City Council · 2025-08-26

I don't want to be seen as a mean coach.

I'd love to come.

Timmy today?

Apparently. It's all my honors and privileges for being there too.

We're getting out of here.

You're gonna be hard to live with, Jen.

That's all there is to it.

He used to tell me.

It's been a long time since we've seen you.

It's fun, eh?

I think it's Sandra.

Which?

You will never know.

I'm kidding.

Anyway, Dave, congratulations.

It's about time.

How old were you when you got married?

31.

How old are they?

30.

29.

So happy 29 for you.

I love those dating apps.

For a while. I had my 29th anniversary last week. Okay, friends, uh, looks like I'm in the hot seat today with Mayor maybe coming a little bit late, or we're not sure what his status is, so I'm gonna just take over as mayor pro tem. And welcome all of you to council meeting. Thank you for being here, and we will kick things off with item 1.1 on the agenda. So, uh, you know, welcome.

We're grateful you're here.

Thank you.

And we were told that when it was our turn, we came up front. So if we were supposed to be in the back, then you can sit right there.

Those are for you.

Prefer to be in the back.

Yeah, we'll take those back seats.

You should have a flyer in front of you.

We just want to do a quick overview.

I'm Beau Hunter, doing public involvement on this project with Rebecca Callahan, who's in the back with us.

My name is Andy Spencer. I'm with DOT, and I'm the project manager for the project.

I couldn't count how many times I've been here, I think, to talk about this project. It's a lot. We've been working on it a long time. We're going to widen Geneva Road south of the parkway. So we start on the south end of the parkway and we go south just to the temple, the south end of the temple grounds, basically this temple there. And the reason we are stopping there is for the future Lakeview Parkway connection. There was a time when we were trying to get it all done at once. We've decided to go ahead and we'll widen to there and then we'll taper. So it'll be 5 lanes. To that point, we've got to get back to 2 lanes on Geneva Road, and we go to about 17th South to get that taper in. Work is underway now. You probably haven't seen it. We have a lot of offsite work that has to get done, utility work. We have some drainage work that has to happen as well. But you'll start to see equipment arrive here in the next couple of weeks as we do some utility work, and then they'll build some embankment on the west side. Some of that embankment is for the utility work. that needs to happen. The schedule is here under construction. It's kind of the middle section, kind of high-level utility work this fall. We'll start roadway work, um, in the spring, and that's really when you'll start to see some impacts, or your residents will start to see some impacts, is when we're widening that corridor, um, through there. What'd I miss, Andy? Well, I think on the contractor, we are planning a meet the contractor event for the community. We'll invite you. We'll make sure you get information on that. We just want people to have the opportunity to come out, see the plans, see the schedule, ask questions if they have any. We've been doing a lot of work with right-of-way over the last—

Do you have a hold of a date for that or not?

We're working on it.

Yeah, we're looking roughly, uh, about mid-September. So what, what our thought was, the residents along the corridor will start to see some tractors arriving, uh, the week after Labor Day. Right now the contractor's telling us September 8th is when they anticipate that they'll start seeing some tractors arrive. And once people see some tractors actually, you know, on the ground— I'm looking at, as I'm saying tractors, I'm looking at the tractor moving right behind your head there. It's perfect timing. But once they see the equipment, then I think it will be another alert to them that, hey, the work is starting. We did actually take those along the corridor flyers approximately 3 weeks ago, something to that nature, just to tell them that it was coming. We don't want anybody to be surprised by the work. And in many regards, we know that it's been long promised. And so, you know, a number of people are probably more in the, well, finally it's here category. But yeah, we want to make sure You know, through all of our projects, we try to go the extra mile and make sure that information is available to the residents. And which is why we have dedicated public development teams, where we have dedicated hotlines, emails, websites for the project. Because we want to make sure that both the general public that is traveling the corridor, planning trips through there, but then also those that live directly and are affected. Uh, know where to go if they have concerns, if they experience problems, et cetera. And so that is why we look to you all as the city's leaders to help us get that word out. And when you're approached by your constituents, hopefully you can hang on to the flyer. And if not, you've got staff who will know how to get us. Um, and, uh, you know, can direct them to us because we want to get any issues Any questions? We want information and good information to people as quick as we can get it.

