City Council · 2025-05-27

Hang on, there's a couple bits. This is our—

all right.

I'd like to welcome everyone here today to our city council work meeting. And, uh, looks like we've got a fairly relaxing meeting today, which is kind of nice.

So far, um, we'll go ahead and start.

We've got, uh, I don't know, I could read this. I'll just read this. I'll read this the first few times so everybody gets the idea, and then we'll start skipping after a while. It just says, item number 1, while in a public meeting, we kindly ask that only presenters and individuals specifically invited by the mayor or city council speak or ask questions. This helps us conduct the city's business in an efficient and orderly manner. If you'd like to make a comment on an issue, please do so during the public appearances portion of the regular meeting. This will ensure that your comment is properly addressed and documented for the official record. Please keep side conversations to a minimum. It interferes with the audio recording. Moving on to item number 2.2.1.

It's a presentation.

Help you. Uh, since an annual report, so that would be Roger Timmerman.

Uh, I see an HDMI cable over here, so I'm assuming this is where I can plug in. Right place.

If you need help with technology, let us know. Don't ask me though, ask somebody smarter than me.

Maybe it's got something. My computer is detecting it's plugged into something.

Oh, great.

Green is a good sign. This on a Zoom link, I could join the Zoom meeting. And share my screen. It's just not coming. We can try to have USB. Uh, on a USB stick?

USB-C.

Have USB-C here. Let me grab an app real quick. I'll start while we're— thanks for having me out here. I'm Roger Timmerman with Utopia Fiber. I'm the executive director here. I've been executive director for about 9 years, but I was a CTO for a number of years before that. Um, I want to do a little bit of history lesson on this. We usually have a couple faces, but I won't spend too much time. I only got 20 minutes, right? Oh, 30 minutes. Great. Um, so historically, uh, Utopia, it was originally created in 2002. Uh, that's when a bunch of cities just identified they wanted something better than they could get from the private sector alone. Didn't want to compete with the private sector. So that's where this model kind of came out of. You can build public infrastructure and in partnership with private companies allow them to use it and sell and compete in our cities. And so it was a— not a non-competitive thing, it was actually pro-competitive thing. We, uh, pretty much all the Utah-based internet providers use our network. Um, it's only those that have a monopoly or something like that that prevent competition that are against Utopia. So, Utopia started up. There was 11 cities that created Utopia and bonded. So, there were actually some more cities, but they fell out when it came time to financially support the organization. So, we really consider these 11 cities as the original founding and pledging members of the organization. And they have the voting authority and control. Since then, we've grown with various types of partnerships in different cities. Sometimes they own something, some of it, sometimes we own some of it. Sometimes we just have kind of an operating agreement, but, but through different types of partnerships, we have expanded into lots more cities. We don't do that at any risk to the original cities, but we do it at mutual benefit. And the mutual benefit means we benefit, and there's a financial benefit and economy of scale benefits and things like that that come from those. I'll talk a little bit about how those are going. Uh, this is kind of a timeline. I don't have the last couple of years on there, but they're intentionally colored this way. Okay, it was a little rough in the early years, but since 2009, everything has been fantastic. Every project that we've bonded for and built has more than covered all of its expenses, including debt and operations. Uh, here, when we talk about Orem City and the original cities paying Utopia, you're not paying us, you're paying the bond debt on projects that did not cover their costs. And that's for this phase of the project, and I'll show you some of the numbers on that.

Yes.

I've compared it in my mind similar to our fitness center. We had to pay for the building, but the operation covers itself. And I would say those, even those reddish-orange ones cover the operating costs, the green cover the original debt. and the operating cost, but the reddish-orange covers the operating cost. Is that fair?

Yes. Yeah, we are covering all the operating expenses for this from revenues, but we're not paying the capital cost.

Thank you.

We're covering part of it, not all of it.

And during those years you were—

what?

During those years?

No, they have never covered— oh, they didn't used to cover the operating cost either.

Okay.

The last 6 or 8 years, you can tell me exactly.

The operating expenses for this period were— we kind of covered that in about 2010, 2011. It was a couple of years into the creation of UIA where it was grown to the point where we were now covering at least the operating expenses.

Go back and make up for the continual—

Yeah, so, and then right here it was, we're paying none of the original bond expenses, but we're paying new bond expenses. And then as we've progressed forward, these years have been able to start contributing back towards the bond on this phase. More and more every year. A couple accomplishments. These are kind of hard to see. There's number ones on here, gold awards, right? So, it's— we are the largest open access network in the country, and open access is that model of infrastructure separate from the retail internet provider. It's very common internationally. It's not as common in the United States, but it's getting a lot of traction. Even big companies like AT&T are getting into open access, but we're still the largest out there. We have the fastest speeds in the country. We have 10 gig for residential customers and I'd say 100 gig for business, but we actually have 400 gig for business. We have the University of Utah has a 400 gig connection with us and we're their backbone. We're also the backbone for the state. We're backbone for a lot of things that are Much bigger than us as individual cities. We're the most competitive system in the United States. So usually you come in and somebody builds a fiber network and you get one more option. So you go from maybe one option to 2, maybe 3 if you're lucky. When we come in with our model, we bring in 19 providers that then compete in the market. So it's very, very competitive when you have a Utopia system. Uh, we've been getting lots of connections from the Utah Education Network. So we say we're number 1, not on any specific award, but if you look at that period of time, we've gotten a lot of new business from schools. So we've continued to build and support our education system. So it's good for us because it's revenue, but it's also good for the city, the schools, because it saves them money. So schools pay less.

Yep.

So are the schools in Orem All Utopia ready, or—

There's a mix. They all have Utopia available to them, but some of them are on CentriCom, so—

But it is available if they would—

Absolutely.

Okay, and in some cases, UEN likes to mix it, so they'll get a connection from us and a connection from CentriCom, so they have redundancy, and then they may have some from— well, CenturyLink mounts Lumen at some of those connections too. But we've been doing really well with it over the last 4 or 5 years. We do a lot of other things with our network other than just internet to homes. And so, we mentioned here we provide air quality sensors. Every time we put in a cabinet or hut, we just put one of those air quality sensors on there. So, if you look at, like, the KSL air quality app or any of these other air quality things, you'll actually see— you can see that Orem has a lot more sensors than most other cities. I say Orem does, but—

Orem does.

Orem and Linden and Pleasant Grove and Cedar Hills. And then there's, like, not much coverage in other cities like Provo and America Fork and Lehi because they don't have these air quality sensors out there. So, we try to look for opportunities to provide public benefit where we have connectivity and attach those. And just by nature of doing that in our deployment, we are the number one provider of air quality sensors in the state. We do other cool things. We do— we call them smart city solutions. We have wildfire detection cameras, public Wi-Fi, air quality sensors, whatever cities want to do. We love to work on those projects with them. We actually have a wildfire detection camera in Orem that points at the bench areas over there. And it's a— it's an experimental type system that we did with BYU and one of their capstone teams, but it's still up and running. It's in the Centennial Park. Is that what the park's called? You have a park called Centennial? It's in there. There's big cameras on a pole, that camera, and you'll sit there and go like this all the time. It's got a thermal camera on there, so we actually can measure hot spots and things. And, uh, so anyways, it's, it's a pretty cool system. Uh, we have a Net Promoter Score 63. That's a customer satisfaction Survey results. You ever filled out something where it says, would you recommend this to a neighbor or colleague or something like that?

That's a, that's a pretty high net promoter score.

It is.

Yeah.

So the others, um, like Comcast, for example, there's usually zero to in the negatives. Most of their subscribers would not recommend them to others.

I mean, across any line of business, 63 is a high net promoter score.

Google rating scores pretty high. We wish it were 5. You know, there's always room for improvement, but 4.6 is really good, especially in the broadband space. It's actually better than Google Fiber. Like, like to, you know, poke at that. And so anyways, with this fiber network, we put it in and we get all these companies that can use it. Any company wants to, for the most part. We do have a vetting process and we do RFPs for that. Um, but there's a lot of companies on there. We have a superior fiber network than other— even, even other fiber networks. Everybody gets their own fiber dedicated connection. Other fiber networks take one fiber network out to the community and they split it and share it. It has time, uh, time division. Everybody gets time slotted and shared, so it actually gets congested during peak hours. Fiber is really, really fast. It actually does slow down if you build your network that way, and the other fiber providers in the state do it that way, including Google, Lumen, Quantum Fiber. They share a network. We don't. So your connection is full speed 24/7. Doesn't matter how much your neighbor is a bandwidth hog. It happens. We're also future-proof. So some things that are new We have a new 2.5-gig offering that's actually getting a lot of traction. It's good because it kind of hits a mix of— it's not too expensive. Like, a lot of people think the 10 gig is too expensive, but so it's not too expensive. It's a good, reasonable price, but we actually— we also make more money on it. And I say we make more money, that's, you know, there's no investors or shareholders. You are the owners of the system. So, we'll talk about the revenue and the benefits of revenue growth on the system and where that goes. But that's good, mutually good, if customers love it and we're generating more revenue. We've lowered the price for 10 gig recently. We keep improving our systems to automate provisioning for troubleshooting. Service providers can manage their services much more dynamically these days, and we have a lot of capacity and we're way ahead of the game on being able to support things like improvements in virtual reality, artificial intelligence, other things are are really driving a lot of increase in bandwidth use, but we've already got it all there throughout the city. So we're in good shape for the future. Just kind of a little infographic, just talks about some of the things that happened this last year. 1.3 million feet of conduit placed, 1.9 million feet of fiber cable. You put multiple fibers in a conduit aerial strand. We completed the build-out of West Haven City. 25,000 new homes, businesses were connected, connectivity available to them, I guess. But, okay, so let's get into some of the specifics here. This is our subscriber growth across all of our systems, internal and partnership. So, we're approaching 75,000 subscribers. I remember when I started, we had about 7,000 or 8,000. So, it's grown a lot. Uh, this is by city. Orem is this one right here. You guys are one of our 2nd biggest city.

The brown or the orange?

The brown. Okay, so that— this red one is Idaho Falls. They're newer, so they've, they've taken off really, really fast.

What's the population of Idaho Falls? Smaller than us, aren't they?

Similar.

And what's the one on the top?

That's Layton.

70,000.

66,000.

And this one's West Valley City. So, Layton's our largest by subscriber. So, um, yeah, we'd love to, like, not let Idaho Falls surpass us. They do have a less competitive market. Um, we have more competitors here. We'll talk a little bit about the competition forum, but we continue to do well here. Uh, so this is— this represents the build-out of the system. So, this is availability. So, when we make the fiber available, That first phase of the project only passed about 10,000 homes. That was a very frustrating period of time because Orange City had bonded for this, was paying for it, and most of the city couldn't get it. And it was UIA that was created in 2008, bonded multiple rounds of bonding, but it was later when we really put the— got the UIA funding to build out the rest of the project. So you got built out, the final areas were built out in 2022. Um, and then there's always a little bit of growth as you guys redevelop or find places to, you know, you feel like it's full, but there's always some ability to cram more units in somewhere. So we, uh, there's a new subdivision. So, yeah, I mean, it never really stops. You know, we've got a lot of cities that consider themselves landlocked, but it's like there's always increasing.

So, when we first built, we just went to an area. We didn't pick higher-income areas. We just put— you just laid fiber.

We kind of went to the cheapest areas.

Yeah, less rocks.

Usually less— the demographics aren't as good, and usually the take rates aren't as good. So, it was actually the worst areas to build initially. This is your subscriber rate, and so it's grown really well as the buildout was completed. And then if you look right here, it's like, that looks almost bad, but there's actually a kind of an annual curve, and that hits us in the early spring. I mean, maybe mid-spring. I just get a lot of move-outs and turnover, and then they kind of come back. And that's what's happening right now. We actually lost— had a net loss of 4 customers last month in Orem, and I was like, oh no, I don't want to go to this meeting and share that unless I have good news. Uh, so I went and looked at it like, well, how about this month? Well, we were already at 27 net growth for the month to date. We'll probably go over 30, 30 or so, which is more than average over the last year. Average is about 26 a month over the last year. So we kind of get that cycle of slows down, we get some move-in, move-outs, and then they kind of come back up on here. So, so we're good there. Um, This is a map that shows every customer in Orem, and there's so many of them. It's like, that doesn't really disclose anything. It's pretty much customers are everywhere in the city. But which looks good, um, because there were times when it was like, hey, only this part of the city could get the service, but now it's everywhere. And you can see some business corridors. Businesses are blue. So there's a couple of business corridors where the businesses are in there. Um, that one's mislabeled. That one is bugging me because I pulled the map. Those are supposed to be red, but, uh, but yeah, we across the city, it's, it's very popular. Um, a lot of the take rate reports we share count a lot of addresses that aren't actually homes. But as we kind of look in and zoom in and just go down streets and look at this, it looks like we probably have well over 50% on this, on the system, even though our reports, I think, sometimes say we have closer to 40%. But it's, it's more popular than that. And a lot of them are sold in bulk. Like, if there's an apartment complex or condos or something like that, they'll— we count it as 1 customer and there might be 100 units. And just the math on our backend system actually counts that against us as like really bad take rate when the reality is we have 100% take rate. So there's, there's some number fixing that we need to do that would help the take rate in the reporting that we do. Um, but it's not in an effort to, like, prop it up. If anything, those numbers have kind of worked against us a little bit. Um, we're more successful than we've been representing. Okay, Utopia and UIA. Um, this is our revenue growth. So Utopia has been pretty flat, but has grown through some of those partnership arrangements, and UIA growth has been very strong. But it's issued debt, and these lines here Represent the debt obligations of UIA, but the gap between our debt payments and our revenues continues to grow, and that's revenue used for operations, but also for paying debt above and beyond what UIA is responsible for. It pays Utopia for the operation of its customers. We have to keep separate books. You're members of both. So, I mean, it's all us, but we kind of have 2 different phases and 2 different legal entities. We have to manage the relationships before those— between those.

So, so just to clarify, go back to the previous slide. So on the bottom, that's Utopia.

This is UIA only.

This is only UIA.

So UIA has taken on debt, and then this represents a monthly debt obligation, even though it's really a couple of payments a year, but we amortize it just so you can see how it trends with Revenue, which most people just say Utopia. Yeah, we market them both as Utopia Fiber. That includes both Utopia, which is an acronym for the Utah Telecommunications Open Infrastructure Agency— it's a stretch— and UIA, which is kind of this financing arm, 2009 and later, for bonding and financing the growth of this system.

And what kind of an entity is UIA?

