intimidation, manipulation, contention, confusion, promotion of false information, and deception, and make those acceptable. So in January, we'll have an inventory of council members who use honesty and common sense in making decisions that serve community interests. So, My question is not to just throw stones at what is said, but to see if— I mean, number one, if there's things here that are legit that need to be fixed, then we need to have a conversation about it. And if— until we— if we're going to bring the community together, then we have to really bring the community together. And anyway, that's, you know, as we look at different things, we're doing all these great things, infrastructure, finance, all the rest, but I think this city council needs to figure out how to bring the community together so we don't have this kind of contention and divisiveness. So anyway.

This is the point, as you describe what you're describing, I think one of Jeff's points was helpful for me to kind of feel the viewpoint of, I think it would be helpful to have all 7 of us come to a point where we understand more completely. He was mentioning we, in the past, possibly were waiting until we got 4 and then move. But I think it would be helpful to bring along others that all of us should be able to understand the whys of the decisions that are made.

Yeah.

We may not agree with them, but it would be nice to know the whys. And sometimes it might take us each of us in our own particular, whatever the circumstances of both would be, to understand that. So it might take just a little bit more, like working with children to help them walk, a little bit more time to train or work with.

Yeah.

And so I think that's more to build the unity you just described. I think that might be part of that process that was referred to. Jeff said, I haven't been on the council, so I can't say. I can't speak to it.

Yeah.

But I can only just from an outside citizen and now hoping to make a difference. So that team building, that growth, that clarity, the ideas rise to the top, all of those things that some of us have talked about would be a clarity to continue along the comment you just made. Is there an issue in the room? I would just say that it could be that team building, it could be that understanding of why so There aren't some left wondering, was there something shady? And I think it was more than anything, we're just not clarifying it or causing everyone to be aware of it before it occurred. So, and that when there's doubt, there's always a concern that was not correct because they tried to get it too quick, so it was shady. But I can see, so I think that might help all of the community to feel that we're all heard, we're all listened to. to would be a blessing, I think.

Okay.

Because I, as I have learned more and more of the processes that happen over the time as a citizen, but I didn't know, you know, the results of them, I just had an opinion based on outside viewing. As I've studied them more and more, it's helped create a clarity and more unity that I think we can continue to build on Outside, for the whole community to feel that awareness and that understanding that I'm heard and hey, all ideas matter and are thought rather than just a select few forward and hey, we're on our way.

Right.

And I think that was a perceived challenge, you know, in the newspaper and everywhere else as you're reading. Some citizens took that the wrong way with emotions of the past few years.

Yeah, no, I think that's great. And I think, I think what you're drilling to it is the why. Yeah, why, you know, if there's questions about what was done, then why was it done that way? Yeah, and I don't know what the best format is to— I think, you know, if we could have those conversations ourselves, because I think the question is how do we get that out to the community so the community understands the why behind, you know, what's going on or what has gone on.

Yeah, and I would actually push back on the narrative of that having happened in the way that it has been portrayed, right?

I mean, if you want to give me specific examples, I'll explain.

I'm telling you right now, if you want to give me specific examples of when this occurred, then we can talk about that, but this narrative of this happened. I just have a hard time when you don't speak with specifics. When I've talked to people and explained what has happened, then they're like, oh, okay, that sounds great. So I guess what I'm saying is let's speak from a position of facts, from the people who were involved. Instead of what you're reading in the newspaper or what you're seeing on social media.

Let me just try and bring that together. So I see what you're both saying, and I think understanding the why would connect the dots there, because truth can be a different reality to different people based on their set of facts. But if both sides understand the why, then that Can bring that together, right? Because right now we're in a situation where we have 2 different sets of facts and people like to fight to the bitter end to be right. But when people really understand the why, I think that's how you bring it together.

Exactly.

And really circumstances are different because quite frankly, I agree with you. When I first came on the council, that was— I thought that would be happening too. But then when you get in these— some of these decision-making Situations. I mean, I've had times I've called, you know, 4, 5, 6 people and I'm like, oh, hey, seems like we have a consensus, you know, maybe I didn't get a hold of everyone. So I'm not quite sure if you're saying, you know, we can't have— I mean, we need to have these communications. I mean, I've talked to people and they've disagreed with me and said, oh, I guess I don't like that, I'm not going to support that. But I've reached out. Now, have I received phone calls for things?

Not so much.

So the point I was just bringing is the discussion about clarity, honesty, and moving forward to help create a unity, not looking to the past of any specific individual past issue. Bring me a detail and you can discuss it. That's not what I think we're trying to get to. We're trying to get to in the future as we strive to be unified as a city, how can we begin that by showing that as a council to create this form of unity by discussing the why, understanding the process, and then when there's a challenge, it's transparent enough so that all of the little emotional factions that can be created within a city that have been created—

Yeah.

Can be minimized because we'll all be speaking, we all know The why. Here's the why. And it's a 1-7 council speak rather than 4-3, and then they see division.

There's 4 and 3.

What was the division? Why did the 3 not? And it will help create— help us all come to more consensus through dialogue and discussion.

And not that we all have to agree on it. No, no, no.

That's not what it is.

But it's understanding why. It's just being involved in the process of moving forward.

And I agree completely that we do not I have to agree with everything, and to my fault, I think Jeff will say, or any of you will say, I've never gone and lobbied any council member and said, you need to vote this way because da da da da da, and we've got to do this, and blah blah blah. I mean, tell them Jeff, I mean, or these guys, how many times have I called you up? I don't talk about the AYR. I'd like you to collect your information. Information and vote the way that you feel is best for the city. And so to that extent, that's why, you know, well, and, and, and this would be good for our conversation on the why sometime, but I think if people understood, you know, when we came into office, like when we were having this meeting when I was in 2 years ago, we had just inherited a moratorium that was coming up in a matter of weeks. If we didn't deal with that We're going to have the whole State Street event. We had like developers lined up to do projects. You know, we had this whole set of things that were breathing down our neck. And then we also walked into the bombshell of the school district. We simply 7-0 voted let's do a feasibility study because we want to check out Sears Point. Okay, probably that was the largest on the face of the earth. But because that brought out the Army against us, while we weren't even in that camp. We were fighting these other battles. And then about June, we finally caught up. Anyway, so there is a, there's a very entertaining why we went down the path we went down. But I think, to your point, well, I think, I think the difference of opinion is a great thing. I agree with that too. But I don't, I I'm saying people are dishonest and unethical and horrible people and beat their children or whatever. I don't think those kind of things help anything. And I think we've got a fair amount of that going on that we need to— if we're going to bring the community together, that's got to be resolved.

And that's even part of that discussion I brought up earlier in the roundtable is there's a certain decorum, there's a certain kind of personal respect that everybody is due, and we need to be very careful to be respectful. To be courteous, to be kind in that process so that we never ever cross that line or cross a boundary where there's a challenge that would occur that would cause any individual to feel like they were slighted, spoke about untruthfully, or— I mean, those things are not appropriate by any entity.

I'd take it quite a bit further. I'd say, you know, whatever we decide we want to do with that, council meetings, but to me, social media. Oh, in all lines. So until we're unified as a council, right, so that we're all, you know, basically putting out similar messaging because we trust each other and we have confidence in each other, until we can make that happen, the social media— I mean, this is a, a, uh, little magazine here, but I'm a huge fan of this magazine. magazine, but it was Deseret Magazine, State of Disunion. And I think that's a national thing.

It is.

To where people take a position and then demonize each other. And I think we're better than that. I don't think we have to be those people. But I think, you know, and we look at all these things that we can do as a council, we can do a lot of good things, but I think bringing the community together should be at the top of our list.

100%.

And, and to that point, voting in the, in, you know, what I said before, you cast your vote and then your sense of decorum is when you're out in the community, you're not on social media criticizing other council members for their vote.

I don't think many of us are on social media.

Yeah, I avoid that. You're always on social media.

There was some of that going on.

Agreed.

Again, agreed.

But I think it's again factions, it's packs and groups that have agendas that aren't my agenda or others. And sometimes they create an emotion and claim they represent one they don't, and they take it to a certain point and run a flag up. So I think there's on all sides of that issue, it became very emotional a few years ago. We need to try and create a Unifying, success, all these things we've talked about today and going forward.

Can I just say one thing you said to me, Chris, that I really appreciated? That, you know, when we were talking about this, I said, well, so do you agree then if someone comes to the city council meeting and in their public comment says derogatory, rude, mean, whatever word you want to use, adjectives for the council, is it appropriate It's appropriate to cut them off, you know, or to let— identify to them that's not the decorum we want in this chamber. And your response was?

Yeah, it's a point of order and it needs to— everyone needs to have respect on all sides. We don't disparage, we don't— it should be a respectful discussion.

You read that statement, but I don't know that we're active enough in saying point of order and stopping them in their tracks.

and say, thank you, your time's up.

I think Renee was making reference to Jesse's son or son-in-law's statistics that he did of how often we vote together.

Oh yeah.

In 2023. And, you know, the surprising thing is the one who agreed the most, the 3 who only, 92% of the time we were 100%, 92.1. And the ones who only casted one note, vote against the group were Jeff, Debbie, and David. The one who only cast 2 was me. 3 was Mayor Young and Renee Millett. And 4 was Terry. I don't think anyone would have guessed that. I think they would have guessed I was the 4 no and Terry was a never no, just because of the way the community perceived it.

Right?

Right.

And let's— I mean, the real elephant in the room is the only thing we've had a major disagreement disagreement on was the school district split and how the study got done. Was it a good quality study? And, you know, should we have done a study? Yes. Was— did— that not everyone agreed it was a good quality study, not everyone agreed it went through the right process, I think that's history now. The voters said no. And now why I want to make sure we're without client is they're talking about splitting some other way that I want to be at the table.

Yeah.

And for a while we were pretty bold Local, from the dais, of being anti— at least could be perceived as being anti-Alpine School District. But I think now we want to say, hey, we want to join with you in studying how this is done and not disparage any other elected officials. We don't expect them to disparage us in their meetings.

I'm going to disagree with that vehemently. I think we were pro-forum children.

I heard people speak anti-Alpine School District from the dais. There were people who spoke against the Alpine School District from the dais.

Then don't classify me with those people.

I didn't. I just said there were people speaking against Alpine.

I'm just correcting what you said so we have the other side.

What?

It was mostly Terry, sure.

Mayor, I think I gotta— I have to speak up just just because I feel like it. There were multiple times in multiple meetings where I felt the council didn't treat each other the way I would have expected the council to treat each other. Disrespectful, there was name-calling, there were just— there were eyes rolled, there was body language that I just felt was inappropriate. And I felt like they were the heated topics that there's no question that this council now can do better, and it all boils down to communication. And I think that by slowing down a decision when there's confrontation or there's disagreements and pushing it off, however we do it legally to push it to the next agenda item so that there can be more discussion, I think could solve the problems. But I feel like the, the comments of decisiveness, I think you earned them, and I think that by But I think that they can easily be fixed moving forward.

Yeah, yeah, no, and I, yeah, I appreciate that and I respect that. And I never approve, you know, people talking down to other councilmen or rolling eyes or whatever. I think, you know, there should be that respect amongst the council. I will tell you, as far as the idea of pushing things off. If I were to go through all the different issues that we had and that every single issue had to be dealt with within the next 2 weeks because of this deadline or that deadline, it was seriously, you know, you really— let's drink from the fire hose.

Yeah.

Because there were so many different things and this had to happen before that could happen, before this happened, before that happened. And a lot of things that we accomplished on that list are because we had to jump in and make it happen. So that's my defense of why some of that went that way. Sure.

Anyway. And I'm going to push back again because I really— it really bothers me when it's the council, the council. Say who did it, right?

Someone needs to own it.

Well, I'll share right now, every one of you at a certain time made a comment that I didn't feel was the most respectful towards each other. It just— I mean, whether it's tone, language, the octave in your voice. There were just times where sitting in the audience as an exec staff member, I was embarrassed that we're having to listen to these conversations. Yeah, well, not at the same time, but over the course of the last 2 years, there's been at least one point with each one of you that I felt, hmm, maybe I wouldn't have said it that way. And I don't think it's wrong to call it out. I just feel like it's emotion.

I think it's fine.

And we, yeah, like I say, we were on a very quick timeline. There were a lot of things that had to happen.

Yeah.

I mean, you know, yeah, I mean, you can go through that list of a lot of different things that happened, and most of those, you know, we had to get this done before this could be noticed, before this, before that, blah blah blah, or it wasn't going to happen. Even simple things like with the Planning Commission, you know, early on. I mean, when the Planning Commission— when we got word that the Planning Commission was planning on not meeting, that would have forced us to not be able to put on the State Street Master Plan. So we had to take decisive action or we wouldn't have been able to change the State Street Master Plan.

3 independent threats.

There was all this— I mean, for me, we just signed up to help the city, and then all of a sudden we've got this incredible amount of stuff going on. But I totally agree that there should be a quorum and there should be the best communication possible.

There's no question in my mind, Mayor, with the 2 new council members, we have a completely different council. And we're only exchanging 2 members, but it It changes the whole dynamic, and I think that we'll see that in our very first meeting, and it's going to be refreshing, and I think it's nowhere but up from here.

Thank you.

Mayor, I think this— first of all, for a staff member to be willing to talk to the board and be honest is a wonderful thing. I saw Josh, you rattling your head in agreement.

Just my little quick takeaway that I'd add to that is if I treated people the way you guys were treating each other sometimes, I'd be in trouble.

And so, so that's why—

that was my only takeaway, is like, man, if my people on the street were talking to community members the way these community members were talking to each other, there'd be some— I mean, there'd be some accountability. But then it was just kind of like— and I get that it's a different dynamic with police departments. It's like, you're the example. If you're the board, you're the example.

And—

I just—

I just—

How many of our staff members actually watch your city council meetings?

Well, we trust the leadership. That's why I feel comfortable speaking up, because I know that you know where my perspective is coming from, and it's to, it's to make us all better and to be much more professional and to be, to do the right things all the time for the citizens. That's our, that's our whole goal.

Well, I just would like to add, I think, and I speak for myself, I assume I speak for you, I'm coming to this council council to presume the best intent of all of us and to work together going forward. I'm not going to address whatever happened in the past. I don't think it does us any good. I think we can point fingers and point blame, whatever. I am here to presume the best intent, and I think that our unity will be picked up on by the community. So as you talk about getting the message, they will see it because they will see how we interact with each other without us even saying anything. They will see how we're reacting to each other. So I think our example, like you're saying, is watched and people see it.

And as they see that and see us interact, that will speak for itself.

Yeah, I agree.

There's no words we can say. There's actions we can take over the next few months that will convince the city, the community, that we're different.

Yeah.

May I make one comment, uh, from a procedural point of view? The, uh, there's an amendment to the Open Meetings Act, uh, and I think it's going to be fast-tracked because it went through committee unanimously. That the city council can actually meet together to talk about city council issues, not city issues. And so I think this conversation could be had with the council without being an open meeting, so you can talk about examples or things of that sort where if there's specific issues you can work them out, or different reform things you want to talk about. I think that's going to be available for you probably in the next 2 or 3 months.

Thank you.

that'll be done in a closed-door session?

Uh, no, it doesn't. It's not considered a closed meeting.

Okay.

And, uh, so that's one of the changes that I think will be passed in this legislature, that the, uh, a legislative body can meet to discuss the issues of the body.

So you're saying it's not a closed meeting, but it is a private meeting?

It's a, it's a private meeting, but it's, it's not considered a meeting under the Closed Meeting Act.

Wait a second, I don't get it.

So, uh, one of the— And I think that obviously, just so you know, this conversation is probably happening today at a lot of city council, right? Because we see it throughout the nation. We see it on a state level. We see it on a local level. And so, you know, I think everybody says we can all be better. And I think that our legislature has probably had the pushback to say, let us meet together as a council so we can talk about these issues and we can say, well, do here's an example, without trying to embarrass a past city council member or anyone else. So I think that's going to be available, and I hope that this council would take advantage of it.

That would be extremely valuable because I've always thought, okay, the council solves problems through communications, but we're not allowed to communicate. Yeah, unless we're in a heartbeat. Right.

And one of the reasons obviously bills are amended is because It's to solve problems and maybe problem issues like this where the council can meet together privately.

Not—

you can't take a vote or discuss agenda items, but items regarding how to operate your forum.

Yeah, well, we're a new council and I love what you've said, Jan, is that, you know, as we come together as a new council, I think that we all are on the same page that we want what's best for our citizens, we want what's best for the community, we want what's best for our wonderful city employees who are building a better Orem. And I just, I see this— thank you, Mayor, for your leadership in bringing this forward so we can have this discussion, so that we can all look at each other and say, We're a team. Let's work together. We're not always going to agree, but we're a team, and we need to set the example as leaders. And let's move forward, we have a team, and work together in unity, just as you said.

Thank you.

Go ahead, Tom.

No, I didn't have a question.

I'm just stretching.

I have something I'd like to say.

So I feel like there's still an elephant in the room. Um, I feel like what you're referring to was 2022 and the issues that we went through with Prop 2. Is that— am I correct there?

Well, I guess I'm looking at from the day that council started, so the last 2 years maybe. It wasn't just the last— and I don't have the specifics, but they were More prevalent in 2022, I think you could say.

Yeah, I mean, I feel like that's what you guys, you two are saying anyway.

Yeah.

My issue is what happened in 2023. To me, that's the elephant in the room. I was looking forward to 2023 because I was not running for city council, but the campaign was led against The rhetoric was against me, but I wasn't up on the debate stage.

I felt the same thing about me, by the way, Renee, on the other side.

I didn't have a microphone that you could relate, right?

Yeah, yeah.

And I don't know that it was necessarily the candidates. I believe firmly that it was a group that was supporting the candidates. I felt their attacks were brutal, personal, dishonest. I mean, I could use these words, right? How many times have we seen that op-ed rearranged by that same individual, right? And it just shocked me that that was the narrative stating that their purpose was to unify Orem. And I'm thinking, how do you start from a position of slander and maligning someone who doesn't even have a voice in the debate? And I mean, I was called unwilling to work with others, that I was a secret combination, that I was unethical, dishonest, a liar, you know.

I'm sorry.

With no response, no ability to respond. So I guess one of the things that shocked me is, I mean, the same thing that I think Jeff called for in one of the debates, is that those— that rhetoric was not disavowed by people in this room. So I would hope moving forward that they would disavow that rhetoric and that group in particular. Because if you've noticed lately, it's still there and it will continue. And if we want to unify as a council, we can't have supporters putting that narrative out and creating that type of division in our community. We need to have a call to, you know, in the community and truth and fact-based information in the community.

But that's where you are.

So, I don't know, that's— I, you know, I guess I had hoped that with the election that that stuff was over. This thing that the mayor read was after the election, right?

A couple weeks ago.

So, We can say we don't control, but we do. You know, we can do what we can do in this room, but we can also do a lot of good outside this room. I mean, just like I did when I talked to Brandon about when we made that comment about getting the city center. You know, I had a lot of people, my supporters, that didn't want to have that money. We didn't need a new city center. All, you know, all the things. Took the time to meet with them and to say, one of the Let me tell you what's going on in the city. Let me give you the facts here. I mean, I think allowing that to continue in our community is not going to help our community, and it's going to further divide the council.

And I think that goes to what Chris and the mayor were both saying. I'm sorry I've not heard that said about you, all of those things that you just said.

All over social media.

I don't go to social media.

A lot of people do. Well, that's what I'm saying is if that's the group that's supporting you, you need to—

I don't think there's a group supporting us. I think there's people that say they support us and then trying to tear on others. And it's not our view or our opinion. And as you're describing, you're being centered out and people are telling lies about you. I could say the same about myself. We all could say We're public figures, we're all going to get that same rhetoric of untrue—

I'm sorry, I'm going to push back on that.

I'm saying there's a rhetoric in the community to the point of where people are saying the same kind of things. I'm for 10,000 people. I'm for tearing people out of their homes. And that was another group that's a community group that had the same exact agenda on the opposite side. And I'm trying to say that if we work together and show the community that we are leaders and not respond to every naysayer or every other wind that goes about, that we'll be more unified, as the mayor's just described in a wonderful way. We need to work on the unity, and whatever's in the past, we need to know that none of us here I don't think any of us here have a desire to have any one of us maligned, hurt, or have an untruth told about us. And we're not the author of any of those, but I think we can stand and say we're all leaders, respected leaders, in the sense that we were elected. So respect the citizens who took the time to vote. And so then we need to now be very careful of how we help so that we are in a public setting, we're never at a point where we have the eye roll, we have the shrug, we have a demeanor that isn't appropriate in a public setting. If we want to have a private discussion, when we get in a public setting, we need to be very careful that there's decorum, there's professionalism, there's a lack of trying to cause harm or hurt or have your view described in a way that would harm anyone else. You can have a difference of opinion, and we always need to respect each other's opinions.

We can do it respectfully.

Right.

I'm not even— and I'm afraid maybe I didn't—

maybe it wasn't clear.

I'm not talking about our relationships with each other. I'm talking about these community groups. Yeah, community groups that spend $30,000 sending out mailers for you 3.

Or another $150,000 on another for the other side.

But that's not the one you're talking about.

There's all kinds.

So rather than cause this council meeting we're trying to discuss, we can't control media, we can't control the other in that form that you're describing. That's freedom of press and they're discussing things that— and I don't follow on social media what they're talking about, but it's small.

I don't know what the— exactly where the solution falls. But we've got to do the best we can.

I agree.

The message going back to our groups, our supporters, that this is not okay.

I mean, it's the disavowal that Jeff called for, right? You called for 3 candidates to disavow the one group. That's what I'm— that's what I'm talking about. Can't people disavow the other group?

So you're specifically asking us to disavow Stronger Born?

Yeah, they're stronger or one and the same.

Yeah.

And are we equally as willing to disavow the other group?

Because the other group didn't disavow it.

They posted it. Tom was dragged through the mud several times. And that was in the newspaper. It was in people's mailbox. So I think that's what the mayor is trying to get us to. The point is, is we need out as a council working together Not always agreeing, but working together, communicating.

Oh, geez.

Oh my gosh.

And then if we see these things, if I see somebody saying something about Dave Spencer, I need to stand up for him and say, Dave never said that, Dave never did that. Or, Lene never said that or never did that. I think we have that opportunity moving forward to have each other's backs. And, you know, there, I mean, I I don't see us being able to solve all the world's problems on social media.

But I—

Sorry, I can't ask you for that.

No, no.

But the fact that, Mayor, you said something, it's not just an Oron problem. This is the world that we're living in.

So what can we do in Oron to unify our community?

I think it was your initial point.

That's exactly the point.

And so I, you You know, I don't— we've got people on extremes on both sides, and then there's a whole bunch of stuff in the middle, and a whole bunch of opinions and truth, and there's a whole bunch of untruths that are— yeah, they're everywhere. So I see our role as a city council, and I'm accepting your invitation, and I'm accepting Chief Sanderson and Chief So Adam's invitation to do better. I will do better at trying to be a better example of—

This is one of them.

Working together as a council. That we're a united body of one, 7 members, a united body of one. Even though we don't always agree, and I'm going to reemphasize that, we don't always want to agree, but we can work together as one.

And I think that's all great. I agree completely. And I think if there is a place for us to push back on the social media or on the community part, the issues can be debated at any time.

Sure.

That's fair.

But just say people are unethical or dishonest or, you know, these descriptions that just are not true.

Exactly.

That's what we need to have each other's back, right?

100%.

And that's kind of like what Jen's— well, somebody else's conversation, but your husband came up and talked to me after the inauguration. He said, Jen's coming into this totally open. She doesn't want to take all these different things she's been told. She wants to get to know you personally, and she wants to form her own opinion. And I think that's what ignited the interview. Hope he doesn't get ticked off.

May I add something, maybe a practical suggestion that you all might consider?

Practical's always good.

That's maybe something action-oriented that you could do as a— And I'll even share one of a former element in the room. So when the former city manager, Jamie Davidson, when he moved on, got with our executive team the very next day, and as we were talking about how to bring all the staff together and show that we want to do what our governing body wants us to do. We got together and we came up together with essentially a statement that we sent out to all of the employees that said, hey, look, we're here for Warren. We support our mayor and council. We want to continue to be a part of providing, you know, city services and stuff. And And we wanted to just show that we trusted each other, we supported you. And I mean, there was no— I don't think there was any sort of denial of any problems or issues. It was, no, we want to come together and move forward.

I mean, I don't know if—

I mean, speak freely, everyone on exec staff. I don't know if you got questions or concerns from that from staff, but I felt like it was by and large net positive and helpful to show kind of, you know, some amount of unity and at least the intent and desire to come together and move forward. And I had staff report to me that back when I got to them, Because otherwise, it seemed to assuage fear, doubt, speculation, accusations. So perhaps there's an opportunity in this retreat where, you know, by coming out emphasizing, you know, your goals, your areas of focus, maybe some sort of statement to go along with that. Maybe that's at least an aspect, a tool of practically moving towards a solution.

That's a great idea.

What if we passed a resolution, sent it to the press and encouraged them to publish it, to say that this has been a heat— there's been heat In warm the last little bit. We encourage all social media to give us a break for a few months. Show us how we're going to— let us show you how we're going to work together as a team.

Exactly.

Let us show you that we're going to work together in harmony, that we're going to be respectful from each other, and just give us a social media break. Do a social media fast, somebody else said. Do a social media break for a few months. Let us show you we can work together. And then if you have concerns, our meetings are going to be held a little bit different. We're not going to have clapping and cheering and booing. We're going to have a spirit of decorum. And just give us a report card in 3 months. Don't give us a report card this week.

No.

Let's show—

just show you how Mayor Young and Jeff Lampson and Lynnae and David and Tom and Chris and Jen can work together. We're going to work together. Please go easy on us for a few months. Now, they may or may not, but I think the fact that we make that statement will be positive.

So I agree with all that except, we need to talk further about the clapping, booing, whatever. Because when I— before I got elected, I went to some city council meetings, and I don't know how many times Mayor Brunson was pounding with his gavel. No, yeah, you know, people were shouting. I mean, he's think we had issues? No, it was a circus.

Yeah.

And that was when— and so when I came in, I thought, okay, these people have taken the trouble to come out, whoever they are, whichever side. We have people on both sides.

I think it's a no-brainer to say no booing.

No booing, absolutely. But what my original direction was, was you can clap as long as you don't get carried away.

Yeah.

Just so you can basically have your voice be heard. You have the freedom of speech. You can be clapped in a congenial way for whichever side, wherever you're at, but no booing, no getting carried away.

I'm not going to argue with that. I wouldn't do it that way, but you're right. Mayor Brunson was pretty hard-headed, hard-fisted, stopped the clapping. I don't know where the proper medium is, but I think we can kind of limit it if we feel it gets out of hand.

Yeah, but again, but I think the citizens' voice needs to be heard because that wasn't the thing that for a long time where people would come out to meetings and wouldn't feel heard. This gave them a way to be heard, but not in a crazy way. But you have to consider, I mean, we had some pretty crazy meetings, right? But we did have generally— I mean, I never grabbed the gavel once.

I know somebody encouraged you to last meeting. Mike Kirshenbaum asked you to grab the gavel. You can strip that out of it, but I think the overall culture We're trying to work together as a council, and we had a— hopefully by the end of tomorrow we still feel that way. We've had a productive retreat. We want to work together as a group, and we invite all people to watch. I don't know how we word that.

Maybe— And I'd like to add to it. I just, as you know, we are committed to thinking the best of each other, to presume positive intent. We encourage our community to do that as well. We encourage you to stick to the issues. And stay away from personal attacks and character assassinations or whatever in any form.

Right.

Yeah, well, not just on city issues but in your neighborhood.

Yep.

Right.

And can I say too— oh, I'm sorry.

No, I'm—

I was just gonna say, you know, just for the record, I mean, I've spoken candidly here, but just so I can get it on the record, right, I've reached out to Chris, I've met with Chris, Jen, congratulated them on their win.

Right?

We're going to lunch. We've had lunch. I mean, you know, I'm approaching this with a spirit of collaboration, a spirit of getting things done for the residents of Forum. I'm not in this for me. I'm not in this for, you know, any one individual, but for— The Lions.

The Lions.

For that resident that wants to be heard. So, you know, to I feel I people who know me, I just tell you I like to get things out there so we can talk about them and then put them behind us. You know, so we said it. Now I agree with you. We're going to move forward. We're going to work together, and that's really what we're doing here. It's not about personality differences or you know it's about how we vote. Like I said before, how we vote. We vote up there. I think it's inappropriate to criticize people when we're on the dais when we're there, you know, or even— we just respect the way that we each choose to represent because, wow, isn't it fantastic that we're not 7— that we are having these debates and we're not 7-0 all the time? I mean, the easy votes, it's easy, but some of the different ones, yay, I'm so glad we're having those discussions.

Part of the challenge that I also Was trying to describe when I was talking about the quorum and the council meetings that I attended or watched when we have either clapping and also the booing was that a citizen with a difference of opinion would be snarked at, and even I heard a council member or two kind of snark at them back in a way that wasn't appropriate, meaning that sometimes when you clap or you boo, if you have that problem. process there, and there can be one side, and sometimes the council, if there's a difference of opinion, they can bring their group of citizens that agree with them, and it can become—

A pep rally.

Rather than this, where we all have a voice, we all feel safe, we all can speak our piece and know that our piece was heard and have confidence that no one's going to out them. or out boo and make me feel like I'm a dirty dog because I came and even said what I feel. And I'm entitled to my feelings and my expressions in that public setting.

Right.

And so that's the only reason why I said I'm thinking about clapping or booing is a challenge, only because I'm thinking of the least among us that would be in that setting and might have a total difference of opinion, but they're very respectful respectful and state their opinion, we should listen with kindness and tell them thank you for your opinion. And when there's clapping or there's a group on one side or the other, I don't know that we could have that same form of respect that allowed the least among us to feel. And that's what my hope would be. I'm here to represent for the citizens of Orem those who would not feel like they They'd come because they would be clapped or booed. Yeah, but I want them to come so we can hear their viewpoint and respect them even though we differ.

Right.