And if you have questions, bottom left, you can call us. We manage our hotlines day and night. We don't anticipate a lot of night work on this corridor, but call us, leave a message. If we don't answer, we'll call you right back. We also have email on the website. General information like this is available on the website, and we will keep that updated throughout.

I guess it's the biggest concern will be people going to and from the temple and what impact that will have. Can you give us some insight of what we can expect over this next year or so of this contract construction period?

Great question.

I'll answer that. Um, yeah, we appreciate that. Actually, I agree. Um, that's certainly one of the major destinations on the corridor. Um, so we will make sure through the construction that, uh, that there's always 2-way travel. It'll be occasional periods when you have things down to flaggers, but you'll always be able to turn into Temple. What we can't guarantee is right now you have a dedicated left turn Pocket, if you will, to turn into the temple. But just because of sheer physical room to build the corridor, we're not going to be able to maintain that dedicated left turn. We know that that will cause some concern, and we'll be monitoring closely to see if there are problems, and we'll do see what we can do. But essentially, what we've got to do, if you look at it, is we've got the road by and large widens to the west, and so we've got to build that. We've got to get it suitable enough that we can put traffic on it. And then we're going to rebuild the pavement to the east. A number of people at different outreaches that I've been to have been concerned about kind of the way that the road tied in with the temple. There's a little bit of a bump. Lots of people are asking, are you going to take care of the bump? Yes, we're going to take care of the bump. We will make sure the bump's fixed there. But we are very conscious that the traffic continue to be accessible to the temple. But like I said, I wish we could guarantee that left turn lane. But that is the plan. is going to be a little bit tough just because we've got to build both halves. Because when you come out of it, we want a completely new pavement. We don't just want new pavement on the west half, we want new pavement overall. And so that leaves us shifting traffic side to side to be able to accommodate that and accomplish that. So, but as Bo had indicated, for the most part, when it's really going to feel like— there'll be utility work and there'll be tractors and there'll be things going on on the corridor, but when it's really going to feel like road work, next spring. You know, with the start of spring next year, it's going to feel like a construction zone, right? And we're going to do all we can to make it as best as we can, and when it's done, everybody's going to love it. In the middle, about like all construction projects, we get— and get into the endurance phase. Well, I can endure it for a little bit longer, but we will try to have good updates for people so they know what that endurance means. Just hang on with us for a little longer. But, uh, as we said, we just wanted to come very briefly, give you an update, answer any questions the city might have, just so that as we head in—

Real quick, can I, can I add on to him, to his question? We've done a lot of work, uh, coordination work with the temple at the property and the grounds, and so we'll continue to do that. They're one of our key stakeholders. We know there's a lot of traffic going there, so we'll continue to work with them closely so they know the traffic shifts in advance of when they hit.

Sorry.

Do you anticipate a need of, of maybe on your billboards on the freeway of saying, uh, people should go down to the Provo exit? Because there's a significant amount of housing around Provo High, the new Provo High. I mean, my sister lives down there. I go there all the time. This Mansell development down there, there's some high density down there. Um, what is your thought? I, I really want to avoid people going east and taking Sand Hill. That neighborhood's been through a lot. So you have some ideas for helping traffic to go down to that Provo exit to show some alternate routes?

We can possibly do some mapping. We're not able to use those overhead signs on the freeway in that capacity. Like, they're very limited. Like, the box of what you can put on is pretty small, and it's usually tied to freeway traffic. It's really hard to Use it to communicate off corridor. We'll have VMS and things. We don't anticipate a ton of delays, like during peak times. So one of the things that UDOT does is they'll look at travel in the corridor and say high volumes between 7:00 AM and 9:00 AM can impact it. And so we see during peak times, morning and evening commutes, a lot of roadway available to a lane in each direction. At least they'll be narrow. There might be shifting, so there'll be some slowing. So, But it should still be accessible. What we find is most people live in an area will start to do other things just naturally. We can produce something though. So if you see something that's a problem, we can produce a map that says, here's some alternate routes that are suitable, consider using this. But we can— we can't dictate what they do, and we can't use the overheads on the freeway for off-freeway communication. We've tried every now and then.

You can—

Something that's creating a high traffic event that may be backing onto the freeway. We shouldn't have that problem.

And we can probably help with targeted emails to our residents down in that area if you help us with that.

Um, yeah, our, our hope, um, is, uh, you know, to always be ahead of the problems. Uh, but if we do hit an inevitable or unforeseen problem, to be able to work together, you know, as both the department and the city, to be able to Communicate information as quick as we can and avoid the frustrations that do often come along with our construction.