Same as Utopia. It's an interlocal, has membership from mostly the same cities, you remember. But there's 9 city members instead of 11, but the 2 that dropped out were Tremont and Perry, and they're really tiny. So it didn't really— doesn't really change the makeup.

So does UIA own anything?

UIA owns most of it. It owns more of all, like, Orem's network. It owns more of All of the other networks, and it owns a lot of these out-of-the-membership networks.

So is it just a different way to finance it? Is that why you did UIA?

Uh, it would have killed the bond rating of UIA or Utopia to include some of those cities. They had some financial problems that would have— like, when you talk to a bond rating agency, they always look for the worst thing. And when it came time for Utopia to grow and expand They were seen as an enormous financial liability to the greater organization's ability to bond. So we had to kind of exclude them. And they—

as far as you exclude Utopia, exclude those 2 cities from UIA.

UIA is you and all these other cities other than Tremonton and Perry.

So everyone was in Utopia, and then just everyone, including 2 cities, was in UIA?

Yeah.

And that was done so that you could get bonding going forward.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And UIA has no employees, doesn't pay anybody. I mean, I'm technically an employee, but it doesn't pay me. So all the staffing and operations is at Utopia.

It just shows that it's making revenues.

Yeah, yeah, that's— I mean, we're talking about how we're going to pay this all off. It's UIA that's going to pay it, not Utopia. Utopia doesn't have any money to pay.

All the revenues go in there.

The customers are with UIA, right? Like, from, from the beginning to 2009, that was Utopia, and it was just kind of like, hey, we're happy that it's breaking operating expenses and doing okay there, but with no hope to pay off the debt. With UIA, we basically have this arm or sister agency that's profitable that can pay money to Utopia for services. And every year we kind of look at the agreement between Utopia and UIA And the board reviews it and says, well, really, it's from a city's perspective, it's the city's paying itself. And it's all under the umbrella of Utopia. Um, but, but we do have 2 legal entities and we have to be correct in how we notice things and set up agreements and justify those types of expenses.

So, Utopia kind of hit a wall because of its structure as far as going forward. That's where UIA was formed. And that's kind of— apparently, the way you're describing it, must have taken ownership of the Utopia assets too.

No, Utopia still owns assets that were built up through 2009.

So we have to own those, and you just— so it's more stacked on top of it.

Yep. It's kind of like the extension of Utopia. Everything built after that period of time is UIA.

Roger, correct me if I'm wrong, but part of the way that I understood it was that Utopia Essentially built the backbone and sort of the highway. And, but then UIA, and I think Utopia still owns that highway, built a lot of the roads off that and essentially the middle and last mile to the home.

I'm gonna steal that from you. That's a really good way to explain it. Yeah.

So that's accurate.

Yeah, absolutely. Um, this is kind of a list of the bonds. Um, so we have Utopia bonds here, but most of these are UIA, and these city-specific ones are UIA bonds. Um, this is really the only one that's Utopia. Now, all these ones are paying everything from system revenues. This is the one that's partial. So cities— when I did this slide last, it was 73% cities were paying, and Utopia was paying 27%. Every year we pay a little more out of Utopia— sorry, UIA— to Utopia, and then Utopia pays it. Um, but, but you may not see a decrease in what you're paying because the bond debt structure on the Utopia bonds goes up every year. Um, I don't love that structure. I don't think any of us love that, but it does go up every year. But we've been able to pay that increase out of Utopia— out of UIA every year. It goes up 2% every year.

Um, here, and Brandon, anyway, uh, I think that payment goes up 2% each year.

That's like our minimum target. We want to do better than that, but at least we got to— wanted to cover that so that the city isn't seeing any sort of increase in what it's paying.

I'm not saying what Utopia reimburses us. I'm saying the debt itself increases 2% each year.

Yes. So, so this is kind of the mix on the original bonds. You're 22.3% of that. Um, then this is what we pay back to the city. The total bond payments approaching $17 million a year. Um, but the reimbursement that we pay back is this amount and how it's allocated out to the cities. And so if 2025 is this year, Wrapping up, um, and then our budget went up by that same amount, the 3— just over $300,000. So it, it's $4.9 million and some for the 2026 fiscal year budget. That's where we're at right now. We'd love to do more, but we actually have $4 million more of debt payments coming on this next year than we did the previous year. Uh, so, but we are going to be able to keep up with that debt payment. And do the 2% increase. The nice thing is we don't have the $4 million increased bond payments the following year. So we're hoping to come back and say, hey, rather, rather than just increase our reimbursement to the city by 2% of the bond amount, uh, we'd like to go higher. But that's all going to be where are we at a year from now as we do budgeting and And work with the board on what we can do. And, but, but the future looks really good.

And that $4 million increase we're having right now, is that a one-off or is that ongoing?

It's a one-off.

Oh, so that's where you're saying the future should be better once that—

It's a 2-off. We had it 2 years in a row based on increasing debt obligations. UIA was growing really fast. Which is a great thing because we have all these revenues coming in and they're covering that debt increase. But the good thing is that we continue to grow our revenues and we don't have to do a $4 million a year debt obligation increase, right? That was kind of the timing of several of our projects kind of hit us in that time period. We could have put more capitalized interest in some of our bonds and spread that out. Well, we were pretty confident in our revenue growth, and so we Kept it a little shorter, and it makes it painful in the short run. But when you go out 3, 4, or 5 years, and we— if we can have anything like the revenue growth we've been experiencing without those types of debt increases, we'll be in really good position to increase this, which is our priority, right? I mean, it really is our top priority. It was to build out the system. System's built out now. Now, our top priority is payment to the cities and reducing your obligations to the Utopia debt. Roger.

In like a year from now-ish, as we're preparing our FY 2027 budget, we can revisit this idea of, hey, is there more that can be paid back to the cities?

Yeah.

Um, a couple of summary items here. So, Improving financial performance year over year. Trends are really good. Increasing take rate and the associated revenues there. The payments for the original refinance bonds increase every year, but that increase is being covered by Utopia and UIA. It's not something to worry about too much, but it's, it's always something to be aware of, right? We do what we can do, and all the trends look great, and Broadband demand keeps growing up, but it's, you know, we need to be vigilant and keep trying to promote this and get more customers on it and growing our revenues. Um, the payments for the original refinanced bonds are accounted as an outstanding obligation for us. I don't know how the city's budgeting for that. Most cities just kind of consider an expense or write-off or whatever it may be, but from our perspective, every dollar you've paid towards those bonds is an obligation. That we want to pay back to the city with interest. That's a very long-term commitment, very long-term. But this is an important thing to know, is that the refinance bonds payoff schedule ends June of 2040. We're 20 years plus into this thing, right? We started in 2002, and demand has only ever gone up. And so we're 23 years in, right? And we've got 15 years left here on these bonds. And at that point, when they're paid off, where does the revenue go? The revenue goes back to pay the cities for what you've paid towards this with interest. So, even if we're not able to get there before 2040, we expect to make really good progress. Things change dramatically in 2040. So that's something to be aware of. And now a couple of things here, like, is it worth the cost? It's been expensive to the city, right? This hasn't been easy, and there has been a cost. I wanted to point out a few things here. Um, our parks don't make money. Our buildings don't make money. Our streets don't make money. Things like that, right? But this has enormous benefit to the city, like those other services, but even in some ways more so. So, I just want to point a few things out here as we compare this to other services that are out there. I think this is a conservative comparison because most people don't pay $110 a month for Comcast, especially when you include video and other options. You got some people on promotions and some people paying way more and all these different mixes. But I'm also being conservative on our comparison rate, but we believe that we, on average, we're saving households about $29 a month.

Thank you.

And if you add that up, that's $348 a year. We have 8,410 residential subscribers in the city. That's almost $3 million a year that we're saving the residents of the city by having this in place. Um, the businesses are also saving a lot of money. A lot of businesses in this city. Um, there was a study commissioned by— well, it wasn't commissioned by them, it was a university study. that looked at another fiber project, which was Chattanooga, which is the only other one in the country that's bigger than us. And they did— anyways, we just kind of scaled that to Utopia and said, what's the economic value? And they basically— theirs was estimated $2.7 billion benefit, economic benefit to the city over a 10-year period. You scale that, size it to Utopia, and round down and be very, very conservative with it. That would be $900 million on Utopia and $200 million just for Orem City for just the 10-year span, not the 20 or 30 or 40 years that this really is good for. So just a couple of, like, data points of, like, this really does benefit a lot of local things, local providers, local businesses, residents, the anchor institutions, and all that. I wanted to just make a couple of comments. Bryn was asking me about some competitive things in the landscape that are out there. We have seen some cool stuff come out and we're like, uh-oh, is this something to worry about? You know, we've seen Starlink come out. Well, they're way more expensive and way inferior, so we don't really worry about them. I think anybody would really be crazy to use them and we haven't lost customers. We have seen quantum fiber come through and they're the residential fiber branch of Lumen, which is CenturyLink. They keep changing their name, but we have seen them come in and completely build out cities, Centerville, Brigham City, and others, and they push it with a door-to-door marketing campaign, and we do see some subscriber losses, but they've been temporary, and we've come— as soon as those door-to-door campaigns are gone, we see those customers come back, and it's been actually surprisingly nice to see that they have not been successful at taking customers.

from us.

Now, they've been in a little bit of a weird situation because they were in somewhat of a pump-and-dump scenario and was near defaulting on their debts, and their stock was in the toilet, and it was a real disaster, impending disaster as a company. Um, and to survive, they've been trying to push their fiber to the home at a loss to pump up the valuation of the company. And they just recently announced they're selling all their fiber-to-the-home residential business to AT&T. So you will soon have AT&T in the city, uh, AT&T Fiber, um, and no one really knows what their plans are going to be like, uh, with that. Um, I think the first expectation the industry is, uh, looking for is some massive layoffs, unfortunately. Um, but it'll be interesting to keep an eye on them and, and how that impacts us. Um, but we still believe we're very competitive. and will do well against them, you know, regardless of whether they do choose to continue to build out or not. But what we have had has not been sustainable. They've been underpricing the service. It's not been reliable, and we actually haven't been harmed noticeably by it. I mean, if you look at our subscriber numbers, like, you wouldn't even see it. You have to drill down to a specific city in a specific campaign to see a little bit of a dip, and it comes right back. And so we're We're constantly being vigilant with competitive options out there. We still don't see Comcast investing in fiber to the home. The industry can't really figure out how they're doing it, but, um, I don't know why they're not, because it's crazy that, you know, you can read, right, what they're doing. They're losing hundreds of thousands of customers every single quarter, and their way to maintain their revenues is to raise the price on everybody because so much of their market doesn't have competition. Competition. And across the company, that's done very well for them, and they continue to be profitable. But in markets where they have a fiber competitor, they're just getting decimated. And like I said, they're losing hundreds of thousands of customers a quarter across their markets. They used to be the largest in the country, and they're now not the largest. They're second largest. And so they're— they don't have a long-term play that's working for them. And like, that's fine, you just continue doing that, do what you're doing. Um, but, you know, there's not a lot of reasons to stick with them when you can get fiber for cheaper and from local providers that are more reliable and better customer service, better reputation. And it's, it's all bodes well for us. So, we see these things in the industry, a lot of change and a lot of innovation, but there's been, even over the last 20 years, there's been one thing that's really been stable and predictable and, and, and has maintained that, and that is that fiber broadband has outpaced every other technology and innovation for broadband, uh, over that period of time and continues to do so. And every technology trend favors more and more of that. So we're— again, I don't want to be overconfident. We want to stay vigilant. We want every customer out there, any person in the city that's not on the system, we kind of feel like we failed them in one way or the other, and we want to get them on the system. Um, and, and we've adjusted a lot of our marketing. We just, uh, recently have been retooling a lot of our stuff targeting, uh, the Spanish language and our website and in our marketing and even in door-to-door sales campaigns we've been doing recently in some of the cities. We've not done that yet in Oro, but it is a tool that we may want to discuss. Um, it has helped quite a bit, but done in a manageable way that's not You know, it doesn't cause people to call their mayor and city council and complain. So anyways, that's, that's my update. I'd love, you know, if you have any questions.

Yeah, I just, as long as you're here, I just want to kind of get an understanding. So, so this all started back in 2002, and then we're going to 2040, right? And so, I guess my question is, is where are we at right now in debt that Orem has, you know, it owes? And then as far as— if you can just kind of lay that out.

I'll have to—

my screen timed out.

Um, I don't know if there's a way to switch. Okay, you have basically 22% of this. Now it's a lot like a mortgage where in the early years you're pretty much paying all interest and the principal barely gets touched. Um, so it's— I'd say it's not a lot less than that amount that's in— that's not outstanding. I mean, we're probably talking $160 or $170 million or something like that. That's just a guess.

$40+ million, Mayor. Our 22% of that was $40-some-odd million.

So that's what we—

that's a number to try to zero in on.

Any UIA general one, you have your 22% of that one as well. Um, you don't have any— those were interesting because some of those, the first ones had a backstop from the cities. These were guaranteed by city franchise tax revenues.

This one.

After that one, we started to just say, hey, we're in such financial strength, we do not need to come back to the cities and ask for a pledge. We still need a vote. We still need support, but there's not— the city didn't have to guarantee the debt. So these other newer UIA ones do not have a city guarantee on them. But as far as ownership, you have an ownership of them.

So what would that— what's that all add up to, you know?

Or is it just the bottom one?

A lot of numbers.

Is it just the bottom one we have 22% of?

Well, this is the bottom one that you've guaranteed, $171 million. So you have a 22% guarantee on that one.

$1 million.

If you have $100 million, this one you still own, but you haven't guaranteed that debt. Like, if for some reason Utopia and UIA went under, you wouldn't have to pay that, but you would have to pay 22% of that one.

So, we have 22% of the $205,000 and 22% of the $77,000.

I have 22% of all of it.

Yeah, you have 22% of all of the UIA.

Just have it guaranteed all of it.

But if they want to wait, I mean, that's those numbers, current principal, or that is that original when they were financed? That's what they have for the total amount when they were financed. Yeah, you'd have to go look at a debt schedule, and we're more than halfway through the payment schedule. Depends on the ones you're looking at. Yeah, we are on this one.

Yeah, the big one.

That's, you know, we're 15 years left on a 33-year term on that one.

Could you have somebody just run that number?

Yeah.

And get that back to us. I'm just curious what we owe right now. And then essentially what you're saying is we're going to pay that off over the next, uh, by 2040. So the next 15 years.

Yeah, I mean, The mix of how much you're paying and how much Utopia is paying is variable every year based on what revenues are available. But one way or the other, that is guaranteed and will be paid by 2040.