No, I appreciate that. I, um, I don't think there should be bullying. I don't think there should be catcalling. I don't think there should be any of that. And for the most part, I don't think there is. Um, I would— but I would like to have— and we can work on defining this— I would like to have a defined class it's okay, just because I think that gives people a little bit of effort to come out to let their voice be heard. You know what I mean? But there's a way to do that, and I think it's just, you know, not clapping crazy.

Right, because I've seen both. Crazy clapping over one issue that was really heated, and a few council members liked that idea, and then there was a few that nobody clapped, and then he just held out, and that was almost as good. So we have to be careful because it can turn into a Just like gestures or feelings or respect, it's our 7 approach to say that we respect all. Even though we all could have a difference, each one of us have a difference.

Right, so it's a balance between letting your voice be heard and being respectful. I think we can come up with that. That's what I'm hoping for. Yeah.

So I haven't said anything, but I will now. So, on the website that your picture, your picture, your picture was on, said we need council members that'll bring integrity to the council.

It's not mine.

And to me, that is a carrot and a stick circle, because basically you're saying we were dishonest. No, it's not—

no, no, when you said you, you got to be careful. That wasn't us.

No, no, no, but your picture was on— they were supporting you, so you should have denounced that or something.

No, you don't think they bring integrity. They weren't saying you didn't.

No, but that they bring integrity to the council. And then, I mean, my thing is we need council members who are committed to working together with so-and-so to fix the direction of where Forum has taken in the past year. They're uneducated. I'm sorry.

Both sides are.

So you're taking the highest emotion of no one?

No, I'm just saying me. I'm just talking to me because I, I didn't endorse any candidate. Well, I wasn't out knocking doors.

Oh, your wife was though, so you got to be real careful what you say.

But it wasn't me.

Well, Chris, okay, it wasn't me.

But you want to bring my wife in it?

I mean, whatever things, you got to be real careful.

I understand how you're saying, but you're talking about unifying.

You got to be strengthening.

I understand.

No, no, no, no, I'm not trying to divide. I'm just saying my problem was I've known Jen and you for a long time. And to me, that was a— that was just like a dagger in the heart saying, Dave, you don't have integrity, you're dishonest. I'm thinking, whoa, what have I been trying to do for 10 years with Tom, right? Trying to make Warren better. And it's easy to say things in the campaign, but my thing is, you know, this is just garbage to me, right? So I can put it past—

But every year we've had this.

But it's a lot longer list.

One of the best places to live.

So my thing The thing is, if— it's like a mob mentality on the— and I'm not on social media, but I see the things and I see the posts and I see certain husbands or wives comment. I'm thinking, and putting thumbs up here and there. I'm thinking, you know, where are our values? Let's get back to our values. If we're all supposed to be good Latter-day Saints, members of the church, we can't have this.

We can't be part of this.

That's right. I agree, but I didn't have any part in the other side. But if you see something wrong and your face is on it, you need to speak up. Defend the little guy, right? Same thing.

Well, and we— I think individually, I'm just going to speak for myself, but I did talk to these people and said, you know, we're running on a platform of civility, and some of the things The things that you're doing and saying are not very civil. I need to document that.

But you could have gone on Facebook and said, I don't agree with this.

I, yeah, I try to avoid Facebook.

So do I.

But I'm just saying, you know, moving together, I mean, Jen, I've worked with you for a long time with OTAC and everything, right? And same with you, Chris, you're my state president. So my thing is, I think what the mayor was alluding to, if you don't think we're honest or we don't have integrity, why? And that's sort of what he was talking about with these, you know, loss of experienced employees. We lost those experienced employees, they resigned. And you know what, I think the city is 100%, 200% better this year than it was last year. What's the common denominator? Figure it out, right?

I think that's—

ask the employees. It's a totally different vibe. You know, Teresa gets to be the city recorder.

Why?

Because we gave her an opportunity to spread her wings.

I think that's a great point.

wings, you know. So that's what we're talking about, right?

Right.

You know, the firemen and the police, all the employees, it's a totally different work environment. It's like a breath of fresh air, and I like it. You know, the first year was very rough. This last year, I thought it was great. I thought the employees— I mean, people are friendly. The babos—

I mean, it's great.

So I think we needed to put this behind us, and then let's just move forward and and work as a team. But, you know, to go back to the, you know, you pride yourself on integrity, right? If you don't have integrity, what do you have?

Well, that's all of us.

Nothing.

Right, that's all of us.

So, you know, that hurt me. And I'm like, I'm a big boy, but we will move on, right?

Agreed.

On the same side as well.

Same thing.

It goes both ways.

We were the recipients.

But my face wasn't on their website saying Chris is running for office.

We're not saying you, and I don't think that's what the mayor is saying either. I think what he's saying is let's lead out in unifying.

I agree.

By setting the example of unity.

I agree. But if we see something wrong, we need to be vocal and say that's wrong. That's all I'm saying. Because if you can't watch out, if you don't have your back, then so be it. I mean, people said I said a lot of things, and you and I had a discussion discussion.

You did.

And I never said—

and we had a discussion.

Yes.

And I, and I met with Jeff.

I think I've said the most things on social media.

So I mean, I get it.

Yeah. And there has to be a trust and a friendship because we're not all going to agree, right? But we need to work together because what is the common goal? To make Warren the best.

Nobody said their goal for running office was to stick it to the other guy, right?

No.

Everyone mentioned money, I get that.

But other than that, everyone wants to make the best they can, right?

We have different views on how to do that, right? But I think we can agree on civility, etc.

Exactly.

Sorry, the very—

kudos to Brent and exec staff for what you've done this last year.

Amen.

I mean, you guys, that was tough. That was a tough situation, and you guys rallied.

I was just going to say the very best way from my perspective for you all to move forward is because it's out, we've had these kind of conversations, you've had them in the past. If there's something that pops up, address it in real time and get it fixed and don't let it fester because—

Right.

A thousand paper cuts, you finally bleed to death.

Yeah.

I think we've got a lot of good ideas here. And I like what Brent said, I like what you guys have said. Yeah, I like what everyone said. So if we can consolidate this down to some actionable items, and because I think, you know, and that's why I want to go through why you ran, because I think we are all on the same page.

Right.

We want what's best for Warren, and we've got talented, competent people on this council, so let's work together to make it work for us as a community.

So then if I can say, we took it away. So in exec staff and in this, you know, city managers and management services departments, we've turned the name into a verb. It's called peatify.

Oh no.

Yes.

You gotta pronounce it right. Someone else is gonna hear about the peatify.

So that's why we have Pete here. So we've got a recording, we've taken notes, we can start to put together some of the ideas that you guys have even said and turn that into a statement and, and, uh, and, and Pete-ify it. And then I also heard here in terms of resolution or defining decorum, defining what is respectful, we may need Steve, your help in starting to create a definition for what that means.

Captain Rome, Chief Rome.

Chief Rome.

Chief Rome.

Yeah, sorry.

So Steve, maybe I can give that as a task to you. And then I'll just say the other thing that maybe would be good to keep in mind, and to me is still kind of practical, but I guess I've worked for a lot of passionate leaders, and passionate leaders get a lot done. And so we were able to get a lot done because we got behind passionate leaders that truly did. I mean, we talked about that had 98% agreement and wanted what was best for and truly, I completely believe. Everyone wanted beyond themselves to help the forum and help the residents. And so that's something that I've also tried to make a point to make sure that our employees know is that they are working for people with good intent that aren't self-serving, that are passionate leaders, and that being a passionate leader is okay. That's not a bad thing. So I guess, I guess then I would say that as a city manager and what I would encourage our exec staff to do is to continue to kind of send that message to our employees as well.

Can I say one thing? I'm just going to say what Dave Spencer said. This right here, our Accomplishments that we have done these past 2 years. So yes, our staff has really been integral in making this happen. Appreciate all— everything you've done. I see my position is not to do what you do. I'm not supposed to come micromanage you. I'm not supposed to come— but I'm supposed to come to you and say, this is the direction I want to have Orem go. How can we do it? You guys know the rules. You guys know the money. Brandon, can I grab the money to do this? You know, how do we do that? So this is what got lost, in my opinion, this last year. These accomplishments got lost. The narrative was not about— I mean, we can talk about we're going to move forward, we're going to unify. Wow, I felt like we were. That's my point right now. I don't feel like there's a dysfunction that we have to solve here. I think last year, my first year on the council, and it wasn't because of Prop 2, my first year on the council was rough because I was coming as a resident advocate to now be the boss over some people that disagreed with me when I was a resident advocate. Last year was amazing. I have never felt I felt such unification with our staff, such positivity with our staff, so many ideas that happened that got lost in the whatever of a campaign, of social media, of whatever. I think Pete's done a remarkable job of putting together our messaging for our residents, and that's what I think we need to— I don't think we need to fix I think our— what we've had happen has been just wonderful this last year. I shouldn't say— you always have to fix things, Lynn, I'll walk that back, right? I think we need to keep going in this direction because, you know, I'm holding up our accomplishment because this is a video, right? But I'm holding up our accomplishments of 2023. Now, and I'm just going to repeat this, yes, you guys made it happen, but there's some vision that is our responsibility as a council to give that direction. I could go through here and look at the things that would not have happened but for the leadership of the council last year, this last year. We can separate those if you want.

I don't want to.

I like being a team player here and continuing with what the past people in the past did moving forward. I don't care about the recognition. But let's at least recognize that, that 2023 was a year of great things happening in Orem. We unified as a council in our mission to improve Orem and to move Orem forward. Let's keep doing that. That's my thought.

And I agree with that, and I agree that, you know, from a city council mayor perspective, that's probably one of the things that is the most disappointing to me is I felt that in 2023 and 2022, for that matter, except this political issue, we rocked it. I mean, we made a lot of really, really good things happen. But your average citizen that lives on social media doesn't have that perspective. And so that's why I'm saying we need to come together as a council and get that messaging out. Because, you know, all these awards, Chicorams winning all these different great things that are happening, and you could I mean, Pete and I talk once a month and I have to shoot that video, but he's just always like, oh my gosh, we are on such a fast track, we've done so many positive things. And so that's where I think the truth and the facts of what's going on aren't really out there like we'd like them to be. And that's what I'd like to see change too. And I think you guys can help that, everybody can help that.

And I'm excited about your enthusiasm, quite frankly. That's— it's so wonderful to have these ideas come to the council I love the things that you said, what you ran on, what you want to do. I'm all in. I'm all in.

Hey, Chief Rell, do we need to— do we need to extend or whatever the closed door for tomorrow?

Yeah, if you want to just do another motion saying let's move the closed door to— I'm just looking at the agenda for tomorrow.

Maybe if you don't do that, then you can't have a closed door, right?

Because it's what day?

What's that?

You don't do that then. it's done.

Yeah, because you can't—

just to be safe, proceed. I can make a motion to move the close of the meeting to 2:30, 7:00.

Yeah, 2:30, 2:30, 3:00. Let's see, where's the— oh, 2 PM, because that's the city roundtable.

Yeah, you can do it at 9 AM.

Oh, 2 PM, because that's our roundtable.

Well, uh, Jesse talked to me a little bit earlier You're saying that his portion may not be as much time as he has on there, so—

It can be zero time, actually. I'm busy on social media.

We can move to 2:30 and then we can change it, can't we?

Yeah.

Thank you.

Oh, I'd rather do it in the morning.

Okay, I'll make a motion.

7 AM.

2:30 at our roundtable.

No, you want—

I want to do it.

We can make more time in the morning.

You can do it at 9:30.

It doesn't matter.

9:45.

Close doors at 9:20 tomorrow, Saturday.

Second.

Wait a second.

Wait.

Um, we can shift it again tomorrow.

I'm open to whatever if you want to do it.

Well, let's just around it.

Okay, let's go with the 9:45. Okay, so 9:45, is that good?

Okay, you can move it again if you want to.

2 seconds.

I second it.

All right, all right, all right, all right, all right. All right, well, we're running behind, but that's kind of a good sign because we have a lot of words to talk about.

Do we need to move to adjourn this one? Yeah, I think we adjourn until tomorrow.

Second.

Hang on.

So anyway, I do think we made a ton of progress today. We talked about a lot of really good things and, uh, So moved, Mr.

Mayor, that we adjourn for the day.

All set with that.

Hi.

Hi.

Hi.

So I just took a bunch of key points out of the book and threw them on slides. I'm not going to read everything that's up here. If you haven't read the book and you want to read these as you go along, you'll pick up— you won't need to read the book pretty much. I've summarized most of it. But takeaway from the introduction was Number one job factor, or number one factor in job satisfaction, is whether or not we feel appreciated and valued for the work we do. This became very apparent to me when one of my employees came to me a couple years ago and said, I just don't feel like my boss appreciates me. And the reason that stuck out is because I knew darn well his boss appreciated him, but the boss wasn't good at showing it. And that's an another reason I wanted to go through this book and I'm going through it with my management team right now. Appreciation is why people leave their jobs because they don't feel appreciated. It's the number one factor. These are things employees want to know most and Stephen Covey's quote is in the book, next to physical survival, the greatest need of a human being is Psychological survival. To be understood, to be affirmed, to be validated, to be appreciated. And they want to know that their managers are genuinely interested in their well-being. Why is this a good investment? I never really thought about it in this way, but it's directly related to employee engagement. If you have an employee that at work doesn't seem to be engaged, they're distant, they're complaining, they're not getting involved, The main reason may be is they're not appreciated, and I myself had never really thought about that. So if you're seeing employees that are not engaged, possibly they they need to be recognized a little bit more for what they're doing. One thing I wanted to say as I go through this: please jump in at any time with any points you've come across that you want to add or talk about, and I'm just here to morph.

So if we go back to the introduction, I thought it was interesting that, you know, everybody being in business and having employees, you know, in the introduction it said, but the number one factor in job satisfaction is not the amount of pay you receive. And I thought that was interesting because a lot of people say, ah, I can make more money, I'm leaving. But it really— maybe it's the result of—

It's a lot of things.

not feeling appreciated, and then maybe the money factor is— maybe that's the added nail in the coffin, maybe, I don't know. But I thought that was interesting.

Yeah, it is interesting.

I think money's everything, and it most likely is, but the appreciation as a human being, I think that's the key factor.

Every leadership book I've ever read, money seems to fall like 6th, 7th in the list of employees' desired needs and wants.

And the inverse of that is interesting too because from the employer's standpoint, you know, if an employee is paid really well, I think a lot of times the employer just thinks they're being paid bank, they should be like so happy with this. And at that point the employer kind of takes them for granted.

Sure.

Like they've already done them the favor of paying them money and so they don't give them the Emotional support, you know, appreciation they should be giving.

That's a great point. And this slide here notes at the bottom, monetary awards are less motivating than non-monetary incentives. So it goes right along with what you all have said. Another thing that I picked up on in the early chapters is it's important to have appreciation from your coworkers and not just your direct supervisors. So we should be showing our appreciation for our fellow council members, exec staff members at this level, and our employees should be showing appreciation for their fellow employees that they work with. And if everyone's doing that, it lightens the load of the manager. Now we get into the appreciation languages. Words of affirmation. This was the Highest-ranked language that resonates with people. These are positive words being communicated to the employee. I took some quotes out of the book and inserted some exec staff names in there that I felt fit these quotes. Brandon, I appreciate knowing you're a man of integrity and can trust you with our finances. It gives me a sense of security. Mark, he's got a really clean office. So praising is His personality traits. He has a lot of really cool swag too, Mark, so if you want to hook anybody up.

My wife makes me do it, man.

I don't want to.

Keep it clean.

I'm in trouble.

I think another thing, as I was pondering this going through, another way that you can show words of affirmation without necessarily words, but you can affirm their character traits by giving them them projects that you trust them to do that are maybe outside of their standard duties. So I think an example of that is like Lane Gray. We recognized what an awesome leader and manager he was, and we had a huge discussion on who was going to lead these big capital projects— City Hall, the water tank— and Lane Gray's personal character traits and work ethic fit that. And so we went to Lane and asked him to take those duties on in a new assignment. I think that showed appreciation. You should through this same method.

Hey Ryan, when you're talking about just be sincere, it's— I find that it's the hardest thing because I'm always sincere when I appreciate somebody, but it's— I think it's the feedback you get whether you question that they feel the sincerity behind it. You can, you can over-appreciate and it doesn't feel sincere, or you can under-appreciate and then they don't feel it. So it's, for me, it's the right words at the right time. And I'm probably less appreciative than I should be, for sure. It's something I know I need to work on. I just I don't want it to come across as fake or not sincere.

Well, then you have the personality of the person that you're dealing with. So somebody— so one person would really love maybe a little more, where another person's like, okay, you're overselling it here. Yeah, you're not being sincere. So every individual that you have that interaction with, it's a different game. It's not a game, but it's just a different experience.

Yeah, it's a balancing act. And part of it too with being sincere is, you know, words are just part of the equation, right? In other words, if you— the classic saying of, I can't— I don't hear what you're saying because your actions speak so differently. You know what I mean? So it's what you're saying, but it's also what you're doing. And that's what really is communicated to a person, I think.

The authors noted if you're not sincere, you actually more damage than even attempting to be sincere. Councilman Spencer.

So going back to the making it personal part of the book, I had— it was question 4. Since feeling appreciated is one of the major factors in an employee's sense of employee engagement, understand and pay attention to or investigate how much the staff feels valued. And I wrote, does the executive staff feel valued? valued by the council as of now? You know, I just read that question thinking, hopefully it is a different vibe. Last year was a different vibe. I thought a way better vibe. And hopefully, because I think the first retreat, you know, was like, hey, you know, do you trust us? Or Brandon, anyone do that? Brandon goes, well, I don't know if I can say that. So hopefully we've made some inroads. And that, you know, Brandon's comfortable with, I can go to lunch with your group or whatever, you know. So hopefully that's— we're going down that path and it's, you know, we're moving forward instead of just stagnant or moving backwards.

It's the ongoing interactions and it's the trust we build every day, every council meeting or every work session or just when you're around the station. Or you come to the, you know, our events, those are— that's what builds the relationship and the trust to where, yeah, that's where I feel like I feel the appreciation, when you guys make time to join us at the fire department events.

I mean, I was just reading, I was just thinking, I was on the plane, so I'm thinking, you know, does the Executive Council feel appreciated or valued by the council? And hopefully that has changed the last year from the first year, maybe the second year. So I think like Carrie and I, we've had a better relationship. She didn't talk to me at all before, right? So it's great, right? So we have communication, I think, appreciation, I think, is coming in.

And I think these are— so when we think of words of affirmation, we think of, thank you, you're great, you did this awesome, you know, So just the fluff is what I call it. And I went to lunch with Mark the other day and I was— I brought up to him and I said, I need an answer to this complaint that I'm hearing. What's your response to that? So then he went through it with me, we talked about it, and afterwards he said to me, I appreciate your bringing that up to me so I could address it. And to me, that was a word of affirmation to me, right? Because he— in those— in that sentence was able to cement trust with me and this mutual appreciation and respect for ideas. And I think that's when you get to the sincerity of the words of affirmation is when you get past the, that looks so great, and— or people understand that when you do— there's nothing wrong with saying that. I don't want to mean that in any way. It's that relationship indicates, I think what you're saying, the powerfulness of those words.

Yeah. Thank you for your comments. Dave, I want to kind of come back to that, what you just said, in a little bit. Chris, you wanted to add something?

Well, I was just going to say the author brought to my mind that It's— depending on the person and the individual and maybe even the generation, how you do it and the media in which you share that can be more powerful or effective than others.

Right.

If I were to text somebody, maybe a millennial or a Gen X, whatever, I don't even know, Gen Z, you know, hey, I appreciate you, keep up the good work, work, you were noticed. I think it would go a long way for them, for a younger employee than maybe for someone else.

Maybe not, I don't know.

But he brings that up that maybe we need to pay attention to the kind of media that we use. Maybe a handwritten note goes a long way more than an email or a text for some people. So—

Well, and interesting to that point, as we get a little further in, we'll learn that the older generation loves handwritten notes. And finds that very respectful. And the young kids don't care for handwritten notes and they want immediate feedback. So it kind of plays into the generations as well.

So, you know, it's got here the affirmation of character. And it says positive character traits in those with whom we work, traits such as self-discipline, perseverance, honesty, integrity, patience, humility, kindness, and unselfishness are like jewels that should be highly valued. And that's huge. I mean, that's a lot of traits that we're trying to encompass, but hopefully we all, you know, can look at that and use that in our daily lives and make sure that we are nicer and more kinder and, you know, more appreciative. And the words of affirmation, I'm not sure what kind of affirmation my language is at the moment, but we'll see.

Thank you for that, and that is a great point about those qualities. Number 2, most popular, is quality of time. And these latest statistics I pulled off of their website. This is based on the feedback that they've had on their— the people that take their, um, what do they call it?

Inventory?

Yeah, but their MBA. The MBA. Which I kept thinking was the degree from school, so it was a little confusing. But quality time, some takeaways from this that in my career I've really enjoyed is our old director Stanford Stansbury would do a leadership training where he would do a book similar to this and we would meet once a week for about two months and go through it, and that was awesome. Quality time you got to spend with a mentor and a leader in the organization. Also one-on-ones with— for me, when I've had one-on-ones with my managers, that shows me that they care about my quality or care about me by spending quality time with me. So with a lot of my employees, I'm finding I need to continue to do that, but I also need to just stop in and chat with employees that I don't necessarily manage directly, but they are within my department. And just chat with them for 15 minutes and see how they're doing. But you got to make sure you're engaged, you're not rushing it, you're sincere again, that you actually are showing you care about them and what's going on in their lives with their challenges.

And I think Brent does that on the council. I mean, we go to lunch once a month.

Month and a half.

Month and a half, but it's only for an hour, but I need more than that.

Duly noted, 2.5 hours test.

Gotcha, we gotcha.

Lowkey, I schedule it 1 hour on your calendar but 2 hours on Bren because I know it'll usually go to—

I need more than an hour, but— and I think I'm stopping to talk to Mark and say, you know, how you doing, what, what's going on. And I talked to the guys and the gals of the team, also the police, to see how things are going. I mean, I met a guy in the library and he's like, so how's it going? He's like, you know, got some concerns here and there. But, you know, I think if we talk to people and as a council we're not so standoffish, like We're the board of directors. We can't talk to the— you know, it's like we're all the same team and everybody's worthwhile. And even people at the library that, you know, are checking out books— I can't say I've been in the library a lot, but those guys are appreciated too. We appreciate it because they do a job and they service the citizens of Warren. So I think the time, quality time, is really good.

We all have different ways that we that we communicate. Jeff, you were kind of talking about people need different ways of communication. One thing that I was shocked about when I was doing these one-on-one meetings was one of them, one that had come into the office there and we sat down, he actually said, this is only the second time I've been into this office.

Wow.

So—

In like years, right? Yeah, yeah.

And so it was amazing What made you think that just spending that time one-on-one, like, just inherently had this trust-building aspect?

I think what it does is I think it shows— by spending that time shows respect for that person. And I don't think you need a stronger way to start a relationship or build a relationship than to show respect for different And even to the point of just all kinds of random employees, I mean, you know, I can just walk around, I'll say hi to different people, but I think it's important just to show that you respect them, you respect what they're doing for their job, and you appreciate it.

Well, I think we could also do that as a council, in that, you know, maybe Chris and Jim can go to lunch, or Jim and the mayor, yeah, you know, so we are— it's fluent instead of stagnant. So, and I thought it was good when I met with Jeff and Jen and Chris, as I was talking, it was probably a couple hours, but it was good to see, you know, during the campaign, my viewpoint and your guys' viewpoint. So it works wonders.

Hey, Ryan, I don't know if we're going to discuss this later about when these qualities are at odds with each other. I don't particularly care for quality time. I just assume spend less time in the principal's office.

Notice only 22% said their primary language is not that much.

Yeah, I was going to say, I think that's why you declined my one-on-one.

All you need to do is schedule that time at coffee golf and Brandon's in.

So fair assessment.

So I don't know, sometimes I think that can be an issue, right?

And I don't know who, which one, if Brent loves quality time and he wants to spend quality time with me but I want to spend quality time with him, how do we bridge that gap? And I'm just using Brandon as an example. So I don't know if that's going to come up later because I know I think the book did touch on it.

I will get to that in a little bit.

Okay.

But to your point, Brandon, back when I was doing economic development, you invited me to golf with you once. And that was like, that was cool to be invited by Brandon to hang out with the cool finance director. That meant a lot. So you never know when something you do might make a difference like that. But you're You're absolutely right, Brandon. Some people absolutely dread this. This is not their language. And you'll notice only 1 out of 5 people roughly. I did some quick math there for you. Number 3 is acts of service. Actually, acts of service is higher than quality time, but the way it is in the book, it's the number 3 item. And this is one that before I wrote the book, I never would have really thought of this as something that shows appreciation to others. But then I look back at 2019 when we did our centennial project, and Pete was part of that committee, and a number of you were involved as well. The amount of employees that volunteered to help us with events and show up to events and run things showed, I think, to our committee the appreciation that they all had.

It—

their willingness to serve showed appreciation to all of us. And that's something I think I need to work on better with my employees is jumping in to see where I can help them and just doing it because I want to, not because I have to. Then the 4th language, any comments on this one?

I think, Pete, if you don't mind my Mind me putting you on the spot. I think we found the power in this when— I think the most powerful way or the most memorable way was when we got the community to rally around the Altigate playground.

Mm-hmm.

And it seemed before then, I think there was— I think some of it was brought up yesterday in terms of people were assuming Everyone was super upset at the city, whether it was because of Utopia or whatever other—

Definitely it was Utopia.

Or the downturn or the Great Recession or whatever. And that became something that when everyone got involved and rallied around it, it just really kind of bonded the community and helped people move forward.

Well, it was built in a week.

Yeah.

4,000 people?

I mean, I thought that was the best project I've ever participated in. And I think if you're giving service, you're not thinking about yourself. We're all in one goal, and I think that's why maybe they appreciate you for the service. I don't know, but, you know, I like helping people, and it's good to make it— get an achievement in it being finished in a week. It was great, and it's still there today.

And on that same point, though, we had our missionaries during that time. So, we came over and we had almost 170 missionaries spend 3 hours, and they built— they saw from when they started and when they finished, and a lot of it got built in that time. And it was— they were now part of the community. They were no longer just somebody here serving for Mexico or France, but they were part of the community.

Wasn't it 4,000 or 5,000 people or something?

Yeah, 4,200 volunteers over the week.

I mean, to build that house.

Well, I think as a kind of a side note to this, I love this, and I think as we're talking about ways to heal our community, I would love to see us do more of that. If we can think of things along these lines, it really strengthens our community.

Absolutely.

I was going to say, just key points on your slide, just with it up there. There seems— I really like this theme of ask before you help, check your attitude, you know, if you're gonna help, do it their way. I mean, truly, that's the key in this environment.

Yeah.

Right?

If you're not the chief over that project, don't go in trying to be one under the guise of service, you know. Remember who you're helping.

Yeah.

That's how you're gonna show it as an appreciation language.

Absolutely.

And I mean, so where I work, I have a lady that we are side by side, not literally, but every project that we do, we're working together. But we never talk because her office is next to mine. And so those opportunities that there have been times when we've had to, you know, she's come over and helped me with something that I was, you know, behind on or whatever. But it was in those moments that that quality time came from, you know, when she's helping me or I'm helping her. And we're, you know, it's just, it's then when we're real and talking and, you know, we don't have to pretend. have the project goggles on. You know, we're both working together. And anyway, I think so those opportunities are opportunities to just sit and talk while you're doing either helping them or them helping you. Allowing people to help you sometimes is really hard if you have a certain way you want things done.

But it's a good thing.

And it's a great opportunity to just get to know each other on a deeper level.

That is a fantastic point. Yeah.

So, just going off of what Jen said, on the acts of service and trying to be, the community more involved, my thought was, you know, we have the knit team that's been a pain in my butt.

Enforcement.

But I think if we have— take a different look at it, say if we're writing a ticket or whatever, how can we as a maybe neighborhood or as a knit team and a council maybe go help that neighbor or— and dig the weeds up and maybe put some gravel down and help them? I think that would go a long way in getting the community rallying around, at least in that neighborhood. Maybe if you talk about the neighborhoods that are downtrodden, whatever. Maybe that's how we can help move things along. I don't know, but I just thought that because all the calls we get, you go out there and you're like, you wrote a ticket for that? Okay, it's in the code, but how can we help that, that neighbor or that citizen that has that home? You know, I don't have a problem doing it. I need council to be like, hey, that might be That would be great. We all step in, so, and then get the ward involved and the whole neighborhood, and maybe, and then maybe that flows into the next home, and that's maybe how we just, you know, I don't know.

I think that's our goal with them. Jeff and I talked about that with the Neighborhood Advisory Commission. That's where we hope to get for— we have some key players on that commission that have connections to the community, and we're also pulling in some key community members. We kind of put the hold on that because we didn't know where that commission was going to be. But anyway, I see that.

Do you, Joe?

Absolutely.

And so, yeah, and maybe there is some money in the budget that we have a little bit that we can help pay.

We can help pay for some gravel, whatever.

I don't know.

But just if we can fix the thing, I don't, I don't mind getting the phone calls, um, from the neighbors saying, I got a ticket, how do I do this? I think we I think we need to be— I think our delivery needs to be different. And maybe it needs to be more helpful first. Let's talk and then maybe we can— and then if it doesn't happen, then maybe it has to be a ticket and a fine or whatever. But I think we can solve the problem if we do it together and we all want to give excellent service. I think that would help. And even the NIT team would dive in and help too. So I think it'd just be—

it'd show the Every time you mention gravel, it takes me back to 2 inches or 4 inches.

4 is good.

Anyway, that was painful.

But what I was going to say— I'm just sorry. Okay, the buzzer went off.

Okay, we're done.

But what I was going to say is, on this whole conversation, in terms of service— In terms of service, I mean, service is magic. We get, like, what happened with the Altogether Playground. That was amazing, right? I've had people ask me, they were involved in some big rolling out turf over at the cemeteries or something.

Yeah, there's been a lot of sod projects.