We appreciate you guys coming and keeping us abreast of what's happening so that we can help our residents. And I really appreciate you reaching out to the residents that live down there. So thank you, and thanks for all your work making our city safe.

We will get the final invitations to, to all of you for our meet contractor night. Just a chance for anyone in the community that's interested, uh, but in particular those that live directly there and are most affected to kind of have a face that they can recognize in the corridor that they can say, hey, I met that person at that meeting, I can get help from them.

Awesome, thank you.

Do you know where you will physically hold that meeting? To be determined.

I'll wait.

You did Vineyard Elementary before, right?

We've used Vineyard Elementary primarily for our public meetings. It's on our list. We've tried to get something closer to the corridor. And that's why we don't have a date, is we need a place and then we'll—

Pushing you overtime.

You're, you're good. You're fine. That's why I started chuckling, because that's what has us not have a date, is we've had trouble matching a venue with a date.

We'll get it to you guys as soon as we have a— we should date and a time. It'll just be an evening, a couple hours in an evening.

So, well, thanks guys.

Thank you.

Thanks so much.

Okay, we'll move on to 1.2, and that is the Heart of Downtown discussion with presenter Matt. I'm I'm not sure I'm getting this name right. Leisure.

And maybe Matt will be with us or not.

He's in Germany.

He said he would be in.

Matt, are you there?

Yeah, I'm here. Hi, everyone. And we've got Jasmine as well.

Hello, everyone. Thank you for having us. So we'll go ahead and get started. So we have a pretty detailed update for you all today, starting with the project background, some community engagement themes, overall goals from the district, and a framework for how we're approaching this project and process. So our first phase really kicked off in earnest in January with our mobilization of the project, putting together the project stakeholders. Coming to Orem for a detailed site visit where we saw all of the assets in the district and really got to understand where the opportunities and potential challenges were with this project. We had a meeting with city leaders, quite similar to this group at that time, and gave them an initial presentation on the project approach and heard from those individuals both during that group session and in some one-on-one stakeholder interviews about what they really saw as their vision for district and the role that it should play in the community. Then we move forward with an inventory and analysis of the district. So everything from documenting existing conditions to understanding transportation opportunities, redevelopment potential, benchmarking against national trends in arts districts, retail cores, parks, those types of things, really to get an understanding of what this project might start to look like. And then providing some public-facing content, which you may have all either shared yourselves or shared. We also had some community engagement in the last couple of weeks to start asking the community about their vision for the role that the district should play in their lives. So that brings us into phase 3, which is just determining the existing attitudes and desires of community members. So we did some public outreach. We're going to circle back a little bit more to our We're really using that public outreach in particular to help us understand what community members' desires are for community gathering, cultural opportunities, public art, and the role that the park, the arts center, and the district should play. Then we kind of get into like the construction of the entire plan outcome. So everything from vision statement to placemaking and activation recommendations, an analysis of how we can get people to the site in a way that feels welcoming and approachable, whether they're on foot, bike, transit, or car. Goals and actions that this city can action against to help implement this project and implement the community's vision. And then all of the illustrative work, the renderings, the concepts that really bring it to life. We're going to continue all of this with a little bit of feasibility on the infill development opportunities, on some of the investments that we're recommending, and help you guys understand at a high level what some of the costs might look like and what available funding strategies are able to achieve some of this. And then finally, just figuring out how we go public with that. So upcoming deliverables, just in summary, we're looking at refining based on feedback from this group and feedback that we received in our previous visit just over a week ago on the concepts that we're presenting today. We're also moving forward with concepts for the Festival Street, some broad urban design recommendations, and we're vetting that against information that we're receiving. So a completed traffic study, Finishing our benchmark analysis and digging into these precedents, which you'll see a glimpse of today to help us ensure that we've vetted all of this with some real things that are happening in reality. And then the economic analysis behind things. So, August, you're going to see some of these, or the end of this month, we're going to have some refinements of this content. September, we're going to vet it, and October, we'll be hoping to come to you guys with a more complete draft of this plan. to workshop together and get final feedback. That way we can have something really buttoned up for you in November, really early winter. So when it comes to community engagement, like I mentioned, we were out with the community. We had Jake McIntyre from Union Creative. He works at a creative agency helping to bring to life public art, cultural opportunities, those types of things in Utah. And he did an engagement series in the park. He was Near the amphitheater, near the playground, and near the pool, asking community members things like, what kind of public art do you wish to see? What spaces do you need more of to support community activities? What do you want to come together for? And also some broader questions they were able to respond on pen and paper with. So why did they come to this area? What do they wish this area had? And what should art, community gathering, those types of things feel like? Here's a visual of some of the items that were put in front of them. We provided some public art typologies, things that are abstract, things that are very representational, narrative-based, things that are interactive, which is personally one of my favorite forms of art. You know, it gets kids and families to actually touch things and feel things and experience them. Everything from murals to some things that are a little bit more tactical and functional, to pop-up and temporary art events. We also ask questions about things like spaces and what we want people to come together for. So is it to gather, to perform, to create, to learn, or is it festivals, culinary events, cultural festivals, art creation, community arts, those types of things? And then just provide them with a little bit of reference material to where we are in the district, what streets we're looking at, the park itself, just to kind of frame the conversation. And so we heard some really interesting things. We wanted to come to the community to actually extract a vision for what they wanted this place to feel like and what they wanted their environment to read like. And some of the things really lined up with things that we heard from city leadership on our site visit, which is that people want to see the boundaries of the park expand. They want that park to be a bigger presence in the community and the edges to start to migrate out towards the main corridors. That there was a lot of scattered parking around the site and that there's a little bit of a tension between, do we consolidate this and provide a larger parking area, or do we keep multiple parking areas that serve these different spaces within the park and within the district? People really like the idea of a festival street and a space to gather and to take over the street and to do lots of activities. And we're really supportive of artists and entrepreneurial spaces, of adaptive reuse projects in the area, and things that we're making new use of existing spaces. Other things is just like bringing more amenities to the park, making it feel more like a community destination, less like a sports park, more like a gathering point. And then a lot of people also conveyed sentiments that they came to the park for one reason, right? So they came just for the pool, or just the amphitheater, or just the playground, and they weren't as aware of what was around them. So that kind of plays into one of our goals, which is turning this district and using the park itself as the heart of the district, To create something that's more of like an 18-hour, 7-day-a-week destination rather than something that's just serving those core community activities. Anything you would add, Matt?