So, so that'll be paid, so we'll have zero by 2040, right? And then what you're saying on that one—

this one was a 25-year with 2 years capitalized interest, so 27 years from— so that one ends a couple A couple years after, I think it's like 20.

So is the plan to— so that— so it's not 2040, it's further out than 2040 or something?

Yeah.

Okay. Anyway, if you could get us some kind of summary so we would have an understanding of this is the debt that we owe, this is how it's going to be paid off, and then when we get to the end, that's when you're saying they'll start paying those funds back to the city to pay them back the principal and interest they paid. I mean, so that could go to the I mean, just—

this isn't— this is UIA debt, not Utopia debt. But just, you know, conceptually, you look at this and say, well, based on UIA debts, you know, we're paying $2.4 million a year— I'm sorry, $2.4 million a month, um, in debt service, right? So that's not significantly different than the amount of debt at Utopia. That's a UIA debt, though. But it's just like, in orders of magnitude, you know, suddenly there'd be $30 million a year available to pay cities back on top of the money that's available on top of the $16 million— or the— right now we're paying them almost $5 million a year.

So, back accelerated at all because we were the original?

Those—

because only the originals are getting paid back, right? I mean, None of these other cities like West Haven or whatever, they have no entitlement to any profits or upside, or they're just customers, not equity holders.

And to that question, so as they grow out, does that, does that benefit us?

Absolutely.

That's what I thought. It's covered.

Money all goes to that.

Okay, so it's not allocated based on subscriber base and all the rest, just like we're all Together, and it— whatever.

Was that supposed to give up any of our position to get the UIA thing in place to save the Utopia thing?

I don't understand that question.

Future, we didn't have to give up any advantages of after the payoff because we kind of helped Utopia. The UIA came into place to save Utopia, right?

Yeah, but it's the same cities, right? UIA is a city-owned interlocal. So it's, again, we do our best. We do these partnerships, we grow the thing, we grow our revenues, and then we come back to, you know, to our boards and say, this is what we have. And, you know, we kind of balance both growth and the need to pay back cities or increase the portion of debt. Um, and kind of try to strike the right balance there. And the growth, I'm like, there's only one purpose behind any growth, and that is to grow revenues for the financial benefit of the regional cities. There's— if there's an opportunity out there, like, we just feel really good about losing a whole bunch of money to go connect this thing, we don't do that. Like, we don't— Utopia and UIA are here to serve the cities. And, and, uh, right now the priority is— and I agree with it personally— but priority comes from our board, and the board is we'd really like to not pay on the bond.

And I guess I mean, so your passion is evident. You've been here from pretty close to the beginning. You've weathered a lot.

I wasn't here during those red years. Yeah, you took over after the red years. I wasn't here for those.

I get it.

I should have said that. I inherited a mess, but it's good now.

You're here to steer. You have been here to kind of steer that. So one thing I just want to— I don't even know what the Thing is, this isn't necessarily a question, but kind of it is. So, you know, where's your anticipated expenses? Sometimes when you start getting revenues, we start increasing the bureaucracy of trying to give service and things like that.

Yeah.

So, so you thought about that?

We're, um, we're frugal almost to a fault. I think I get criticized sometimes. Because I demand a lot of our team. When I started in 2009, just as CTO, we had probably 70 to 80 employees, and that was like 8,000 or 9,000 customers. Eventually, I came back here. I left for a few years, came back, and when I was executive director, we had about 14,000 customers. And at that point, we'd grown to about 100 employees. we're now at 120 employees, right? So we've grown our employee base by 20%, and in that time we've more than quadrupled our customer base, right? Like, it's been dramatic growth, and it's all, you know, we're getting a lot of economy of scale benefit, um, and it's something to always be mindful of, right? When we have our board meetings and we're approving our budget, it's like, here's our headcounts, and we're very, very lean on that. Um, we do grow, and, you know, our biggest increase is these darn COLAs, right? Same thing the city deals with. You say, like, we're not even hiring that many more people, but just keeping up with inflation and things like that is really hard.

Um, so, yeah, we do. Yeah, I had— I worked for a company that said, you know, if you want to keep your job, we're taking back your COLA. You know, and we were grateful to have a job. So, do you ever foresee that? I mean, as a way to control expenses?

Um, well, we, I mean, ultimately, we're— we consider ourselves part of the city or extension of the cities that created us and our board members and guide us. And so we generally take the most common approach among our board members in their cities. So we actually present that in our city, in our board meetings of like, here's what all the cities are doing. And we're in line with how we cover that. So we haven't gone so extreme as what some companies might do, which is not a bad thing. But we also are similar in cities that we pay under market, you know, compared to private sector things. You know, we're way under that. We're a little weird in the sense that 98-plus percent of the jobs that we employ are private sector jobs. you're directly competing with private sector for people versus it being like, oh, here's this big pool of public sector broadband employees, like they don't exist. So we, we balance that. It's a— again, I would never say don't hold our feet to the fire. We expect it, encourage it, and I'm a like-minded individual, right? I like the conservatism and efficiency in government, and we apply that to how we operate at Utopia. And I, and I think we show it in our numbers, in our employment growth, in our expenses. Um, we have not increased our, our headcount very much at all over these, uh, like, I've been back in like 9 years, and most of those additional increases were not even overhead. It was insourcing functions. We insourced our utility locating. If you paid a 3rd-party company for it, we insourced it to save money. Most of those employee positions were actually that, not just overhead.

I think we're going to have to wrap up.

Yeah, sorry.

But as far as if you could get back to us.

Yeah, we'll do run some numbers.

What I'd really like to see is just an outline of, okay, this is the debt that we have, you know, as of like now, and then what the projections are to pay that off. And then what the projections are to pay the city back and just what that whole thing looks like, just because we get asked about it. It's kind of a big, messy thing. So that would give some really good clarity.

I think it would be good to have that picture. I agree. There's a lot of bonds and a lot of different timings and a lot of mixes of principal and debt and all that interest and all that stuff. So it's hard to figure out of all the stuff.

I've written that down and I'll follow up with you.

Great.

Thank you, Roger.

We appreciate it.

I think what we should do, I think we're just here. So let's just take a 5-minute break and go ahead and grab food, and then we'll come back. We can have more to go through than we have.

Making it—

first 3 have to pay something to the Gold Star Memorial. 1, 2, 3, 4.

So anyone watching, go Pollo Loco right now.

Okay, let's restart this in 5:06. And we'll go to Pete Price with, uh, municipal wastewater planning program.

Hey, Council, good to be with you today.

This is an annual presentation that we make, uh, basically reporting to the governing body so that we can report to the state that we are aware of our utilities situation and that we are making strides to make sure that we continue to provide a Class A service to our citizens. It's called the Municipal Wastewater Planning Program, and what it is, is it's a survey that we as management fill out, and it helps us To evaluate and summarize the technical, operational, and financial conditions of our utility. It helps us make sure that we understand business operations and also identifies and resolves potential problem areas before they become serious and costly. We've been going through some master planning and case studies over the past several years. In fact, These types of surveys are not a concern to us as management. It's more of a formality, uh, going through it. We, we make great strides to make sure that we do, that we, that we'll be in good shape. The 3 areas that were, that are evaluated by this survey are financial evaluation. Do we have the resources that we need to, uh, to maintain our utility? And it focuses specifically on both of Both aspects of that utility, the collection system, the sewer pipes that takes the— And down to the treatment facility, and then we, we treat that. So, I'll just dive in real quick to some of the questions. This survey is over 100 questions long. I don't have the space or time to go through each question, but rather have just taken areas Uh, of that survey, and we'll discuss those. For the financial area, they, they ask, do you have sufficient revenues? Our— and in our opinion, and, and yes, we believe we do. We're— we've made great strides in the past couple of years, and including this fiscal year, to raise rates to a level that would allow us to ensure The functionality of our collection system, as well as our treatment plant. Uh, next one is rate study. Questions about rate studies. When was the last one done? Impact, reselecting, when was the last time you did that? I know that we've had presentations over the last few months. The capital facility plan. Do you have a capital facility plan? Yes, we adopted that in 2021. Master planning. On the consent agenda items today is to finally approve and adopt the master plans for each of our utilities. Presentations have been given to you over the past several months, as well as on those, as well as the rate study and impact fees. Uh, we are in good shape. Uh, we have a supportive council that invests in our utilities. Um, and so that's, uh, and I guess that's it. Uh, we'll jump right to the next one in collection system. Uh, again, the collection system, the pipes that convey sewage away from your homes. It asks In that survey, it asks some of the system characteristics. What's the largest pipe? What's the average depth? How many miles of pipe do you have? We have about just over 300, just for your information. Uh, lift stations, do you have? It asks these questions to make sure that we are aware of it. That helps smaller communities who may not be as advanced as our community to become aware of what they have. Um, also about the collection system, the number of backups that we have during a calendar year. Uh, last year we had one caused by an, uh, UPS failure at one of our lift stations. Not being got into the roads or anything like that has impacted our A little bit, but we were able to get it cleaned up and reported it to the state, um, and got the, the issue corrected. Uh, it also asks about new development. How many new connections do you have? Uh, how many commercial connections do you have? Specific questions about preventative maintenance. How often do you get Go through the piping system near your city and, and clean it to make sure that it will continue to flow. Uh, questions specific to the sewer system about master planning, and that's, that's the major— that's one of the major portions of the master plan that you will be, uh, adopting and approving tonight. Also asked specific questions about the operators of the system. How many do you have so that you can Determine if you have adequate staffing to do what you need to do. And also asked about the certifications. Right now, for your information, we have 27 full-time employees in— that work in the Water Reclamation Division, and 4 variable hours. 9 of them work in the collections, specifically making sure that the sewer pipes work. We've got certifications. We've got 6 with grade 4 and 3 with grade 2 in both treatment and collection. Jumping from the collection system to the facility, our wastewater treatment facility, the survey asks—

Just a sort of comparison question for you. Backup last year for collection system of our size. But how does that compare to other places of similar size?

Yeah, I don't know, Ryan, would you?

It's pretty good.

Yeah, there are other cities you go fishing, those are not quite our size, but they don't have any. And the way we handle them is as quick as that.

I should have introduced Ryan. Ryan Johnson is the Water Reclamation Division Manager. He oversees both the collection system and the wastewater treatment plant. Uh, so back to, uh, or moving to the wastewater treatment facility, uh, the survey asks, what are your flow characteristics? Yeah, we've, we've got a capacity of 13.5 million gallons per day. That means we— it's been designed for 13.5 million gallons to go through our treatment plant, which is a standard set by the state. We currently receive about 8.3, so about 50% of what we could do. Um, uh, also, uh, that's our flow capacity. There's also a loading capacity, or how much organic matter can we treat. But we can treat up to 40,000 milligrams per liter of dissolved BOD and TSS. Currently treating, uh, we currently receive flows of about 18,000 milligrams per liter, so well below our load capacity as well. The survey also asks questions about the ages of our, of the system processes, how we go about doing our facility maintenance, if we've had any violations over the past year. Of our effluent going out. We have not tested— we test for BOD, organic strength of wastewater. Um, we've tested for coliform pathogens. We're testing for TSS. We test for ammonia. All of these different things, uh, we are, we are below our Our limits.

Um, let's see.

So violations, we've had none. And then master planning, again, we have the capital facilities plan. That's part of the master plan that you will be approving tonight. And then it also asks similar questions to what they do regarding operators. We have 15 that are at the wastewater treatment plant. And make sure that that restoration can be done. So again, the purpose of this, of this program is for us to go through and ask questions that the state feels we should be able to answer. And as we answer those on an annual basis, anything comes up that we know that we need to take corrective action, over time, and this brings it to our attention. And in reporting it to you, confident that what we are doing, the water restoration facility, and will endure. So, if you have any questions for me, I'd be happy to do anything.

So, Mayor and Council, um, we've been doing this now for about 5 years.

This new requirement that you talked about, Prior to that, it is a requirement that's, uh, by the state to do so, basically to bring to light any issues and provide an opportunity regarding this. This is kind of a health check for our water reclamation facility collection system to ensure that everything's functioning well. And that we have sufficient funding and that you love and support us is my point.

I think this information would have been very valuable before the Public Works lunch for the Slido.

All right.

Recognize some of them.

We didn't want to give you any answers.

Thank you, Mayor.

That's all I have. A few extra minutes for Jen.

Okay, great.

Thank you.

She's so glad for that.

Next up, we've got item 2.3.

You be done in 5 minutes.

Discussion on boards and commissions, uh, handbook and policies.

Thank you, Mayor and Council. So, uh, the intent of this presentation is just a discussion about some of the changes we've made in our boards and commissions, get your feedback, and if there's any future direction you'd like us to take with them as we continue to make some of these changes. So, uh, really that's a high level of what we are here for. So just as a recap, we came to you— it was with a presentation about some of the changes that we've been evaluating Evaluation of our board positions and the changes we were recommending. So the intent of that was all to tie back to our areas of focus for last year. A lot of those transitioned over to this. So really, it's to align the interests of the city council, city employees, and the community, and to promote a community-focused and effective government. We want to make sure that we have these groups, that we have very wonderful and engaged citizens, want to make sure they're functioning effectively, well. Uh, we have proper procedures in place for all of them. So, from the analysis that we did of our boards and commissions, we had some recommendations that are listed here. So, the first one was to improve our training for our commission members, staff, and council. And then we had some recommendations to look at consolidating and eliminating certain groups, standardizing titles of the remaining groups, standardizing additional language in the code, and then some other miscellaneous ones. So, I'm just going to give an update on those recommendations here. So first one is training for our commission members, staff, and council. So our city recorder has implemented at least annual training for all of our commission staff. So that's our staff and clerical members that are assigned to each commission. This wasn't happening as regularly in the past, and so we want to make sure that all of the staff that are assigned to the commission are following proper procedures. So this is on the Open and Public Meetings Act. They're given templates and things that they need to follow to make sure that we are compliant with Um, and then she also onboards new commission staff that's assigned to commissions if they're coming on more than once a year, but we are wanting to at least once a year. And then my team is working on finalizing a boards and commissions handbook with feedback from our legal department and city recorder as well. So this is to give to prospective and current commission members and really just give them kind of a toolkit of things they need to know to be an effective commission member.

So.