Yeah, there's been sod projects. And I've gotten different calls from you know, different— what do you call them— single wards and single stakes and all that sort of thing. And they're always looking for service projects they can do. But it might be worth exploring, you know, within the city to have somebody over service, right? And because then it would— maybe you already do.

I'm shaking my head no.

But just to make it more of a thing, because we know there's a ton of value in it. We know it's a way to bring people together. It's just, it just kind of floats out there as a nice thing to do unless we like actually grab around it and say this is a thing and now let's figure out the best way to optimize it and make it the best, right? So anyway, there's probably something there in terms of just

This is a— I mean, where our community is at right now and all the good people and all the people who want to help and serve, it would be a great way to bring people together. So that's going to require us not just being a by-the-way thing, but actually, okay, if we make it a thing, then it will— I think it will get alive.

So you heard me talk a little bit about the My Hometown Initiative. And as we've begun to look at it, I think we have the pieces. It's just a matter of logistically bringing them together, either having a team, internal communication, adding in more communication with the public.

But, you know, we literally—

Laura Bascom is our volunteer coordinator in Public Works, and she is— she's always working with volunteer groups on all sorts of projects around the city. We have, you know, HR that often coordinates things for employees to do. Mark Sorensen is often coordinating things for the police department officers to go help with some of these NIT complaints. We've got interns now that are helping us get the word out more and doing more with events. We do our fall cleanup, our spring cleanup, our Day of Caring. So We do some interaction with the different faiths and things and communities. We have some of the networks, we have some of the processes, we have the people. It's just bringing the pieces together and then emphasizing it.

Well, we did have— back in the day, we had Neighborhood in Action. And it was set up that the neighborhoods were small and that's how we got things done. And then it was disbanded. And I think maybe we need to go look at that and maybe intertwine that with—

You know, we've recently increased our neighborhood commission.

Correct. So we need to look at maybe there, at what they did in the past, and maybe take some of those things and maybe build on it, because it worked. Neighborhood Action worked, and it was cut off, which I didn't agree with, but that's what happened. But I think if you look at that, you know, because Joyce Johnson was the hero of that, and she ran it, and she did a good job, and I think it worked. But now we're sort of Trying to get back in to make sure the cogs are aligning.

Carrie, Josh, Chris, anything else you guys want to add to—

I'll add, so Laura is— her title is volunteer coordinator. That's what— that's her position. And she can leverage a lot of people, whether it's with youth programs, Young Men and Young Women, Eagle Scouts, prisoners. She organizes groups like that. They were out there cleaning some stuff at Public Works for like a whole day, just like a couple weeks ago, and trimming, and they did a fantastic job. And I thanked all of the guys that were doing service hours that were going to go back to jail after that. So, I mean, we can leverage a lot. And if we want to get hyper-focused on a certain home or project or neighborhood or area, we can kind of organize and do something like that. It's hard to do something like this on a daily, regular basis, but on a planned, organized event basis where you get a lot of energy and synergy with others and excitement, you can do a lot of good. Like the project with the missionaries when they came, we all together put it around.

One thing—

Maybe we need to Recognize more, right? And get these things communicated out more.

Sorry.

I was gonna say, I've been working with Laura to get things on your guys's calendars as well as Hillary and Katie and all the different departments, so that way you'd be able to attend these events. Because I think that'd be super cool for the residents in the community to see your faces there. And it just— not everyone, but just at one or two or something a year, I think it'd be fun for you guys. So I think that'd be cool to work with Laura and We've been trying, but we'll get there.

Josh, I'm thinking like maybe, maybe we need to create a database for when someone has a— is on like the warning level, you know, taking a look at those and see if there's a way to connect in with Laura Bascom and the neighborhood group.

I know Kenneth did that through CDBG. He'll get into that, you know, try to coordinate because there were some funds there, but coordinate the funds with the service. I think that could be something really great.

Do we have any sense as far as the NIT who is in need versus who's just not doing it?

It's an interesting dynamic because So, with the NIT cases, like, I understand what you're saying, but so somebody, you know, we're writing somebody a ticket. Well, the neighbor that called us isn't complaining, it's the person that got the ticket that's complaining. So, when we talk about that balance inside of the neighborhood—

I mean, if it's complaint-based, that's fine. If it's not complaint-based—

What do you want us to do?

Well, that's what I'm saying. So, if, if, if a trailer's parked and it needs to have gravel We reach out to the board and maybe we combine and we can get together and say, okay, let's fix it. What do we need?

You know, can you— I guess part of it is also, are we talking about Band-Aids or are we talking about solutions? Because the Band-Aids—

Yeah, solution.

Let me finish, Coach. Let me finish, Coach. Because what we do, we do the United Day of Caring, we do things like that where we pour tons of our own resources into it and it looks like an eyesore 60 days later. Okay, so it's like, are we putting a Band-Aid on a problem or are we fixing it? And that would be my only counter is, yeah, a lot of our cases like that, the reason NIT's involved is because it's a continual problem. It wasn't something that got resolved the first time. We don't just show up with a ticket book.

Well, all the calls that I've received—

Well, and so, and those don't get referred. You never call me to find out what our side is.

So— Well, I just go out and look at it. I'm like, that's why we need to look at the code.

So you have no, you have no idea how many times we've talked to them? You don't know how Diplomatic Traffic— you have no idea?

Yes, I do.

You've never called me.

I've talked to them.

To the person?

Yes.

Yes.

What about the enforcement?

He showed me the ticket.

What about the enforcement people? I'm saying, yeah, we might have wrote a ticket on the 3rd time, but what about the first 2 times we were there?

I, I talked to Brendan. Brendan talks to Mark, or I talk to Mark.

I've asked you to call me.

You want me to call you directly?

I've asked you a dozen times.

Okay, I'll call you.

Okay, because yeah, if you— and on another piece with that, every time I get these on an email or anything like that, I always type back, what's your attitude for enforcement? What's your appetite for enforcement on these issues? And it's ghosts. None of you ever respond back, what is our actual appetite for enforcement?

We need to look at the codes, and if there's a problem, then change the codes. Correct.

Yeah, that's not my job, right? That's not the IIT's job.

Correct.

But I think—

so if you don't like the law, change the law. You have the legislature.

I understand that. So, but one thing, Josh, is if it's collect the complaint base, I'm fine. But if they're driving around trying to justify their job, I don't, I don't, I don't agree with that.

Is that what you think they're doing?

Yes.

Well, you're wrong. No, that's your opinion. That's not—

no, I've asked for the complaints and they haven't been able to give me the complaints.

So, the complaint is the law. Change the law. You have the legislature. I mean, we've talked about this a dozen times. And it's a big city.

No, the definition is— no, your definitions are different. I'm hearing you and you're not communicating with the same definition.

Well, I'm just saying change the law.

You're talking about the law, he's talking about complaints of neighbors.

So where—

what is it that we don't enforce? Excuse me, I'm talking. We don't enforce every single law on the books. We should, I guess, right? But sometimes you enforce a law because it comes up as an issue. And that's good.

I'm not being critical of that.

That's just how it ebbs and flows, right? So what I'm hearing, and I think this is a discussion for a different time, frankly, is do, you know, I'm hearing you feel unsupported because you're trying to do your job. I'm hearing he feels unsupported because he's trying to represent the residents with his job. So let's just come together. It's a fluid decision. So let's just figure out where we are. I think you've You both have great points here, but I think this is a discussion for another time. This has been—

come up several times.

So, we need to solve this, obviously.

Well, then that's just it, is, okay, if we're talking about improving neighborhoods, we're the ones that are actually boots on the ground trying to improve the neighborhood.

Correct, but we talked about this—

Just because they don't want to have—

just because they don't want to improve their part of the neighborhood, that's not our problem.

Well, we're trying to improve access to services. How do we get the citizens involved and the neighborhood involved? So, maybe they will take Ownership, and it won't look bad 60 days later, you know, because there's a buy-in of the neighborhood. So that's all I'm trying to say.

The codes—

we need to look at the codes.

Yeah, I completely— if the neighborhood will do it, but we can't, we can't just haul gravel all day.

No, no, I'm not saying that.

It's just like the playground. It was 4,200 people. So how do we mobilize The neighborhood, maybe we need to look at things differently and say it shouldn't be on the police, but it should be on the neighbors. And let's see if we can't coordinate them, and then they can take ownership. And hey, if it's looking a little different after 60 days, let's come back and see what we can do. If not, then it has to—

That's what I'm saying. Systemically right now, it's the neighbors calling us about it. It's not the neighbors going, can I help you with your—

Right, but we need to change that mindset. So, that's the direction we're trying to do with this active service. I mean, it's just, you know, some of the people that call me, I go in there and I'm like, you know, this could be a good board project. He needs to put some gravel so he can park his trailer there instead of parking on the street, or whatever. That's a solution to me, and the neighborhood would come together. And the city council or whatever, and the executive staff maybe jumps in too and helps, and it shows it's a community, the community's coming together to help, is all.

I think Pete's question was a really good one, and I think that some people probably could do that and help them, it would solve the problem. And then there's others, like you're talking about, other systemic that just are really difficult.

Correct.

And the board's been doing that for 12 years.

Yeah, and that's part of the discussion, but I think that we need to have that discussion. I think your people are in a really difficult position. I think your question is a good one, is what does the council really want to do? I don't know what the history here is, but I think it would be great to sit down and have a meeting specifically about this and say, how do we address this? in a way that your people aren't in this awkward position and we're not feeling frustrated because, you know, we're getting complaints and we're citing people for stupid stuff, whatever.

It's a hard issue. It's not an easy issue to solve.

So let's bring that together then. As far as it sounds like we need to go deeper with this conversation than we have time to right now, you know, as we're going through Ryan's presentation. So if you can put it, you know, on an agenda because it's come up off and on a little bit. As long as I've been here, as far as the NIT team and this and that. So anyway, we need to dive deeper on that. We need to come up with, you know, a resolution, a process, a way that this works so it works for everyone. And then in addition, we're moving through this presentation on acts of service and how effective they are in health in the big picture. So this is kind of the macro presentation that Ryan's doing, and then let's work our way back down to this single issue at some point.

So helping bring it back. So we need to be grateful for the MIT employees who reengage with us sometimes.

So tangible gifts right here, next one. I love the PD, just so y'all know.

We'll come check your mom.

Yeah, yeah. I got some weights.

So the 4th language is tangible gifts. Only 5.6% of this, of the respondents to the survey feel this is their primary language. So if you give people a lot of gifts thinking that's the way to show your employees appreciation, you may not be making any headway with them. And that's one thing that kind of surprised me a little bit.

One thing I've noticed with the Babbel Store and how we all have this nice like orange swag now that we haven't really had in the past. Maybe it's not appreciation, but it's belonging.

I think people feel like more of a team when they've got their own swag.

I totally agree. I don't think it's a gift. Although, was it Tara?

Kaloncha?

She really liked the swag.

Yeah, but the point is it's not being given. I mean, they're earning Babbel Bucks. They're being appreciated by giving the Babbel Bucks to then receive the swag. gifts. So I think it's completely different. Babboe books are completely different than tangible gifts.

Because usually when you give a Babboe book, you're also giving them verbal affirmation.

Right. It's, it's, it's combined.

It's the gift they want.

Yeah. And then it reminds them of the verbal affirmation as well.

There's a great marketing story. When Adidas and Nike first started, they would give their swag away so they could get their logo out. They don't do that anymore. Right, because people wanted to have that swag.

Free software, right?

So the 5th language is physical touch. When I read this, I was like, ah, no.

HR bells went off.

I'm a touchy.

I love it. Finally we get to my category.

So my only takeaway from this, handshakes, knuckles, and high fives.

That's all you should be doing.

If someone really wants a hug and they ask for it, that's up to you. But I'm not—

yeah.

It's interesting in the book though that even, even the high-fives and knuckle-ins could be inappropriate in certain settings. I mean, if the person's just not receiving it, it's making them feel uncomfortable. I never really thought of that until I read that it could be making somebody feel uncomfortable.

I do want to say though, there are some people that do really do appreciate that in the workplace. There's one in— someone in your department in particular that really appreciates hugs, but she will always ask first, is it okay if I get a hug from you?

Is it okay if we have a hug?

And so if, if you do have someone that does appreciate that, ask first, then make sure it's okay.

Don't ask, then I'm uncomfortable.

Do not get in my office.

Right. Once again, I'm shocked at how many people—

Do you have a percentage on this one?

Oh, really?

It's like, and I don't like hugs.

It's like the darn hugging dance. You know, right?

But it's like, they hug me and I'm like—

I do not like hugs.

You know, but at the same time—

Touch me.

I don't want to touch you. Well, it's like— I don't know about Josh because he likes thrashing.

Everybody go up to Josh and say, Josh, now that we know.

So the whole good game, pat on the butt, carry, that's out?

You know what?

As long as you follow it with good game.

I would say that this may relate again to the service aspect in terms of like being willing to do things for me, not just— at least for me, not just doing stuff from my office, but getting out and about. I think this is something where I think Chris is really good at. And again, I kind of spoke to this, you know, High-level sophistication, very good, you know, I guess the white-collar aspects of the job, but also gets out with the different groups in Public Works. And, you know, he and his leadership team aren't afraid to kind of get their hands dirty and roll up the sleeves and stuff too.

And Chris asked if there was a percentage on this one. It was not identified on their website as one that anyone voted.

Less than 1.

It depends on who you're asking.

I would like to see Dave and Josh give a hug before we leave today, though.

Oh yeah!

Oh!

I gave you 3.

I move we adjourn.

I think we're done.

Okay, Chris, you're done for sure.

Good job, Chris.

Plus he's a Raider fan, I'm a Chiefs fan.

And you lost on Christmas.

All right, I've got 3 minutes. So I didn't know what my language was, so I did the MBA inventory, which there's a code in your book, you can go on their website and do it. Did anyone else do it? I'm curious to hear. These are my top 2: words of affirmation and quality time, which kind of surprised me. I knew it wasn't tangible gifts because I'm not a swag person. I don't like clutter and I don't know what to do with some of this stuff. You know, you go to a conference, I hate going around the tables and getting free stuff. It doesn't do anything for me. What's your number 1?

Mine?

Words of affirmation.

Words of affirmation.

Carrie?

Same with me.

Same.

Yeah, but I do love swag.

Yeah, the queen of Babo.

Uh, one of the biggest things that ever— that meant something to me was back when we did Lakeside Sports Park almost 20 years ago. I was one of the surveyors on the job with Dave Lund. We did all the layout of the fields. We had to do a 50-foot grid for the grading, and when that project was done at Gifford, our city engineer took everybody out that worked I think you were there, Chris, and took us all out to McGrath's Fish House at the time.

That's a nice place.

We had lunch and then they gave us all a handwritten thank you with a gift card or some gift certificates to the mall. Now, if you read the book, it'll tell you that's recognition, but to me it was appreciation. And I think they go hand in hand even though the book kind of suggests are a little bit different, and I'll get to that really quick. But it talks about discovering your coworkers' language in here and paying attention to what your coworkers do to try to figure out what their language is. So in Carrie's bringing up she likes swag, I know I have an employee that if I gave them swag, that'd be the coolest thing in the entire world. And I've just had to pay attention and know that that's what they like. And I'll send this out to all of you if you want a copy of this, but this is where they talk about the difference between recognition and appreciation. Recognition focuses primarily on performance or the achievement of a certain goal, while appreciation focuses on the value of the employee. Recognition focuses on what the person does, appreciation focuses on who the person is. And a real important note is that some people really do not like public attention and recognition, so if you're going to recognize—

311.

Yeah, 311.

And the other thing too, another key point is not all employees are high achievers. And, and that's true. A lot of employees in our organization are the cogs in the machine that keep us going, but you know you're not going to get above and beyond out of them, but you're going to get that steady workflow out of them. And that's okay. That's one thing I've come to realize, that's okay. We need those types of employees that just come and they do their job and they do it well and they get it done. There's some other key points throughout this you can look through. Talked about the older generation values handwritten notes.

Is that one in here?

There was one in here I think I wanted to kind of point out really quick.

No, it was on the previous slide. But just in closing, this is kind of This is kind of how the book closed out. A single act of encouragement doesn't look like it is going to change the world or make a real difference in a colleague's life. But when appreciation and encouragement are consistently communicated over a long period of time in ways that are important to that— important to the individual, the impact can be dramatic. So lots of small actions lead to a big end result.

Keep this up, please.

Yeah, I'll leave that up. As soon as I saw this on Ryan's desk, The example that popped to my mind. Several years ago, we were— we had a council meeting that was— it was pretty contentious. It went till 2 AM. I was, I was the, I guess, acting city manager at the meeting. And, and there were only citizens that had come in that that essentially said they didn't want the city to annex that southwest area where now the current temple is. And it got to 2:00 AM, and then the council needed to make a decision and respond. And at first, it didn't seem like anyone on the council wanted to say anything. And then a council member, Decided to, you know, be brave and start to talk about it. And I noticed that he was very specific and conscientious about expressing gratitude to the citizens who came out, spent the time, respected their opinions and everything. And he spent several minutes talking about that, expressing his gratitude. And then he proceeded to, you know, give his take on it. And it was, you know, his take was largely different than the residents who came in. And then I think he gave the motion to accept the annexation. But it completely— I saw it completely diffuse, you know, the negative emotions in the room. And then I saw that—

Excuse me.

That trait or his way of doing that, you know, it was a pattern. It was a habit for him that he did the whole time. And it just made a real impact on my mind in terms of that there is a real power. Like, it really does make a difference to change and help things move forward. In terms of expressing gratitude.

Thank you, Brent.

Thanks for all of your participation too.

Thank you.

Really appreciate that.

Well done. I just want to put an exclamation point on that, Brian, as far as it takes me back to one of my daughters. And she was a really good athlete. She was a really good basketball player, a really good soccer player, like a star. And when she had coaches who were appreciative and encouraging, I mean, she was a completely different player than if she had a critical coach or or someone telling her the things that she's doing wrong without any support. And so when you take that to our whole team, I mean, that was my experience with her, and it was like black and white as far as that appreciation coach versus, you know, someone who's just telling her she sucks and she needs to work harder to do this. Makes a difference, in my opinion. And I think it would go, you know, it goes through our entire organization.

So.

Great point.

Thank you. Jesse.

Uh, how long would you like me to take? Because I can— I'm an accordion.

Yeah, um, I'd say 10 minutes.

Okay.

Um, first, um, sorry, Jesse, before we go, sure, we did schedule a closed meeting. That's right, for 9:45. So do you want to make a motion to continue that to later today? Or if you want, we can just do a closed door after the, uh, next meeting, regular meeting, which would be Tuesday.

Yeah, I think that's—

I guess Tom's not here.

Yeah, yeah, it might be better.

Tom's not here, so I think we'll— I don't think we'll do it today.

Okay, we'll just make a motion to move it to Tuesday.

If you just want to skip it on— you don't even make a motion, just go ahead and just skip it.

Okay, and then we need to go through so we can delve in.

Yeah, you're gonna do the motion now?

We don't have to. Everybody's in agreement.

Okay.

All right. Thanks for inviting me, and thanks for TESS for putting this together. And this is the second time I've been here. I wasn't hired until after the first one was completed. And last year I was— I didn't get to sit at the big boy table, so I'm so excited this year, which means my wife has told me to act like a big boy. In fact, last night we were at Ryan's table and she looked at me and she said, are you 12? I said something inappropriate or something. But anyway, when last year when I presented, we were talking about the change of the form of governments. And, and so I put the memo together, Steve looked at it, and then we presented that. And then afterwards Tom said, so, so basically you don't really have an opinion. And I said, no, I don't, I don't live in Orem, so I don't have an opinion as to what the best form of government is. And I did say the best form of government that I found out after talking to all these elected officials is the government that the other city has, right? That's what I heard. Um, and it's interesting, uh, the difference, because Tom said, well, if you didn't have an opinion, what would your opinion be? And I said, if you can't fix your problems within the current structure of government, then you need to change your government. But I don't know if there's problems you can't fix. I think all problems are fixable if you have people that can come together and work together. And the difference between that conference and the management and leadership we have in this conference is night and day. And I don't know what the problems were, but the city is moving in a direction that's unbelievably great right now. And I can go around— And Pete, I mean, you've just been a genius on how you tell the city's story. I mean, it's just unbelievable how you do that. The library issue— who would ever want to touch the library issue when it's in the media every week? So Bryce did a great job doing the library. I go around and Brandon's understated. Well, I'm really conservative. You don't have to say that. We know that, Brandon. We know you're really conservative. It's just your personality. And I took a tour of the waterworks when I first got here. Unbelievable. This is an unbelievable city, and I think you're going in a great direction. I think Brent is one of the best city managers you could have ever had, and I think Steve Earle probably should have been your city attorney 20 years ago. He is a phenomenal attorney, and I think he's probably the best city attorney in the state. So with that, it reminded me when I was a kid growing up. I grew up pretty really poor in a trailer house, being raised by my grandmother, and my biggest goal was to buy a 14-foot aluminum bathtub boat with a 9.8 Mercury motor so I could go fishing anytime I wanted. And I took that boat and I pulled it up to Natchez, Mississippi, crossed the river, and then I went across so I could camp out and fish at night at a tributary coming into the Mississippi. Well, when you're going across the river and you're going downstream, it's not hard. to go downstream. It's not hard to go the wrong way. But when you have a boat full of fish, maybe a little bit over the legal limit that night, and a 9-horsepower Mercury motor, and you have to go back to Deer Point, Louisiana, and it's upstream, you have to stay focused on that point or you're going to run into a sandbar. In other words, you can't look back. You have to look forward. And I got stuck on a sandbar because I didn't focus on where I had to go, and I spent 2 hours in the middle of the river on a sandbar and I didn't have the charts, so I had no idea how to get off the sandbar. But if you focus on going forward— and that's why we don't talk about the past, and I've never heard anybody talk about the past management— it's no, it's not relevant anymore. We're talking about things that we should do, and I'm really proud of the city for doing that. I'm really proud of the leadership that Brent has put in. So with that, I'll just tell you a little bit about the legislative process. Last year, there were 867 bills that were introduced. That was a record for Utah. We need to be regulated, obviously. There's a message that we're— that we need the government intervention in our life. I'm being facetious, obviously, as somewhat of a libertarian. I think less government is better government. They passed 575 bills last year. That was a record also. Yesterday, I came in, there were 190 bills. Today, I just looked, there's 240 bills that have been introduced. So this is a formidable task. So what I do is I process these bills. I look at the titles. I actually try to read every bill, but some of them are so technical in nature, they will be changing the name of an organization. So you'll have 15 statutes in one bill that just has the name of an organization changed. So they're not substantive bills. The reason bills are passed is first is they're trying to cure a problem. So if you listen to the state leaders, DEI has a problem— the diversity, equity, inclusion. The governor's mentioned he wants some attention to that. So right now they're going back and forth. The legislature has written the legislative— legislature—

the bill.

The executive has it. And so they'll work that out and that will be introduced. So there's a problem that somebody perceives, so they're going to create a new bill. That's generally not what we see. What we see is technical changes of the bill. And, uh, an example was yesterday, the technical change in the Open Meetings Act. In fact, last year they changed it where a city council member that resigns— not removed, but it resigns from the council— gets to come back and interview the applicants and vote on the applicant to take the position of that city council member. Steve and I laughed because these things only happen when it— or only change when it actually happens. And we were wondering what city had this happen, right? Because somebody complained to the legislature, hey, I had to resign because of family issue, or I was leaving, and I felt like it was my city, and I felt like this was my position. I'd done so much work. And And I wanted to have a voice. And so the legislature heard that and they changed the bill. So what I do is I read the bills, those that involve the— impact the city in some type of way through zoning. There's an issue that came out regarding some water conservation for new construction that the city's doing. I send those on to the city and ask, do you like the language? If you don't like the language, let me know. I can go back. The other bills we follow, we'll be giving you updates regarding probably on a hopefully twice weekly. This is the bill, this is the language. If you have a problem with the language, let me know. These bills move pretty fast, so if you have a problem with the language, we generally can go back to the sponsor and say, can you change these words or you can delete that or can you add that, clarify this issue. We can do a lot of that early.

early on.

And so that's kind of— we have to have quick and early intervention. So when you get an email from Brent or myself, or Chris is going to be involved in the League of Cities and Towns, be responsive to it if you have a concern, because if you take a week to read it, that bill may have already gone to the floor and advanced to the— gone through committee and advanced to the floor.

So, Um, do some of our other council— do you guys get the ULCT Friday fax? Yeah, already. Yeah, because that's another one that we'll try to refer to.

Right.

And as far as zoning, um, at this late in my life, I don't want to learn it. And so I'm not going to pretend I know it. I'm going to tell you I don't. And so I defer those bills over to Steve, and then he sends them to wherever Steve would like to send them. And we're, we're trying to be in collaboration because there may be bills that affect you that the city council— when I say you, the city— that the city council may not know that would have an impact on you. So I'm trying to keep the city in the loop too. There are bills that affect the, uh, the, the legislative council. I'm looking at those bills too. I like some of the changes. If I don't, I'll go back to the sponsor. So again, these bills move fast. This is This is the exciting time of the year. We get to see what the legislature's doing. It's kind of like a— I mean, I read all the bills and it's kind of like a Christmas present when you open the bill and say, what's in it? And so there's some fun little bills. For example, I know we're in an open meeting, but okay, I'm the first to admit I don't have a front license plate on my car.

Right?

Is that a crime, Josh?

No.

It's a secondary offense.

See, there you go.

So in other words, I get pulled over for speeding, you can give me a ticket for that. So there's a bill that says it's not going to be required and they're not going to print a second plate, which I think is great. Just little bills like that that go in and clarify the law. There's a new bill for Carrie because she drives in Sarasota Springs.

It's the—

what bill was that, Carrie?

Don't drive too fast?

No.

The road—

The road rage bill with a weapon. So I guess we've had a problem in the state. And I remember I went on a cruise and I took the Messages of the First Presidency. It was 1918. I was reading Heber J. Grant saying, these automobiles are terrible. People are going to go up the canyons on Sunday and not be with their family. I'm thinking, now we have a road rage bill that people are pointing guns at each other.

We've really advanced as a society.

society, have we not? Anyway, so, so I read every bill. Some of them I think, oh, that's a very, very practical change. So along the way, if you have questions, generally I'll be down there or I'll be on the internet reading the bills. A lot of times you never know what happens because there may be 3 or 4 committee meetings going. There may be amendments in those meetings. You can't be at the Senate, the House, and all the committees at one time. I talk to other law lobbyists and say what's happened, what's happened on the floor. Last year I met with Keith Grover about every other day and just say what's happening in the Senate that would impact the city of Orem. And he was very helpful, say there's a bill that came up and this— and I would go immediately read the bill. If there were concerns about it, I would let the city know about that. So anyway, I'm here to serve. I'm here to help try to get through this process. It begins January 16th and ends March the first. So, but thank you, Mr. Mayor. I yield the time back to you.

Thank you, Jesse. Appreciate that. And it's important to understand that the legislature, the bills are a bigger deal than they used to be. Um, I mean, you go back 20 years, this wasn't a thing. You go back 15 years, it wasn't a thing. And then about 10 years ago, our legislature— if you look at who's in the legislature, and who the heaviest lobbyists are in the legislature, it's all around development and developers. And so, so because there is such a big voice for that up there, I mean, in our city normally you've got the developers come in, you've got the city council, we work out things, we negotiate things. And in this case, we've got all these things coming down from the legislature because they've got such a big impact there. So because they've got such a big impact there, that's why we've got to be on that. We've got to know what's going on. We've got to work with other cities to basically protect our rights. So it's more important than it used to be as far as from a city standpoint. So I appreciate that. I think we've got a break. We're right on time.

Did you say we're right on time?

Yeah, I mean, 10:32 and it's a 10:30 break. break.

That's great.

There were no hugs in my presentation.

That's why. You missed out, Mitch.

So I'll let you take a 15-minute break, and if you'll all be back at 5:45, we'll carry on.

Thank you, President Dyer.

We're going to have a presentation on potential major projects for fire, police, parks, recreation, library, and utilities facilitated by the executive I'll turn the time over to the executive director.

Thanks, Mayor. So kind of like our conversation with— in regards to accomplishments, we're kind of constantly in a mode of both looking at, you know, where we're at, where we've been, where we're at, and trying to look forward. And we want to make sure that we're doing it good, hard, comprehensive look at all of the assets and facilities of the city. So as you know, from year to year, always a big percentage of the budgeting process is one-time expenses and capital projects. So true to form, we've been looking at kind of all across the city, and this is the process that, you know, ultimately got us to now building a new city center and a 10 million gallon water tank. And some of what I've heard from you on the council this last year is, you know, we need to look forward, we need to have vision, we need to define that and come together as a council to define that looking forward. So that's why Pete put on their long report. Now, all of that said, I do also want to preface with and emphasize these are recommendations. These are ideas. These all don't necessarily mean let's do them all now, you know, but let's look forward over the next, you know, few years and let's prioritize these and let's ultimately figure out what we can afford or how we can afford it, which will be a subsequent presentation with Brandon and Laura Lewis after lunch today. So with that intro, Pete, let's— Yeah, so the first few of these projects have kind of this theme in mind where, you know, we talk about quality of life and providing quality of life for for the citizens of Oregon. And a lot of these fun projects that are related to quality of life have in mind resonating with improving ours and our residents' hearts, minds, and bodies.

And soul.

The soul we leave to the Church of So something that you've heard us preliminarily talk about— no, Josh, it's not the Church of Josh. Josh and Mark. Come on, that's a different one.

That was John and Mark.

You've heard some preliminary discussion talks about the concept of the heart of Orem and trying to set a vision for downtown Orem. And the heart of that, the center of kind of downtown Orem, which is basically city center to University Parkway, is around the Sierra. And one concept One of the things that probably came through the old State Street master planning process that has seemed to still kind of stick and resonate with people is the idea of an arts district and a place that is focused on the arts and bringing our Seara Park, our Seara Pool, Seara Shell, and Seara itself kind of together. And as Ryan and I have talked about, The one kind of historic building that is really iconic of Orem is of course the Sierra Theater there. And there's tons of memories and connections to Sierra Park open space and events there. And then of course the upgrades we've done over the years with the pool itself. So we've been drafting and doing work to put together a potential process to continue to flesh this out, study it out further. Ryan, let me turn it over to you to get started.