No, I think that this really builds into the site plan that we're going to look at here in just a second. So I think that's a good summary.

So based on community feedback and stakeholder interviews, we came up with some goals. Goals for the district that fell in line with the scope and probably aren't that surprising to you all, but just to formalize those and bring those to the public. What we're really seeking to do is 5 big things. It's to establish the Arts District as the heart of Orem, the heart of community activity, arts and culture-focused experiences, and also understanding it's a vital economic center of the community and ensuring that the designs, concepts, and implementation guides we're bringing forward are underscoring that. To create a dynamic and family-friendly environment. So still making it a place that you want to bring your kids, you want to bring your family, but expanding the opportunities that are available to you and getting people to feel rooted in a family-friendly culture in the community, but also want to come to the park every day and do something different. Enhancing community identity and sense of place is another big goal of this project. So things in the public realm space that underscore community identity. visual, human-scaled experiences that people can feel on foot, those types of things that help places read like they're a part of the community and they contain what you want to cherish and take care of. And then improving the pedestrian and multimodal experience. So like I mentioned at the top, we really want people to feel welcome no matter how they get to the district. So whether it's on bike, by car, transit, any of those things, and especially on foot, we want people to feel really comfortable in the spaces that they're occupying. And then driving economic development and investment. So we know that this park, and we know that the State Street corridor, is a really vital part of Orem's local economy and sales tax base. So we're looking for ways that the creative economy can both bolster this area and be bolstered by this area. So just underscoring that economic value and economic center through the design and the concepts. And so So, plan framework. It follows not too dissimilar from this presentation. We're really looking at the entire district in some chunks. Today's conversation is going to focus a fair amount on the park itself, which we're seeing really as the center of the district and one of the prime early areas for opportunity and for investment. You know, it's a great public asset. We know there's already a lot of activity happening there. And with it being public property, there's some good, like, early phase things that we can do there. And then starting to break things out. So we know the arts campus to the south, that's where we have the potential Festival Street of 720 South. So what does the northern part of 720 South start to look like, and how does it have a relationship to the existing arts activities in the district? Knowing that a lot of people take their kids to school at Centennial Elementary School, and that the park is a big part of that. Part of that experience, and so that's another chunk in the northern edge of the area that we're looking at. And then we are also going to provide some high-level recommendations for the corridors within the district. So Orem Boulevard, State Street, Tiger Way, 400 South, 800 South—ways that that experience can feel really pedestrian-friendly, human-scaled, and we can have some public realm things that reward people for being on foot in spaces who are more people-first. Visiting businesses and spending time here. So it'll follow a plan overview, a summary of all of our community engagement, an analysis of the site inventory, and then public art community gathering strategies and projects for consideration, and then our urban design recommendations and concepts for the park, for how streets should feel, some broad guidelines for architecture and the forms that it can take, and then the details of how things can happen, so phasing and implementation. Matt, would you like to add anything? Okay, so diving into some of the work that we've done so far, like I mentioned, we're really seeing the park kind of as the first focal point of this. It's a pretty significant public-owned space within the district. takes up a lot of area. We know it's already bringing a lot of different types of activity, from people going to performances at the amphitheater, to the pool, to just enjoying the park in general. And so there's a lot of opportunity here to make a huge impact on what people's experiences when it comes to the district itself. Matt, do you want to talk a little bit about the park program and our approach?