Help them understand how Orem works, how our government works in the city, uh, purposes, terminology, and basics around our boards and commissions, processes and procedures for meetings so we can ensure that's consistently being followed, legal requirements, any resources and support that's available to them. And then each specific commission has some specific information that's given, just kind of an overview. That's what we're going to be kind of— Prospective person wants to sign up for a commission, you can kind of look at that and see what's the function of this commission, how many people, how often are they meeting, things like that. And then we are also working on additional training materials in conjunction with that. We want to do some videos and things that's easily digestible. Some people like to have training in that format versus just a— So, go figure. And then additional staff or council materials. In progress as well. So this is— I'm sure you cannot read that at all— Just kind of an example of what we have in our commission handbook. So, um, the first half is really just like basics of what they should know about processes, procedures, what it means to be a commission member. And then this, the bottom half, is, uh, information specific to each commission, kind of just one-page summary there. And then it goes through the purposes, how they're Uh, different types of boards and commissions that we have here. Again, legal requirements, meeting schedules, processes, things like that. And then the other recommendations we had were mostly surrounding standardizing the language that's in our city code about city commissions. That, if you recall, we had a lot of variation between different groups as far as how long a member serves, how often they are supposed to be meeting, the titles of the groups. And so, um, we wanted to standardize that. This first one is we did eliminate or, uh, transition out or transition to a subcommission under another group, certain of our groups. So we had some that weren't really necessarily functioning or we felt could be better suited in a different way. So a few groups— the Alcoholic Beverage License Hearing Board, that's one that hadn't been active for quite some time. Our District Review Board didn't kind of set for a specific purpose, not necessarily needed in the same way. The Public Safety Advisory Commission. And then we did transition these bottom 3 as well. So the Senior Citizen Advisory Commission is no longer a formal commission, but we still have them. We have involvement from our senior citizen member, and she'll still be providing an annual report. The Beautification Advisory Commission, their duties have been transitioned to a subcommittee under the Neighborhood Commission. And then the Heritage Commission has Also transitioned to a subcommittee under the Events Advisory Commission. And the standardization that we did with our groups, we wanted to make sure that the nomenclature and the terms were clear. Some of them were called committee, commission, advisory commission. So we just standardized that across the different groups, and essentially all of them are named whatever the title is, and then advisory commission to make clear that their purpose is to provide advice to the City Council on their scope of responsibility. We standardized the individual term lengths to 3 years for each group. Again, we had a few that were outliers, but we just wanted to create consistency. Standardized having a chair and vice chair for each of the groups and kind of the roles there. And the meeting frequency, we made this actually less specific than it was for a lot of the groups in code before. A lot of them said they meet monthly, they meet quarterly, whatever it needs to be. With your feedback, we made that a more flexible need for most groups. Obviously, there's the Planning Commission that still has its set meeting schedule, but for all the other groups, it's really— they meet on an as-needed basis as determined by the commission members. And so kind of annually, we're encouraging them to set how often they want to meet and establish that at the beginning of the year. Then we also standardized— oh, sorry, did you have something before?

No.

We standardized the language around member vacancy, making sure that's consistent. What happens— how do we— what happens if someone resigns and if they move out of the city? Standardizing the language. And then at the last work session, you also had an overview of the boards and commission application program. So we wanted to make it simpler for people to apply and easier for you as council members and for the staff who's assigned to be able to track those applicants and know how long people have been in there and prepare and everything. So that's in progress, and I think it's going to be a wonderful benefit. So really, that's a summary of the changes that we have made, and the intent for the rest of this is kind of to just be a discussion from your perspectives of the groups that you serve with. Is there any other changes that you would like to see made? How are you feeling that they're functioning? I, I— one of the questions that we've had over the past few months is whether there should be a maximum continuous service period for any of the commission members, or— so really would like to open that up for a discussion and just kind of feedback in general on our boards and commissions.

And if I may, one part that we maybe struggled as staff to try and, to try and figure out and interpret from you as a council is, on the one hand, uh, you know, we're, we're all about boring professional objective processes that, you know, you don't even really have to think about. On the other hand, these are citizen volunteers who you have relationships with, and every once in a while there's 1 or 2 or a few or, or more who do an exceptional job, and, and, uh, you know, maybe you want to consider to keep them for longer. So, uh, but we, you know, we really do want your feedback on How do you want to see us try to address—

Let me set this up just a little bit. So, I think, I mean, our original goal was to essentially make all the commissions really meaningful. A secondary goal was to give as many community members opportunities to serve and to get engaged in their community in a really robust commission structure, right? So I think we've done a great job of putting that all in place. So the only issue that I've seen lately, and what I asked Brenda to have a conversation about this initially, we said it— well, we did this, we set it so that the— we'd have 3-year terms and we'd have a maximum of 2 3-year terms. That's kind of what we agreed on just to make this all work. But then, as soon as we started having people that were getting up for renewal, and particularly if a council member felt that they were adding a lot of value, more value, then they were concerned about the 2, 3-year terms and thought maybe we should give longer, another term or whatever. And so that kind of puts me in a box because I like processes and procedures. And so different council members ask me, what about this person? What about this person? Can we put this back up? And so generally, if the councilman recommends that, I'll do that. But then it started changing to, you know, can we do this person for 3 years? And so, so, and I understand if you've got really good people, you hate to lose them. But at the same time, I also understand that a commission can't be a locked-off group that isn't fluid with the community. And so I guess what I'm looking for is feedback from the council. What do we want to do with this? You know, right now it's, it's officially 2 terms for 3 years each. Do we want to keep with that? Do we want to change that? We have some other criteria. Anyway, I just want to conversate about that.

Is that true of all boards, or just— we have that in place, or you're suggesting that be in place, Mayor?

My understanding was after we did this whole process, that's what came up with was 3-year terms.

I think in writing, That's the case for Planning Commission, but not for other boards and commissions.

That's what I thought. The current—

but it was being enforced that way.

It was on other commissions.

Yes, like Carol Walker.

Yeah, she's been on—

she just flips. She keeps changing commissions.

So she turns out her thing and she, she's utilized and go the extra mile.

My example, when I was on the Care Commission, after 2 years, they're coming Terms, yeah, 2, 3-year terms. You know, I was like, hey, when's the next meeting?

I hadn't heard anything.

Oh, you're off. But we haven't universally enforced or done that.

Mayor, practice has been consistent with what the mayor's talking about, but not necessarily in writing for all of them.

And I think we did have conversations about it when we were going through this whole Overhaul.

That's right.

We had conversations about it, but I don't know that it ever made it. Apparently, it never made it into being part of the official policy. So I guess what I'm asking is, what do we want to do with that? Because that's a good piece of the puzzle.

So I think it should definitely be in writing. I like your process. Yeah, I will tell you the last one that we did where we extended someone to a 3rd term, I would have preferred we not have done that because coincidentally, It was mainly because I interviewed for my neighborhood commission who had also applied for the Natural Resources Commission. And when I was talking to him about what my commission did and everything, and, and he says, well, actually, this one was the one that I wanted. I'm graduating in April in wildlife and forestry management. I feel like that's a good fit for me. And actually, to that work meeting, not knowing that we were doing that reappointment that night, that triple term that night. I brought that gentleman, that kid, um, I felt like a new demographic and it would be exciting to add him to that commission, especially with his background. So I brought his resume that night and, um, had that process been in place, it would have been a lot easier. But at the same time, I kind of felt like, yeah, but did you check who was listed on— because he was listed in the Natural Resources Commission. Selection, what I'm trying to say there, but wasn't interviewed or wasn't called. And that's— we all do our commissions the way we want. But to me, that would have been a great opportunity. Kind of stop what Dave had said, right? Where you just, just let people— let's use their talents in other commissions. If they're doing great in that commission, they'll probably still be a great resource in another commission. Um, and I know that pain of being told you to move on to something else, um, because I did. I did Transportation Advisory Commission after that.

That's—

That's kind of my take, I guess. I was a little disappointed for this young man because I had actually said, you know what, I think we have an opening. Let me take your resume tonight to City Council. Or I guess that was Monday when I interviewed him to get it on that. But anyway, that's kind of my experience with that particular Yeah, and I would agree with that.

I mean, I— Lynnae and I served on the CARE Commission together. We were probably some of the most amazing commission members ever.

Thank you, Jeff.

I'm sure Lynnae was. Somehow the CARE Commission went on without us. I think it's good to give other people a chance. So I, you know, as painful as it is, you know, Dave and I have got some great people on the— now on the CARE Commission, and it's like, gosh, we really hate to see these people go. But I think in all fairness to as many community members that want to be involved, I think it would be good to limit that.

I too like the idea. I don't know what happens to people who just got reappointed to a new— we're going to have some grandfather clauses to some who are already past their 2nd term. I don't think they should all be fired immediately, so we've got to figure out what how long we fix that, right? If someone's in their 3rd term and they're only in a year, do they get 1 more year? Do they get 2 more years? I don't know how to enforce— how to implement that.

What if we were to also add in, I don't know, because maybe there are some commissions that are highly specialized. Nobody wants to— you don't have a lot of applications. So maybe we could add something in there that says, you know, after public announcement of, you know, For applications. If we have no one else, no other applicants, it's at the discretion of the council and the mayor. You could give them year-by-year extension to then once again keep continuity on that commission for a year, but then to once again request applicants, see if there's anyone in the community. I don't know, like maybe Board of Adjustment, CBG, so many people.

We have language.

I'm not sure if this is in every commission, but we do have— in some commissions, we say that a person continues to serve until their replacement is appointed. So, something like that.

I think you can say that for all of them.

Say for all of them right now?

Yeah.

So, that kind of addresses what you're—

So, if you had no new applicants, it's not really a 3rd term.

They keep serving until there's—

yeah.

By default, right? Yeah, I mean, I think we want to, we want to encourage as many people to get involved as possible, and we want to make— we don't want people to like go want to sign up for something and think that, my gosh, I'm locked out forever, so I'm not going to sign up.

And there was someone on your Orenfest, your events commission, that I interviewed for one of my commissions. And in that interview process, she says, well, I'm already on this one, but you know what I'd really like to be on is CDWG. We start talking about her interests and skills. And so, you know, maybe those conversations could happen too, so that CDWG would know this person actually applied for yours but got put on this other one, but she may want to switch. Can they switch? I mean, do we care?

I don't know if they can per se switch, but they could basically apply to another commission and then they could resign.

That's what I mean.

Yeah.

It seems like— I don't know how we work this, but as of June 30th next year, or some date in the future, if you're over that, thank you, and we'll look for new applicants so that we don't have a bunch of people who've been on 7 or 8 years all leaving immediately. It seems like logistically you'd want some lead time. To those who are out of compliance right now through no fault of their own.

How many do we have?

Do we know?

I don't know that.

That's a great question. In the CARE.

Yes, I'm on CARE that are over that.

We have one on the CDBG.

That are coming up.

They're sure they would be expired.

But we're just holding on until you guys make a decision on this.

2 coming up on the CDBG Commission.

Oh, 2.

Thanks.

Past their 6 years.

They are both at 6 years.

I would say, unless you've heard complaints, I feel like we've dealt sensitively with, uh, even accommodation. And I think that, you know, as long as we have kind of an upfront, you know, in-person conversation, people have, uh, responded really well and have been excited about different opportunities. And, you know, we You make sure they feel appreciated and that we're not just kicking them to the curb. So, yeah, unless some other complaint has come to you that we haven't heard, I think it's gone well so far.

Yeah, I think so too. So I think we— well, as far as— so it sounds like, sounds like mostly we're in favor of having a hard stop. And then there's a question of What we do with people who are over.

What do we call them? Legal noncomplying. You know, they can have another year to be legal noncomplying.

But we're advertising them.

Yeah, that's right.

Quick advertising, something.

I don't know what it is, but the 1 year seems reasonable.

I don't have any pride of authorship.

I mean, how many committees have 4 people going to be going off?

I don't think there's—

I mean, so maybe they serve and then maybe at the beginning of the year you say we're going to switch it out.

And yeah, and even some of these people that are there, I mean, I would just chat with them. I don't know, maybe that doesn't work, but, and just say, you know, we would invite you to— we're really trying to make opportunities available for more community members. Can we invite you to switch to another commission if you still want to continue to serve?

Or it's easier to have that conversation if we have a set Yeah, you know, surely we, we've decided to go with 2 terms, and as of the time that we decided that, we're gonna have people who are still on it sort of for another year, and then we're going to change things up.

Give them an opportunity to, to apply for a tuition.

Yeah, they can apply.

I mean, Carol Walker's even helping with the Kathy Lewis at the— so she's just—

she just recently retired. She's doing volunteer stuff all over the community.

She's wonderful.

She's at UVU all the time. She's just—

that's what she's doing. So good for her.

Yeah, good for us.

There may be other, other places in the city to volunteer.

You need to bring us a new document that we approve on term limits because the only one that sounds like we will I need to add that into, uh, the language for all of our commissions.

May I add one other thing that came up 4 years ago? We had a commission that called me as I— as a candidate, um, asked to interview me so they could give their endorsement. So I said, oh, I don't think that that's appropriate. And I made some phone calls and it was not.

Yeah, look at Carrie's face.

No.

So perhaps we need to put that in this document too, handbook, or do you think, or is that just—

well, I think it'd be a good thing to put in the handbook itself, or would that be something?

So what is it exactly that you're suggesting? Some commissions, they'd ask to interview 2 city council members.

City council members.

City commission wanted to do that.

To endorse candidates for city council.

Yeah, individuals can, but not the commission.

Right, right. Do you envision that the council members would speak to their, their, uh, commission members that are leaving and, and, and help welcome them into a new commission and apply for a new one?

I do, because I call on mine, right? I interview everybody.

Yeah.

Uh, so I have that first point of contact, that first touch, right? So, you know, don't I— is that okay?

No, I would prefer that.

I think it is better than staff having to reach out cold to them.

So, but I think we should let them know now that it's another year kind of thing. So it's not just having a conversation.

And it would be helpful, and maybe you're already doing this, but it would be helpful to just know that someone's coming up at the end of this year. And so we can kind of be working towards that and letting them know ahead of time that This is your last year, and thank you. And for other commissions, and do you know anybody that would want to take your place kind of a thing?

Yeah, so that it's not after the fact. I don't generate a letter.

I'm not signed.

And that's part of the new program, right? Like, where it's a lot easier to see that, and we can ensure that staff and council are in communication about that. So every on the same page as far as what's coming up.

So, thank you.

So we, we can easily sort of generate a list of who is gonna, you know, pass their 2 terms, and then we'll work with the liaisons of that particular commission to communicate.

Well, and you guys, you, Jeff, and you guys need to decide on CARE because you just wrapped that up, right? So it's not functioning right now. So do you want to You can go either way. I would think that's a year. Say, yeah, they're really good.

I mean, we can talk about it.

Everybody okay with that then?