So let me get up. Oh, the laser.

The laser.

So some of the thought we've had is Okay, I will use the laser. This house right here, the city has owned for a very long time, and we haven't done anything with it except for now, I believe, fire's training in it. Um, the city owns this property back here that has not been developed into anything. It's just kind of weeds at this moment. We have some cell towers right here. We have a well house. We have this open space that can't really be utilized, but it is kept nice and looks good.

But is there a way—

the thought is, is there a way to take the Sierra property, which they own up into here, they own these 2 buildings, and long-term their master plan shows them acquiring this as well. How do we tie the 2 together? And we also have 720 South, which is a very low road with very Very low amounts of traffic. However, it's still an important connection and feeds all of the parking for these developments. But how do we utilize that road and make it an asset that can be maybe closed at periods or turned into more of a pedestrian walkway or combination of the both? With some of the thoughts we've been discussing with. How do we bring the two together? And do we develop some kind of promenade through this area or even up through here? Do we continue to acquire properties and expand the park out? In working with the mayor over the last year, as we had the retreat, we had direction to do a new station remaster plan, but we've been meeting with the mayor and discussing maybe it's better to just tackle one area now, see if it works, validates the future, and we go from there. So we do have an RFP ready to be issued that Jason Bench has been working on. And as soon as we are given the go-ahead, we can pull that trigger. And the idea is to bring a consultant on that will help guide us in the creation of this arts district in this heart of downtown. The idea would be to select a consultant that's an expert in creating these types of things and has those ideas and that experience, that has a vision. And we want it to be resident property owner and business owner driven as well, so not just staff deciding what it should be. Some of the considerations are, do we develop some kind of buildings in this promenade that we can have more commercial space in it, unique restaurants, art studios, entertainment, and just energize and activate the area and make it a really cool place that people want to be.

Hey, Ryan, wasn't there a— didn't we do a study before my time? A consultant or something like that did something like that already, or no?

We had a consultant—

well, we've done a couple of things over the years. Laura Lewis back there did a study for us on the arts and the economic impact to the city.

We—

when we did our economic strategic plan, DPZ out of Florida was part of that. They did some mock-ups for us, but we never really got into it in this area.

Okay.

Down around UVU, we did also the Wedge, the industrial areas. by the freeway. Those were some mock-ups and some concept art done. So some examples that Brent and I have been paying attention to that have been brought up is Gardner Village in Salt Lake. Gardner Village, we're more talking about this portion of it here. All of Gardner Village is 19 acres, but the village itself is 9.5. For all anyone that's ever been up there, you know, you're very familiar with it.

I've been there.

imagine. This is kind of that area here that would likely fit into the space that we're presenting today. Just some images of Gardner Village and how they've made it unique. Different vendors are in here, different commercial shops. The other one we ran across was last year I was in Fort Collins with Councilman McDonald at the Towns and Gowns Council with you, or conference with UVU representation. And we went and visited downtown so we could kind of see what they're doing. And they have a promenade right here. It's a little bit of a different situation because these are historic buildings, but they took this diagonal street, they developed a promenade. It's only 400 feet long, but I was actually shocked that it was that small because when I was there it felt much bigger. And this was— this is a picture I took when I was there that day.

Wow.

They have a stage here. They do concerts, performances. I think this one was on Thursday nights, if I remember right. It's right there, but I can't read it very well. And they have fountains. They have beautiful street trees and furniture. And people just come and hang out. They go to the shops. This is looking— I'm in the middle. Each picture's in a different direction down the promenade. You can just see the activity there. This was in June, first week in June. And we could develop some type of promenade lined with some really cool architecture that we have shops in. These are just some of the streets. This is a back alley leading to that promenade and how attractive they've made it. Just the types of things they've done to clean up the area and make it really look nice. So that kind of summarizes the heart of downtown. Burton, do you want to add anything to that?

Yeah, so something over the last year, Mayor and I have had, you know, a meeting or two with Adam Robertson, with the CIRA, just again, just talking idea, conceptual brainstorming. Kia seemed very interested in working with the city. Even in our early drafts of an RFP, we've had Adam look at it, give input, express interest to me on like the selection process and the steering committee that would be built for this type of effort. So we've tried to be really conscientious of communicating with and partnering with proactively with the steering committee. So, that's the idea, that's the recommendation. Any feedback, questions, clarifications on that particular— So, who—

I love this, I love this, the vision and the idea of this.

Who would actually own the property where those commercial ventures would be placed?

Would the city own that?

Would they own that as private?

And who would develop it?

Would that be a city development?

Would that be a private developer that would come in?

Yes. So to some extent, that's to be decided. But like Ryan said, on the south side of 720 South, the SEER has talked about acquiring or leasing or coordinating with, I guess, what was Liberty Square— Lincoln Square, sorry— with the Lincoln Junior High School. Was that exactly your own plans? Oh, really? I mean, that's sort of— that's kind of the details, I guess.

Yeah.

Brent, if I could add one thing I left out is this is a long-range plan.

This is probably a 10-year plan.

Well, I almost think there are trends towards maintaining ownership of land and allowing it to burn.

Absolutely.

To me, that would be the way we would do it.

Yeah, and in the study process, trying to gauge interest from—

it's been a little while—

residents, businesses, and what we're talking about.

The study would drive that, and we would drive that. I mean, it could be a very short-term process, it could take 10 years, 15 years, we don't know. Right now this is all exploring options and ideas of a possible path to go down.

And, you know, frankly, I have friends, the Gardner Village Halloween celebration, you know, it's a yearly family event with the mother-daughter, you know, so I would love to have something like that here. I mean, we have the population to sustain it. You know, these friends are going up there. Let's leave them here. Let's bring those celebrations here.

That's a great spot for it too.

That's one of our prized orange things.

I think we can make the most of that.

I love, love, love this idea.

And we're coordinating this as— I mean, we're exploring this, we're looking at this, but we're also looking at in the context of State Street because there's a bigger plan For State Street, but you're kind of taking it a bite at a time and figuring out as you go. But we're just trying to look forward and see where we would be with this very long State Street plan.

Thank you, Mayor. So to that end, and again, the recommendation is that we do a study and envisioning process. Part of that would include visiting concepts that could go into zoning or or I guess the title of the properties that then could be considered essentially having it be like a beta test or a model home to be considered elsewhere along the State Street corridor over time.

Love that forward thinking.

Thank you.

I think it's an awesome— I think, I mean, it's a long time.

And that's a great That's a great concept and a great area to start the development and maybe learn some things, what to do, what not to do, is that experience through the rest of the street.

I mean, Sarah owns a lot of the property as it is.

And I really like the direction because I think a lot of us ran on supporting Sarah as the jewel of our community, and I like, you know, some of the things One of the things that I heard when I would speak about that was the city taking over the Sierra. I really don't want to do that. I really like this supporting the Sierra in their endeavors and creating, like Jeff says, you know, we're the support here. We don't want to infringe on the great establishment that they are now.

Well, I mean, the Sierra has that 99-year lease, so it's not like we can take it over anyway.

Well, but there were— there was push. Oh, no, no, there was push. For directing what was there.

Correct, make fixed seating and stuff like that.

Yeah, there were pushes to basically incorporate the SARE. Our current thinking is that a lot of the benefit from the SARE is because they are independent and they've got their own autonomy and they do their own thing and then we can Support and work with that because they do a great job of what they do.

So that— I think we're all— I see heads shaking yes. That's the messaging that we want to put forward.

You know, the idea was they wanted— the city wanted seating in the Sarah, and if that would have happened, they'd have been out of business because of COVID Yeah, because you could— now you could expand and contract the plastic chairs, and with fixed seating, you shouldn't. So it's a blessing that we didn't do that, and we need Well, there's a lot of things you can do as a nonprofit you can't do as a city too.

Right.

You can get the best of both worlds.

That's a good idea.

So this is an opportunity to, on equal footing, to partner, to communicate, to define, you know, who does what, who would own what, what's the vision, but do it in a collaborative way. Which I'll go over this weekend.

Well, and I think you've met with Adam, and I think he's great to work with, and I think he's— he leads to great ideas, and I think we need to move forward with this study and see what it looks like.

The fact that you were kind of already thinking in that direction anyway, it's a good time to do it.

Yeah, I'd love to say that this was completely, you know, my concept.

Amazing.

Well done.

This has been a concept that Adam has talked with previous councils and stuff.

So let's support it. I think that's what we're saying.

Yeah.

Wonderful. Okay, so this relates to now— so that was heart. We're keeping Adam in charge of heart. Now we're on to bodybuilding with your The bodybuilder.

Classic Bryce, the bodybuilder.

The dad bodybuilder.

I think what I—

as I've heard more about the concepts that have been talked about at the SERA, I get fired up too. I just get so excited about the long-range idea. And so Adam and I have had a chance to meet several times too to look at what the recreation side of SERA Park looks like and how we can do our side of investment to support the environment and the ambiance that we want from something like a Sierra Park promenade. And so there's a lot of great— you know, y'all are familiar with some of the more athletics-driven investments of recreation that we've been involved with the last couple of years. And so I think we have a really fun opportunity here at the park to recognize and support the idea of an art district that is focused on events or passive programming where people can come and be and celebrate some of those other things. And so 2 ideas I wanted to talk to you all about today that we've worked through are improvements to the existing pool and the incorporation of something like an ice ribbon on the site that would support the mingling and food and music of a, of a Seara Park. So we worked with Method Studio to do some work on On our existing pool. If you're familiar with the idea of trail nodes, when you're on a trail system, when you get to the— you can't theme an entire trail, obviously, but you go heavy on the investment of the entrance or the on and off point so you know where you're at. And we really like that idea for our recreation buildings. And so you'll see as the Hillcrest building is wrapping up, it will look and feel a lot like the fitness center. And we would like to bring That to the Sierra Pool as well. And so it's a warm, modern, lots of woods and concretes and grays that would help you feel like you are at, at one of our other recreation facilities. Metha did a great job of designing some features that would help break up some of the large concrete swaths that are there. On the amenity side, if you've driven by, we have have a new splash pad that was due to be finished in May of 20— or July of '23, but we have commitments from our contractors that it will be done and completed before we open this summer. They'll use the offseason for that. But really here we're looking to modernize the locker room experience, the parent drop-off experience, some of the concessions, and bring those buildings with a lot of sort of unfun work up to a modern design. Here they have again the water flow motif. Pete and the— has the Art Commission been involved, Pete?

Yeah.

With the sculpture? We would have a Miro woolly mammoth sculpture that would be incorporated into the front plaza over here. And again, just a lot of treatments to the different roofs around the building. So that as we use our different recreation funds to update the splash pads and the toys in the shallow end, and we're saving up towards a water slide replacement, the rest of the building would feel like a natural extension of our recreation system and would match, um, in a lot of ways the new design and idea of the Sierra Pool and go from there. So we worked really close with Adam on a number of things to make sure that their summer events and our summer offerings work together. I think it extends further into some of the other areas of the park that naturally we would look as this master plan comes to our pavilions, the inclusion of disc golf versus something else. You know, we'd really make the rest of the green space focus on the passive recreation and being there for a concert and coming and being with your family and enjoying food afterwards and walking around. And go from there. The second half of this is an ice ribbon. What I really like about ice ribbons is they have a year-round use. One of the best examples of that is in Hanover. This is just out front— the Crane Plaza is just out front of their city center. And 9 months a year, it is a walking path with picnic tables and plazas and again a place to be outside. And then for 3 months a year, it's engineered in a way that it can be an ice ribbon. And so I think about the idea of a Gardiner Village in the winter, and you're able to come and skate and eat and shop and all that. And then in the summer, I think this could be designed in a way that you're able to add amenities that function as a welcoming plaza or entrance and exit points for the Sierra Shell. They get improvements to lighting and pathways and parking, and we're able to, we're able to have that be a part of the recreation system, but with a huge benefit to our users.

Well, I was just gonna say, you know, I love the— could we add some benefits for our food truck small business owners, you know, have something? Because that's, you know, when you go to the farmers market and they're there, it just adds to that. So I think This would be supporting those small business owners. I love this idea of maybe like pulling all these other things in.

And exactly, you know, when we designed Hillcrest, with a simple change to the depth of the concrete and the width of the sidewalk around, it's able to accommodate food trucks. And so I think when you plan something like this, which is why the master plan is so important, we're not— we don't want to just throw an ice ribbon in the middle of a park. We want to use an amenity like this to support the overall vision of the block.

So I appreciate your saying that because, like, I mean, I didn't know that, that you added more to the concrete so you could support the food trucks. So to me, that truly is forward-thinking. I appreciate your knowing that and adding that. And does it get cold enough in the winter to have ice underneath or something?

Yeah, so, okay, you have to engineer it. Yeah, we can't just pull out the garden hose. You know, I think to that point, you know, if you were to just— if we were to just say, hey, we want an outdoor ice rink, does that work? You know, I don't know if we have the climate to say guaranteed it works. I think if you look at an investment in capital projects that support the totality of this, that's what gets me closer to saying yes, because we can use it for 12 months, even if we have a bad winter. Right.

One thing I'll add to this, the ice rink turns into basically a bicycle skate pathway and scooter pathway for the kids up there. When I've been up there, that's what's— they have a lot of fun in the summer doing that.

So are they, are they turning on the ice for 3 months? Are you waiting for it to happen and supplement? I mean, when you talk about the weather being a factor, how does this Well, I've been on a tour of the Bountiful one, Bountiful City.

That building right there that's at the bottom corner, that is the refrigeration plant for the system. There's a big chiller next to it, to the bottom even more. There's piping, a pipe system underneath the whole thing that circulates refrigerated water through and freezes it.

So your point there, So if you want ice, you've got ice.

You've got to make ice, but the higher temperatures will make it harder. A little slushy.

Okay.

Yeah, I get to drive the Zamboni.

They do have a Zamboni.

So, so in other words, there is an ideal environmental temperature, but it doesn't have to be below freezing as long as you engineer in the proper piping flow and refrigerant There have been discussions about, oh, could we just turn the Sierra T-bank pool into an ice sheet?

But the engineering really makes a standalone facility designed for ice temperatures the ideal solution. Ryan had mentioned this, the Bountiful Ice Ribbon, the Milky Creek Ice Ribbon. Again, this, this is a step away from athletics. This is not benefit our ice hockey community. They would still need to travel out to Vernal and Park City and Provo. But this would be for the, the purpose and intent and environment that we're looking at at La Sierra Park. This is that non-athletic, the passive recreation, the community building events, city hosting, food trucks, which I think is really appropriate to the block. And, you know, like has been mentioned, such a unique and central part of our city, something that I think recreation would be so proud of to have as a central outdoor event and recreation space. Any questions on that?

We could get the train going around it as well. Oh yeah, that's a great idea. And we've talked to Adam about continuing to team up with the train club that meets there at the Sierra, and even adding a, you know, a path where it could go over to the Orem Heritage Museum. So yes, absolutely we want to incorporate that.

We'll talk about it again, how do you pay for all of it. But what gets me most— again, what gets me excited about these as we consider the passing of the CARES Act is you're able to satisfy arts and recreation requirements in these joint projects together. And rather than that feeling of dividing up the pie and sort of, you know, arguing over who gets what share, I think we, as we've put together a 10-year plan, I think we're really excited to say how much can we get towards a joint something, because I feel like we're going to get 2 for 1 on the return on these dollars rather than just us or just them. We're able to say this is great for everybody. Y'all are getting a new plaza or new walkways or new parking. We're getting this new rec center amenity that seems really exciting to us.

Can I just, you know, add a kudos here? So truly, I feel very confident in your leadership. there, because I mean, sure, you have— you had a new rec center building, but we were in the red with our old rec center for years and years and years.

Yeah.

And yeah, the new building helped with that, but I really feel your management, your excitement, your leadership has brought us to where we are, where we're making money now, you know. So thanks for all you're doing. I just, you know, these new projects, you always think, ah, you know, can we make it work? But I feel like with this team here, you know, Ryan, Bryce.

I'm really excited about what you presented here.

We are too. Any other questions before we sort of jump to the next one?

Yeah, the brains.

Any other feedback questions?

Maybe one thing to bring up, both Lame and Tom have brought up doing an ice rink, a portable one at the city center. That still could be an option next year. And I personally think that's a good thing to do because then we could test and see what the participation is and the revenue.

And how many people want skates?

You rent them, right?

But yeah, so yeah, it's a good—

that was a thought coming out of my mouth.

Yeah, so this would be a great test because then we say, okay, well, how many pairs of skates do we need to get and what sizes.

Children's sizes, women's sizes, men's sizes, yada yada yada.

That's a great test.

Maybe those future hockey players are going to put on their first pair of skates.

And have many been to community rinks like this around the country or other places to see?

Because there's—

I've been to several with our family and we love them.

It's just a really fun gathering Yes, and you see them in those urban environments or those outdoor— they just, they attract people and gathering and being, which I think is what's really fun about them.

And as a mom, that's another adventure you want to expose your kids to, right? You take them roller skating, you take them to the pool, you take them— so let's take, you know, you want your children to learn how to ice skate. So maybe in the future, if they ever want to go on a date, they know how to ice skate. Anyway, yes, I like providing business.

So where were you thinking of putting the ice rink in the city center?

At the Sierra?

The ball diamond.

Hug it out, Chris.

Yes, hug it out.

Time for a hug.

Okay, so to be clear, ice ribbon at Sierra Park, right?

Okay.

And using probably even some of the building or adding on to some of the buildings that are at and support the Sierra Pool. But the concept of an ice rink and these portable mobile ones, the thought is we could do that where we're doing Lights On. So in that— that open space there in City Center Park, potentially during kind of the lights-on period to test it out, flesh it out. You know, build out our pro forma.

Yeah.

Cool.

Anyway. Yeah.

Yeah.

That's, that's the thought.

Because how big, how big would they be?

You know, NHL rink is, I think, 100 by 200. And these usually are 30 by 60 or 40 by 80.

Pretty cozy. And you just leave the lights on till—

Yeah, a couple months.

February, end of February.

Yeah. How long are those going to be on?

I know we just— End of the month. End of January.

It's so nice to drive by that.

I drove by there then and I thought, this is so cool.

Even it's after Christmas, I'm like, man, you need to leave those up all year long.

So then the next—

well, I hate to— or has it bring this up is so then when we have the ice rink, are we going to want lights around that?

If you give a mouse a cookie.

So Jeff, to that point, I mean, I think we have— I mean, and please give us affirmations on high school, but every year we've expanded We expanded a little bit more the lights and the amount of trees that we light up and even the amount of lights we put on the trees. And part of the way that we're able to do that, I mean, we incrementally increase the budget. However, we're also buying the lights and part of the budget is buying the lights. And so we're able to take, since we don't have to buy those, rebuy or rent them every year, we take some of some that money and put it into of the lights. And I those think that's a good point. funds to then add to right now.

But you're planning on expanding the lights next year, maybe going up Center and First North or something?

Yeah. So as you know, Dave, we have— we'll be planting in 1.5 times more trees when our new city center is done and the parking lot is done and everything compared to what we had before.

So we will have more trees to And then we're looking at doing the snowflakes, what that costs us down State Street, to make it more festive instead of just black, right?

Yes.

On the hanging lights? Yeah, on the lights. That would be nice.

Well, Chris is doing that, right?

I don't know what—

Springville did it and it looked really nice. So, if you had it all the way down State Street, I think that would make it a little bit more festive.

ladding fee, I'll just remind you of that, okay?

Why'd I ask you for that?

Well, there's a will— well, where there's a will, there's a way.

Well, we're giving them— we're giving them something, a cookie, right?

Yeah. I'm gonna bring that book to your house.

I'll move my cheese then.

I think our goal is to see the city center walk from space. OK, so that's heart, body, and Bryce has a beautiful mind as well.

Classic Bryce mind builder. Mind craft, I guess. One of my other favorite— in fact, my favorite thing the last year of getting the chance to work with both the library and recreation departments is again to see that multiplication of our efforts or our monies or our investments or our staff. We do so much of serving the same members of the community just in different ways. And so it's been really fun to go through and work with our library and to see where we can again multiply or get creative with funding sources or project ideas. And help each department further its own mission, but really working together we'll just get there a lot quicker. I think I've met with each of y'all council members about the library's strategic plan that we implemented in December and that we're going through the different phases to support them in modernizing some of our practices, putting our staff into much more high-profile positions positions, you know, they are the relationship builders in our community. And so making sure that their time and their efforts are spent building relationships with our residents and adjusting their workdays to reflect that, that they're able to be out front, that they're expected to have experience programming online or in person with our residents. And it's been very well received. They're very excited about that. The second half of that is the facility master plan to support the in doing that. The facility, as you all know, has been built in phases. It is 2 separate buildings, now 3 separate buildings with Library Hall. It's 3 stories or 2 stories or 1 story. It has some unique challenges, but with that has a number of opportunities. And so we've, again, we're working with Method Studios to design our facility master plan that will support our staff in what they're doing and help them build some of these efficient processes so we don't have staff redundancies where we don't need it. We can take those dollars and use that to invest in our residents and programming and relationships. So Phase 1 is a focus on our entrances. The first entrance you can see right here, this is the vestibule that connects to current City Hall. That will not exist, and so we need to design an entrance from the plaza into the building The second one is if you've been in the storyteller wing trying to get to library hall, you go through a fire escape door and you feel like you cannot be in the right spot. And so to add some prominence to that, so you feel like you are entering one of the again one of the crown jewels of the city, the library hall, the brand new facility. And then the third one is to look at the entrance. You can sort of see pop from the corner that. Currently leads to the north side of the building. And so again, that idea of nodes, we want you to feel like you are entering the library from all 3 places. And so we've worked with them to design in a way that is cost-effective, but really to add some simplicity to how you get in and out of the library. This supports the idea that we want to feel like a community center. We don't want you to feel like you're cutting through the library to get to the city center. We want you to enter on purpose. We want you to— And stay, not just check out a book and leave as quick as you can.

We're not a Blockbuster.

We want you to come and be here and talk to people and build relationships and have experiences. And so we've been really excited to work with Method Studio on all of those. We feel like we'll be able to accomplish this again without major significant construction. We're not ripping down walls and building new buildings. We're able to do some design. We're adding some glass. We're shifting some stacks around to create these types of spaces. And But this is— we are finishing the design process for Phase 1 right now and hope to implement this as soon as possible. Phase 2 will focus on some updated staff spaces, specifically right when you walk into the north entrance, sort of by the children's area. We have our large circulation desk in the old Circ Inn area. Area of the facility. What we've seen with the more modern libraries, or those that have been built more recently, is they have a shared space for our tech services division, the life of the book, from acquisition to cataloging, collection maintenance, circulating it in or out. Those are currently spread across 5 different areas of our library. So those books are moved on carts, the staff teams are separate, people are trained only on one task. We plan to bring them into a bullpen like we've seen at the Granite Library, the brand new Spanish Fork Library, so we'll have much more of a team feel. It's way more efficient, it's way simpler, and it's better customer service. And so we'll look to retool that entire circulation desk and staff area to better support our tech services staff. A second one is the idea of our makerspace. The makerspace is a lot of our— is everyone familiar with makerspace?

So—

Tell everybody what it is.

The idea of the makerspace is you can come into a library and you can use a Cricut machine, you can use a Laser Forge, you can use a lot of computer software and video editing and podcast equipment.

And sewing machines.

And sewing machines.

Crazy cool.

3D printing is huge. This is an incredibly popular portion of our library. And it's a, I would say, one of the new emerging fields of library services. And we currently have it in our basement in this room right here. So you can see that we can accommodate about 4 people at a time. And so we would look to swap our space in the library and move that to a much more prominent and large and technologically capable area.

Right.

So we can be bringing in our youth groups, be bringing in schools and our homeschool and our charter school groups. We'd be able to run community classes, bring over our friends from the Senior Friendship Center and let them come over on a Thursday morning and have the space to work and operate. In addition, on the upstairs of the children's area, we'd love to take one of the nooks and turn it into a junior makerspace as well. And so supplement our story times and our craft ideas and some of these not just come and read come and be read to, but come and do to support the reading that you're doing.

Bryce, where would you put the new makerspace area?

Right now, again, working with Method, we plan to have it all finalized, but we have proposed on the upstairs by the admin offices on the south building for the full makerspace, and then upstairs on the children's area for the junior makerspace as well. that glass overlook area. There's that little cutout.

We have it back over there.

That'd be nice.

And then a future teen area as well. Every library is currently equipped with a space that tells these teens they can come after school and be there and hang out. I've seen it done some great ways in other libraries. We've seen some poor examples as well, but we feel like we've been able to see it. There's a lot of great ways to suggest age-specific areas rather than put up more walls, but we can suggest it with furniture and programming and everything like that. The final one of the library facility master plan is to leverage those outdoor spaces around and in between the buildings. There are 3 courtyards, a lower, a middle, and then the upper balcony of the children's. We're again working with Method to design a library park that focuses on passive programming opportunities, and so we would landscape and redesign it in a way that encourages you to be there with your family and with your books and to be in the space. We've talked community and demonstration gardens, indoor and outdoor greenhouse spaces. We've talked swings, not like swing sets, but like porch swings where you can sit and read in the shade of those big mature trees that are out there. Make it far more accessible from the street down to the courtyard area. The vestibule that will face The main plaza would have a semi-private outdoor reading space as well in between that and Library Hall. But we really think the blending of the library as an indoor-only facility into an indoor-outdoor community space—

Yeah.

Again, parks and libraries blending really well together opens up funding opportunities. We have a wonderful park staff that is already equipped and ready to handle these types of things, and so we design it with them. In a way that provides just a lot more experiences at the library so that you can come and stay a lot longer.

Thanks, Chris. So maybe just to kind of wrap this up, I don't recommend watching Parks and Rec. I can't watch it sometimes. Some things are—

You used to love it though, didn't you?

Some things are a little bit too accurate sometimes. One thing in there is it has some funny mockumentary interaction between library and parks and rec. And, you know, historically there's potentially been at least a perceived and/or actual sense of competition between maybe library and CIRA. What I love about Bryce, about the vision that we're talking I think what we're talking about is— and Bryce used the term 2-for-1— I think what we're trying to propose is rather than competing with each other, we're coming together to get 3-for-1 by saying, look, we're not competing against each other if we're trying to address quality of life with mind, body, and heart. We're trying to bring those together. There's a place for both, all of them, and we can synergize together and provided these amazing quality of life features for everyone. And there's a place for it, there's a market for it, in a— again, in a collaborative, you know, team-oriented sort of way.

And let me just say what's exciting to me about this, and that was a great presentation, Bryce. Well, what's exciting to me about this is in government and a lot of places, Things just get stuck.

Mm-hmm.

I mean, you do it the same way now that you did 10 years ago or 20 years ago or 30 years ago just because it's comfortable and it works and it's just stuck and it works good enough and there's, you know, there's nobody pushing to change anything. But that's what we're really doing here in Orem is we're taking these things into the future. And Bryce is doing a phenomenal job to take a boring old library and take it into a dynamic, progressive, amazing asset for our community. And so what he's laying out for you is revolutionary and is taking best practices and is taking the very best that's out there and that's going to be overlaid on the Orm Library. So it's exciting.

And I'd like to add to that, outstanding job by the way. I think it's awesome that we're using the stuff that we have already and we're just making more of it. But both of you, I think that what you're doing is bringing our community together, and that strengthens our community in ways that we can't even put a price tag on. So I really love both of those ideas.

Well, I guess all 3 of them, mind, body, heart.

And you're being respectfully non-traditional. I mean, I said that in my little Mulan thing, and to me what that means is, you know, we're not disrespecting the core of a library, which is to educate and live through education, right? Through experiences and knowledge, really knowledge. We are expanding that to different areas of life and with our facilities that we have. So I think emerging into the future.

Perfect.

Very exciting, truly.

Thank you.

Any other questions, feedback on this before we move on? Okay, Mark is going to take us through concept of a new training facility for our fire department. And I'll say that the why behind this is really compelling and is one that's been kind of eye-opening for me. And so I guess with that brief introduction, Mark, take it away. Thanks.

This is a picture of our fire camp. These are new recruits and lateral employees that we pulled out of different departments that want to work for us because it's a destination department. You can see the training tower in the back. This is down at Ypres. It's a training tower that resembles nothing like we ever fight a fire in. But unfortunately, that's what we currently have to deal with. We're the 5th largest fire department in the state. We're absolutely the most progressive aggressive fire department in the state. We're the only department that has an operational manual for our truck and engine fire suppression operations that really dictate how we do our job. And you would think Salt Lake City, UFA, Ogden, West Valley, the bigger departments than us would have similar things, but they have the same firefighters that we do that were all They're all trained through the Utah Fire Rescue Academy in Provo, and they're just 20 years behind the times. Luckily for us, we have a core group of employees that have gone out and researched different training processes and brought them back. East Coast, West Coast, Seattle, different, different areas which we've implemented into our design. And we're at a point now that we cannot progress any further without, without a training facility that lets us practice what we do realistically. And so that's this Proving Grounds. And this is a project that's been underway since last March. I returned from a fire station building conference with some literature on just one of the vendors, and I dumped it in Chief's lap. And I said, Seth Swenson's lap, as he's over our— division chief over our fire training, to come up with a plan and a process so that we could present a training facility. Like Brent said, the why is to properly prepare our firefighters to enter burning buildings and save lives. This is a picture of Tim Hope. He's got second-degree burns on his right arm and his face, and this is a result result of really the procedures that we follow, the techniques that we do, where because we don't have the facility to develop the muscle memory with our training operations, he made an error with his partner inside the building. And luckily for us, he survived. They both bailed out a second-story window and— but received burns for This injury. A simple error, they didn't close the door behind them as they were searching, which then allowed the fire to just flash and come up the stairs as they were trying to exit and got themselves burned. So this has really pushed the need to have the facility to train the way we actually function day in, day out. And it has to be real life. I mean, we take advantage of every house we can get into, every building that is going to be torn down. We've worked with legal to develop a packet so that we cover all of our bases so that when we train, which we train every single day, we train as realistic as possible. Yeah, it's really just a matter of what we do is We save lives. And it sounds dramatic, it sounds dramatic when it's explained, but that's exactly our whole process. If you expect us, our residents expect us to show up at a fire and go into that house and get somebody if they're still in there. Well, I'm telling you that we're the only department that does it. Believe it or not, wherever you live— Pleasant Grove, they're not coming in my house to get somebody in my family because they don't, they don't have the They don't have the technique, they don't have the training, they don't have the manuals, they don't have the direction that we provide. And so when I tell you that we have the best people with the best processes, it's— it really is true. We should be really proud of the department for what they are able to accomplish.