Yeah, we spent a lot of time working on developing this park program and understanding the future desired uses of the park. So what kind of festivals might happen here? What kind of events might happen here? And so this is where we, we've landed with that. And we try to create a detailed list of all the different elements that we would want to have in a future plan. So what you're seeing here is, is that list, and we've started to work those elements into the line work that you're seeing here on the site plan. So a lot of what we're going to talk about is related to this program. And We'll kind of quickly go through this. But, you know, generally, some of the big moves are the ice ribbon concept, which we're going to talk about in a little bit of detail. We have an event lawn with a new shelter. We've got some adjusted parking and circulation. So we'll go through each one of those in a little bit of detail very quickly.

Yep.

So first and foremost, one of the things that we heard is that that central parking lot really starts to divide the park into 2 halves. And so what we wanted to look at is moving the parking to the edge of the park. So, so we've proposed to shift that, that 69-space parking lot up to the north near the school, and then also look at potentially a future long-term project that may include a parking garage that would support the whole park and various events.

On top of that, I think bringing that parking lot up to the north does a couple of things. We were talking about this being artistic. It's providing more service to the amphitheater itself to help take some of that capacity and those needs. And it's also giving us an opportunity to look at some drop-off ports and vehicular access points. So that people that are a little bit more mobility challenged can get to those northern park amenity spaces.

Yeah. So one of the other things that we looked at was trying to create a hierarchy of pedestrian circulation through the park. So those are what these red lines are, and those correspond to different gateways and access points as well. And then those circulation routes really start to to create different areas for festival setups and tent type of organizations. So really trying to build on the organization of the park.