Sure.

All right, sounds good. And the other thing, uh, once I talk about this, he probably already does this, but We should put some social media encouraging people to sign up for commissions, talking about what the commissions are doing.

We try to do it from time to time when we see like some need more applicants.

Okay.

Some have, you know, just long lists of people waiting in line. You know, they just need a little bit more help. We try to keep an eye on that.

Sounds good.

Are you— are you—

what's the new program dropping in 2 years? Every 2 years, the applications.

How are we doing?

What did we decide in the last meeting?

Because we were taking notes.

I don't remember. I'll, I'll listen to the last meeting.

If they go stale, they should go stale after a period of time. I don't know what that is.

Invite them to re-up if they move.

Give them some notice.

And they can look up with your new program and see if their application is still there.

Is that correct? Yeah, Carrie, it is 2 years.

That's what we set it at.

Okay, thank you, Tristan.

That's a good number.

Can you put that just on the— on that somewhere in that software where they can see it, that when you sign up, your name will be on here for 2 years?

I'm pretty sure we can just add that as a comment.

We generated a letter that when they submit their application, they receive a response from the program indicating that there may or may not be anything at this point. Your resume will be held for a period of 2 years during which you may be contacted by Perfect. So, I mean, they should be getting notification.

Everybody, you have to have a— you have to have resume or it doesn't go, right?

It does now.

It has to have a resume.

That's—

yeah, feature of the new program.

Okay, anything else on this? All right, thank you. Thank you, Jenica. Okay, all right, 2.4 presentation, new filing requirements from Municipal Officer's Office.

Summers.

So this should be fairly quick for me. Um, so just wanted to talk about a couple different bills that came through the last legislative session that affect, um, our new municipal candidate filing period and some things to be aware as we move into primary season and our municipal election. So House Bill 504, um, made it a requirement that any candidate for municipal office now has to fill out the same conflict of interest disclosure that each of you filled out at the first part of this year. So it should be a very similar form as to what each of you had filled out. There's now a requirement for any candidate to fill that out at the time they declare for candidacy for municipal. What that means for any incumbent, so if you are running for the same office That you currently hold. It is not required of you to fill out that form again. Rather, it's— you have to just make a declaration that you have reviewed your prior conflict of interest form, that it is still up to date, and that you're just certifying that it is up to date. So what action have we taken to help move along this as we've— we're about a week away from filing period? Is we now have that conflict of interest form specifically for candidates, and we've also prepared a declaration for any incumbents that are refiling for election. So if you're refiling for an election for the same seat that you hold, you can just again fill out that declaration form rather than refilling out the entire conflict of interest form. Okay, any questions as to Thanks for that. Um, State Senate Bill 54 dealt with how candidates' names appear on ballots. Um, really addresses 4 issues: gets you a default standard for how your name would appear on the ballot, gives instructions for if you go by your middle name, if you're weird like me and go by your middle name, or if you want to use a nickname. How that would— the process for getting a nickname on the ballot, and then also delineates specific restrictions for certain nicknames. Um, so regardless of whatever title, um, or degree you hold, the default way your name appears on the ballot will be your first name, your legal first name, and your legal last name. So regardless if you have a PhD, a doctorate, etc., your name would appear on the ballot as, in this case, Michael Johnson. If you go by your middle name, you would have to provide an affidavit with 5 people who know you that are not family. They would sign an affidavit that that is the name that you go by and you're generally known by. If you use a nickname, that is also the same process. So the advice I would give to anybody listening that is anticipating using something other than their legal first name is to contact Teresa prior to June 6th at 5 PM because that is the filing deadline to get any sort of alteration to your name appearance on the ballot. Nickname restrictions that are out there, you can't use a slogan. So if you wanted to use Like a Rock, Um, you have to— you can't do that because it's a slogan.

But if, if Michael Johnson up there went by Mike, would he have to be Michael on the—

So if he— if you're using any normal derivative of your first name, you can work with the city recorder just to get that without having to go the affidavit route, if it is what's considered a common derivative.

David, Dave.

Correct. What about David Dave?

Dave could work because it's a common derivative of David.

What's that?

No, you do— you just, you just work with Teresa to make that happen. Okay, any questions about nicknames, nickname structures?

Jay, can we apply these restrictions to anyone serving on boards and commissions? Public Works Advisory Commission chair was a childhood mission. And he still calls me by my childhood nickname.

You have to share with them. Share it.

Still calls me Rinnie Poo. It's not a common derivative.

It's definitely not a common derivative.

It could fall under offensive interference.

Now it's in the public.

He's only got another year or so left on his terms. I already texted him and asked him about it. I didn't know the nickname. Thank you.

House Bill 300 amended the election law. It was a pretty significant amendment to our election code. This bill by itself was about 88, 89 pages. So there are a lot of changes to the election code, a lot of staggered changes for when things will come into place. The one though that is pertinent to this year is if you are a mail-in ballot voter, your mailed ballot has to be received by the election office by 8 PM of Election Day. The postmark rule no longer applies.

That's a big deal.

It's a big difference. So if you are a vote-in mailer, Or mail-in ballot voter, make sure that you either drop it in the mailbox or mail it several days in advance.

Several weeks.

Yeah, but how about overseas people who get their ballots? That's different.

Different code section.

But it seems, Peter, we want to make that known that people get their ballots mailed in at least a week before.

Yeah, because ordering current to the drop box—

the drop box saves a stamp and makes it easier, no question.

We put that in utility billing.

As we get closer, that makes sense.

Yeah.

Okay.

And then this was just a house kind of cleaning item. Um, there used to be a little bit more complicated algorithm to determining when the filing period was for municipal offices, and now it's just been cleaned up as the first 5 business days of June. Are your candidate filing window for municipal offices. And in essence, that is the update.

Go back to that. Sorry, I was looking at my paper.

Yes.

Okay, so it's just the first 5 business days of June. Interesting, because I remember seeing there was something about filing June 2nd to 7th. Somebody's just asking about that today. Yes, obviously it's the 6th, which is Friday at 5:00.

Friday at 5:00 PM.

Okay, thanks. Okay, thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you, Jay.

Okay, moving on. Item number 3, uh, would you like to report on yours?

Yes, um, very quickly, uh, so Just, uh, so the Heritage Advisory Commission is one of those that would become part of the Greater Better Commission. And I just wanted to say thank you to those who have involved this commission. I was a little worried about this one, but they've been welcomed and are doing great. They had such an amazing Memorial Day celebration yesterday.

Thank you.

And so thank you to everyone who's helped with that, made that possible. It was just awesome. And they're right in there pitching and throwing.

Who invited Congressman Kennedy? That was great.

Did you do that?

You did a great job, man. Kept it short and—

Oh, it was really short.

Thank you for that invite, Mayor.

I had a personal conversation with him.

He said because this is his district, he would love to be invited to future events as well and either participate or just come.

But he really appreciated the opportunity to be there, just so you know.

Great job.

Thank you.

How cool is that, right? You got the congressman, right?

Make it on TV.

But no, the Lieutenant Governor did make it on TV.

Spanish version.

So, and then next, the Care Advisory Commission. We all just, uh, finished reviewing and approving that for another year. Um, Orem Youth Council gave a very informative report last week in our city council meeting. And just grateful, you know, 20+ high school students that are anxiously engaged in good causes, providing hundreds of hours of service. So, for Santa, food bank.

I think that's a great example of where we're trying to go with the boards and commissions too, is what the difference in that youth council. Yeah, that's what we're trying to do.

They're—

and they're just amazing. So, thank you for that. Jenica serves on that, and that, along with Jen, Gail, and Michelle. Transportation Advisory Commission.

We—

this is one of those commissions where I like the flexibility on the commissions because some months there's nothing new to talk about. And so it's nice to be able to say, does anyone have anything we need to talk about? Okay, we'll postpone it for a month. Um, but, uh, we've got a great commission there, a well-rounded group of former highway patrolmen, traffic engineers, avid bike riders, avid walkers, former police officers, other engineers. So it's, it's a really well-rounded group and very, very involved in, in making sure that traffic's Been going, and we're excited to see that, uh, the roundabout down near UVU is— it's happening there. We've been talking about that one for you.

So, um, that's my daily commute. Thank you.

We can, Tom. And then UVU Community Outreach, um, Steve Anderson and I talk to each other on a regular basis, just seeing if there's anything that we can do for them or they can do for us. Great example was the Tree Discovery Trail that the UVU students teamed up with our Orem staff and have created a website with QR codes and the plaques. So you can go walk by any tree in Orem City Center Park, scan the code, and you can learn all about that tree. And again, just another opportunity to collaborate together. And hoping to see Okay, thank you, Jeff.

Thank you for working hard on those commissions. Okay, we'll just run through our agenda real quick. Uh, 6:00 PM, session, call to order, convocation, inspirational thought, Natalie Thompson, the new—

Yeah.

Okay, so anybody want to introduce you?

I can introduce myself.

I asked—

did you ask him?

Oh, you asked them?

Okay, that's a great idea, Dave, to get them out.

Thank you.

We're introducing them while they're here.

Oh, I got you.

That's easy.

Thank you.

Okay, so I'll let you introduce them, Dave.

Um, Has to be the highest number of 8s we've ever had.

You know, sometimes I go through this, it's on both sides, and I just go like, there, do not turn over.

Yeah.

Um, okay, so then 8.1 is swearing in of the newly promoted fire captains.

I'll just come forward.

Teresa's gonna read them, and then if we can just have a picture with them in front of you.

By the way, this new stand makes it great for pictures. We just stay where we're at and they come right in front.

It's perfect, right? That was good. Okay, and then a presentation, 8.2, Ms. Sporman. You know who's going to do that as far as—

is it their—

probably Donna Millard, I would guess.

I don't know which one of them's coming.

What's that?

I don't know if it's Donna or the other one.

Joanne.

Let me just try and let me know.

Donna's here, it sounds like.

Oh, then it's Donna.

Yeah, I don't know, it's too late or something.

How do you spell Donna's last name?

Mills.

M-I-L-L-A-R-D.

It's like Mallard with an I.

Did she say Millard?

I don't— I don't know.

Oh, I was putting a little fancy—

I mean, she has metaphor on the page.

Like Camalecia.

That's good. It's like filet, right?

I get that one.

Your name is Lay.

Item 8.3, presentation, Orem Outstanding Pre-Treatment Program Award. And Reed Price is doing that.

Yep.

And then 8.4, Public Safety Month.

Uh, Paul Ashton.

Yes, Paul's doing that.

And then 8.5, summer reading program. That's Meg Fender's pay. Matt, 8.6, presentation, please. Autism picnic, 4 or 5 minute.

That's really good.

Item 8.7, Sleepy Ridge Golf Course. 8.8, Farmfest launch, Nate Whitaker. And 8.9, Historic Preservation Advisory Commission. And Grant is doing that.

Grant will do that. And I think, uh, many of the members of that commission— Okay, it'd be good to make—

recognize What I—

yeah, no, what I'll do is I'll, I'll talk to Grant and ask him to introduce the members of his commission. Perfect.

Okay.

And then we've got item 9, personal appearances. And then 10, consent items, uh, appointments to Library Advisory Commission. Do I have to say something about that's canceled?

Uh, you can just make a note that it's canceled.

Just say it.

Just one of the— just to approve the consent item then? Yeah, after he notes it's been canceled.

Yeah.

Okay. And then 11th scheduled item, a resolution for the CDBG rejected use of funds for fiscal year '25-'26.

Heather Cox.

Yeah, I'm sorry, Mayor, we did this about a couple weeks ago, but we received our HUD funding and it was $30,000 less than we anticipated. Most of that funding is going to be reduced on the regional level, so we just have to re—

so you go through it.

Okay, thank you.

Um, City Manager information items, and then we're going to a closed session. Okay, then we're returning to a closed session.

Where's that go?

It's a new place, the summer conference room, 3rd floor.

All right, all right, thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Let me throw that in there.

So you never want to—

I thought you had the track.

I am.

Track.

Okay.

Yeah.

Just switch.

I mean, we've got the message, right? Thank you. Yeah, not tonight. Not tonight. Hey, Jeff, good. How are you?

Perfect in any realm of—

one day at a time, we'll get there.

It's the way to do it.

It's picking—

it was picking up the mic in here.

Where did the mayor go? Um, just shut this side down. There we go.

I'd like to welcome everyone here tonight to our city council meeting and call this meeting to order. We'll start out with an invocation from Natalie Thompson, followed by a Pledge of Allegiance from Haley Johnson. And Dave Spencer invited, uh, these women to come tonight. So if you'd like to introduce them.

Yeah, so they're, they're a part of the Miss Aurora Morality, and, and we appreciate their service.

To the community.

They go, go, go, go, and they're at every event. So we appreciate— I know you're going to be speaking a little later, but we appreciate your service, and also for Joe and Donna, your service too.

So thank you.

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

Thank you. We'll move to our— on our agenda, item 8.1, the swearing in of our newly promoted fire captains. Our Chief Mark Sanderson, if you'd like to present that.

Mayor and council, thank you. I don't know if you could see the limp. But all those guys in the back of the room, they all set me up to be injured on Saturday playing volleyball with them. So, unlike the 4 guys that are retiring that have caused this captain promotional, I think that's— I'm taking the hint that this is my opportunity to retire as well. That's— they're injuring me. So, I just want to take this—

Don't do that.

Thank you.

Thank you.

I just want to take this opportunity to let the men and women know within our fire department how Amazing. Not only I, but our whole administrative staff thinks of them. They do a great job. They provide an amazing service, and it's not very often that we get to publicly thank them. And so I just want to give everybody in the back of the room a round of applause, please. Well, we had 9 qualified candidates went through our testing promotional Um, we grilled them for over 3 hours worth of interviews. So the 4 guys that I'd like to call up to go through this swearing-in, this oath of office, that finished at the top are Andrew Belknap, Matt Empey, Chandler Godfrey, and Jesse Steiner. If you guys could come forward. And at the conclusion of Teresa's swearing them into the office, I would like to ask the chief officers to come up and join us with You, Mayor and Council, for a picture.

We'll have you guys come this way more so they can, so they can see you.

Yeah.

And then you'll, you'll just raise your right hand and repeat after me. I state your name, do solemnly swear that I will support, obey, and defend The Constitution of the United States.

The Constitution of the United States.

The Constitution of the City of Orem.

The Constitution of the City of Orem.

That I will—

oh, and the laws and ordinances of the City of Orem. Oh, sorry, I am sorry, we're going to go back.

The Constitution of the State of Utah.

The Constitution of the State of Utah.