Mark, do you think the citizens of PGM know that?

No.

Oh, absolutely not.

Because I mean, if the word gets out, everybody's going to move north.

Well, I mean, for 30 years, if something happens, you don't call 911, you call Station 2 in Orem. And that was before the Linden Station. And we just expect them to respond. They deliver a great service for one call.

That's it.

They can't handle multiple calls because of the lack of resources.

But that's— I mean, I didn't know that's the case.

Well, they don't have the ability to.

Yeah.

I mean, the training that comes out of— I mean, it's at the front door, 2 people on a hose line, where our guys are going in back windows into rooms that aren't on fire to then search to the fire to get people out of the fire smoke environment. 20 years ago, the city purchased this property, 1600 West, 1300 South. So if you're west So if you go westbound on University Parkway, over the freeway, across Geneva Road, down into that industrial, then you can make a left-hand turn onto 1600 West. Takes you down to this 3-acre parcel that was originally bought for Orem Fire Station Number 4. Which we all shook our head at the time because it made no sense to put a fire station in the southwest corner of the city with, you know, a 45-degree response where you want a 360-degree response from the fire station. Luckily, we've hung on to this property because it's the perfect location for a training facility. It's zoned properly. The property to the south has some form of legal protection.

Agricultural protection, isn't it?

Yeah, thank you. So that it won't be developed and owners decide to remove it.

Okay.

That's the only way to do that.

I mean, once they've—

they have no intention to right now.

But I mean, usually conservation easements—

so there's a difference between a conservation easement and agricultural protection.

Okay.

So yeah, they could change it if it's just an agricultural protection.

One of the benefits with this property is we've looked at making sure the zoning fits because our intentions— I mean, we train Every single day. This isn't a training facility that's once a month, every couple months. This is a training facility that will be utilized every single day, which also will allow us to burn, which creates the smoke. And so based on the environment, the industrial setting, it just makes more sense than trying to put a training facility on Center Street or, you know, 800 South off State Street or wherever property is that we can, we can find.

With that training facility, would that be a destination that other fire departments would use, which we could get a return on investment?

Yeah, we've talked about different processes right now incorporating different regional training and even national trainings to come in. We're currently working with—

Well, the farm's not a destination now.

Oh, this—

yeah, this training facility, as I get into this, it actually puts other training facilities to shame, including Salt Lake City, which is our capital city.

I just wanted to comment though. While that may be the case, we don't want to necessarily focus that that's a given, right? Oh, no, no. I mean, monetarily speaking, we're—

We kill business to save lives, and that's what we do.

Guam does it first, and let's see what we can accomplish.

Absolutely.

If we can't fill the schedule, then maybe we fill it with other—

Yeah, one of the huge benefits is the national training that we're currently— I attended a training up in Seattle with 6 guys. I mean, it cost us almost $15,000 to send the guys to this training. Well, with a facility like this, we can host that training here where our guys get to attend for free, and then other firefighters from all over the country pay to come here. So those are the types conferences where I think we see a little return on investment.

So is the building— are you building a fire tower?

Yeah, I'm going to show you right here. This is just the proposed facility layout. There's a building that's a classroom component, and then there's a couple of fire structures, drive access, fire hydrants, and all this is currently in the works.

So I think what we're saying is, we're saying this is an Orem-first facility.

100%.

For Orem.

But if we have opportunities to monetize it, we will.

Yeah.

But we can't really count on that in our pro forma as far as—

Yeah.

But we obviously will do that, and we think there's a good chance we can do that.

Yeah, I don't, I don't want to try to sell this or push this over on the council that we're going to make any money off of That's not the intent. This is an expense for us to be able to do the job the way we need to do it. And honestly—

Real quick, we have a firearms range that would operate basically on— that operates on the same principle. We use it about 25% of the time, and it's farmed out to all the way through the FBI the rest of the time. We charge them a nominal fee to use our range, and that's basically the fund we use for maintenance upkeep. So it's not, yeah, we're not charging them. It's not a business. It's not profitable, if you will. But we don't pay for the maintenance of our range.

Nobody else does.

Maintenance is self-sustaining.

So it's really more cost savings and offset to the operation.

Yeah.

You have Provo, you have American Fork, Lehi that all have training facilities, but they're not, they're just not realistic. I mean, Provo You've seen their cement tower behind their Station 4 across from University Hospital or Utah Valley Hospital. There's, I mean, there's nothing like— you don't fight a fire in that single room, 3 stories, all cement. It just doesn't make sense. So you can see how we're utilizing the space, created a gravel space. The rest will be cement that we have the ability to expand additional props that Overtime or additional, like, the little cargo, what are they?

Containers?

Yeah, those kind of containers to do different type of operations. But this proposal is the bread and butter.

How many does your training facility you're looking to have in there to train at a given time?

Like trainees, how many will it hold in the building?

Oh, I think our classroom setup is I want to say it's 100.

Oh, nice. Good.

I mean, we can, we can host a big conference or the entire department.

That's perfect. Mark? Yeah, can this facility serve as kind of a mini station?

Like, would you respond out of this?

Um, no, that's not our intent. We have built-in bay space just because that's one thing we lack is apparatus with buying more vehicles, and just we don't want them sitting outside, so we And we've done that. We've minimized the building so it's a shell versus full structure just to get them out of the weather.

So, so to that point, Pete, part of how that conversation I think has changed over time, because Chief Sanderson was saying how originally it was purchased for a station, and since then, you know, obviously we've annexed in that Southwest Annex Building, but also since Since then, Vineyard has grown a lot.

Yeah.

And so we've been in ongoing talks for, I guess, more intensely over the last year or last several months with Vineyard to try and figure out what's the best location for the station that they would build and pay for in Vineyard, but making sure it would have a 360 response, which, which could include then going into South This training facility covers all of our training, not only just our fire but also our EMS.

There's actually a built-on component that is essentially the back of an ambulance attached to the building to where we actually go in and run patients through our ambulance and do real live training, not only from the fire side with the towers but also our EMS components.

And I'll say Linden and even the location The location of the Linden Fire Station takes advantage of that same concept as well because obviously it's faster sometimes for those firefighters to respond to North Orem than it would be for a different station in Orem to respond to. So it's being looked at globally and ultimately whoever can get there quickest will be the one responding.

Right.

This is kind of a breakdown of the classroom. You can see it's a large classroom setting that can be divided into breakout.

Uh-huh.

It also has a kitchen facility, a couple of offices, and then men and women's showers that are accessible from the outside so that we're in the, you know, we're in the toxic environment, we have the ability to go in without walking through the training facility, shower, clean up before we drive home or do those kind of things to protect ourselves. maintain the cleanliness of the facility. And then that's, that's a picture of the additional bay space that's attached to the building.

EMS training.

So this, this is a picture of the structure, one of the structures. It's called the Commissioner. They all have different names. We actually, to finalize this project, we actually are taking a couple of our cadre members and Trevor Bell in 2 weeks out to Denver to tour this facility just to assure that as we put the final stamp on all of that, we dotted the i's, crossed the t's. We've talked with people that are working in them currently just because we just don't want to leave anything out. This is our one opportunity to do it right. You can see the design. I mean, you have your, your high-rise, you have your apartment setting, you have your garden style. You have, I mean, everything we're going to, everything that we are going to fight a fire in Orem is built into this structure and then the next structure. All the rooms have the ability to have live fire up to 1,600 degrees.

Wow.

We can ventilate from the top, which is our part of our operations. And it's just, I mean, these are, this is a 50-year structure. I can't remember, I think Seth told me there's over 200 of these types of structures nationally that are in current use, and it's just the right direction for us to go. This battalion chief, obviously, it looks more like—

Mark said it quickly, but it's actually important what he says about ventilating. That isn't always every fire department's— that isn't how they always operate. And being Being able to go and ventilate a building directs a fire in a certain direction so that then our firefighters can go in and save lives.

As soon as we cut a hole in the roof above the fire, it actually gets smoke lift, which then actually protects the person in that environment. So if we can alleviate the smoke, the whole intention is we provide a longer time for that person to survive in that environment. for us to go get them. And there are not very many departments that do vertical ventilation. It's just, I don't, it's the lack of training, the lack of understanding. Being up on an icy roof and cutting a hole in the roof. I joke all the time, our guys are so aggressive that if you have a medical call, they're probably cutting the roof above the kitchen because you're having a seizure in the kitchen just to get warm oxygen to the patient. I joke all the I time. do that all the time. But you can see the benefit of this building, which is the second building of the structure. It's more your residential structure, upstairs rooms, downstairs rooms, and the benefit is the inside walls are reconfigurable. So we're not just set with— I mean, because once you train in it, develop that muscle memory, we want to change the structure within. And it's something we do on our own, readjust the walls and change the environment So that once you've been through it, you're not just accustomed and focused on, you know, exactly where you're going. We want it to be different every time.

So, dumb question, but is this something that the police department could benefit from as well? I mean, I know that they're probably wanting to have different experiences and different rooms. Less fire, but yeah.

Not fire, but public safety.

No, absolutely. Something to add to that is I was on a commission about 5 years ago for UVU. Provo wants the Ufa property back.

They own it.

And so there was a— okay, can we build a joint public safety training facility based out of UVU? And we went toward facilities across the country and whatever. And it came down to— I mean, who wants to basically piggyback on the costs, and everybody basically punted it.

Yeah.

And so that's why something like that doesn't already exist, and that's why we've got everybody using our facilities like our range and things like that. And so yeah, I mean, it's a— I hate to call it a flaw in Utah's mentality sometimes when it comes to these kinds of things, but it's like that forethought thing that never really been there. And so now, yeah, now it's crunch time where, you know, I don't know your first timeline. They want— the pro wants their property back, and, uh, you know, they're looking for a new home. So, you know, this is stuff where, as far as being used, used and abused plenty by just our own people.

Yeah, there's components. I mean, there— I mean, when we're— I mean, a lot of the rooms where we're burning, we wouldn't want the police officers in there. The carcinogens that'd be exposed to because they're not wearing the breathing apparatus and those type of things. But there obviously could be components, and that's something we work closely together on.

Mark, can you talk about the construction materials then?

Is it—

are you going to be able to burn it down and you have to rebuild it?

No, it's all protected within.

So it's—

yeah, we can burn up to 1,600 degrees, which is— we would never get that hot. Without, without warping walls, without destroying the property.

And it's— These are small fires, correct?

Like pallets is what you refer to?

Yeah, well, and furniture. I mean, CESSA mastered ripping stuff from DI and then burning it.

But you're not like igniting the whole building.

This is what—

Oh yeah.

And we actually control the heat. We control the heat with ventilation at the top. So As soon as we pop that vent, simulate ventilation, then it lets all the heated gas go and protects the interior.

Is it more realistic to what you're dealing with?

Yeah, this is—

that's exactly what this is. This is the bread and butter of what we do with these 2 buildings. It allows us to deal with Midtown 360, any of our garden-style apartments, any high-rise that comes, and it's just It's such a thing that I don't know why it's never been a priority. And it's probably just been because UFRA and Utah Fire Rescue Academy just does it one way, and Orem's got by for so long. But now having the processes in place and the people we have in place to take our service to a whole new level, we can't go— we can't do any further. We can't go back. We can't do any more without this. And so that's why it's become such a priority.

Again, in concept and kind of in summary, it's difficult to keep your people safe and yet provide a realistic opportunity to train to them so that they can respond in the best way possible to enter in a very unsafe situation to save lives. It's—

that's hard.

And so some of this stuff I mean, you know, these facilities have obviously been developed over time so that they can provide that solution in that scenario.

And then for us to go tour them to see and talk with the training officers in Denver just to make sure that we're not missing anything, that the money we spend is well thought out and spent appropriately, because I feel like we get one shot at this project, and so I want to do it right. And, um, the one thing you should all be aware of too is, I mean, for the last 2 years, Fire Station 1 rebuild has been, of course, our number one priority with door issues and water issues. And we've done some things working with facilities to mitigate the water, and we've got a commitment from every single person on the department that that this is the number one priority. And the thing that I appreciated that came out of the meetings that we had with each crew and platoon was that they put service they provide to the citizens above their own living quarters.

That was my question.

Because they feel this is a higher level priority than what they currently live and sleep in every day. And that, I mean, that says a lot about our people.

So have you written the RFP?

For this?

Um, for this, we had— it's all in the works right now. Okay.

I, I was involved in the representing a federal contractor that bid on the Hill Tower probably 3 or 4 years ago. So there's a— there's special type of materials to build this facility. So I can pull some of the technical documents and I'll share those with Steve.

Yeah, and Chief Swenson's been in contact with this company from the get-go and And with all of his research, he's found that this is by far our best option for that 50-year training building.

So if I'm hearing you, you're saying that, you know, of course our goal is to have the best of the best in our employment, right, for our firefighters. So you're saying this is a priority for firefighters as far as from a recruitment standpoint? You see that this would help that?

Oh yeah, I mean, this would just One more feather in our cap. Besides our pay and our processes and our critical care paramedic response and our engine and truck manuals, which nobody has. I mean, at a glance, you know what your responsibilities are every single day based on the seat you sit in the engine. You know what your responsibilities are. And that's the detail our guys have gone to to assure that we provide the safest and most efficient level of service to save lives as we can.

This is kind of personal for me because that Tim, uh, he was at our fire and he saved our girl in our house, and he made it so that our house didn't burn all the way to the ground. So I see him injured and I think, oh, we have to help him.

So thanks for doing that.

So, Jen, I appreciate that because Josh says sometimes our mentality is that like training is a want and not a need, but I think this is more on the side of need. Because we've all read— we've done a great job of, you know, fire stations and equipment and engines and ambulances and getting great people that are bought into, you know, the highest standards of life-saving. And now, and now I think the thing we need to make sure that they have is the ability to train.

Our training, our current training consists of guys buying wood at Home Depot and creating hallways with a door, and we put it out in the middle of a parking lot, and it's just not realistic. But those are the things, and it's funny coming back to 'em because 20 years ago we didn't want to train because our training consisted It consisted of taking the hose off of the truck and we'd flank it off, walking around cones to a cone and then spray this cone like it was the fire. Well, that's not realistic. We're just wasting all of our time. And then when the call comes out, we gotta hurry and load it all back on the truck and respond on the call. To where I was shocked when I started as the chief and realized the level of training that our guys are currently doing. And want to do because it's, it's just a mentality that's changed with the actual personnel, not the leadership. It's the guys wanting to be better at the job they do every day, and we just need to provide them the ability to do it.

So this is awesome.

Thank you.

Is there—

and again, these These are thoughts coming out of my mouth, so— but it seems to me that the level of training and the number of lives that this is going to save and the prevention—

is there some kind of a national entity that would look at this and say, there's a grant for that, we'll help you pay for this because of what you're doing? And is there a way that we can get some kind of insurance benefit or deduction in some way because of the prevention? You can go get a physical for free once a year because, you know, hopefully that prevents other problems down the road. Well, this is where we're thinking, hopefully we're presenting, we're making disaster small Are there things that we can tap into because of this that would, you know, get money and preventative money to help us in other preventative ways down the road?

Before we—

So, Jeff, I love that question. I think—

I was going to mention the ISO.

Yes.

Yeah, so we just went through our insurance rating with the city and we can do much better. We have an amazing water system. So the ISO rating for the city takes into account our water system, our dispatch system, and then our fire services. Well, our water is like off the charts. We can't do any better with water. So, I mean, it's an A+. Dispatch, great. When it comes to the fire department, we score a big fat zero on the training facility because who don't have any. So it's a reduction in points. Fire prevention, which is something we've increased with our outreach to the community and community risk reduction, that's changing. And so our intention is to be— is to get this underway and then have the evaluator come back and see the difference it would make. What we needed to What we're trying to determine is if we can spend the money on this and we can translate that to reduction in homeowners' and business owners' fire insurance, then it's like a no-brainer if it's a wash. Now, I don't know what that number, what that cost savings is going to be, but so if we take our ISO from a 3 to a 2 or a 4 to a 1, what's that cost savings? And it could be significant to where it's— I mean, that alone covers itself.

From a taxpayer perspective.

And Jeff, I would also mention too, from an employee standpoint, since we—

first management standpoint, right? When we're training our employees better to be prepared for the fire that Tim went into, we're lowering our risk of workers' comp claims too as well, and we're making sure that our first responders are going home safe.

So there's a soft cost there as well that we And we don't have necessarily particular grants that are significant in mind, but it is something that is on our list to seek and find. And one of those could potentially be like a federal earmark process, for example. And so we have started to talk about getting recommendations from surrounding jurisdictions who might be interested, and then we can use that to then go to Congressman John Curtis and others of the Utah delegation to see if there would be support from them to pursue a federal grant.

Yeah, employee job satisfaction, this would be the number one thing that would make a difference for our organization, which we have a high level of satisfaction right now, but this would take it off the charts. Because I think in the back of all their minds, it's never going to happen because it's, it's never been a priority. It's never been a focus until now.

And so—

Well, I think this speaks volumes to the families, you know, to the wives and husbands and families of these firefighters that we're going to do what we can to make sure that they get home after I mean, I spoke with the fire during December, and everyone was so excited about just the talk of this.

Oh, I know.

It's great. And you talk about muscle memory, so, I mean, the key thing is, you go into a fire, you don't even have to think, you're done, and you're saving lives. It's just like what the police do. You need to have experience, because in a split second, you've got to figure out how you're going to shoot the gun, Yeah. So I think it— I mean, it's priceless. So we need to definitely move forward.

Any other comments, feedback?

Can I say one more thing to that list that you made of what we've supplied for a fire? You know, you went through that great thing. Take this, this, and we need to do this. I want to add just a little kudos to Carrie because her innovation, her, you know, in our high-risk, in our STEM program, Huge difference for the fire guys. Huge difference.

And that's, that's you.

I mean, you did awesome on that, so thank you.

She's always been supportive of the fire department for sure.

Well, I don't think it's just compensation. I think it's the direction of the chiefs, that they're innovative and willing to support their staff and show appreciation.

That's what I'll do.

Well, you think about those languages we just talked about. That's— this would like be a tangible gift. It doesn't fall in that same way we think about it, but it's something that is tangible that you're providing to them that shows how much you care.

I think it makes it a destination for sure.

Yeah, they're supported in the job they do, for sure. So thank you for your time.

So we have some other things to go over, but it's our lunch hour, so I think we want to put a button in this presentation, have lunch, and then come back to it. If, Mayor, if you and council are okay with that.

Yeah, just what do you want to do as far as time-wise? Because it's 12:10 right now.

We've got lunch scheduled for— Tess, the hotel does If we— however much time we take in the lunch area?

No, I just need to let the servers know, and then I think we'd be good. I'll call them right now or text.

So I think we could still take an hour to 45 minutes for lunch.

So I guess the question is, when would you want to come back?

Yeah, because it's 12:30, right?

It's 12:10.

Does that work as far as— I don't want to cut too much out on the other side.

I would say the one area that we can cut down on is the last council roundtable, because, you know, what we're talking about will feed into that anyway, right? Because these are recommendations.

We've got to go through all our goals and focus on that because we did those roundtables. It says 1 o'clock. Does that give us enough time if we come back at 1? 12:50? 12:50?

I can eat half.

Let's just say 1, but let's just really start at 1.

Okay?

Is it in the same room or is it upstairs?

Recording at Welcome back.

Thank you.

So we left off with Chief Sanderson, and now we're going to move to, uh, another item, potential infrastructure, uh, type of things. And then after that, we'll move into more financing options and that sort of thing.

So you want to do it? So thanks, Mayor. So on this This next item, I'll just highlight that what we're talking about is a potential use inside of the Public Safety Building. With the construction of the new City Center, our fire administration staff will move over to the new City Center, and their offices will be around the new Emergency Operations Center there. And then And that provides additional space in our police station. That, along with combining with public dispatch, creates 2 opportunities to re-envision, you know, what we're doing with the public safety building. And of course, since it was built, you know, we have more officers today than we did then. And so we want to— so after we talk about this potential health clinic idea. Josh will talk about a little bit about the why and the what related to reconfiguring the police station.

Okay, so we've been talking a lot about how awesome our employees are and what we've done to retain them and how much we appreciate them, and this is a potential idea that we could add another benefit to employees that would help with engagement retention, it would help with absenteeism, and then it would also help with our medical plan usage. And that is the idea of an Orem employee health clinic. And where it would be located is on the back side of the Public Safety Building. It would have a separate entrance. It would be completely separate from the police department building, but it would service all Forum employees and their family members. So they would be able to use this clinic. We could do 2 models. We could either hire a third-party organization to run the clinic and we would just pay a set fee, or we could have this— we could hire a doctor and an office manager slash to run the clinic for us. Those are the 2 options that we have to choose with that, but we, we think this would be a really great incentive to— especially for our employees to want to stay with us long-term, because one of the ideas that we have is if an employee works and retires from the city with at least 20 years of service, they would be able to utilize the clinic until they're Medicare eligible. So that really helps with our first responders who retire a lot.

What about city council?

That we could carve some money out.

20 years, Dave, you gotta be in 20 years.

You're almost there, Dave.

You're more than halfway.

Almost there.

We don't want it extended by 20 years.

Oh!

So bummed out.

We wouldn't be taking anything away from our first responder space for Josh's employees. Like Brynn mentioned, we have some extra space right now that isn't being utilized.

Well, and I'd say quite frankly that, you know, it would be— having it close to our first responders means that they— it would be extra convenient for them in terms of using it.

Absolutely. And another thing to mention, Right now, we partner with IHC WorkMed for our random drug testing, our pre-employment screenings. We also do annual physi—

every other year? Physicals?

Every other year. Every other year, we switch off between police and fire that they do their annual physicals. We could also do that at this clinic. So it takes away a lot of the burden from the human resources staff and from the police and fire department as well, because we could just send them directly to the clinic. One of the ways that we're thinking about how we can fund this remodel and the startup costs is the savings that we have been able to negotiate with our broker GBS with our medical insurance for this year. So that, that could fund the startup costs for this home. So where we're at right now is if you guys approve this idea, we would finalize the architectural designs of the clinic at the same time that we're finalizing the remodel in the police department. And then we would need to choose which model of service, whether we want to do it in-house or third party. We would recruit the medical provider or put out an RFP for the third party. We've already looked at some of the third-party medical clinic options. I think it would be easier to control the costs if we Had the medical provider be an employee of the city and the office manager, I think we could control the cost a lot better that way, but there are those 2 options.

So, Carrie, have you done this before?

I have not started a clinic, but I have run a clinic before.

Yeah, that's what I mean.

And it's very— yeah, it's very successful. I do want to be really clear though that this is not a cost savings. This is an additional benefit to employees. It will not make money for the city. It should help us lower our health insurance claims though, because if you come to the clinic, we will not be charging the health insurance company for these visits. It would just be a flat $30 copay or whatever we decide on, and then we would not charge our health insurance for it.

What types of things are you talking about doing in this clinic?

So it could be your physicals, It could be minor injuries. So for an example, where I used to previously work, my son was on a job site and he cut his knee open. And he was at the clinic within 10 minutes and stitched up 10 minutes later, you know. So it can do all of our injuries on the job when the clinic is open. So let's say someone in Public Works gets a, I don't know, Chris, what do you think? Well, it could be another example of like cutting yourself open.

Laceration.

There you go, a laceration or something. You could go into the clinic and we wouldn't have to send them down to WorkMed. Yeah, um, so that would help us with, with those costs as well.

Um, we are also talking about like broken arms, broken legs, stitches.

I don't think we would have an x-ray machine. We would work with Mark and his—

it'd be really, it'd be really easy to coordinate with either Timpanogos and/or Orem community that have the resources to outsource with the provider's order.

Here's—

you got a broken arm, we've slinged it up, we've secured it, send them to OCH for an outpatient x-ray, gets sent back to the doctor to read and treat it.

It'd be more acute care is what I consider it being. Ongoing, uh, maintenance.

How about like colds and flus and all that kind of stuff?

Or minor injuries.

I personally feel like we had this at Mountain Point Medical Center, the hospital in Lehi. It was huge retention for employees, and it saved, I mean, just me personally with our 4 boys, significant amount of money, the overall insurance, just by taking our kids there for the clinic. And it was for everything from UTIs, runny noses, colds, sore throats, earaches. I mean, it's just your, it's your insta-care. But it's provided to the employees and it's a huge benefit.

So it was personal savings in that regard, right?

Right.

But doesn't that translate into lower insurance costs?

Yes, it will do that. Yes, in theory. In fact, when I came from my previous employer to here, I was really surprised at our renewal rates. They were double, triple of what I was used to negotiating because they had a clinic and Wharam does not. hasn't yet. So in theory, but I mean, until we run the clinic, we won't know how much it will save on the medical insurance plan. Part of it is we want to make sure that our employees have the opportunity to get their ongoing care, because since we're on a high deductible plan, a lot of employees don't choose to go get their annual physicals because they don't really understand that that's a free thing. They don't want to pull out their HSA. They don't want to do that where they could just come pay $30.

And I think that's a really good point.

keep on— especially if you have like maintenance medications, like diabetic medications and things, where it's hard to go into the provider all the time and get those. You could just go take your lunch, go to the medical clinic, get your maintenance medications, because we're thinking we might even be able to have a small pharmacy type for traditional medications like penicillin or insulin and those kinds of things that employees need all the time.

What are you thinking as far as cost?

Well, it will—

the biggest cost will be just to start up the clinic and get all the equipment and everything that we need. And then depending upon which model that we decide to go with, we can control the cost if we do it with our in-house doctor, if we hire them. Really, the only cost would be the doctor and the office administrator and any supplies.

Would you hire a regular doctor or would you hire a PA?

I would highly recommend that we hire an MD. Lynnae met with Mark and Josh and I and we talked a lot about that and she agrees that maybe an MD would probably be the best option.

I think a family practice doc would be—

would have a wide variety of experience to bring, but yeah, there's a lot of We also have the ability, we have a discounted contract with Boundary and Henry Schein, so all the medical supplies that we currently use on the ambulance for our services, we would use the same, those same companies I think for discounted rates for the supplies for the clinic.

Yeah, so I imagine you've got a range of costs, like a high and low?

Yeah, I would imagine that We estimate that the ongoing cost to the city would be $300,000 to $400,000, maybe even $500,000 a year, and that's just straight costs. The savings we've talked about too is negotiating supplies, the reduction in our insurance premiums. With having an in-house pharmacy, that's going to help with our pharmacy rates as well. And then the soft costs that we can't put a value to, is employee satisfaction and the lack of absenteeism if they can use the clinic, as well as keeping employees longer because they have access to it.

What are the downsides or what makes you nervous about it?

My only concern is that last bullet point, and that is getting buy-in from employees. Sometimes employees are a little slow to step into something new that they're not comfortable with. So I think it's going to have to be a really positive, big marketing push to get employees engaged with the clinic. But once, once, uh, and, and that, and we have to have a provider that employees can connect with. Those 2 things are the most important that make me a little bit nervous.

I mean, it's optimally You get it to a point where it's cash flowing itself, right?

That would be the ideal situation. But again, like I said, some of it you can't, you can't put a price on, right?

No, I know what would be optimal though is that it cash flows itself, but then you pick up that benefit for the employers, right?

Yeah, and that would be the ideal situation, but I don't want anyone thinking that, that I think day one this is going to be Right.

That's a little bit of a jumping off, you know, diving board and just kind of figuring out as you go.

Yeah. What's your— what's your pullout plan? I mean, like, would you do a 5-year contract with a doctor and then reassess? What would you think? How would you approach that?

I love that idea. What I like about this is that I'm thinking that we would consider this doctor similar to the executive staff members where we could appoint them so that anytime if it's not working out, we could reevaluate.

So you'll have that flexibility to get the whole time.

Because that's another potential con of including It's maybe a little bit quicker and easier to pivot away from a contract than an employee hire.

I mean, if you're going to employ, you're just basically cutting out the next level of profit margin, right? So in theory, you're costing less.

Correct, yeah.

But then you're taking the risk of just running in place, but you should be able to run in place. To me, it really just comes down to if you can make Yeah, it just makes financial sense.

Once the employees use it and see the significant savings and then the service they get based off of the provider and the office manager, it will be a no-brainer.

And realistically speaking, that takes more than like a budget year. It usually takes a couple few years to get sort of full adoption.

Right.

And that's where then you can really assess, you know, is it getting to, you know, how close to like a break-even type point is it getting to.

What I'd hope we could do if we decide to do this is go all in for 5 years. That way we've got a starting point, and at the 5-year mark, then we reevaluate whether or not it's a good option for employees and for the city.

Yeah.

Maybe you could do some employee surveys too, just to get some feel of what, you know, would you use this, would your family use this?

Yes, absolutely.

You know, so we'll get some more data to give us information.

Absolutely. I definitely want to do a survey from employees. I did not want to do that and then tie your hands by having employees be excited about something like this. Until we had your soft buy-in on a project like this, then we can go see if employees are interested.

And Brandon's thought process?

So obviously the financing part of it is similar to this. There's a bit of a jump into taking the risk. Obviously we know what our reduction, and as she mentions here, with health insurance savings, So it's committing those health insurance savings for, you know, that period of time. And then obviously it doesn't work out, you've wasted those funds. As far as the construction element, we're going through that.

But it doesn't sound like you have major heartache or heartburn over it, even though—

okay.

I mean, but the savings too. I mean, a lot of times health insurance companies will induce you by giving you a lower rate, and then once they've got you in, then they're going to put the rates back.

They do this every time.

Yes.

Right. You know, part of it for sure.