So we're going to provide, like I mentioned, a glimpse at some of the precedent studies that we're using to benchmark against different areas in the park and different investments that we're recommending. We're taking a look at benchmarks for all of these things, from an ice ribbon and associated facilities to an arts Village retail core, to what parking garages you guys have in the area and what that could look like and, and how that could fill in the opportunities that you have for that type of investment, to what a civic anchor might look like that has a relationship to the ICE ribbon, but also provides you guys revenue capture opportunities, what live-work units might look like for artists and creative entrepreneurs to get that creative sector going in the district. And then secondary performance shelters, which was primarily in response to some of the feedback that we heard from leadership in the last couple of weeks is, so we have the amphitheater and it's like a primary programmable space, but if this park really is an area that we want to have sort of events, what would secondary performance shelters start to look like so that we can have things a little bit more expanded? So when it comes to events, what we've actually found in studying this is the capacity is here to support some fairly significant gatherings, and the park is already used for things like the Heritage Festival and the car show, Orem Fest, And so what we really looked at is the organization of those spaces and how you could start to have things that feel a little bit more intimate and have like a clear boundary around the secondary performance shell, and then start to expand and trickle out. And like I mentioned earlier, that parking in the north that really starts to serve that community gathering, serve the amphitheater, and make that space a little bit more workable for these types of experiences. When it comes to the amphitheater itself, it's a great amphitheater, it's a great space, it's been really well taken care of by the Arts Center. It's just a couple of minor tweaks, so some refined ADA access. We're also looking at the entry sequence. Right now the queuing area is just kind of open, so providing people with some shaded shelters and something that feels more like a brand or entrance into that space. space that does it the justice that it needs. And then also public art. So, we know we have performing arts here, but how can we bring public art and visual art and that permanent sense of an arts-infused space into the amphitheater? When it comes to the pool, we knew that there was already a study that had been completed on what the necessary enhancements were needed and what repairs and maintenance was needed. We were also asked by the team at Orem to take a look at anything that could be used and consolidated with future investment and looking forward a little bit more at how the pool might have a relationship with an ice rink or some other features in the district. And so we're looking at a relocation of concession and rental to help support fully the ice rink and the pool so that you can have ice skate rentals and pool noodle rentals and ticketing and some of the facility support all in one space. And so moving that from the southern entry point into the eastern entry point allows us to get dual use out of that type of investment. Also, we'll talk a little bit more about this with the ice ribbon itself, but we have some precedence for some rentable cabana or cabin spaces, and dressing that could totally be applied to the pool as well. And so you guys get additional value out of that. So when it comes to the ice ribbon, the current form of it, we've actually decided to refine based on some of the feedback that we received in person the last couple of weeks. But what we're really looking at is a destination ice ribbon. We're trying to bring something to the community that feels like a little bit of a novelty. Ice ribbons are, of course, always fantastic, always a draw. And we know that they're popping up in the Salt Lake City region and in Utah broadly and across the country. And so what is really going to be the differentiator about this concept is that it's going to have a civic anchor with a rentable space on the second story that can support community gatherings, support a revenue capture model for you guys, and also some smaller scale rentable cabanas that are something that families might rent for birthday parties or just to have a secured space where they can hang out and be with their families. And so That's the type of experience we're trying to create. It's right now in concept around 730 linear feet, which is a good size ice ribbon. We're also looking at it being a 4-season ice ribbon with roller skating in the summer and ice in the winter, so you guys are getting full use out of that. And then right now in this current concept, it's about 13,000 square feet of ice surface area. Matt, would you add anything?

So, we were loving hearing about this. I just want to make you aware that we have 10 minutes left in our timeline, so I want to make sure that we hear the most important things, or if there's anything special you want to dwell on. I just want to let you know the timeline because I'm not sure that we made you aware of that, but continue please.

No problem. I can move a little bit quicker. So like I mentioned, the ice ribbon, we were basing that off of some other national precedents. So Toledo, we're going to provide more details on the plan. But this is a good model for that civic anchor and the cabana rentals. But functionality and form-wise, we really like Numerica Skate Ribbon in Spokane, Washington. So this type of thing that provides a little bit more function is what we're starting to look at with the form. And then when it comes to development potential, the Arts Village, like I mentioned, in the center, what we're looking at is a civic anchor in the northern part that has a relationship to and serves that ice ribbon with potential revenue venue space on top. And then a lot of focus on bringing some small-scale retail businesses, some restaurants, that type of thing, and some creative spaces that can serve creative entrepreneurs, artists. So live-work concepts to support this concept. And really, we're basing the scale of this off of other precedents in the area and precedents across the country. So it's not a massive retail space. It's somewhat comparable to this section of Gardner Village in West Jordan. And so when you're thinking about the retail space and architectural scale, this is kind of what we're thinking of, and we just wanted to provide this to you all to help get a visual for what that would feel like.

Yeah, so what we were showing on the previous plan was about 20,000 square feet of total space. We're probably going to refine that further, but it's Similar to what you're seeing here highlighted on this plan. So not, not a lot of buildable square footage.

And then I'll just go through these really quickly. We're looking at some urban design precedent studies, like I mentioned, to help support what the street experience should be. And so we've been looking at Fort Collins, which was recommended to us by the team at the city, both these northern and southern portions of Linden Street. One of them is fully pedestrianized, which is a potential opportunity. for what that Festival Street experience might be like. And then also just like a better understanding of the scale, what amenities are in this space, to help us inform how the Art Village might look, but also some recommendations more broadly for the District. And then when it comes to the live-work spaces, something a little bit more similar to Cape May, narrower streets, a little bit more pedestrian-friendly, and like 2-story 2.5-story units for residential work. So I'm going to breeze over the art stuff because the community is still informing us, and I mentioned that during our upcoming community engagement opportunity, we're looking to do that report out. Just as a summary, some next steps for us is the concept refinement of all these things, the development of the concepts for the Festival Street and multimodal improvements with a StreetSafe experience feels like, and then kind of proof of concept stuff. So the revenue scenario and development engagement and strategy and renders of this experience.