And the laws and ordinances of the City of Orem.

And the laws and ordinances of the City of Orem.

That I will conduct myself. In a professional and courteous manner. That I will provide. Professional quality and compassionate service.

Professional.

To the residents of Orem.

With dedication, pride, and integrity. With dedication, pride, and integrity.

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

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

Good job.

Here we go. 1, 2, 3. Okay, awesome. Thank you.

Mayor, council, thank you for your time.

And congratulations to our new captains. We'll go to item 8.2. We have some new Orem royalty. And Donna, were you going to introduce them? Donna Millard.

We are happy to be here tonight to introduce our new royalty. So without further ado, I will turn the time over to our new Miss Orem 2025, Riley Ramsey. Well, guys, I'm glad to be back.

It's been a while, but this is my first time seeing this room.

It's beautiful.

I love it.

Um, but like Donna said, I'm Riley.

I'm the new Miss Orem, and my community service initiative is I have named it the Survivor's Mindset Initiative, and my goal with that is a mixture of things, but my main goal is raising awareness on the problem that we have here in Utah surrounding sexual assault. And with that, I also am hoping to empower young women to learn self-defense and how to make themselves less likely to be targeted for this. Hello everyone, I'm your new Miss Orms Teen. I'm Brielle Schroeder and my CSI is called Be the One.

It's a friendship initiative on which I'm empowering the youth of today to know that they are in control of their destiny, that they're the ones that can go out and make friends with other people and be the one for those lone people who feel isolated and lonely.

I, like Riley, am very excited to be back. Uh, my name is Haley Johnson and I am the second attendant this year, and my CSI is called Lending Aid to First Aid, and it's a 2-part initiative. Part one is disbanding and combating stereotypes against our first responders and bettering the relationship between our community and those that serve us every day. And the second part of that is teaching individuals what to do in an emergency so that they can be their own first responder in those vital minutes while they're waiting for our licensed professionals to lend the aid that they need.

Hi, I'm Natalie Thompson. I am the 3rd attendant to Miss Orem.

And my CSI is called Hope Over Harm: Bringing Awareness to Drug Abuse.

I think it is so, so important to bring that awareness and to help youth and young adults ages 10 to 25 understand what it is, how to prevent it, and what to do when they're caught in that situation.

Yeah.

Hi, my name is Harley Wilde, and I'm the first attendant for the Miss Orms team, and I'm also really excited to be back. My community initiative is Keep It Green by Staying Clean, which is picking up trash just like 5 to 10 minutes a day, taking that time to be aware of how we can keep our city more clean.

As always, we appreciate your support, and as you can see, we have a lot of different initiatives because all these girls have different ideas of what, what can happen in Orem, and so it's all very powerful when they work together.

And you're going to see us all summer and all year, and we appreciate again your support, and we're happy to be here for another year.

Thank you. Thank you, Joanne.

No picture.

All right, here we go. 1, 2, 3.

1, 2, 3.

1, 2, 3.

One more.

1, 2, 3.

Thank you.

All right, right here.

1, 2, 3.

All right, thanks. When Chief Sanderson comes back in, we're singing.

Oh, here he is.

I heard it was your birthday.

Oh my gosh.

So we're gonna sing happy birthday to you.

Somebody's going down. This is 2 years in a row.

Yeah, it's gonna keep going.

I'm gonna start a boy con council meeting.

Ready?

Ready.

All right, go ahead. Give us a note.

You got ready?

Happy birthday to you, happy birthday to you, happy birthday, dear Jasmine, happy birthday to you.

Thank you.

All right, moving on. Item 8.3, a presentation for the Orem Outstanding Pretreatment Program Award. Reed Price, the Assistant Public Works Director.

Come on up, guys. Uh, Mayor and Council, it's, it's good to be with you this evening. Um, I'm honored to be here to recognize the good hard work of some of our employees in the Public Works Department. Uh, we have with us today, uh, Ryan Johnson, who is the Water Reclamation Division Manager. We also have Olivia Larson, who is on— who works in our GIS Division, and Dylan Hansen, who is a program coordinator and oversees Uh, the pretreatment program, which is part, again, part of the Water Reclamation Division, it's responsible to go around and educate, uh, the businesses, restaurants, auto shops on the importance of, of, uh, of not polluting, uh, the sewer, the sewers, and to make sure that they— that we are able to handle what comes down to us at the wastewater treatment plant.

Thank you.

facility. That's a— it's, it's one of those behind-the-scenes jobs that has a great impact on, on our, on our community. Um, they were recently awarded the outstanding pretreatment program for the state of Utah by the Water Environment Association of Utah. The Water Environment Association of Utah is a professional organization made up of uh, POTWs, or publicly operated treatment works, or wastewater treatment plants. Uh, they were interviewed, uh, and by a group of their committee members and, uh, have honored them by selecting them as the outstanding program in the state of Utah. Um, I— in, in, uh, during the interview process, uh, they— our program, uh, stood out because of some recent improvements that we've made with the expertise from our newly, relatively newly formed GIS division in Public Works. Olivia Larson is the, uh, is the employee that works directly with the Water Reclamation Division, and some of the improvements that she's made include streamlining how the chain of custody forms for sampling are, are handled. Um, it's a, it's a much more efficient way, uh, to, to, uh, handle the samples now. Um, and another thing that she did, uh, was, uh, to— um, no, it escapes me. I knew I should have written this down, but my, my old brain doesn't work.

Email.

Oh, that's right. As soon as inspections are done, automatic emails, uh, are sent out to the, um, to the business owner, and, uh, it saves a lot of work in following up and, and sending that. So she's been a great resource. Dylan Hansine has been the, uh, the program, uh, coordinate— the program coordinator down there for how many years now? For about 5 years, and runs a great system and, and makes sure that our industries, uh, know what they— how they should be acting, what— in order to protect our treatment plant. So, uh, great team that we have. This is just one, uh, one team of, of many that I get to work with in Public Works, uh, and appreciate all of, all of the good work that, that's done there. So, uh, we have this plaque to present to them from the Water Environment Association of Utah and wanted to recognize them. Uh, in front of you and the public so that they— so that you can understand what good work they do. They do there. So, you don't mind if we could get a picture? I should have mentioned, we do have another employee, Ron Smalley, who is an inspector that goes around and does a lot of the work that couldn't be with us tonight.

All right, here we go. 1, 2, 3.

Thanks.

Hey, thank you, Reed. Next up, item 8.4, Building Safety Month. Paul Ashton. Chief building official present that.

Good evening, Mayor Young and the council. Uh, thank you for letting me have an opportunity to speak with you this evening. Um, we in the building safety division have a competition with our firefighters. We want to keep them in the station, and that's what we do. We make sure that, that buildings are safe and, and, uh, and in a manner to occupy and, and be able to, to keep people safe. But here, here tonight, I'm here to recognize Building Safety Month, a national initiative led by the International Code Council and observed each May. For over 40 years, it's— it has highlighted the essential role building codes and inspections play in creating safe, sustainable, and resilient communities. Here in the City of Orem, our building safety staff works diligently year-round to uphold these standards. Their efforts help ensure the safety, health, and well-being of our residents. I want to take a moment to sincerely thank them for their professionalism, dedication, and commitment to serving our community. Our building safety team includes myself, deputy building official, 4 inspectors, and 2 permit technicians. Together, we collaborate with many others across— others across departments and private sector to ensure building safety and educate the public. Each of them plays a vital role in sustaining the safety and resilience of our built environment. The 2025 Building Safety Month theme is Game On, which reminds us that building safety is a shared responsibility that touches everyone— residents, business owners, and visitors alike. Building safety affects nearly every part of our daily life, from the homes we live in to the schools, businesses, hospitals that we depend on, especially during emergencies. Local code officials, inspectors, contractors, architects, and engineers all work behind the scenes to make sure our buildings are safe, energy efficient, and accessible. Effective code enforcement is a critical, critical investment. It reduces injuries, prevents property loss, and supports community recovery when disasters strike. That's why public awareness is so important. We encourage all Orem residents, whether homeowners, renters, or business owners, to learn about how building safety impacts our daily lives. And we hope that it doesn't impact them too much. That's why we, we have the codes and standards that we do. To help amplify this message, the International Code Council respectfully recommends that Mayor Young sign a proclamation declaring May 2025 As Building Safety Month here in the city of Orem. Thank you for your time and continued support.

Thank you, Paul. Next, we've got item 8.5, uh, presentation, our summer reading program with Meg Flinders, a librarian and over patron experience.

Hello.

Oh, magic.

Hey, we're just waiting for an adapter real quick.

I'm just here for moral support.

Um, my name is Meg Flinders-Paye, and I am the programming librarian at the Orem Public Library. Um, and I'm excited to talk to you today about our 2025 summer reading program. Thank you, Pete. Um, our theme this year is Color Our World. This is the theme theme selected by the Collaborative Summer Library Program, which is a national, uh, summer reading program that supports libraries across the nation, um, in our efforts to help provide summer reading opportunities for our communities. Um, we're emphasizing the arts a lot this year, so we'll be doing a lot of programs about, um, making art and celebrating art throughout the, the summer months. Um, So we'll be starting, our kickoff is this Saturday, which is so exciting for us. We'll be doing— the goals of this program are to track our progress and help our patrons qualify for prizes and for our finale event. We anticipate approximately 3,000 participants from Orem, and the whole point of the program is to encourage children and families to read over summer break and to lessen the summer slide, which is a decline in reading skills that happens during the summer break when students are not in school. So we try to encourage them to continue reading so that they keep their reading skills up as they prepare for the next school year. We also hope to develop positive attitudes about books and reading, and as part of our goal as the Orem Library to be an experience library. We want them to have, um, engaging and educational experiences throughout the summer. Um, we also love to be able to collaborate with the city on our summer reading program, and we have a lot of great opportunities this year. We're co-sponsoring the butterfly house that will be at Orem Fest. Um, and then I'll talk a little bit about our finale prize that is co-sponsored by many departments in the city. Um, so our kickoff, like I said, is this Saturday. Um, that'll be at the Hillcrest Park. Many of our events this summer will be taking place off library campus because the library will be undergoing construction, which is actually perfect that this is the theme, is Color Our World, because we'll be going out into the world to experience the wonderful parks and things that Orem has to provide. And then we'll be doing over 30 programs this summer for kids and families. One of them that I'm excited about is a Wings of Fire tween scene, which is a really popular tween series right now, and we'll do— be doing some programs collaborating with artists, and I think those will all be really exciting for our families to participate in. And then our finale is partnering with the Sierra Pool. We'll be doing our finale there. So if they complete their reading requirements, which is earning 10 badges for our summer reading, then they earn a wristband to enter the pool, and they'll be able to celebrate there. And we'll have a DJ and just have prize giveaways and lots of fun for everybody who completes that challenge. And then one of our special things that we're really excited about this year is that if they complete the required challenge for the summer reading, then they earn a City of Orem coloring book. And this is really cool. It's created by an artist specifically for our city, and this was sponsored by many departments of the city. And I'd like to give a special shout out to Sydney and Kenise for making this happen. So you guys are awesome.

And Pete.

And Pete.

Thank you, Pete.

Thanks for making this happen. Um, and then they also get entry into that finale pool party. Um, they'll also be eligible to win other ticket prize drawings. Um, that these are donations sponsored by local businesses, um, as well as educational toys, books, and games. And the point of all of these prizes is to encourage participation and reward our community for focusing on, uh, improving literacy. So we're really excited about this this year, um, and we just wanted to thank the city and the council for their support of the library.

Thank you.

Thank you, Meg. Next, we've got item 8.6, a presentation on the police autism picnic. Cameron Wilson.

Marin City Council, my pleasure to introduce you to Cameron Wilson.

She's one of our dedicated civilian employees.

Uh, who helped us, uh, put together Autism Week.

Um, so, and with Pete's help, we have a video for you, and she'll take care of that.

Um, is that—

oh, there it is.

Uh, thank you, Chief.

I'm gonna apologize in advance. The video is amazing. Pete's team did phenomenally, but you're going to realize how much I talk with my hands, so I'm just going to apologize Right now, working on it.

Not really.

And if you have any questions or anything afterwards, I'm happy to answer them. I know that several of you did come to the event, and that's awesome. We loved it. We had a great turnout. So the video will explain it all and show all the cute pictures and all the good stuff. So the police department, like, 4 or so years ago My lieutenant at the time asked me to go on a ride-along with each shift.

Do you hear that?

And I rode along with Officer—

let's see if I can fix that.

Is there something else I can do that's up on?

Thank you.

So when I started at the police department like 4 or so years ago, My lieutenant at the time, Spieth, asked me to go on a ride-along with each shift. And I rode along with Officer Schwenke. He's still here. He's phenomenal. He's great. He's this big old Polynesian, big grin on his face all the time. He's the best. And we did a traffic stop on a van, and it just had no license plate. He gets there, mom is so frantic. She's like, oh, I didn't have the right screwdriver, and all of this stuff. So he's like, I'll just do a for you. Super cute, super nice. He's grinning, putting on her license plate. I'm sitting in the front seat, not really thinking anything of it. And then I start to see like some movement in the back seat, and I was like, what's happening? Like, something, something's happening in that van. So I kind of like flag him down, and he goes over. He's like, is everything okay? And, um, the mom's like, oh, I have a son. I got an 8-year-old son. He's got autism. Like, he hates police. He's terrified of police. And you can tell that Like, Schwenke goes, did something happen? Like, is he okay? He tries to give the kid a sticker, like, and the mom's like, ah, he's just stressed. Like, nothing really bad happened. He's just really stressed. He really hates police. So we left that interaction, and when I got back to the office later, Spieth was like, how did it go? How did everything go? And I was like, this is bugging me. Like, I was like, this is really bothering me. And I told him about the experience, and he was like, well, what are you gonna do about it?

I was like, I don't know.

I was like, uh, I don't know. I had been like 2 weeks on the job. He like inspired me and encouraged me to really come up with some sort of solution, something actionable that the police department could do to kind of help this situation. And I said, you know what, I wish they could understand, like I wish the officers and these individuals could have just low-key positive interactions with each other, and I think that would be the way to fix it. And thus was born the picnic. So we did it with leftovers from Orem Fest the first year because we had no funding and we were just trying to like pull it together. And every year it's gotten bigger and bigger and bigger. And this past year we had over 1,600 people there. It was a huge success. We had 25 resource booths and a bunch of police booths and we grilled hot dogs and painted faces and served ice cream and played Legos and it, it was amazing. It was great. A lot of it's networking with the resource booths. So I do a lot to keep good relationships between these resource connections because I refer to them all day, every day, right? Like, I'm talking to citizens and referring them to these resources that do great things and that could help their situations. So a lot of it is keeping really good relationships with them and having them come because I want the families to leave with good police interactions, and I want the officers to learn and train and grow, but I also want them to leave with like actionable things to better their situations. So I think a lot of the preparation is kind of dealing with the odds and ends of the resource booths.