So I'd say this has become a proposal because of the savings that we've been able to garner. And so then when we come back, out those savings and we sort of announced those savings, part of the idea was, okay, now how do we reinvest that back into employee benefits? And so then this is an option that has some promise that, yes, we probably need to do some additional vetting out and fleshing out, but wanted to make sure that at least in concept you all as our leaders governing body thought you saw enough promise in this to continue to push it.

I also like the idea that there are other cities doing it now and doing it well.

We have models to look to and not just say we're going to try this and hope it works. There's others that it's working and we can utilize that same type of model and apply it to our city.

Absolutely. In fact, when I was—

How common is it, Eric?

I know Salt Lake City has West Jordan has 2 clinics and Sandy has 1. I don't think there's anything south of us.

I know that West Jordan is looking at it.

West Jordan is looking at that because there are employees there from Sandy that are pushing for it. And when I was considering coming here and leaving where I previously was, that was a major factor, the biggest benefit that I left behind, that it was really strong struggling with whether or not I would move to Oregon or not and work here was maybe that clinic option.

Nurses choosing to leave Mountain Point, I was in a leadership group over there, that was a big sticking point that kept them there. Even when IEC was offering more money or the university was offering more money, the clinic kept people with Holy Cross now.

I used to say Josh, where this would go into the police station, any additional thoughts, concerns, ideas?

We have— I mean, that's the thing, it's inside, excuse me, inside our existing footprint. We're talking about basically moving a couple, making a new, potentially new entrance, moving a couple walls around. It's not, so, I mean, there's not, it's not a major construction concept. One of the things when it comes to the inefficiency that it creates, my group and I know Mark's group, we're constantly getting random drug testing of our people to maintain the integrity that we need to have in our job. And for us to currently, I mean, it takes somebody offline for at least an hour to go get a simple UA. And I mean, for Mark, if that's somebody that's rescue, well, that's an ambulance out of service. Yeah, that's an ambulance that's out of service for an hour. You know, for me, it's an area car or whatever that's out of service for an hour.

So let alone our people hate going to a clinic in uniform to get weighed. They hate it.

Yeah.

So while it's hard to calculate, there would be that soft cost savings in time.

I mean, it looks suspicious. a police officer walking in the building.

To work then?

I mean, I get it.

While you're taking your drug test.

Yeah.

So how would they—

how—

I mean, so you don't want people in your police department, so how are you setting it up?

Just through our lobby, either through our lobby or through their side.

So this is where the space— this is where you'd come in, is the side entrance. So if you are facing towards the Back end of the Public Safety Building. You know where that generator is?

Yeah, I mean, I know where it is.

Just walk past that, yeah, and then there will be a separate entrance that will create where those big windows are on the side of that back lobby entrance space.

So is that down to the left, is that the little area where—

oh, you can look at trains. I didn't know I could do that.

Yeah, now I know where we are.

Wow.

Train.

Oh, just doing that.

Thanks, guys.

Started poking the screen.

Okay, so the entrance would be by that stairwell right there, right?

Yeah, well, we've actually moved it over to this area. So this is a window right here. So instead of this being a window, it would be an entrance. There would be 3 client patient rooms, an office for the medical provider, and then there will be back space that we can put a little pharmacy area. So it'll be very small.

Oh, the city council stuff, okay.

We will have one named after you.

There's a named Spencer UA room.

You know, I wanted to mention one last thing too. So this is for the medical clinic, but we have also had mobile dental clinics come into the city before, and we could utilize that space and let employees come to the dentist there as well. That's been popular in the past. And then if we see that we don't need one of those spaces and we might have a need for maybe a mental health provider or something, we might be able to pull some of those rooms out as well.

Thank you.

I was trying to help.

I've got the room. He's— I got him in.

So, apparently.

Any other questions, thoughts, ideas on this one?

I'd just like to run more numbers on it as far as other cities are doing it, what that looks like. Because you don't have anything medical, it starts to become ridiculous, you know. So anyway, just to get as much information as we can because it's There's got to be— so we've got 500 employees, we have families, plus the average medical use. We just need— I'd like to see a profile on it.

Perfect, I wrote that down.

What's the size of Sandy?

Employee size, we're almost identical.

And maybe take a tour up there.

So we did do that. We visited Sandy. We had a group of us that went and visited with Sandy. We went to O.C. Tanner.

Draper has one.

Is it theirs?

There's one in Draper.

Okay.

What was their overall— I mean, obviously they like it. What are the cost effects of that?

They're a little hesitant to share that information. We might have to brown request that information. Happy to do that. I just want it to be really clear that this is This will not save the city money. We're hoping to go as cost-neutral as possible, but it won't be a cost savings. It will be an additional benefit.

Is there—

is there not a way though to project, rather than an 8% increase next year to our insurance rates, it's only 2%, so isn't that a 6% that you could put a dollar figure to ensure that there is a huge cost savings?

I think what we would do is work with our insurance broker to talk to SelectHealth, which is who we just moved to, let them know that we're moving in this direction and what potentially the rate would be for the upcoming year because we will have a clinic. We do have that ability to negotiate a different rate because of the clinic.

I mean, I've known companies doing this.

Yeah.

It's all worked into their insurance premiums as far as Or the fact they've got this thing and how it affects the rates and everything.

And so what really happens there is they look at what are they budgeting for their insurance premium. And typically what we see, they'll adopt something like this if their insurance premium goes down and they were anticipating an increase in that cost and they use that delta to then add this benefit. So, I mean, yeah, we could— I think we'll have to essentially do what we used to say in my master's program, do some fuzzy math to show some ranges on, you know, best and worst case scenario on what that would look like and project that out when we do a pro forma, bring that back and see if it still makes sense.

You can see what the cities are doing for sure. That's number one, but I'll bet there's corporate data out there.

Oh yeah, for sure.

And see what that all looks like and how the factoring is.

Yeah.

I think—

I know that a couple companies I've been involved with, they were doing it purely from a— I mean, they wanted to create the benefit, but they also wanted to break even, so they were really going down and they were able to make it cover itself.

I just don't want us going into this—

Right.

In the long run, I think if you look at long-term care, I mean, employees with diabetes or things that we've bought the employee for 30 years that have significant medical health costs, I think the clinic is a significant way to reduce that individual's overall healthcare out-of-pocket, but also the total cost to the city in premiums And so, and I'm sure we have a number of employees that would fall into the category.

So, okay.

All right.

So moving on.

No one.

Sorry, I got extreme.

Police station in the house.

So our public safety The building right now that hosts the police and fire department is about 25 years old. It was built at the time for a police department that was the 1998 version of Warren Police Department and a much smaller fire administration too.

We're—

you just walked through it— we're busting out of the seams. I mean, it's not unsustainable, but it's not— It's not designed for it. It was built for smaller than we are, and there's certainly no room to grow. There's a lot of space in our vision. We don't need a bigger building, we don't need a new building, we need to turn a 25-year-old building into one that's now repurposed for the next 25 years. Taking some of the space that's corridors and insufficient and moving some walls around essentially to make different things. You know, the people that designed and built that building, the leadership at that time was very— well, I'm not going to talk about that. Mark and I are much more collaborative, okay. And so like we have 2 conference— to run both departments, we have 2 conference rooms and we're literally kicking each other out. To try and collaborate with things. And, you know, he shouldn't have to have a meeting in the hallway the same way, you know, when we're waiting for— We've— it's outgrown its efficiencies. And so to be able— once the City Hall gets completed, the fire department will be out. And realistically, I envision that we will have enough square footage. That's part of what allows for the clinic to go in, is we can give that space to them. And then that will give us room to actually be able to grow as well. Some of the other issues that we do have, you know, with suspects that we're interviewing, particularly with victims of domestic violence and stuff, our layout right now parades them through the public area in ways that, you know, They're not. It's ugly for me. I mean, it's— we shouldn't make people— we shouldn't put a spotlight on somebody because they're coming in for help. The optimal space, and then if— to walk through right now, like, we have a break room that was built in 1999 that I won't eat in. It's gross. We've got a tiny little gym that people can kind of sort of work out in, you know. But we also have a large former jail space that we can't use for prisoners anymore because of the liability. And I mean, it's, you know, we basically have to hire a prison staff to be able to hold anybody anymore. So, but we have that area, which is, you know, so it's like, well, we can repurpose that, maybe move the fitness and exercise stuff into that area to be able to open up the space that So, as well as the gym, the break room, to things like that. As we'd be able to have at least 2 more conference rooms. And just obviously the general space that we have would be much better utilized. The number one issue that we have is with our evidence. So, on capital crimes, homicides, things like that, We're essentially required to maintain that evidence forever. We've got evidence from Gary Gilroy in our evidence room. And, you know, that has been— that was built— that was basically built to size back then, and we have every single storage room, 2 offsite storage units that are full of stuff like that. And then the areas we have, it's poorly lit, it's horribly ventilated. So like Tara, the positive Tara, her office smells like rotten marijuana. Like rank, like nasty. I won't go in there.

And I don't have to.

And anyway, it's— that has to— so being able to move in the clinic where it's going to move, we can actually take some rather large corridors that we can essentially abandon for corridor space and turn that into more secure evidence area. And so, and one of the things are we are out of compliance with certain national standards with some of our evidence and keeping it in a certain way. So, like, our major most important stuff, Gets taken care of the right way. Some of the other stuff, like I said, is literally in storage units offsite.

So, um, Chief, it's the perfect example that it's— it was poor planning initially because the day we moved into the building, we were outgrown already. There was no 25, 50-year plan with this building, and that was unfortunate back then.

And so our vision is basically to take that footprint and open it up so that there's less Less corridor and just more usage of each square foot, more open spaces and stuff like that. You know, and then our officers don't have to go to multiple points to begin their shift to start and things like that. Well, your body cameras are cleared out in this hall because that's the only place we could find space to install the— I don't know what they call that. Anyway, it's where they all sleep and recharge and all that good stuff. And then And then walk over here and get your this. And anyway, they literally— it takes about 10 minutes to get ready to go outside at the beginning of the shift and stuff. But yeah, anyway, um, I don't think it's particularly expensive. Like I said, mostly it's moving around some walls, wire a couple of new outlets, sort of thing, change a couple of light fixtures hopefully. And that should be about it. Other than one thing that we're excited to do too. Is completely rip out every ounce of carpet in the— on the main level. It's disgusting 5 minutes after we get it cleaned. It's just— it's— that environment just does not, you know. And so we'll make it so that it's just— it's a more sanitary, clean environment.

So kind of like we did with our fitness center and our city center, although Both of those facilities are a little bit bigger than they were in the past. They became much more efficient and optimized and natural light and more storage, more ability to— more conducive for collaborative— collaboration. So the thought is we can do that without tearing down load-bearing walls within the existing footprint of our police station. Yeah. Because we are dispatched from Golden Grove and because our fire administration is over there in the new city center.

Chris and I walked through that building last— like, I expect before Christmas, and I don't think we were super inspired by it.

So I'd love to see—

the ideas that were shared, what it could be all in.

And those hallways were just wasted space.

I mean, big hallways, tons of half rooms, tons of rooms, just a corridor.

Can you help me understand a little bit about this evidence? How are you going to make things— you're going to build extra rooms to store stuff?

Maybe is there like a place we can store it not there? Are you just building people things?

One of the things is, I mean, we have to show a chain of custody on things as they get adjudicated. And so it's okay, we took possession of this and we maintained possession of this through— I mean, we can digitally— we have digital digital footprint, so to speak, fingerprint of this article as it goes through the whole process versus— so like stuff that we have in storage units doesn't have any forensic value anymore to us.

Or that climate control and all that.

Yeah, yeah. And so there's climate control, but there's also the need to process them, be it our own crime technician people or take it to the crime lab. They're going back and forth and storing it. And then for For our officers to be able to access it, to be able to go to court and things like that. Yeah, pie in the sky. There's been talks before, okay, well, we could have a, like, a countywide thing, and that always runs into everything like that is always done per capita. And so our price tag would be significantly higher than Salem, and my argument against that was Well, if I'm already self-sufficient, why do I need to pay for Salem? Exactly.

So, yeah. Well, okay, not Salem.

Nothing happens.

Any other questions, feedback, input, direction?

That would be one of the issues, would be just anything you can do with the evidence part to optimize and minimize it, you know what I mean? So you can use the rest of it for people.

Yeah, realistically, just being able to— what will, with the clinic going in, what will otherwise become abandoned corridor space, we're just going to wall it in, add it on, and then, yeah, I mean, I don't think we can— it's going to— I think we calculated it's almost doubling The evidence area will have, if we can do it with what we already have. So, and the goal being to start just as soon as possible, as soon as fire moves out? No, we'll start before that.

Before that?

Okay.

We would start—

He's going to push us out quickly.

Oh, that's okay.

I see what's going on.

I got this tent, the EOC tent thing.

Yeah, that CERT trailer. We're moving into that next week.

So we suggest— Do or else. So good question. So again, we're here at our retreat. This helps give some framework to our budgeting process. And so then we'll be budgeting for FY25. We'll be moving into our new city center, essentially about— we'll be in our new city center this same time next year. So in our next fiscal year, the idea would be to start moving vaults.

So are they on track for this fall, for this season?

Right.

December 30th is substantial completion.

That's the schedule. Is that when we're moving in?

No, we'll move in the first couple weeks of January.

That got bumped back 2 months recently.

No, it's always been that way.

Really?

It's always been December for about the last 6 months.

That's always been December for us.

They just didn't say which December.

I'm just glad Christmas is over.

Okay, Chris. Sorry, I'm trying to hold And we just have these last couple slides.

Yeah. So what we do in Public Works, it's that we don't, we don't speak to the mind or the heart, but maybe more along the lines of the soul.

Huh?

You like that? Yeah.

Okay, give me some.

All right.

Church of Christ.

So we talk about things like muffin monsters and screens and ditches and oxidation and struvite and biogas, which you all have actually in this room today. Keep it to yourself.

That didn't go over very well, I guess. You've been hanging out with Jesse Riddle too much.

You've been hanging out near Jesse Riddle too much.

Better than that.

No, but seriously, we have odor control. We have— we produce a lot of different types of gases, air quality, water quality, a variety of aspects that are heavily regulated by the Division of— well, the Department of Environmental Quality with the state and Division of Water Quality, also Division of Water Quality Water Resources. So, but they're all managed under the US EPA. And so we have, the State of Utah has primary or has primacy to regulate the corresponding cities and state agencies in the State of Utah. This facility was constructed, we first turned ground out here in 1957. Prior to that, raw sewage was not treated. It went into large septic systems or directly into Utah Lake. So you think about it, from '57 to today, that's not been that long ago.

Just a week.

Less than 70 years ago. Life expectancies have expanded as a result of water quality, water treatments, and so forth as well. With that said, so at a tour recently, during the tour with the city council, I said that the facility is functioning quite well for what it is today, and it is a 70-year-old or 65-year-old facility. But there are many things that are not— are very substandard. Much like what Chief just mentioned, their facility is 25 years old, but Well, this has been expanded and added and duct taped and hay baled together for the last 65 years. We have increasing standards and regulations that we must comply with statewide. The entire state is going to be spending billions of dollars in the next 5 years to handle some of the new regulations that have come forward for water quality. quality. Our portion of that we estimate to be about $160 million worth of costs. In comparison, the City of Provo is looking at just over $200 million, whereas in Salt Lake City they're looking at just under $1 billion of improvements as a result of recent water quality standard changes. We have to meet these standards or we come in violation with the state and the EPA. So what we're looking at here in the next 5 years have to do with first and foremost disinfection expansion. We used to use chlorine, now we use UV disinfection. Our UV disinfection needs to double in capacity based on our growth and demand. the demands that are upon our facility at this point. So UV light can be used for disinfection or inoculates the bugs so that they cannot cause problems to the human body. We have a series of byproducts that occur in our pipe networks in the form of struvite. Struvite is ferric magnesium and other elements that basically Basically it's like cholesterol in your bloodstream where it'll cause a blockage and then you might have to go in and then extract that or put in a stent or whatever. We have stuff like that in our pipe networks in the facility just to put it in layman's terms. The side stream phosphorus treatment is not an inexpensive solution but it will help with that and it will help to extend the life of a lot of the pipes and so forth there.

Dewatering.

dewatering has to do with is our sludge and biosolids. It's the byproduct of this process. After the sludge is digested, it turns into a biosolid material that can then be used and implemented as fertilizer, which is what we do today. So we feel very good about that. The dewatering process needs to expand. It's deficient right now today, and we need to make it—

And Improvements on that.

It's technology that's very— it's older and not efficient, and we're at the point now where either we have to throw a lot of money at it just to repair it, or we have to go ahead and replace it. And so we're at that point in the decision process. Electrical systems, believe it or not, and SCADA systems, which have to do with remote telemetry and being able to access and process information and make on-the-fly decisions in the facility to be able to ensure that we can meet our requirements for water quality. Those are all being upgraded as we speak. So automations, biogases, odor control, water quality improvements. The water reuse project, for example, is a $20 million project that's fully funded and underway. I'll be taking anyone who would like to go to that in the next week or two to that to see the progress on that. Essentially, over the next 5 years, we have about $80 million worth of work to do, of which we have funded over $20 million. So there's a lot that is happening and going on at that facility. In 2022, we adopted this This is a capital facilities plan. This is the first 10 pages of a 280-page document, but I can pass this around if you want to look at kind of the topics that are in there. It's an extensive capital facility plan. I think Laura's going to talk a little bit about how can we actually make that come to fruition and actually build it and put it in the ground. But these are things that aren't really talked about. aren't on a wish list, I would say, but they are on a needs list. And they will help us to comply with a variety of standards and regulations, including water quality, seismic issues, and increasing our capacity for treatment. Are there any questions regarding that? This is kind of high-level discussion.

You mentioned in the next 5 years, $80 million. What's the The total timeframe of TriStack?

It was $160 million over 20 years. And I guess maybe the $80 is over the next 10 years then, is what I should have said. So it's $160 over the next 20. So we're going to have to look about— look at how to creatively finance in the forms of grants, low-interest loans, bonds, and so forth. I don't want to get into the numbers, Because that's what Laura will be talking about.

The expansion-related things could possibly be an impact fee related.

Yes, yeah, I failed to cover impact fees. We do have impact fees in place today. They've been in place for about 5 years, and we just recently updated those. So basically, that's for anybody that's new, that's adding on. As a result of them coming into our system, they have to pay an impact fee.

To gain equity in your system.

Exactly.

West Union Canal, switching gears, so in water resources this would be associated with our stormwater. Irrigation systems have been in the state since the beginning of the state. No cities have been able to develop without first being able to develop Water. Water comes first before anything else. Crime, police, fire, crops, whatever, agriculture. We have been utilizing some canal systems that are privately owned, that are not— they're not owned by the City of Orem or any other city— cities, but they're privately owned. Some cities or districts might have ownership in that company, which is a private company. We do not have ownership in the West Union Canal Company, but we utilize the canal system to convey stormwater at certain, you know, during certain times of the year during events where our system cannot handle it, where we do not have our own independent stormwater system to take care of that. We have an arrangement with the canal, with this particular canal company to pay them $20,000 a year to help for the burden that we place upon them for the maintenance and the wear and the tear and the operations of their facilities. And so we are sharing cost to a limited degree with them, but we know that we need to become independent. And the West Union Canal is in the process of going under. So there's about 5% of the shares that are available in that company today compared to 100% of the shares that were there maybe 5 years ago. So we knew that this canal company was going away. Typically, the canal companies do not own the right-of-way where they exist. They're on a prescriptive right where they are on— they've put physical improvements on land that they do not own, but that others have allowed them to build upon and therefore there's a prescriptive right to be there. That right is given to the canal company, not necessarily the city, although we could have a discussion with legal on how to dissect that. In any case, the canal's going away. We have to come up with other solutions to care for our stormwater to help mitigate, minimize damages that could result with storm events.

So, That's a discussion I'd like to have because I know—

Right.

I just read Reed Price's report on our canals, and it was the one from 2007-2008, right, where we had initially talked about the bike paths, you know, some of the active transportation opportunities there. And I understand the problem— as I went through that report, I understand the problem with the northern part, but I guess I'd looked at it, it looked like a great idea to me. So I don't know if this is— I'd like to have discussion, not now, but maybe in the future about that, to further explore that, especially since it seems like this is now an issue in the forefront.

Hey, Tess, where does the West Union Canal start in the north? The West Union Canal diversion is off the Provo— they're all diverted off the Provo River, and that's about 700 7th North. 7th North is our latitude. Let's say if you take 7th North in Orem and intersect it with the Provo River, that's about where the diversion is. It starts there, it's in Provo. It's just east of the Smith— Ryan Smith development that's going to be coming along. It's just east of that and it's diverted, it comes south and it comes over close to the Carterville Road. It hugs along Carterville Road for a ways. And then it turns around and it goes back to the north along 2000 South and then northwesterly up to about 16th North and Geneva Road. So that's kind of how it wraps around the city. That's West Union.

Okay, so that whole thing is West Union?

That whole thing is West Union. There's a Provo Bench Canal, it has a different point of diversion. It's at 8th North and the tailrace from the Central Utah Water Conservancy District Hydroelectric plant.

Mm-hmm.

And that starts there, and then it hugs the bench, just below Exactwhere. It's up along the bench. And then it turns at about 400 south, and it comes back to the north. That turns into North Union Canal then, and 800 north is where that goes. So, there are different segments of the canal system that if they are abandoned, we could certainly enter into discussions with them.

Yeah.

Odds are that they don't own any of that land and so that we wouldn't have a right to do anything on that unless we were to purchase it. The Provo River Canal or Provo Reservoir Canal, well, the Murdoch Canal Trail System, that was all owned, it was all owned by the federal government up until about 8 years ago. There was a title transfer to the Provo River Water Users Association. It's 100-foot width. That they got. And that's a private association, a private company, which we are shareholders and a part of that. But since it was privately owned and they owned the property, we negotiated with them to put a trail system on it. So that's a big difference between that and other privately owned systems.

That was the thing. It sounded like a great idea, but this was a little different because people have actually taken land right up to the face of the canal. So if you put a trail through that, you've got— there's concern of security issues.

There's a variety of issues.

No lighting and things going on at night in the dark right next to people's private property.

Speaking to Lynnae's interest though, I think there are some segments of some of the systems that would be really nice to incorporate into a canal, into a trail system.

That's actually really good.

We're looking for—

Yeah, 8th Avenue going south.

Because, um, yeah, we can talk about it.

I don't want to take your time.

Yeah, so just in summary, suffice it to say that areas where we see potential big capital projects is at the wastewater treatment plant and then in storm drain as it relates to the areas around the West Union. That's, that's everything we have to present on in terms of potential proposed major projects. Any last questions on that?

Okay, I think we're good.

That was a lot of projects, a lot to look forward to in the future.

Now we get to figure out how we can pay for it.

I'm going to introduce Laura Lewis to tell us about that.

Are you going to go?

Actually, I'm here.

Oh, I thought you had an accounting something.

We're going to put it at the back end, and if we get to it, we'll get to it. So otherwise, there's enough discussion with you, then we're going to give you a little bit more of a priority.

Got it.

So we work very heavily with now Lewis Robertson in Birmingham, used used to be Lewis Young.

Robert's down here.

And they are our financial advisors. Not only— we're going to talk kind of specifically about debt today as far as projects, how might we fund those, and just a general knowledge of what different types of financing we have available to us in relation to bonding.

But they also They help us with—

we talked about, I mentioned impact fees. They work with us as far as developing those. And there's a lot of other financial studies and whatnot that obviously myself and my staff don't necessarily have the expertise in to do those. And so we turn a lot of that over to LRB to be able to do for us and on our behalf. So, with that said, Turn the camera over to Laura.

Thank you. So as I was sitting here, I noticed your game of the Orem trivia challenge. I think I ought to play because I've been working with Orem for a long, long time. When your police chief was talking about the age of your public safety building, I'm like, really? It was that long ago? Because I remember doing a financing to help with lights that we used the police public safety building as security and Anyway, so I, my roots in terms of time run very deep with Orem, and it makes my kids crazy because I'm very passionate about my job and, you know, protecting my clients. And as we're driving, I'm like, oh, I financed that. I financed that. And in Orem, I can do that a lot because we've done a lot of projects together. So a few of you don't know me. I have I've been in this industry for more years than I really want to say, but my gray hair kind of gives me away. I've been doing this for 35-ish years.

Hey, you're lucky you got some.

I know, that's true. I've done the no hair thing. I had cancer years ago, so I'm happy to have it. Anyway, so I've— I started out in the underwriting world and moved to the municipal advisor side because I really have this passion for sitting on my client's side of the table and looking out for you. I legally, I have a fiduciary responsibility to you, and I can give you all kinds of war stories where, you know, I've pulled out the mother bear to, you know, make sure I'm protecting my client. So there's a little brief introduction about me. So very quickly, I'm going to educate you on some of the basics, and then I've got a couple of choices in terms of, well, what if we do chose to do debt this way versus that way. You know, lucky for you, probably you'll think you don't have to get into those nitty-gritties, but I do spend a lot of time with your staff in, you know, determining what is the best way to finance various projects. You're very fortunate in Utah, we have a lot of tools in our toolbox. You go north to our neighbors in Idaho and you have a hammer. you can build wherever you want to build with your hammer because they don't. I mean, you have to— it's a geo-vote. In Idaho, you can do a geo-vote that has to have a supermajority, so 66%, which is a little bit hard to come by sometimes. And like if something's like really critical, like your, you know, sanitary system is going to break down and cause health problems, you can get this like judicial something. They have very few tools. Utah, you have a lot of tools, which is great because it can help us to get your projects done at lower cost of interest and reasonable timeframe. So something that you all need to be, you know, prepared to deal with is nationally $34 trillion in national debt. And it makes people, because it's like that's in their, in the news all the time, ah, debt is bad, debt is awful. Debt is bad. Because the federal government, they hear that number and it's a humongous number, but that is all operational debt, right? I mean, yay if the federal government had to operate like you, because you have to have what? A balanced budget. How do they balance? Oh, let's just dig a bigger hole, right? So a lot of your constituents come to the, you know, take So to speak, with debt is evil, debt is bad. And certainly debt can be bad, you know, I wouldn't advocate to anyone to go out and finance their home on a credit card, right, that would be insane. I wouldn't, you know, suggest that you do anything like that. But when I, you know, have on occasion had people kind of in my face, oh, the government shouldn't go into debt for this, and one of the first questions I don't How did you finance your home? I haven't had anyone yet say they paid cash for it. I've geared up for that because then I would say, where did that cash come from, right? Because if you're 20-something and you want to buy a home, high likelihood is that's a large capital expense for you. You're going to have to go into debt to pay for that capital expense. So So for local governments who have these large facility needs that you've just heard about, I mean, exciting projects, right? Those are the kind of things that, you know, debt is reasonable to consider for that. So just, you know, again, you may need to educate your constituents. Local governments have the benefit of issuing at tax-exempt rates. I say currently in here because every— I'm sorry. I don't know, roughly 10 years. There's some discussion, it seems like, federally about taking that away from local governments, but you, at the moment, gratefully, there's no talk of that. And just to give you some idea, I'm working, I just completed a project up in Orem that had a, not up in Orem, up in Ogden, that had a local government as well as a corporate component to a development downtown. And the bonds that the city issued, 2 series of bonds, of bonds that were probably blended, some of them were taxable, called 4.4%, probably. The developer, for their portion of financing, the $102 million of their portion, I know it was over 10%. So that just gives you an idea of the benefit that you have to be able to issue on a tax-exempt basis. Well, that isn't great. Let's put it that way. So, next thing, pay as you go versus pay as you use, when you're considering debt versus, oh, we'll just save up and pay cash for it. So I've got, I mean, again, I've been around a long time, I've got a bazillion war stories. So years ago, the then mayor of Riverton was about as anti-debt as you can imagine. He worked for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Christ of Latter-day Saints. That's where his career had been. And he was like really, really anti-debt. But they really, really needed a road, 132nd South or something like that. And I had friends that lived out there. It was like a death trap. Every time I drove there, I'm like, oh my gosh, am I gonna make it home alive? And so Mayor Applegarth agreed to meet with me, and I said, okay, Mayor, we're going to do this very quick exercise.

And you tell—

you— we'll leave this meeting, you go talk to professionals that you, you know, respect and, you know, appreciate their thoughts on this. And you tell me what you think the construction cost inflation for that road is going to be over the next 10 years. He said, okay. And I said, I'm going to go And I will bring evidence to you as to what the interest costs will be to do that same project. And he said, okay, I mean, that's great. So he went away. At the time, you know, it wasn't like 2 years ago when inflation was like 9%. He came back and said, okay, I've done my homework, here's what it will cost. And they had kind of identified, we'll save up X over time and pay for this road. Down the road, no pun intended. And I said, okay, that's great, what will that cost be? And we did the math, and again, very quick without having to whip out numbers for you. If your construction cost inflation is, let's say, 7%, and you can borrow at 3.5%, right? So I said to the mayor, yes, you'll get there, you'll get your road in 10 years. How many people might die on that road before then? Or I can finance it, you'll have your road today and you can pay for it over 10 years. Suddenly he was like, oh, I see, right? There's some wisdom here. So just to know that, you know, if you do— some things are fine pay as you go, it sort of depends on the critical need. But the pay as you use is okay, we need this Now our current ratepayers, our current, you know, payers of storm sewer fees will be paying for that because they'll be using that system. If you do pay as you go, it may not keep up with the construction cost inflation, it may not keep up with your constituent demand. Okay, under Utah law there are 3 broad general categories of municipal bonds. I'll touch a little teeny bit on what I call designer debt. Some of the things we've blacked out here for time. The 3 types of general bonds are general obligation bonds, GO bonds, revenue bonds, and annual appropriation lease revenue bonds. I'll get into all of those in a little bit more detail. PIDs I barely touch on. This might be the most you see of it. It's public infrastructure district. It's generally Generally used for development.

Mm-hmm.