Right. We will be happy to take any questions. We've got a lot of content that we're working on, so we can get into the weeds on any of this or talk about high-level strategies.

Where are you on your vision statement? Has that been crafted?

It has not been crafted yet. We can still take some feedback on that. We wanted to wait until the closeout of the community engagement to make sure that we heard all the stories and input from the community, but we would seek to come back to this group and also the stakeholders that have been identified throughout this process to actually vet that and ensure that when people say it, it feels like it's in their own language.

Yeah, I think the goals will inform that vision statement as well. So if you have feedback on the goals, we'd love to hear that.

Have you visited with Adam Robertson, the Sarah president?

Yeah, we've met with him on a few occasions. We toured the facility. He was present on our site walk of the park, especially the amphitheater, and then we've had some virtual conversations with him as well.

Then do you have plans to involve the Arts Council? I know we had the rec and the events.

Yes, we plan to give them a similar presentation to this one, but really focusing on the arts and culture strategy elements and asking for their feedback and input and direction on these recommendations.

And last question, do you have statistics on the live-work model?

That's something that our public finance consultant is going to take a look at and help us again kind of Proof what that concept might be. We have some precedents that we're looking at right now to help us understand the building form and the scale and all of those things. But the actual, like, feasibility from an economic standpoint, we're going to have those experts weigh in on.

Yeah, because I'm more interested in— as we discussed this in the meeting that I was in— but the financial implications as the city, whether we should maintain ownership and control of that housing. Or, you know, how are there examples that you can show us that we can consider successful examples of how that's been handled?

Definitely. So whether in the planned language or in a follow-up conversation from this, we can talk about some different operations models, prove it a little bit against the economic information that we're receiving, and give you guys some options to that. We don't want it to feel like there's only one path forward on something like that. We want you guys to know that there's optionality in it. Perfect.

Thank you.

Oh, I like the—

I like the 5 gates to the park. That's great.

I love that.

Anyways, anybody else have comments, feedback, suggestions? Well, thanks for coming today, Jasmine and Matt, and we look forward to working with you more on this project as it unfolds. So, thank you.

Thank you, everyone.

We will move on to item 1.3, which is a presentation on pedestrian safety and mobility at City Center Park by our own Matt Taylor.

While we're waiting, just for your information about the Arts Council, I think it's September 19th is their meeting, and they're scheduled to come by Zoom and talk to them about arts in the district and, and focus on that as opposed to some of the other issues.

Can I ask Bryce a quick question? Okay, so I saw those examples in other cities. Don't just have a ribbon, they have a circular area.

Yeah.

What's— is that not feasible on our land? So, consider that.

All still very much an option. I think as you look at the balance of programs, scheduled space, and I can't remember the term they use, but the passive recreation model. I think it is that balance, but definitely all still an option for where we're at in our process.

Yes, I should have said, do you feel it would be more successful for our area, our demographic, to have the ribbon concept? Just that skate and learn how to skate and go in a circle, and, you know, not necessarily the tricks, right, that happen in the open?

I think I would definitely consider, but once we went to like a design phase, I think I would look at the cost and do some pro formas of, okay, how much additional rental revenue can you do better? Birthday parties, can you bring in congregations, neighborhood groups when you have a dedicated sheet of ice, that semi-private space? And then sort of see if that makes sense against our model. I know for, like, the pool, we can only rent it when it's closed. For something like this, you can have private and semi-private events that might give us the most flexibility.

So you didn't necessarily discount or count it out. You're still—

No, not at all.

Not at all.

Matt, we're excited to hear from you.

Hey, thanks. This is a presentation. It's a little different. We're calling it now is the City Center Block Plan, because it does incorporate— as we got into brainstorming sessions with city staff about the various issues, more, more than just pedestrian safety emerged out of that discussion. So we've tried to capture all of that discussion. Into a more comprehensive look at the City Center block. That was last night. Beautiful night. All right, the challenge. Uh, one of the things that we've all noticed is a significant increase in attendance at the City Center block, and you're very familiar with all the reasons behind that. Just briefly, Orenfest. Farmers Market, Lights On celebration, all the ballpark games, and increasingly other amounts of events, plus increased utilization of City Hall. And that all just combines to a lot of pedestrian and people movement between these spaces. Our estimates is that it's grown into the hundreds of thousands. And that's based off data collected— what's that service? I forget the name of the service.