Mmhmm.

Because the police stuff, I mean, I've got— we've got a great COP team that I can say, hi, I need like 10 pop-ups and I need all these chairs. And our parks department was phenomenal, scrubbing all the tables off, moving them out, setting everything up for me. Like, our city's great and very supportive of things like this. So I think the biggest thing is keeping up with those resources and marketing. I market the crap out of this because I want, I want people to come. I'm not gonna turn anybody away, any ability. We have lots of people that come from outside of the city and end up tagging their police departments on Facebook like, you should do this, we're going to Orem's and we live in Springville. And you know, like, I just— it brings this whole community together, which I love. So I have, I've noticed that There's some— there's less apprehension on our side with officers and their interactions. I think sometimes they are afraid to come off a certain way, especially on calls and in crisis situations. And I've noticed that it's fun to have them like empowered in a way and just be more comfortable with that. I think our citizens also really love it. I get asked about it all year long.

Mm-hmm.

I get people that are like, are you going to do another picnic? And that's so great. And I bring— I brought my son and he was kicking and screaming the first year and hated cops and was so scared. And he got in the police car and on the motorcycle and played volleyball with officers. And like, I get feedback all year long every time it comes up. So I think it does make a big impact in the community, especially with the resource booths, that they can stay better connected with each other and in the community to make sure that people are getting the help that they need, the help that we can't provide really. So I'm happy to be a connector, a liaison for that. Well, I got, hey, please control the weather better, a lot of that feedback, which I was like, yeah, it was the last hour was a little rocky, but it is what it is. But yeah, we got so much feedback. I had one mom specifically, she came up to me and she was like, thank you. Like, she's like, I have 2 little boys with autism this kind of thing is like life-changing for us. She's like, even just the peace of mind of knowing that my kids are going to be a little more comfortable with officers. Heaven forbid something happens, right? They're a little more comfortable. So I got a lot of feedback like that the whole event. And just walking around, are you having fun? Yes, this officer gave me this cup and it changes colors. And I'm like, yeah, that officer had no idea that we had color-changing cups because I bought them. But you know what? He gave them to you. And I love that it was a positive interaction. So I think it does a lot of good. I get really good feedback from the officers too. They really like this kind of thing.

They—

I mean, it's a training day, right? And it's work, but they do such a good job and they have a good time. So thank you for the city support. It means a lot. And things go so much smoother when everyone's on board and helping out.

Very much.

I work for a good city and I'm grateful for the chance to innovate, to have a wild idea and let people go, okay, yeah, let's do it.

I really like that.

Hey, sorry.

Any questions?

Anything I can answer about it?

It was fun.

I think a fair amount of you were there, and it was— it's a great event every year, and it's an annual event. that we're kind of known for now as a city.

So I'm very grateful for your guys' support.

Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you, Cameron.

All right.

There are so many amazing things happening in Orem. We're up to item 8.7, so we've had 6 already. Now we'd like to have a report on the Sleepy Ridge Golf Course from Golden Hope. Sleepy Bridge.

It's like a hearing, Senate hearing. Mayor, council, good to be with you. I think somehow we missed each other last year. I'm not quite sure what happened, but Glad to be with you this year. Maybe it's appropriate. Sleepy Ridge was built 20 years ago this summer. 20-year anniversary. Pretty cool. Let me dispel a myth. People think because you own a golf course, you're a good golfer.

Not true.

I'm a very average golfer. But what golf has allowed me to do is travel the world and see good Better, best. Last 4 months, I went to Pinehurst, North Carolina, played number 2, went to Augusta, Georgia, saw the Masters, got back this Sunday from Whistling Straits, Kohler, Wisconsin. I try to bring a little bit of those best back that nobody knows but you guys know. I snuck a divot off a grass of Augusta, Georgia, and it's on the back of the green at number 18 at Sleepy Ridge. This big a divot, but we got a little Augusta on the back grass at 18. But it's allowed me to understand what the bar is as far as the best. And I'm here to tell you, in my humble, biased, confident opinion, Orem City owns the best public golf facility in the state of Utah. Not even close. In the last 20 years, we've done 800,000 9-hole rounds.

Wow.

We've had 3,000 weddings. We have had 800,000 visitors to weddings. We host Orem, Timpanogos, Mountain View, and Provo's boys and girls golf teams. We have junior golf clinics. Um, we're at capacity with golf. We are at capacity with our offices. We are at near capacity with wedding That's a good 20-year run. And, you know, I, I went through a lot of mayors and a lot of councils. And just to review, you guys have, with ourselves, done the perfect public-private partnership. Orem City contributed the land and helps us with water. That's the only dollars that have ever been put into Sleepy Ridge. My side put in all the rest to build the golf course, build the building, and then the return is I get to operate it until 2060 and keep the revenues and the profits. Greg Stevens, a great attorney, and I think Jerry Washburn brought up a key point to the contract, which has been genius, and I love it. So the involvement that we have with the city really contractually is what's called the reserve fund. And what that idea was in the contract is the city wanted to make sure we kept it in tip-top shape so that it didn't— if you think most public golf courses, it's a tough sell every year to get more money in a budget for new golf carts or maintenance or improvements. Sleepy Ridge, with that foresight, we have to take 5% of our gross revenue and put in the reserve fund, which has to go back to improving The building, the clubhouse, the grounds, the golf course every year. You can do the math if you want, but that's now up to $150,000 a year. That's why we're the best, and that's why we'll stay the best. So it was all smiles and sunshine on this. I appreciate Chris Shirkey. Now we've got our golf committee going, uh, Mr. Spencer. We're back meeting regularly because the golf committee with my— I'm on the committee, one of 6. We have to decide every year what to do with that 5%. I don't get to unilaterally decide what to do. So we put forth suggestions, improvements, and the committee's come up with a good idea this year, which we should have a short-term budget, which is this year's 2025. What are we going to do with the money? A 5-year plan, and then a long-term aspirational plan. So that we can prepare for a roof that's going to cost us $100,000. If we can prepare for HVAC units— are not fun right now— things like that, we have to put the money aside. We just don't spend it all annually. So we're coming up with kind of that 3-part plan on what to do with the reserve fund, and the golf committee's actively involved in that. And so, um, I, I, I just couldn't be happier. It's a beautiful place, um, the grounds, the landscape, the golf course. We just keep making improvements. I got a Whistling Straits idea that you're going to see this year that I just came back from. So I'm just happy to be here. The public-private partnership has just been great. And we hand it back to you 2060, give you the keys. I hope you sign me up to run your operation, but I won't be here. Maybe my son or my grandson. That'll be where it is. But anyway, things have really been great. And so I'm here to answer any questions, and I'm just glad to have a partnership with Orange City.

So I serve on the Utah Lake Authority board, and we're making some improvements down in that area, really trying to promote the lake and get people down to that area. I'd be really interested in chatting with you about ways that we can kind of help that partnership too with the golf course and whatever your needs are with those people who are going down there to enjoy the lake. And see if we can also get them down there to discover Sleeper Ridge golf course also.

Love to talk to you about that because there's kind of a, kind of a balance that has to be found with that. One thing we're worried always about is we're built out down there. That obviously is one of the reasons for our growth is the west side, as you know, is getting there. But we have a lot of walkers, joggers, and bikers that want to go on the cart path. And we have signs posted all over. We lost a little girl. On the golf course. We don't want that to happen again. So the balance on the lake, we've talked before with past administrations about, you know, trails that have been proposed by the state and others as far as along the golf course. And, and we support all of that as long as they're safe in terms of, of that. Um, and we know there's some trailheads planned and other things. My partner Keith Holdaway is currently running some cattle out there to the west. of the golf course on some wetlands. And I know he's in some negotiations with the BLM and others on the state on some trail systems.

That'd be great.

Yeah, let's chat a little more about that.

Be happy to do it.

Okay, thanks, Golden.

Any other questions?

I, as a golfer, just want to say thank you. Um, and I'm not a great golfer. I'm a horrible golfer, but I love being out in the middle of all of that green. Fresh air, open space, and Sleepy Ridge truly is the best. So thank you. I remember when it was— your clubhouse was a trailer, right? And it's fun to walk down there and just see how beautiful that is.

Thank you.

You're welcome. I've heard— I have 2 great quotes about golf, reading books and stuff. Golf— there's no such thing as bad golf, only bad golf shots. And golf is about the time in between the shots. You think about golf, you play 4, 4 and a half hours. The actual act of swinging and hitting the ball is 4 and a half minutes. So it's about what you just said— nature, your buddies, walking the walk, and just enjoying the outdoors. So that's kind of what I do.

I've never thought of it like that, but that helps me appreciate my game better. It's only 4 and a half minutes.

You know, those 4 and a half minutes can be treacherous.

Oh, well, thank you, Golden.

You're welcome.

Sleepy Ridge is a great resource for the city of Orem, so we appreciate all that you do. Next, we've got item 8.8, a presentation on the Orem Fest launch. Can you— our city event planner.

Thanks. While we get situated there.

We're so excited to share with you Orem Fest. It's been a lot of time planning for this, and it is next week. We are thrilled to be able to have the Hearst family as our grand marshals this year, celebrating over 75 years of service. The Hearst family truly embodies our 2025 theme of a beautiful past and bright future. If you've ever visited the rec center or have been participating in a rec league or even needed the first responders, you have been impacted by the Hurst family in Orem. And so we're just grateful they accepted our invitation, and we're thrilled that they are our grand marshals.

All right, like Kneese said, our theme this year is Beautiful Past, Bright Future, and this theme honors our proud, proud past and bright future. Orem's successes are built on the foundation of those who came before us. From parks and water systems to a thriving business community. In Family City, USA, the past guides our future. We honor those who paved the way as we carry their legacy forward to build a bright, beautiful, inclusive Orem for all.

So this Orem Fest has been planned and with large help from our Orem Events Advisory Commission. You can see on here all of the members of our commission. As well as many staff members throughout Orem who put in a lot of work to make this great event happen.

All right, so this year's, um, Orem Fest will have, um, again, boutiques and food vendors for those last couple days. We have over— we have 21 food vendors, some returning and some new, and then 63 boutiques.

Yes.

Okay, and this year we have so many generous sponsors, so many wonderful businesses in Orem who have given, um, just about doubled our in-kind donations this year, and our cash donation total this year is $92,500. Um, and yes, 30 businesses offered in-kind, so we have a lot more, um, Small businesses in our community who got involved on that $500, $1,000 level. Just a lot more businesses involved, which is really exciting to see.

And then Heather won't brag, but we will. She did, she did amazing last year and she exceeded this year. She did about just over $10,000 more in cash donations than she did last year. So she's awesome.

Very awesome. Okay, so here we're just going to kind of go through the lineup of the week. We're starting off first on Monday with our Orem Fest car show. It starts at 6 PM and it's at the Sierra Park. We always have lots and lots of cars that are really awesome to see. We also have free hot dogs for the first 2,000 people there and a business showcase where we have a lot of businesses that are showcasing what they have to offer and to give back to the community. Well, also, it's not on here, but the Orem Express will be there, so free rides for kids and adults on the Orem Express.

Express.

The American Legion are the beneficiaries of this, um, car show, so all of the business showcase entry fees and all of the car participation, um, participant entry fees will go towards the American Legion, who supports our veterans in our community. On Tuesday, we have our Warm Fest pool party, um, so please come out for that. We, uh, hope Hopefully won't have a lot of rain that day, but even so, the pool will be warm. Come out, have a free ice cream, half-price admission. It'll be music. Buy your tickets early. Um, it'll be a great time. Um, thanks to Sleepy Ridge again for hosting our Oronfest charity golf tournament. We're glad to have, um, that there. So if you would like to participate, sign up for that as well.

All right, we are bringing back Sports Fest. That'll happen in the next couple days. So on the 4th is, um, the pickleball tournament at Hillcrest Park. Um, I just realized that I don't think we fixed some of those ones there, but there is not, um, cars there. It's just pickleball. Um, and they— we have men's, women's, mixed, and parent and child divisions. There's prizes. It starts at 8:00 AM, but it'll go for the whole day. So we're excited about that. That's our second year of doing that. We have Orchard's Jam back at University Place. We have the Children's Entrepreneurship Market again. If you guys went last year, it's probably the market where you spend the most money because all the children are, you know, trying to get you to buy your things and you can't say no. They're adorable. And then this year for stage entertainment, we are doing something a little bit different. We actually have 3 different entertainments: breakdancing, a magic show, and a drum kind of show. And so that will go from 5 to 8, and then it'll finish off with a silent disco. And then on Thursday is the first day of the carnival. Thursday is noon to 10, and then Friday and Saturday are 10 10:00 AM to 10:00. We have music and activities for the kids, entertainment lineup. The food vendors will be open. Like Meg said earlier, we have that butterfly tent, just live little butterflies that you can go through, and it will be awesome.

Okay, then on—

I stole that.

I didn't know. It's okay.

When you're presenting, you see all the All the little things that shouldn't be there, but that's okay. We'll just tell you, look at the magazine, it's perfect. The kids crafts we'll have on both Thursday and Friday, and it'll be at the North Pavilion. We have some fun painting projects on Thursday, and then on Friday we have Via Ceramics who is coming out, and the kids are going to be able to get dirty, play with clay, build some pinch pots and sculptures. So it should be a lot of fun. We have the cornhole tournament that day. It's in the evening, so hopefully it'll be a little cooler. Um, so please register for that. And then to end the night at 8 PM, we'll have Orem Fest Fit. That will take place over at the Orem Family Fitness Center, and it's a free event. Come on out to the parking lot there and dance and get into the music with some Zumba and our talented instructors Okay, so then on Friday's the kickball, um, tournament, and we will have that.

We have Orem's Got Talent returning again, so all of those best, um, comedy, dancing, and singing. And then we are going to retry the drone show. Someone put out their first, first ever drone show, and then we will call it first ever. 'Cause it never lifted off the ground last time. But they figured out their leg issue. They came back and tried it. So we are fingers crossed, hoping that happens at 9:45 that night. If it doesn't happen, maybe first ever next year.

I don't know.

Or we might give up.