And they're fairly new. So general obligation bonds provide to the bondholders— whenever I'm educating on how do bonds work, think of being the bond purchaser. I'm now going to own these bonds, right? What do you get if you're going to own a general obligation bond? You get the full faith and credit of Oregon. Once you issue those, you are— there's like no way to get out. There's no way to not pay those bonds. Technically you could, again, but in only theory under Utah law, you could declare bankruptcy. But you can't declare bankruptcy under Utah law. It's not approved by the legislature. So really there's no way to get out. So as a bondholder— Ooh, Oh, yay, you've got the lowest risk, right? Because you have the lowest risk, you're going to get the lowest return compared to other types of bonds. So on the city side, yay, low interest rates. Any public purpose project can be financed with a general obligation bond. So, you know, pick one of your projects you just discussed. We could do all of them as a GO bond. I'm not recommending that, but anything would fit in that category.

So if you're going to do box a project, legally.

It does require a majority vote of your constituents, and because of its security, you don't have to fund what's called a reserve fund. It's where you like set money aside in case there's a missed payment. So the majority vote of the constituents can be, can be a problem. So I found with my clients that sometimes initial surveys are really helpful. Again, war stories. Years ago, West Valley Water to do a rec center. Every year they did like a citizen survey. They had questions related to, would you pay $3 a month, you know, in taxes for this rec center? Every year that was kind of used as an educational— people kept reading that and responding to the survey, and they saw the percentage increase. And finally, by about 3 years, they were like, oh look, we got about 60% of people saying that they'll, they'll do that. So, whoo, that might be a good time to issue GEO bonds. So it's a, you know, sort of a way to do some voter education. If you decide to do a GEO vote, as a local government you are required to provide certain information. I do not love the way that that's required necessarily. Information's good, but you You have to describe the project, easy. Show what the tax rate increase will be, easy. Show what it will cost the average citizen.

Uh-huh.

We have to look at what is like a median home price in, in your area and, you know, figure out what their taxes will be. That's also pretty easy. The piece I hate about it is they do require that you publish a notice that talks about I hate talking about the total debt over time, and the reason I hate it is because if I were to ask any one of you in this room, what did you pay for your home, you're going to tell me the principal amount that you paid for your home, right?

Right.

But anyone is going to say, I bought my home years ago, Murray paid $220,000 for it, right? The way they have you publish debt-related stuff in Utah would have me say to you, $220,000— oh, no, it wasn't that, it was $440,000, because they have you publish with all the interest that you will pay over time. So it's not that it's wrong, it's what it's going to cost you over time, it's just not how people think about it, right? So again, you need to be aware so you can educate them. You cannot spend the city's resources to promote a vote yes campaign, right? It's here's this neutral information, here's what it will cost you, but you can't spend a dime saying we support this, we want you to vote yes.

Yes.

So what do you do? Oh, you can have educational forums, open houses. You did that with your rec center. But you should also encourage, you know, your citizen leaders to form committees to— that they can do the supporting. So again, another war story. Years ago, if any of you traveled to St. George, like for the conference of the League in April, they have all kinds of recreational improvements. Pools, trails, etc., etc. They finance all of those with GO bonds.

That's great.

And what they did is they had committees of like the soccer moms, the baseball moms, the whatever, right? And they, you know, they had media stuff all over the place. I think the vote passed with something like a 70, 72% approval rating. So it really is important to make sure that someone, I mean, the negative people are going to be Right. But you really sometimes really have to encourage those that support to get out. There's the cost of the election and the timing. Timing, again, I've been doing this a long time and the timing thing just really irks the crap out of me because it used to be when I started this business you could hold the GO vote anytime you decided, right. Welcome to the Taxpayers Association who came in and said, oh, that's awful and evil, because their perception was if you do it any time, people won't come. You'll get cute about when you're going to have your election. You'll have it the day after Christmas, whatever, right? I mean, that was their perception. I don't know that I saw any of those abuses, but over my career it went from any time to 4 times a year to 2 times a year to 1 time a year. Now, The idea with one time a year is it's a general election, everybody will come out, that's great. Yeah, we'll know whether they want it or not want it, everyone will be there to vote. The problem is this last bullet point, and that's what irks me because I think, oh, thank you Taxpayers Association, you want more people to do geo votes, but now you've made the timing so bad that— There have been times I've said to my clients, if you want to geo vote, Great, but you want to start the project in March? Of what year? Right, I mean, that's what it comes down to. Because you can vote once a year in November, the soonest I can issue bonds, if you issue in November, is probably late February, early March the following year. So pick any of the projects that were talked about today. If you say to me, let's start on those, we're going to make a decision and here's what we want to start on. If I don't use GO bonds, we can have financing and be underway with those projects by your construction season in, you know, March, April of this year. You say we want to do that project, we want to stuff it into a GO bond, you're looking at a year later. So just be aware of that. You have to determine how critical the project is because what if— This 3rd bullet point at the top here. What if it's really critical to you, but I mean, again, I would probably never recommend doing a storm sewer with a geo vote, but if you did that, right, and the citizens all went, we don't need a storm sewer, what do we need a storm sewer for, and it's voted down, then what are you going to do, right? You still have options legally, but now you have a It's a perception problem. You came to us and said, do you want to pay for this? And we've told you no. And here you all are going off and still doing the bonds anyway, right? So you do have to think about the— what are you going to do if it's voted down and it's something you really need? Financing considerations. 4% of your taxable value. If I did that calculation, it's going to be humongous. I don't know what it is, but you would fall over dead. I mean, so you'll never hit that.

$200 million.

How much? $200 million.

There we go.

So, woohoo, you could do all the projects and then some. You do have to think about how you'll pay for operation and maintenance. So back to my West Valley story, right? They, they, ooh, we're going to do this fitness center We're going to do GO bonds. That'll be great. We'll have this new tax identified for it. And then the then city manager said, and then we'll include something for O&M in that property tax vote. And I went, can't do that under state law. You have to fund that out of your own operations. So what they said is, well, we've always known we're going to have to raise property taxes. taxes to operate it, it won't pay for itself. So now what they had to contend with is if we do a GO vote this year, we'll build the facility, 2 years later we're going to have to go back to raise property taxes to help fund it. Citizens are going to say, you've raised property taxes on us twice for that same facility. So they shot the GO idea right in the head. And then they had to go back to the voters and say, and went to a building authority, which I'll talk about, because through a building authority process, you don't have to raise property taxes, but they did one tax— truth in taxation hearing, raised the property tax to pay for the building, and included in that truth in taxation process O&M. All right, revenue bonds. There are 2 classes that That you'll see most often with revenue bonds. Enterprise fund system revenue bonds, which falls right into the projects that Chris was talking about. So if you want to finance a sewer treatment plant, you want to finance water lines, those are all going to be best funded pledging those system revenues to the debt service. So we have a very nice revenue source to pledge to those repayments. We have to be very careful obviously because that's going to have an impact on the utility rates that you have to charge, right? So that's that very super high level. We'll get a little bit more deeper in a minute. Also under state law, we can pledge our sales and excise tax. So the franchise fee taxes that are— that you'll see on your utility bills that come to the city, we can pledge those. We can pledge sales taxes. We can also pledge pledge, like transient room taxes. The market doesn't love those as much.

We've talked—

I'll talk in a little bit about care taxes. Those are also pledgeable. So any of those revenues that you get, like, you know, that class of sales and excise tax, we can pledge those against bonds. There are other what I call special revenue bonds, assessment bonds, tax increment bonds, and public infrastructure districts. PIDs are a little bit of an anomaly. They're technically a property tax, but they're a limited property tax. So I still put them under revenue bonds because it's a limited revenue. But I'm not going to get into those. If you ever want me to come down and do that, I'm happy to. Those are highly used for development type of financing support. So your enterprise fund revenue bonds can be used To fund any new projects or as well as upgrades. So the projects that Chris was talking about of, you know, cleaning the arteries out of your sewer lines, those can all be funded with revenue bonds. We cannot fund operations. Again, back to the whole thing with the federal government digging a deeper hole. You cannot fund operations. You can only fund capital projects, new or improvements. They are not subject to voter approval— oh, little asterisk, always read the footnotes— unless there's a successful petition by your constituents to force it to a vote. They can force almost anything that you vote on to a general vote. I have seen it happen once, and fortunately the I was working on that was successful. It got forced to a vote and still got approved, so that was good. It's a relatively high bar. They have to, you know, provide notice in so many days after you approve the resolution that they're going to try to gather signatures, and then I think they have 30 days, or you probably know better than me, but it's a relatively high bar, but it You know, they could force you to force it to a GO vote, but usually they— I've only had that happen once. Standard for use of water, sewer, storm sewer. You know, when you think about it again, you're the bondholder and I say I'm going to pledge to you to pay these bonds using water revenues, that sounds really secure, right? Because if they— if your constituents don't pay, what are you going to do? Shut off their water, right? If I say I'm gonna pledge you just storm sewer revenues, you might go, well, how are you gonna enforce that, right? Nicely. Most cities have an ordinance in place that if they, you know, if you pay a utility bill and say your utility bill is $100, wish mine was, utility bill is $100 and only pay $90, there's usually a waterfall of how it gets applied and it gets applied to water last so you can cut them off. So you have an enforcement mechanism. So again, when you think about, oh, I'm a bondholder, GO bonds are great. Oh, utility bonds also very great, right? Because there's a high likelihood you're going to pay those bonds back and that's what the market cares about. Because of Orem's rating, there would not be a need to fund a debt service reserve fund on your utility bonds if I were dealing with Ophir. Ophir, I think that's the smallest city by population in Utah. Probably they would want them to fund a reserve. So it's nice you don't have to do that. Your ratings may equal, on rare occasions will exceed your GO rating, but interest will still be slightly higher than for general obligation bonds. And I'll go through some examples a little while later. With a revenue bond though, the nice thing is If for some reason, you know, there's a super tight year, you've had a problem, people aren't paying, whatever, the bondholders cannot come back to the city and force you to raise your property taxes. There are covenants in the bonds. They can force you to lower your expenses on your utility system. They can force you to go through a rate study and increase your rates, but they cannot come after the property taxes. So Sales and excise tax bonds, they can be used to construct new city projects as well. They're secured by that revenue stream. They are not subject to voter approval. You would not need to fund a reserve because of Orem's great ratings. I have had cases where a city's sales tax obligation exceeds— rating, excuse me, is higher than their general obligation rating, and you say, well, seems odd. It is a little bit odd. What the rating agencies love about sales tax structure in Utah is the shared revenue platform. So there's that state sharing formula where they don't have to worry about, well, like, what if Costco moves out of Orem? Well, it's going to move somewhere and those taxes are still going to be generated and you still get a portion of those because of that shared formula. So, So they don't worry about concentration risk. We can pledge them separately or together. So I pledge just sales tax, I can pledge just franchise taxes. We can also pledge Class C road revenues. Those I can only pledge to do Class C related road projects. Talk about transit road taxes, CARE taxes. CARE taxes, again, they're pledgeable, but They have a 10-year approval window, right? So if I'm going to use that as security and you've already collected 2 years' worth, I got 8 years left. We'll— got an example. State law can limit, but only in rare circumstances, the money that can be pledged. The example that comes right to my mind is state law limits how long you can pledge— how much sales tax you can pledge to fiber. There's a story there, but I won't tell you the joke. Class C road funds, they limit the number of years you can pledge those. The idea being they don't want you to pledge road revenues for 20 years if the useful life of your road is only 10, right? So it makes some sense there. We've talked about petitioning to vote. There we go. I'm trying to go really fast. So the financing considerations in terms of ratings, the ability to get the bonds done for water, sewer, storm sewer bonds, those utility bonds, we usually have to show a coverage covenant of 1.25 times as a minimum. So we look at your gross revenues less your operational expenses, that's your net revenues. You have to have $1.25 of net revenues revenue for every dollar of debt I have per year. And you have a covenant that you have to maintain that. So in a super wet year, maybe, just maybe, you don't collect enough revenue because people aren't watering their lawns enough, right? So your covenant is you got to go in and raise those rates so that you maintain that, that coverage covenant. So can you see, oh, why Why then for sales tax bonds do I have to have a 2 times coverage test? Anyone? Anyone staying awake? My kids would— their heads would have already hit the table by now. They think my job is the most boring thing on the planet.

Because they're so volatile.

Right on, Lynnae, yes. So you can control your water revenues, you cannot make me shop, right? So that is exactly right, why we have to have a higher coverage covenant with the sales tax. We talked about how we compare that. We can assign some revenue sources to increase coverage. We could just finance your water system with water revenues and your sewer system just with sewer revenues. Depending upon the timing of your project, sometimes it makes sense to just combine them all. You ought to be, you know, considerate of the useful life of the project improvements. Under state law, you can issue debt for up to 40 years. I've only done that on a very rare occasion. Typically, we don't issue for longer than 30 years. But what you want to be cognizant of is, again, you don't want to issue a 30-year bond for a project that you're going to have to redo in 20 years, right? So that's something we just need to be mindful of. mindful of. For weaker credits, again, not likely for highly rated cities like Orem, but for some credits, we'll talk about building authority transactions in a minute. It works like your mortgage, a building authority, in terms of its security. And because of that, the market says, well, is this essential to the city or nonessential? If they deem it nonessential, you will probably have to fund a reserve. What is essential? I mean, your constituents might say that rec centre is way more essential to me than the police station. I use it more, right? They might think. Markets are— no, you as a council, if push came to shove, you're going to dump the rec centre and keep the public safety building. So that's how they're going to deem essentiality. Thank you.

I like this presentation.

You do need to consider how your repair and replacement and repairs are going to be handled. And very critical, we can't just say, oh, we're going to add $100 million worth of debt and not think about what that's going to look like in terms of your cash flow and that coverage and your rates. So, you know, we spend a fair amount of time working with a lot of cities looking at the utility rates every 2 to 5 years, looking at their longer-term horizon of what they have in terms of capital needs to make sure that we're putting that in, you know, their debt in a nice fluid— that's a good word— nice fluid way so that it's, you know, easy to be absorbed by their ratepayers. Something else that I think is important Something else to just, again, high level be aware of, when, you know, if you walk into your bank or credit union and you want to take out a mortgage, they're going to give you an interest rate, you're going to tell them how many years, they're going to give you a fixed payment, and out you leave.

Okay.

We— you don't have the luxury of saying, well, look, I'm only 30. I'm not 30. I'm only 30, I'm going to be getting way better jobs in the future, so let's structure my debt so so that it increases over time to match those revenues. They would be rolling on the floor laughing, right? But you as local governments, we have the ability to structure debt in that way where it makes sense. So when I look at like your utility revenue bonds, again, we want to do it wisely, but in terms of looking at the impact to your ratepayers, If— and again, I can give Ogden as another fairly current example. They have had hundreds of millions of dollars of needs. They're an older city. They've had a lot of needs in their utility system, and they've had to raise their rates quite a bit. So we're very cognizant about, okay, if they've got to bring in more debt, I look at, okay, here's their current debt. Oh, that's when it pays off, right? If I'm bringing in some new debt, I'm going to layer part of it on top of here, but I'm going to backload it here because it has the benefit of keeping those rates a little bit more constant, right? So we have that flexibility in this market which you don't have in the consumer world. Special revenue bonds, assessment areas have a million previous names. You put a special assessment on Properties that agree to have the assessment put on them. We can include a lot of infrastructure needs. One of the super fast tax increment bonds used to facilitate development in a city. Under assessment bonds, we can only fund things that are owned by local government. Under tax increment, we have a lot more breadth. We can finance vertical build actually for the developers, build Keep it tax-exempt. So it's a tool in your quiver to incentivize development, similar to PID's tool in your quiver to incentivize development. Why would you want to do that? Because you're assessing the properties are going to benefit from the improvement. So recently parking structures seem to be like the hue and cry for we need to develop but we've got to do parking structures and they're expensive, blah blah blah. We can pay for them with some of these things that I've talked about super briefly. Okay, annual appropriation lease bonds. Again, this is— they've been known by 100 different things, but they— the structure is most similar in terms of consumer debt to anything else I can point to. I can't say, oh, you know, Dave, this is how this would compare to a revenue bond lease. Because you don't pledge revenues when you take out consumer debt. But I can say with a lease revenue bond, it works pretty much like your home mortgage, right? We use the actual physical facility as the collateral. That's what the city is pledging. You're saying we want to build a new public safety building, we want to build a new rec center. Well, what's the legal description Give me a title policy, blah blah blah, because that is the actual security. Under state law, it is not considered debt. It is a lease because you legally have the right to not make that payment in a year, and then the bondholder gets your building back. Why do you think they care about essentiality? Oh, they want to know you're not going to walk away, right? Gratefully, I have had had no clients walk away. But Pocatello, Idaho, they did. They went, yeah, we're not going to pay for that anymore, right? So you do have a legal right under a lease to walk away. So again, we think of risk and return. What bonds are going to cost you the most in interest rate?

These.

These, right?

Because they have the annual appropriation risk Care about essentiality, they can still be highly rated. Again, I have had no problem with them. Yeah, anything that we can put a lien on, we can finance with that mechanism. Not subject to voter authorization, interest rates are going to be higher, we talked about that. Financing considerations, they're going to be rated based on the strength of your general fund. They're going to say, well, it's essential, then I think, well, if they're— they've got enough cash, they're probably going to pay, right? If you're looking real tight, they might not think this is a great structure. What's the useful life? We aim to avoid this bottom thing, economic compulsion to renew. So it's a tool that we have up in Ogden, this project I just completed. We did part of it as a building authority. So you're not going to renew it? and it made sense to effectively move some of the city's cash upfront into that particular facility. But bond counsel was really concerned about we can't, we can't make it look like, I mean, if the city is putting 90% in equity and we're only funding 10%, we've kind of taken away the likelihood, we've all but eliminated the likelihood that they're going to not renew, right? they're sort of economically compelled to renew because they've got so much money in it. So we only— we limit the equity initially quite a bit. All right, impact of credit ratings. I'll show you your credit ratings in just a minute, but here's a real quick snapshot of what we refer to as the MMD. It's an index that's published by Thomson Reuters every day. This particular index assumes a General obligation bond in these particular rating categories. So your highest rated bonds, you know, you can tell your kids, oh, A is not good, you've got to be AAA. AAA, AA, single A, and BAA. One of the rating agencies instead of BAA uses BBB just to be difficult, but it would be the same thing. So you can see, so let's say, You know, when we do a bond, we have what's called a weighted average maturity depending upon how you're amortizing principal. So if you had a 20-year amortization, your weighted average maturity is probably going to be around 14 years. So if you look at, oh hey, we're AAA rated, that debt's going to cost me, if it's GO debt, about 277. If I'm AAA rated, it's going to cost me 362. It matters.

A lot, right?

It matters a lot. I can still get any of them done, it's just going to cost you more. This is that same kind of data in a yield curve. So again, you can see you'd rather be down here at this AAA bottom line than at that top line, it's just going to cost you more. I could spend an entire presentation I could spend 40 minutes, and I won't, telling you about rating agencies and what they look for in a city's credit. It is— a lot of it is the numbers and what kind of general fund balances. That does matter to them a lot. But they also care about your management. They also care about— I mean, this is usually like the mind-blower. Prepare for your mind to be blown. They care about you raising property taxes. It is not a good thing to go to the rating agencies and we haven't raised taxes for 40 years. They're like, what is wrong with you, right? I mean, that really does concern them. I mean, and it's been a little challenge with issuers in Utah because, you know, several like you, like Orem, have— I mean, I think Orem, Layton, Murray, what do you have?

2.

A lot of malls and a lot of auto dealerships, right? So you have huge sales tax revenues. And I've had to say to the rating agencies, why on earth should they have to raise property taxes when they have all these sales taxes? I mean, practically you can— you get that, right? You get that, right, rating agencies? But they do worry about it in terms of it's not as stable as a revenue source, right? So in their ideal world, you would be this like 3-legged stool of property taxes, sales taxes, and other taxes, right? You, Layden, Murray have a really long leg with that sales tax, right? So it's something to be cognizant of. It's not the reason to just raise taxes, but it's something to be cognizant of. There are 3 primary rating agencies. There's one by the name of Kroll that I have never used, very few people use it. Standard& Poor's, Moody's, and Fitch. So your ratings are there, are related in the same way that they're lined up. So general obligation, Standard& Poor's has you rated AA+, your Moody's has you AA1. It is the different nomenclature for the exact same rating. And Fitch has you rated AA+ as well. Now, you're one of those that look, oh, look for general obligation, but you come down here to water and sewer, you have a higher rating in water and sewer than you do in your general obligation. They rate debt, they don't rate the city, right?

So how does that compare to other cities?

I haven't looked at that in a long time. I think the client said But I— so again, with Ogden, they just did a sales tax bond that was AAA rated. I would expect your sales tax to be AAA rated as well. Ogden's general obligation would probably be in the AA- or A+ range. Salt Lake City is AAA across the board. I think Provo is AAA across the board. Those are the only 2 that I'm aware of that are AAA across the board. In terms of their GO rating. So I would say you are probably in the top 95 percentile of the cities that are rated.

Okay.

And that's off the top of my head. I haven't done an empirical study on that. So now we're going to look at different scenarios for how might we fund this $10 million project. So a consistent thing scenario to scenario is that after we get the bonds all done, Stuff into the trustee's account for you to use for construction, $10 million. I did not know about the potential for utility projects, and so I didn't do one for utilities. I would have gone. So if we had a project, one of the rec projects that you talked about, and you pledged— or your art projects— and you pledged CARE taxes only, I've had to limit here the length of maturity because I My understanding is that you only have 8 years left on your current CARE taxes.

10 now.

Oh, well, we cut out— then it would all— I would update that a little bit. So the par amount of the bonds would be $9,145,000. Again, here we would be limited by the now new remaining life of the CARE tax. I estimate it would be rated AA. The weighted average maturity, again, that's— they look at how you're amortizing your principal and With a weighted average of when that principal all matures. And under this scenario, again, it's shorter. The true interest cost is lower because we're shorter, we're, you know, down the yield curve some. But your estimated average payment is $1.4 million. That's a lot, one, even though the interest rate's lower, but I've now shortened that maturity, right? If I did that same project using sales tax revenue bonds, We— you would not need a reserve fund. It would be 20 years, the remaining life. Again, you could go 40. 25 to 30 is what many projects are done. I assume it would be AAA rated. And you've got the 3.49% interest. That's because, again, we're going longer out the yield curve, but your payment's lower.

Right?

So again, there's a lot of nuance So those are the 2 sources that we're thinking of as like how, okay, what does make the best sense in terms of how this is going to be absorbed into your budget. So we looked at that, your public safety project, and I used sales tax revenue bonds. I'm going to have about the same thing as I had with the other set. There's still sales tax, right? So those are going to be about identical. Oh, but what if we did that as a general fund? Surprisingly to me, I would think that constituents would be like, rah-rah, let's vote for public safety. Ask Salt Lake City about that because they— I think they had to go to vote 3 times to get a new public safety building. It was brutal. So again, you have to think about that. Are the citizens really going to vote for that or are they They're not. So under the same scenario, your general obligation bond is going to be about 5 basis points less. Debt service is different but not hugely different, right? All to go through the headache of a GO vote. A public works project using— I did have public works, but I didn't use virtual bonds, so I lost my moment. I guess. So sales tax is the same. Lease revenue bonds. So if I do a public works— so think of a public works building, right? We can pledge the building as security. We can have a legal description of that building. That's what they foreclose on if you don't pay. Well, that's a pretty meaningful difference. You know, it'll be 15 to 20 basis points, give or take. And that's even assuming it's an essential purpose project Like public works. If we went to a nonessential building versus an essential building— oh, I think I missed— ignore that. This one should be essential. This one should be nonessential. So if we have an essential building like public works, again, I can get a lower interest rate. I don't need a reserve. If I have a nonessential facility like a market would deem a rec center or parking structure, then we're going to need to fund a reserve. It's going to cost you more. The rating is going to be worse. So it's important to know all of these tools because, you know, it's not like I just walk in and like I would in Idaho and slam down the hammer and say, here's how we're going to finance this. We have to be thoughtful about what What are you going to do today versus what are you going to do tomorrow? So I'm going to jump back to my project in Ogden that we just did. They came to me 3 years ago and said, we want to do this development. Their former CAO hated pledging sales tax. I hate— I can't even underscore it enough. And I've worked with them a long time as well. But they were finally to here, I couldn't pledge any more franchise taxes. They had no money. No hedron in franchise fees. So I said, well, you're going to have to do part of this as sales tax. Well, I don't want to do it all as sales tax. Okay, why not? Because they don't know what's coming down the pike, right? With this that I just showed you, if I know that we've got a nonessential building coming down the pike and an essential one coming down the pike, I'm going to choose to do the essential one As a building authority and probably use sales tax on the nonessential one, all so I can lower this interest rate.

Okay?

If you've got enough headroom in sales tax, you might do them both that way. But we have to stop and consider what else is coming, right? I don't just look at this, okay, got your project, there you go. It was the lowest interest cost, see you later. Because I want you to understand— What it may cost you later if we don't think about that, right? So I love these type of discussions that you're thinking about what might come this year and next year and the year after that. I mean, you don't have a forever horizon, but it really helps to understand that. Another important thing in municipal debt that people don't think of, what you pledge— drill this in your head— what you pledge does not have To be the repayment source, right? So let's go back to that CARES tax example. It would be lower than $1.4 million if we did 10 years instead of 8, but let's call it $1.2 million. Is $1.2 million going to be easier to swallow or harder to swallow than $700,000, right? The market will take no risk that that CARES tax I don't think the CARES tax is going to get renewed. But if you think it's going to get renewed, right, like, yeah, we're pretty sure it's going to get renewed and it would make a lot more sense budgetarily to finance this over 12 years, fine, let's do it as a sales tax bond. Can you use CARES taxes to repay it?

Yes.

Market does not care. The only thing they care is if you default, they're going to cut They'll come after the sales taxes. That's what they'll have legal access to. So that helps us in terms of our creativity because what you pledge does not have to be— what you pledge helps me get the interest rate down. Your finance plan can be, you know, we're going to go find donations for this. I mean, it truly can be. I've done that before. You'll need to look at your internal finance plan. I always spend time The city's going to pay. Yay, but it's like, you know, I don't want to be like the used car salesman. I mean, for any city I could do almost any debt, right? But I want you to know how you're going to pay for it, right? I can finance your Ferrari, but if you've got a Toyota budget, then we need to finance the Toyota. And then Dave mentioned, and I was like, oh, I should have put that in the presentation, some projects Projects may require funding from multiple sources and, you know, being creative with the debt structure as well as being perseverant. I'm nothing if not perseverant. And donations can be a source of funding, right? The trickiest thing about donations is once a project is built and your potential donors know you have a funding source where it's getting built, they kind of were like, eh, you don't need me, right? So you have to be a little bit careful about that. It might impact your timing a little bit. But, you know, you can— I did a project up in Idaho that took me forever. They financed a project very similar to the Maverick Center. They have transient room taxes available to They can issue them legally, but they can't pledge them under state law. So we did it as a building authority. They're using the transit room taxes, but they didn't have enough, so they also are using donations for repayment. You have several ways to finance your projects. You have great rates, you have low interest rates. All those alternatives should be explored, including state— the state does have some low interest loans for water and sewer projects, but they also come with a lot of red tape that sometimes is very expensive relative to how you have to bid those projects and build those projects. I think I beat that last one to death. If you ever want to call me about, hey, what about this, please feel free to do so. That is my cell phone. If I don't answer, it's probably best to text me, but we are happy to be a resource to any and all So thank you. I wasn't paying attention to the time. Oh, you did amazing. Okay, yeah, you're good. I'm the best talker.

So thank you. We do have to keep going. Maybe just, um, please, please stay though, Laura.

Yeah.

Uh, so first of all, I want to make sure you know we're not saying that we need to go out and get debt for everything that, that we as executives staff proposed in the major projects presentation. However, we asked Laura to be here because there could be, depending on the timing and the amount of projects that we want to do, there could be a debt financing component that we might want to look into with that. We'll have Laura share this presentation.

I think we I was just going to send it in an email to you guys right now, if that's okay with you. I have hard copies, I could have handed it out. You're good. You're on it.

But maybe one last point to emphasize. So one, there will be different kinds of debt financing depending on the group and project. So what we do What we would do for wastewater treatment plant and stormwater would be different than what we would do for potential care projects like the Sarah Pool and the preschool. With the City Center, we were able to do that without any debt financing, in part because we saved up, but also in part because we received ARPA funding from the federal government. that helped us bridge the final gap there. But with our fitness center and our library hall, yes, we saved up, yes, we had some CARES Act associated with that, but we also had some general obligation bonds that were falling off at the time, and so we had to renew the GO bond for those projects. And so I guess the last thing that I would say is something that Laura brought up was the idea of because construction inflation has been so high recently, there is a more compelling, I guess, case to make in doing that evaluation of if on some of these projects we want to get them done sooner rather than later, then the debt interest we can get to because of our great rate is likely less than what construction inflation will be over the next few years. I guess with all of that, any immediate questions or concerns or input or just notes?

I mean, ultimately it comes down to balancing everything, right? We've got to look at our existing revenue streams, we've got to look at the projects that need to be done, we've got to look at the cost of capital and prioritize it and optimize it. So, and then if we push too hard on the debt side, that takes you down the potential tax path and you just have to weigh all those pros and cons. So there's a lot of variables in play.

And we will now take a test on—

I say we do it like the feds. Let's just print whatever money we need to build it all.

Isn't your book on investing?

Is that right?

See, we just read your book next year for our public.

So just to give you an idea, so currently we have 2 general obligation bonds outstanding. 2, no, 3 water, sewer, stormwater bonds outstanding. One of those is ending here in 2 years. We just completed our sales tax revenue bonds, just paid off, so we no longer have any sales tax revenue bonds. We do not have any excise tax bonds. So from a bond perspective, we obviously have lots and lots of room. And To do any variety of these things that we have available to us, just to give you some idea. And so then from a cash flow perspective, you know, for the last handful of years, we come to you, I guess, in the early part of the budget process and say this is the amount of money that we can transfer over that are— I mean, I kind of call them savings. Brenda calls them potentially something else. But we look at the last fiscal year, we say, here's how much total revenue we had, here was the total expense operations, and that difference we transfer over into a capital projects fund to then use for capital projects like we presented to you. And for the last handful of years, it's been in the range of $4 or $5 million. So something, as we get into more details and fleshing everything out, like the mayor was saying, into our new budget process, part of the conversation I would anticipate being for you is, do we maybe take, you know, a certain amount of that money and say, move it over to the Moving forward, we could dedicate that to debt service payment, for example, to get benches and things like that fixed up. Any questions, concerns, ideas, etc.?