It'll happen. Okay. And then Saturday, the big day. We have a breakfast in the morning at 8 o'clock in the morning. Come support that. It supports the Orem and Linden Rotary. Come get some great food. And then we also have yoga at the park to help you, you know, with your digestion after you ate all those pancakes. So then don't forget to, to enter your babies into the baby contest that starts at 9 AM, and that will take place over at Hillcrest Park Center. Um, sure to have a great experience as well as get some fun takeaway bags.

All right, and then we'll finish off with the best events of the whole entire week, the Grand Parade. Yep, just the normal route, 800 and Center Street, and then we'll finish off with fireworks. And this year we've got some music to the fireworks as well as like the drone show, kind of same places We moved and we got a little bit more parking and we hope that it will be the perfect end to the week. We're always looking for volunteers and all of that. So if anyone else is interested in volunteering, we still have a couple spots open. But that is, that is Oramfest.

Any—

see you there. Any questions?

When do you sleep?

On June 8th.

Maybe the 9th.

Maybe the 9th.

Any other questions? It looks like it's gonna be an amazing week.

Yes. Thank you guys so much for your support, always coming to the events. We always appreciate it. And it's the best week of the year for residents.

So—

That's right. We'll be there.

Perfect. Thank you guys.

Thank you.

Okay.

Item 8.9, Historic Preservation Advisory Commission. Grant Allen will lead that, and Grant, if you can introduce your commission members.

Good evening, Mayor and Council. Um, we're excited to be here. Um, see if my slide will pull up really quick here. Um, first, I would just take— uh, I was excited to hear that May is Building Safety Month. It is also, um, Historic Preservation Month, if you did not know, um, nationally by the National Trust for Historic Preservation.

Thank you.

But also locally by this Utah State Historic Preservation Office. Um, also included in that is archaeology. Um, if you didn't know that the Historic Preservation Commission is also charged with archaeological preservation in the city as well, under the National Park Service delegated authority. So, um, I don't know, Pete, can you get my— Not getting anything. Okay, let me try. Maybe my dongle's bad. I worked hard on these slides, you know.

Just kidding. There we go.

That's better. That should help.

Yeah, so I was just going to show the Utah State Historic Preservation Office, and then I just want to highlight something from the National Trust. Their theme this year is the power of celebrating the power of place and the power of preserving places and preserving buildings and preserving archaeology, and the history of those places as well is critical for the identity of a place, the identity of our communities.

So just—

Take a time if you don't have a chance. We're going to take the time right now, um, as we're eager to move this meeting forward, but take some time, review that if you have a chance.

Um, now let me pull up our slides here.

And I'll introduce, uh, to my left is Olivia Johnson, our chair of our Historic Preservation Commission, and then Crystal Muehlstein, one of our members of our commission. The other members were invited and were unable to make it. tonight. So I'll turn the time over to Olivia for our presentation.

Good evening, Mayor and Council. Um, it's always wonderful to be here with you and kind of showcase what we've been working on over the past year. So the first thing is the CARE grant. Our focus is on historical photos and displays in the new City Hall here. Um, we applied for and received the CARE grant in 2024, um, and we are going to display historic photos. Um, we are currently finalizing a list of the types of digital displays and display cases that we want, and, um, we, um, last commission meeting we discussed locations of where we could put those displays and where they'd be allowed to be installed at. A big focus that we have this year is community engagement. As part of the historic photo display project, we are currently exploring opportunities for residents to contribute to those photos of historic places. We are coordinating with the Orem Library, UVU, and the Orem Museum, and we'll share in the future of how those interested can share photographs and information on historic sites here in Orem. And, we're excited to have the community become involved in sharing the history of Orem with us and sharing it with each other. Something that we've been working on since last year is the survey. So, we— a historic preservation consultant has been hired to complete the reconnaissance survey. I mean, it's the first survey Historic survey done in over 10 years here in Orem, and we will be sending out notifications of when those surveyors are in the area. So if people see people walking about taking pictures of their homes, they'll know who those people are. And our survey areas on this map are Survey Areas 1 and 3, so near Bonneville Elementary, um, and up to 1600 North. The survey is completed on the Memo Drive. It was recommended to the commission, to us, to explore this as a historic— for historical district status. Um, it will include Memo Drive, a portion of 75 East to 800 North, as well as 200 East to 1020 North, including Garden Drive. Um, this area was developed in World War II in 3 stages, and it shows the history and growth of Orem during World War II. So I will be— okay. The commission has discussed both the location of the Pioneer Cabin that was found back in 2020, as well as where it will be placed and the extent for its restoration. We are currently discussing ways that this cabin will be used after it's restored and placed in Heritage Park. We are currently— the cabin is currently disassembled and is being stored at the water reclamation plant while that site is being worked on. So I will turn the time over to Crystal for this portion.

So we have been able to tour the Provo Pioneer Village site, the Olmsted Power Plant, and the Orem History Museum. And in doing those things, it's helping to give us some ideas of how we can incorporate what other cities are doing and other places are doing with their historic sites for that cabin that will be at the Heritage— at Heritage Park. It's been very interesting to see how Provo has done their Pioneer Village. One of the things I've really appreciated is that they are very mindful of the time period that different artifacts come from, making sure that nothing that they have displayed in their cabins is before the train came. So it's all things, for the most part, that were able to be brought over on wagons and whatnot, because that really changed what was available for people. So it really gives you an idea of what was available in those times. So we've had great ideas. We're going to tour the Lyndon Pioneer Cabin, I believe, next month. We're looking at the Lehi Cabin and the one here at Nielsen Grove Park, and just getting ideas of how we can best serve our Orem citizens with the resources that we have.

And I just got a— there's a whole host of photos, but if you haven't had a chance, any of you been to Olmsted Power Plant? I'm sure maybe in the past, but I had never been there before, and I went there last year. It was really, really cool to see. And then I was amazed at, as a photographer, the photographs that were there. We have lots of photographs that we're excited to try and bring to more light and where people can just have the opportunity to view them. And then here's some photographs from the Provo Pioneer Village. So, we would invite, if you're interested, to join us on an upcoming tour. If it can be arranged, we invite you. If you're interested, um, we can make those arrangements. And then we're just always so grateful for all of your support and, uh, and, and the work that we're championing. And, um, any questions for the commission?

Okay.

Oh, we've got a restored cabin. Do we have pictures of what that looks like right now? Do you happen to have them in there?

So you're talking about the cabin that was found on—

Yeah, that was found 5 years ago.

It's not currently restored.

It's a future truth. It will be restored.

Yes.

Okay, thank you.

Um, I don't have any photographs of it currently, so I went and asked Lane about 2 weeks ago. Lane said, well, you could go take pictures of a trailer with the disassembled parts.

Gotcha, thank you. We'll wait and see the grand Unveiling.

But yeah, update on that, we have hired a contractor who's in the middle of disassembling it, and then Lane said once they're— the pump house at Heritage Park is kind of the stopgap right now. Finishing the pump house site improvements, once that's built, they can fill in the site, and then they can get to work on actually moving all the components there and beginning the restoration.

Okay.

Okay.

Thank you.

Great job. Thank you. Okay, now we'll move on to item number 9, personal appearances. And tonight we just have 2 residents have signed up. Uh, we'll start out with Sherry Solberg. Okay, sure, if you'd like to come up.

Thank you, Mayor and Council. Um, I actually live in the property that will be my Airbnb when it can be approved. I know you've heard from many of us, and I appreciate that. But I'm here tonight because I'm genuinely concerned and because I care deeply about Orem. When I recently spoke with the city's economic development analyst, she encouraged me to share my perspective, and I believe it's important for voices like mine to be heard. And I share these thoughts with respect for all of you and hope they're received in that same spirit. I speak tonight not in opposition, but in sincere hope.

Thank you.

hope that we can work together. I'm part of a group of local short-term rental hosts who want to be responsible, compliant, and part of the solution. We're looking to collaborate based on data and best practices to ensure compliance and address concerns while protecting property rights. We want to work with you for a proactive solution and to maintain neighborhood balance. This proposed ordinance has serious lasting consequences, not just For me, but for many in our city. I want to support the council and help to find balanced solutions, but as written, this proposal would be devastating to my future. After a late-life divorce, I needed a legal, sustainable way to stay in my home and provide for myself. Short-term rental was that path and was more viable for me than long-term rentals. I followed every rule explained to me separate entrances, off-street parking, full transparency with the city. And at no point was I told that this model was prohibited. I acted in good faith. And now learning that I may not be able to recoup my significant investment because of new restrictions— restrictions I was never made aware of— feels incredibly discouraging. I also want to highlight a concern about neighborhood impact. Just down the street from me, a Property is being built that's presented as a single-family home, but will actually house 4 separate families in 4 units. This project has been under construction for over a year and lacks sufficient parking for all the residents, and it poses a much greater negative impact to my neighborhood than my short-term rental, which does not affect my neighbors. I support thoughtful regulation. Thank you. But a 182-night limit cuts income in half and makes SDRs unviable. The 1,000-foot spacing rule penalizes responsible hosts based on location rather than on conduct. And the 100-license cap, when over 250 SDRs already exist, excludes many of us who made careful, substantial investments based on our understanding of city policy. We want to be part of the solution, and we want to continue offering safe, well-managed housing to the families, professionals, and travelers who come to Oron. So please don't close the door on residents who followed the rules in good faith. This is not just about a property, it's about my ability to rebuild my life after loss and remain rooted in a community I've loved and contributed To for many years. We're not asking for special treatment. We're asking for a fair, collaborative approach that honors the good faith we've shown and allows us to continue contributing to the well-being of Orem. Thank you for your time, your service, and your willingness to listen. Thank you.

Next, James Brown.

I appreciate the opportunity to address you again. I know you're probably tired of seeing me up here, but unfortunately, get used to it. You're going to see me a lot more, I think. Um, before I talk about the referendum, which is really what I wanted to talk about tonight, I wanted to take a slight detour. I'm kind of sad that Paul walked away before this, but I just wanted to comment. It's Building Safety Month. And yet we opened a building as a city that I don't think that any of our city inspectors would have approved of if it were a commercial building. I mean, we had big pits out front. We still don't have ADA parking. Um, we did a lot of things here to open this building that I don't think were appropriate. I think we should have waited for the same sorts of rules that we would apply to any other building in this city. So I think we kind of took some shortcuts, maybe. As a city to get the building open sooner. I know I've talked to a couple of you about this, but I just wanted to raise that as an issue. I think it's important for us as a city to set the example. And I think it was kind of inappropriate of us to open a building that wasn't really ready for the public yet. But back to the referendum, which is really what I wanted to talk about. I'm sorry that Jen isn't here tonight. I know she and I have emailed back and forth. You guys have been copied on those emails. And I just wanted to address that in a public forum, what was discussed in those emails. So I think her biggest concern was that I was making some accusation that perhaps the amount of money that came into the campaigns for her, for Jen and for Jeff and for Chris over the last campaign season were somehow influencing her or those sort of things. I'm not making that accusation. I'm simply pointing out the data. I'm a data guy. I'm a data scientist. And so after I got the city to finally update the website correctly so that the disclosure information was there, I went and pulled that information down. And all I'm pointing out is the fact that out of $105,000 in donations that went into those 3 campaigns, excluding the money that the individuals themselves put into their own campaign, $20,000 of that came from 3 special interest groups: the Stronger Orem PAC, the BUILD PAC, and the Utah County Realtors. So that's 67% of the money that went into those campaigns to get those 3 people elected that came from special interests. Whether or not you want to say, oh, that's influencing decisions and now they're making decisions based on that, or whether you want to say these groups invested in the people who were going to make decisions that were positive for them. It doesn't really matter which way that goes, but I think it's important for our citizens to realize that nearly 70% of the money that went into their campaigns came from special interests, which those 3 people are now voting in favor of. And so I think that's an important distinction. Since it happens to be Preservation Month, I would encourage you to consider Preserving that farm as part of the preservation of Orem. It's an important part of our city, and it's an important part of our community. Thank you.

Hey, thank you. Okay, we'll move on to item number 10. We've got, uh, an appointment to the Library Advisory Commission. But that has been canceled, and that will be presented at a future meeting. And item 10.2 is a resolution adopting the utility master plans and the associated financial plans.

Mayor, I'd like to make a motion that we approve the consent item of 10.2.

Second.

Aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Aye.

The consent items are approved. Thank you. Okay, we'll move on to item 11, scheduled items. We have item 11.1, a resolution for the Community Development Block Grant, CDBG, projected use of funds for fiscal year 2025 to 2026. Heather Cox, would you like to present that to us?

Yes, thank you.

Um, just pull this up really quick for you.

We have to— we did this a couple of weeks ago, and we have to approve this again because we received $30,000 less from HUD than anticipated. So, instead of $599,000, we were at, um, well, actually $30,000 to $40,000, $569,000. Uh, so most of the cuts we had to make were on a regional level. Uh, so there's very small difference to OREM-specific programs. So our police department for victim services still receives $30,000, uh, homeless services just under $2,000, critical home repair $57,000, neighborhood revitalization just under $2,000. Our LMI playground equipment received slightly less, but we're still at $280,000. Our administration just for Orem City's, uh, Just about $24,000. Mag administration at $90,000. Our Section 108 loan payment has to remain the same. Um, code enforcement remains the same. And then these next 4 are ones that received most of the cuts. Um, so we are still doing well for Orem city programs.

So, yep.

We can vote on the resolution.

Mayor, if you're ready for a motion, or were there discussions? You might want to call for that first. I'm sorry.

Yeah, no, you're good. Does anyone have any comments, questions on this? I think it's fairly straightforward as we're just making a slight reduction based on funding. So someone would like to make a motion, that'd be great.

I move that we approve the Community Development Block Grant, CDBG, projected use of funds. I second that.

Aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Thank you. Thank you.

The resolution passes. Thank you, Heather.

All right.

Okay, we're up to item number 12, city manager information items. Brenda, anything to share?

Just quickly. I just wanted to highlight that it's easy to, you know, be customer service oriented and make human connections on and make people happier on the fun things like golf and library and city events. But I hope you notice today that in, in the areas where often we have to do a lot of enforcement in police, fire, building safety, and pretreatment, we saw wonderful examples of the customer service oriented. human connection, finding solutions sort of attitude that permeates everywhere amongst the city. So just wanted to give a little extra shout out to those groups. Thanks.

Thank you, Brent. I think that that about brings us to conclusion.

Mayor, I move that we adjourn to a closed-door session in the Summit Conference Room to discuss pending or reasonably imminent litigation, the character, professional competence of an individual, or the purchase of or lease of real property.

Second.

Aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Okay, we'll adjourn to the Summit Conference Room for closed session. Thank you for coming.