My question is, on all the projects you're studying, what is the priority? What's 1, 2, 3, 4, 5?

And you look at those and go, okay, so—

Josh, it's a no-brainer.

Look around.

Yes.

However, with that, it's— I think we'd have essentially kind of 3 categories of priorities because the funding source is going to be different on wastewater treatment plant and storm drain versus a fire training facility. We would, we would use impact fees and utility fees to cover debt for wastewater treatment plant and storm drain. For the fire training facility, we would use some of these general funds and fees and give back these funds as well. And of course, with all this, we'll continue to definitely look at grant opportunities. And there's even some debt that, for example, the state Offers for some things that are even lower interest rates.

I mean, in a perfect world, the ideal is we balance all this out so we don't have to raise taxes. And then we, you know, because we've got all the different sources, and then once we get that all balanced out, then we have to take a step back and say, well, how much risk is there in our funding sources? Where are we at? That's the calculation that brings That is absolutely correct.

So we'll expect that that'll be kind of a big part of the budgeting process this coming year, unless there's anything that we've talked about that is, you know, sort of a heck no out of the gate. And you don't even have to answer that.

Please stay in control of yourself.

I like a lot.

The final thing I'll say is we won't be doing the Accounting 101. I'm sure you're all heartbroken. But just so you know, I've sent that out to you via email as well, the presentation. So if there are— if you scan through there and there's something that doesn't make sense to you or you're just curious about, please feel free to get a hold of me and ask me about that. I talked to Brent about that. I mentioned maybe in one of the weeks we are councils and we don't have a very loaded work session, maybe we can have a discussion about some piece of that presentation at that point.

Okay, we good? Okay, all right, thank you.

Just before we start, there is—

there was supposed to be another break on the agenda, but we're probably short on time, but there's cookies back there. And we're gonna get some to-go boxes too so you guys can take some home because we have lots of treats. As if you need more, but just so you know.

Yeah, no, thank you, Jess. Yeah, absolutely, there's lots of treats back there, so feel free to jump up. And we're not going to take another break, so we'll need to pick up our pace on the breaks. That's fine, but we're just going to keep going with our time lapse. Okay, next up on the agenda, we've got the 2024 Goals and Areas of Focus, and that's, uh, Ben and myself. And then we've got the 2 o'clock City Council Roundtable, and I'm guessing with where we're at on time, we're going to blend the Goals and Areas of Focus into City Council Roundtable. That's what she said. And so I think that'll come later.

Okay, fine.

So, all right, well, Brad, would you like to—

should I go ahead and task you? Yep. And this is— this should be in your packets as well if you want to pull out what's called the Community Council's Historical Area of focus. This document shows the last 5 years of areas of focus. Starting from 10 or so years ago, ultimately we try to take general themes and general subjects and make sure that we're we're addressing those subjects. So it's been everything from transportation management, UBU master plan, city facilities, legislative relationships. And then starting in 2021, we really kind of stuck to 5 main overarching areas. And then with tweaks every year, and then we created more specific goals and tasks that you as the council wanted to make sure that we incorporated. Those 5 major areas of focus have basically been safe and livable neighborhoods, thriving and balanced business environment, dependable infrastructure, community focus and effective government, skilled talent to the workforce. And then in this last year, a year ago, we added in this idea of unifying, coming together, and that's where this concept of aligning the interests of the council, employees, community, and the NSC, as you said, is kind of the benchmark of decision-making.

Thank you.

So I've had Tess take this document and say, as kind of a starting point for our discussion here, is perhaps we could look at the existing areas of focus and see if any of those areas of focus should be changed or added to or tweaked. And then from there, we can take some of the different things that you've already expressed in your roundtable that you had or in the discussions you've had with each other as the retreat has continued. And on some of those things, I think we— well, I think on all of those things, we want to make sure it falls under particular areas of focus, that we document it and make sure that we're making progress on it and ultimately reporting back to you. So, So maybe I'll start off with the question, Mayor. In terms of those 6 areas of focus, any desire to tweak or change or add to those? And Mayor, I don't know if you want to give everyone an opportunity to speak to that. I think that's a great question. Go around the table that way?

I would say just, I mean, maybe just pipe up if you have something you'd like to say. And everyone, you know, feel free to be involved. I think right now we're just trying to narrow it down. If you want to change any of the broad categories, these are the categories essentially we came up with last year. And you can see as you look through those, A lot of those things have been, you know, happening or done or whatever. And so we're starting out with the main pillars. And I would take into account, you know, things we talked about yesterday, reasons a lot of you said that you ran on different things. Just kind of everything we've brought together up to this point in the meeting and let's try and get a really good list of what our goals are, our focus.

I just have a question. When you look at aligning the interests of the city council And then skip down to community focus and effective government.

How are those two different?

They seem really similar or related. Well, yeah, they're—

so you've got effective government, or actually— oh, I see what you're saying. Zoom back.

The community-focused thing was more, you know, okay, we did the study, but, you know, transparency portal for the community, you know, so they have an avenue to— and then we had legislative outreach. It's just an avenue for the citizens, the community to be able to come to us or see what we're doing.

Yeah, I think, I mean, in my mind, so you've got community-focused and effective government. So effective government is more— I mean, that's the heart of the beast, I think. It's more efficiency-driven. It's more efficient, effective. Like, for example, what came out of that, you know, we did a study on the employees and where they were at. We also— and we haven't talked much about this— we're also in the process of doing a much more in-depth study. It's a 6 to 8 month study It's not cheap. It's really delved into all the different departments and how effective and how well they work. I think where aligning the interests came from was that was essentially something, as I mentioned, that I've talked about from the beginning, trying to bring those 3 groups on the same page. And that's the point that I felt like, you know, we've made a ton of progress in a lot of areas. but specifically city council and the city employees coming together in a huge way over the last year. And then now we need to bridge that gap to community as well. So they're a little bit different, but I think the reason they're different line items is because I think on the city council, city employees, and community, that's so important that it's a single focus.

That's also an internal kind of thing.

We're working with ourselves.

Right, exactly.

And an additional point of emphasis. Yeah, one additional note. Of those that are on the page for 2023 and looking at 2024, just in looking at your improved communication, education, outreach, And we have the emergency plan, neighborhood commission expansion. I would just add, because we've talked about it, as part of that would be just some form of a Latino outreach or a form of tapping into the groups that usually don't have much voice and finding a way to find them, reach them, or reach out to them so they can reach back into the city. What politicians do.

So that's still in the school district?

Yeah.

I think we need to figure out a way to implement it. It is a big issue. I mean, our demographics have changed in the last 10, 15 years. That was actually a big part of the emphasis on the school district was we want to make sure that the kids in our town are completely, you know, getting the very best practices they can for what they need. So, yeah, I think minority outreach, we just need to figure out the best place to put it.

I think it could be its own commission at some point.

Yeah, it probably could. I mean, because I'm not sure what the numbers are, but they were significant as far as— 40%.

We have like, I'm trying to remember, Jana Alvarez is on CDBG.

That was why we put her on.

I don't know if you've met her yet.

Yeah.

So that's why we put her on CDBG so she would understand and have access to that funding and there you have a voice there. And I think as Jeff and I, we're working on neighborhood commission, that was one of the things we wanted to also bring that voice to that depending on the applicants.

My only other element would be the tapping in of a business, how they can access that.

Yeah, that would be—

Well, we've talked about it. I mean, we've got our, not chamber, but just our economic development.

Our business alliance.

Our business alliance. And I don't know if— and they have a group, like their own little chamber.

It would be really good to get some communication going and figure out how to— I talked with Kathy about that too.

She referred to the County Chamber of Commerce quite a bit. They also have some resources. So yeah, it's just kind of connecting a lot of dots together.

The nice thing about their business alliance they've got is so that a lot allows them to come together with their specific types of issues, but then we don't really have a way to actually hook them into ours.

Yeah.

Right?

Well, I think it's educating too. I think there's a lot of people who aren't even aware of what resources are available.

At least the people we talked to didn't know.

We talked about the process of starting a business, and if it's, you know, if it's a language you don't put it in.

And also the resources that every other business person has access to, they don't have access to that because of the language barrier. So if there were a way that we could make that available to them, I don't know what our language resources are.

I think we pull those community leaders and say, who's your bilingual person and can we— can they come help at our facility that we have down there? Yeah, Business Resource Center. And then that will filter out to that community through the language and hopefully avoid that language barrier.

Well, do we have—

is our business license application in Spanish? That's something we should be doing if it's not.

That's an easy fix.

We can do that.

We have translation spouses.

So the Business Resource Center, that's actually— kind of a work in process. But as far as what we've got right now that we can do is we've got Kathy under economic development, right? And so if we practically made economic development under her have some piece that was a connection to that group, then you start to bring that together.

Yes, tying it together.

Yeah.

Well, we have a great start right now. who is a member of the Hispanic population from Orem up here. She works with Kathy a little bit. So if we found a way to expand her role, because she wants to graduate soon.

She's very business-focused. Her family runs a business here in Orem.

Yeah, her mom's the owner of a dress shop.

Dress shop, yeah.

And really key— I'm sorry, I'm just going to say, based on my experience, you know, in California, the key is you You can't do an 8 to 5. You have to have after-hours opportunities because they're already working 3 jobs. And maybe you can connect with the English classes that are being taught in Orem.

They expressed a desire for that.

At the church there on 8th South?

Yeah, and other resources. For example, they have questions and want to know how they can get help with employment. So just somebody who they could look to that would give them ideas or point them in what direction to go. Just knowing what is out there for them and if they have a need or a concern, they'd ask, hey, where do I find this? And they'd be pointed in whatever direction instead of just, I don't know, good luck. So Tesca's writing a lot down. Maybe we can pull this back into a summary a little bit.

Yeah.

I think we want to do Hispanic and minority outreach generally.

Yeah.

And I think that— and again, tell me if I'm misrepresenting here— we could at least initially look at something of a subcommittee amongst our neighborhood commission that is Hispanic minority focused. And then also, I think we could do an OBA-specific subcommittee that would be Hispanic-focused.

Yeah.

And then from that, see how we get those groups together, see how much we can get done in terms of translating things and connecting them to, you know, all of our resources, and see if that then over time develops into, I guess, a more specific Hispanic I think that sounds great.

I think that's a great path to go down. I think I get excited about on the business side, because I think if you're breaking down a lot of the population, the people running the businesses are probably the leaders of the community, right? And so if we can bring that in, then that's going to get that going a lot faster.

We had the Utah Hispanic Chamber come in to represent But he's out of Salt Lake, right? But he's interested and came and said, here's my card and we want to participate and support. But again, it's just— it would be nice to have something close.

Yeah. Okay.

So just to add on the one that's for business alliance communication, just put a minority Hispanic subcommittee.

I kind of feel like there's a lot of work to do on the Neighborhood Commission. I think they would fit really nicely there.

Yeah.

So up above— so Minority Outreach and Community Engagement generally, rather than possible Commission Communication, let's just— let's say Neighborhood Commission Subcommittee.

I moved here in '94 and I checked out the census data and it has been really low.

Okay, that's enough. Thank you, Greg. Thank you. What else as far as percentage-wise?

Should we—

so right now we're just talking about areas of focus. I guess we could look through last year's list and see what else, you know, should be on the new list.

Yes. So yeah, I have a few things. Okay, let me figure out where they go though. But I really felt— so I like on our point 5, our legislator outreach, I'd like to really connect with that more.

That's good.

Yeah, I mean, we did have— we had a meeting or something, and there have been great communications, but maybe See if we can make that a little more— more engagement on there.

So, task under community-focused and effective government, and it's called legislative outreach.

We're looking at 2023, we have that one, right? So you're taking those and making them 2023?

Yes.

So 1%.

We have the historical study on the Cochise Creek.

That's the next one I wanted to say.

As far as this legislature outreach, I do think that's really important. As we were talking about how these bills come together and how they're made, a lot of times they're just kind of floating along and then all of a sudden they get sped up and then they start to get rammed through. And unless we've got strong relationships with those legislatures as a group, it's going to be hard for us to just kind of sit there and watch it go We can't stop it, right, or we can't modify it at least. So we really need to have those relationships so that whenever we get into a bill that we've got concerns about, we can make 10 phone calls and we're there. So that's why it's important for us to get this sort of, you know, happening thing.

So again, we'll be meeting with some of them on Tuesday after lunch. We'll get Councilmember Chris Kilpatrick involved. Of course, Jesse's going to be super involved during the legislative session. And then, Tess, I think it'd also be good to share with the entire council kind of the contact information.

Oh yeah, yeah, they're awesome. They respond super quick.

We just looked it up too. 29% Hispanic population.

As of?

2020 census.

2020.

Carrie and Bryce, I think we should also maybe be thinking about— as we think about the list of people we invite to big city events or things of that nature, we should be keeping these people in mind.

Yeah, better or worse specific. Yeah, well, just another—

I'm trying to figure out where it goes, probably community-focused or maybe safe, livable, connected, engaged neighborhoods. I'm not quite sure, but I really would like to see us have more of a dialogue with UVU and West Portland. They had that in 2019, it looks like, is the plan, as a goal, and we know why, right? We know what was happening then. It's not stopped. I'm still hearing that from those neighborhoods. It's just not on the— you know, it's on the back burner now. So I would like to start those conversations and get some great outcomes.

Yeah, let's put that at community focus and effective government.

I think, I mean, from last year we had Alpine School District, but also Linden and Pueblo.

Yeah, so April 25th, um, we'll be having— it's either 3 to 4, a lunch meeting. I think I was Waiting to hear back from them on which one was better, but we'll be doing a meeting with Linden, I believe.

Mm-hmm.

Okay.

Oh, yes. Because that's what we really want to have, uh, we need to start talking and more so and talk to the listeners that are interested.

Perfect.

I'll put this around me. I also want to add under thriving— maybe not, where am I adding it? Dependable infrastructure, number 4. So we've talked about this when we talked about our transportation master plan, we've updated it, right? So we've done that and we talked about updating our active transportation plan.

Yep.

So can we focus on that and just the different ideas Ideas, the canals, whatever. And I'm fine with the canals isn't a good thing. I understand that. But let's brainstorm. Let's get something out there.

Look at everything.

Look at our— what did you— who was it, Chris? Someone here said yesterday there are a lot of grants available, or there's some stuff happening on that front.

So yeah, we've got a grant application starting in for general active transportation, I think through MADD.

Yeah.

But then there's also an RTP grant and a DUOR grant that are both trail-specific. And Matt Taylor, one of our senior planners, has some trail master planning ideas that we can use and reference in those grants. So, Tess, let's call this one. Yes, thank you. Thank you, Chris. And so another thing that we want to make you aware of is. In this upcoming legislative session, we've heard that the state legislature is looking at defining parameters whereby cities can create a transportation utility fee and fund. And those utility fees can be used for trails and active transportation and roadways and sidewalks. and related infrastructure. And we currently pay for our transportation with, well, with general fund taxes, with gas taxes, and with a quarter-cent sales tax. But several years ago, Provo went through a study process to look at how in their city, with so much public and not-for-profit-owned land in their city, that almost 50% of their properties weren't collecting property tax to go towards, for example, transportation uses. And so they developed a methodology to charge a transportation utility fee. And since then, Since then, it's been challenged and went up to the Supreme Court, but it was challenged more particularly against some other cities. Pleasant Grove was kind of at the forefront, and they ended up prevailing. And the state Supreme Court said that cities can in fact impose this utility fee, and it's not a tax because you can associate it with the exact use and exact impact of the service being provided. So, so it's, it's, so the state legislature has essentially been saying that they agree with that ruling, and, and even the Libertas crew has expressed support in the concept as long as cities go through a proper methodology. And the proper methodology that's being referenced is the one that ProRail has used. So with that, Chris, anything else? So we want to see what the state legislature does in terms of specifically defining the parameters. But then assuming that that passes, we would like to propose We looked into doing this study, the same study that Provo did, potentially with the same consultant, to look at, okay, here's all the ways that Orem pays for roads and trails and active transportation, and here's all of our potential plans for maintaining, adding to that, all of our transportation, and see what that gap is. And then And then see if then at the end of that, a transportation utility might make sense for—

Just really quick, there's about a dozen cities that have it today. Provo is probably the best example, as Brent mentioned. Their residential fee is $3.68 a month. That generates $2.16 million a year. There's a variety of, a range of fees that, or amounts that are out there, like anywhere from $3 to about $18 a month. I would say that PROVOS is the most equitable and fair, spreading out that across all of those that place a demand on the system.

What's the revenue for bringing it in?

Is it through utility?

It's a utility fee that's on your monthly bill, and it's based on trip generation for that particular land use property.

Yeah.

So, if you have a UPS business that has so many square feet, it's going to pay more. But, if you have a residential property that only has 15 trips a day, it's going to pay less. So, it's reasonable and fair, and it can be applied against agencies and nontaxable entities like the church or a church Churches, school districts, state, county land. Yes.

So on dependable infrastructure, we talked about since 10 years ago on the council about 950 North and 400 East Hampton. Is that supposed to be done this year? Come on. You're ruining the suspense of my question.

No, we've talked.

I know.

And we have to—

should that be something on a goal?

We have to get a water line in there before we redo the road.

Because we don't have to—

we don't want to blow up the road after we replace it.

That's supposed to be done this year. It's not on the list this year.

Well, last year it wasn't on the list. I'll have to verify that. See if it's on there for this year. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, it has not.

out of 10 years?

No, it wouldn't be 10 years.

It was maybe a couple years ago.

That's got to be done.

That's got to be done.

And we're going to do it.

With the elementary and the junior high, that road is horrendous. 950 North to the cemetery.

Between 4th East and 8th East.

The straight shot from Canyon View and Orchardville.

What we've suggested is that we need to We need to make sure that this— the tank project, the well project, the pump house, all of that's done. And we were very concerned about being able to pay for that. That is our absolute number one priority.

What would that project—

That project? It's a half mile. It'd be probably $600,000.

We're spending $500,000.

That's just for the water. And then the road itself—

So, Chris, what might be realistic? 2025?

Yeah, well, he said it was going to be 2024.

Go on.

No, so I probably did, but we also didn't have— we didn't know what the bids were going to come in at, and now we know for all these projects, and they're a lot higher than what we were hoping that they would come in at.

So put that on your Tiger Team list.

It's on the list. Believe me, I know.

Move it to the top.

I have one to add to—

go ahead and put on 950 North. Look at 950 North and create a construction schedule.

Where's Ryan?

Right here.

Help me out, buddy. I mean, Chris is absolutely correct.

We have a schedule of projects, and they're all scheduled within that framework, the master plans, and that's what we try to follow.

So where's the schedule?

25.

I don't have it with me.

We'll try to do it at 25.

Try.

I'm going to try really hard.

If we get a transportation utility fee, I'll—

Oh, I will guarantee it if you do that.

Yes, you are.

I just had another point, and I kind of want this one bumped up. Number 1, a confidential instructor. I think We talked about this when we were doing our transportation master plan, and that was a State Street renewal plan that involved active transportation. So I don't know how you want to couch that, but we're doing that for businesses. But I also would like to see the beautification aspect emphasized here somewhere.

How do you want to—

Yeah, so that looks great.

State Street's So yeah, and then maybe I want a State Street renewal active transportation fund. I mean, too many times we just talk about State Street. Let's just talk about renewing it. You know, it's not a bad street. It's it has some beautiful parts.

So let's concrete's awesome.

It does.

Chick-fil-A's great.

I do too.

If I may, maybe yeah, maybe. I think what we can add on here is the heart of downtown. You're close to 8 South. In terms of beautification aspects, I can— Yeah, I like that.

Okay, okay.

Thanks, Tess.

Thank you.

So how about, can I have you change that? Renewal slash beautification. Well, I want—

somehow I want renewal slash beautification in I will add, though, Lynnae, to that is we do have the beautification standards. So every new project that comes in, like Nickel Mania, has that separated sidewalk with the street trees and all of that. So as projects are redeveloping, it's happening slowly.

Okay. So that's a function that's already included in our ordinances?

Correct.

Yeah.

But that's why I also bring up the heart of downtown thing, is there could be beautification aspects that we haven't really even considered that could come up as community.

Yeah, let's keep that word in there just to remind us.

That's great. I like it.

Okay.

Thank you. Yeah, on that infrastructure list, that should be our number one as far as the State Street piece that's compared. I think it's one of the back ones, right? Wonderful. So we should be going through and looking at the previous one.

Dave, why don't you look at number 4?

Look what?

Oh, that was for 2021.

Sorry. I'm also looking at yesterday's conversation. I think that Under, let's see, probably safe and livable neighborhoods. We had a really kind of a lot of conversation yesterday related to that. So adding in finishing research and analysis of short-term rental ordinances.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah, regulations, maybe short-term rental regulations. And then also pursuing the hometown initiative to help with our NIT.

And then some were old.

And then I also, I heard a lot about I've heard a lot, and not just yesterday, but this idea of emphasizing homeownership and new development.

Which I need to correct. Yesterday I said something about urban housing loans. It's the rural housing loans that they use in Soto del Oro, right? So that goes with homeownership.

And then, if I may, perhaps park revitalization and maybe some of the The projects that Bryce talked about in terms of revitalizing Sierra Pool, looking at Ice Ribbon, and then improvements at the library as a community center. Maybe that could be a follow-up.

Yeah.

So not library department, but just library as a community center. And then so to ask, so revitalization, revitalization parks. And then instead of recreation, let's say syrup pool and ice ribbon.

Can we use renewal instead of revitalization? I just like that.

I think it's positive.

Perfect. Yeah, so instead of revitalization, renewal.

We used it twice.

Used it the whole time.

It's because it's a great word.

It's a great word.

It's all about new and creative. When you say emphasize homeownership, is that the same to you as housing affordability?

When you say what?

Question. I think we catered to that.

Could—

if the council is willing, could we put down, um, consider the Affordable Housing Authority or the Attainable Housing Authority and have them come in and do a work session presentation of their program?

This is the finishing basement?

This is the basement finishing program.

To me, that's something we have control over as a municipal—

Yeah, we talked at length yesterday about housing affordability. It needs to be on there as a focus, right?

Yes, so it's called— so instead of emphasizing homeownership, let's call it housing affordability. Then let's talk about the strategies we'll put forward or members will put under that subject. Is that what you're saying? So attainable housing study. Emphasizing homeownership in new development.

Compared to renters only.

Affordability.

I think we talked about revitalizing new developments under that.

What would that mean? So maybe we could do a hometown initiative. Gary, stay out.

Well, under attainable housing thing, we had a lot of talk about revitalizing neighborhoods.

I'm just wondering what— yeah, what does that mean to you?

That's almost a subset of attainable housing. Yeah.

And what does it mean, I think, when you went— like you were talking about yesterday, looking at the agency, how to get money into—

It means we have to take a step back and try and figure out how to do it.

Well, I think we laid out in the content plan actually quite a bit of that.

So that—

yeah, that takes you kind of to taking a step back, figuring out, which requires conversations maybe with consultants.

Is that a little bit of reinvesting in neighborhoods and getting homeowners to reinvest in their homes?

Yes.

And oftentimes they're being rented.

Somebody owns them but doesn't live in the neighborhood, and that's the problem. Yeah, and that falls under that hometown initiative.

Perfect. So Tess, above housing affordability is the hometown initiative. So let's cut out— cut the pursuing homeowner initiatives and let's put it under housing affordability.

Okay, perfect.

And then on that, let's say along with pursuing hometown initiative and along with NIT.

Yeah, that's kind of a that was something else I was going to mention. But yeah, we need to have conversation based on NIT where it's at, based on what the rules are, and bring that whole thing together based on the We had that conversation yesterday, right? So that's another—

This feels like a big topic we need to break down.

Yeah. Okay. So after pursuing hometown initiative, let's just make a new one.

Well, I think NIT is just its own category under community development where we build safe, livable, and connected neighborhoods.

Neighborhood improvement team, communication, looking at legislation.

Evaluation.

Okay.

NIT evaluation.

So I'd like to echo what Chris said. Landlord issue, not you, Chris. The landlord issue, the, um, I'm trying to figure out how we—

Owner occupied.

Yes, owner occupied. And then NIT, um, how do we pull that together with, um, that particular one with enforcement? Because NIT, we're looking at code enforcement. From a unification standpoint, it seems like a lot of what we're looking at. I think occupancy. I'd like to figure out how to address the occupancy issues too. I'm not sure if that's because I just under the new. A home that's being rented as a duplex when it's a it's a house with an ADU. The homeowner moves out and then. continues to maintain ownership and then rents it.

He makes it as a duplex instead of—

Yeah, so it's out. So could we—

maybe we put this under, um, the short-term rental one?

Because what's that doing? That's taking that home off the market.

Above housing affordability.

There's a line.

And affecting that— what you're saying.

We do catch a lot of that, because strangely enough, somebody thinks they have to come in and change their utilities.

Is that where you catch it?

Yeah.

You're not listed as the homeowner. We can't do that. And there's already sort of— we gather some information and figure out That's what's— that's not perfect by any means. Obviously, that's kind of happened, stands for that. It happens a lot.

I think about an addition in this neighborhood area, I can't remember what we called it.

Satan levels.

Satan levels.

I think we need to address what Josh and Dave were talking about, what code rate are we trying to enforce, and we don't need to code.

That's sort of the neighborhood code evaluation. Because they have a list of codes that they think are not as far.

I think that's part of the whole NIT evaluation. Yeah, trying to figure out all the pieces and how they blend together.

First, aligning interests of the city.

We talked about doing a resolution. We talked about decorum, setting some kind of—

maybe setting or reevaluating our decorum standards and meanings for us and our citizens. And then also talked about doing service as a community.

I had a couple ideas on that. One is, I think Chris may have mentioned yesterday that the statement that the mayor reads Maybe we, Chief Earl and I, could revitalize— that's the word we're using, right? Revitalize the statement a little bit.

Renew.

Renew.

I'm sorry, renew the statement a little bit. And also Steve and I could give some instructions on if a resident— the reason I think the City Council meeting is maybe sometimes the only interaction a resident has with the city.

Yeah.

And so maybe if there's a point where somebody's going off track, there's a way that we can talk about how somebody can say, Mr. Mayor, point of order, uh, if you're looking at something else, or if something's being said that is attacking a city council member. So we can maybe talk about how that could play out in a city council meeting. And also, I would recommend— and obviously I'm recommending the council can decide this— but, uh, if there's an instance where something happens, it would be great for the council maybe to discuss that instance later and said, how could we have handled that in a better way? In other words, along the line, let's see if we can improve on the public meetings that we're having. Just Recommendations about like on the diet?

Chief.

Yeah.

Not you, Chief. That real Chief, Josh.

Oh, I'm going to yield away.

Too many cheeses.

Too many cheeses.

Too many cheeses.

My question for you is.

I remember being told a couple years ago that if, um, there was someone that was disruptive, that the officer there didn't have the authority to remove them.

We do if the mayor— it has to be the way it is in your— in the ordinance is I think one of you has to make a motion, and I think you can even make a motion to mayor and leave. And then if you guys make a motion to suspend or to expel somebody from the meeting, What about— yeah, until then it's no one's fault.

It's the same motion. You would make a motion to remove a person, so it's got to be by 2/3 of the, of the council that's there.

Because I know last year, maybe the year before, I mean, somebody, you know, made a comment, but then somebody on the council said, you know, called him chicken. whatever. You know, that's not acceptable. So how do you publicly say— should the mayor say that's unacceptable?

I think we monitor ourselves.

Yeah, I think it's a point of order. I don't think we're talking about removal because I do think citizens have a right to express how they feel, and sometimes they're frustrated with the goat house or something in their neighborhood and they're most I just think when they go off and they attack council members, our staff, that that would be a point of order. And the mayor can say, remember, just a reminder, we don't want to make this personal to people. We're serving you, you know, let us know what your issue is and we'll see if we can help you.

Well, and I've seen other legislative bodies that interrupt the person and say, I'm sorry, you'll need to stop saying that. I'm sorry, I'm not going to allow you to say that. to continue to disparage someone from this microphone. I mean, we got to decide if we want to get to that point. I've seen it done well.

And hopefully we'll see—

that'll be one of those meetings that won't be closed.

It will be improvements to the decorum as we discuss it, which that new law might be.

Well, the legislature has a parliamentarian that can actually remove somebody who's disorderly or attacks somebody or makes any allegation against somebody else that they've committed a crime, they can actually remove the person from the chamber or from the building. Our rules are a little bit different than that, and I think more of this is a point of order to let's keep them back on track so that— I think what happens, you know, somebody gets up there and says something, the next person wants to equal it or better it, and then the emotion gets up and now they're talking talking about how bad Josh is or how bad I am or the mayor is, and it's just— it misses the point of what they're trying to get at. I mean, we're all trying to serve the residents, and let's try to get them back to the point of service.

I do think we need to have a conversation about this, um, because, I mean, in the 2 years I've been there, um, I mean, there's been a I think we've seen a few instances of what we're talking about. So I don't think we want to— and I lay on the side of free speech and representation, and I want everyone to feel that. And so I don't want to take a few things here and there and really take away that free speech. That's why we just need to have a conversation and, you know, figure that out. But it can be on our list as far as we figure it out.

Yeah.

I think that's part of what you're getting at. It's just the ability to call timeout quickly. It's not like we're censoring necessarily. Timeout long enough.

Just remind.

Sorry.

No, it's good.

So I think there's obviously a difference between somebody who's being disorderly and somebody who's just maybe voicing a negative opinion about something, right? And I've taken some notes on what we kind of talked about yesterday about potential rules of decorum where we might want to stop somebody from talking, but I think there are also some potential First Amendment implications here too. And so that's one of the things I've kind of noted for myself that I want to do a little bit of research on where those lines will be. Okay, that's great. You know, what, you know, for example, if you say we're gonna allow clapping but we're not gonna allow booing.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.