Placer AI.

Yes, Placer AI. Thank you. So, but we only— we don't anticipate the needs to level out. You know, we certainly want our events to continue to be successful. We want the park to be— and the city facilities to be an increasing amenity and resource Central place for Orange City to help increase our identity and community spirit. We want this plan to comprehensively approach the block. Okay, the challenge— I've already mentioned a few of these— strain on existing infrastructure, poor pedestrian safety and connectivity. We've made a lot of strides. I'll show you some of the things we've done even just this year. But, um, unless you go to one of the perimeter sidewalks, there's actually no way to cross this parking lot to the park without going through parking lots. Um, there's other areas of the park which will show you that there's no really easy connection to get from the perimeter of the block to the interior of the block. Uh, sometimes we have small exterior widths and, uh, And on a day-to-day like this, that's probably just fine. But when we have major events, we can have— there's almost a pedestrian level of service, just like traffic that goes down and you almost get to a standstill in some spots. And I'll show you one very problematic area that we need to take some more specific look at. Intersections and crossing the main block to other blocks is A key priority and thing that we've identified. We've witnessed and have also data on near misses, and, and, uh, some of that's anecdotal, observational, but we know it's a problem. People, especially at big events, crossing unsanctioned crosswalks and stuff and almost getting into trouble. Um, we— if there's ways to increase alternative transportation, biking, walking, transit to this location that would help reduce parking demand. We know that we have limited number of spaces on site and around the block. Um, wouldn't want to pave over the entire park just to accommodate more people. That would be a declining proposition. So, how do we get more people here without a vehicle? Um, Inadequate is probably not the right word. I would have changed that, but we can improve still. And there's been a lot of efforts at our major events, and I don't want to diminish anybody's work. Um, done a fantastic job facilitating the huge crowds that we get, but we can do better and we can do more. And then, um, is there a risk of underutilizing Spaces came up in the discussion. A lot of concern that we're building the new Freedom Plaza here. Um, and how do we ensure that's programmed and functions in a way that maybe encourages additional activity on this block, or also cross between traffic between the 2 centers of focus on the block? So I'm just gonna walk through some pictures very quickly. You're Probably familiar with a lot of these issues we have, and they're in no particular order. This is mostly as I walked around the block, so that's the order, but not by topic. Um, we see a lot of people crossing at this unofficial intersection. It's convenient in a way to just hop on over to Smith's and grab something for your game or event. And hop on back. Unfortunately, it's not safe. And, and so we want to look at this intersection and possibly a signalized intersection to try and improve the safety and the convenience of our patrons at the city center. We can see that going from this intersection, there's no way to get from the intersection to the actual park without walking through drive aisles and parking lot. This is a major crossing point about 300 West Center Street, where we see a lot of people crossing, coming from the north on major events and jaywalking at this location.

300 East.

300 East. Yes, I have a bad habit of flipping my—

Clarify.

That's because they're parking in the neighborhood.

They're parking in the neighborhood. They come up. Quite a bit of walk down to a signalized intersection, and so it's just easy to say, hey, I'm gonna take my life into my own hands. And this is not just big events, this is just a regular day-to-day activity too. We can watch people coming out of the neighborhoods, coming out of the Trio residential facility there, and hopping across. So we are studying the HAWK signal, or One of those flashing beacon signals for this location and seeing how that might increase safety and pedestrian movement flow. We have a lot of sort of unfinished connections. Now, this isn't the best example because there's a step in here, but maybe that's something we all should look at and address is the trip hazard step. This sidewalk's really just for maintenance access, but because It's close to the parking lot, people use it, and I caught people using it right there. So he's like, why are you taking a picture of me? I'm like— I tried to get it fast so I wasn't being weird. But so this is just one of those examples of people, what we call desire lines or desire paths. These are paths that people— you've probably all made your own path at some point in life. It's something you desire, but it doesn't exist. So there's a number of these throughout the block, these desire lines. We've addressed a few.

I'll show you.

Here's one example of our narrow sidewalks. We don't have solutions yet for that, but it's something that, that in this planning process we want to study. Obviously, we've got some major utility poles here. It would be costly to upgrade it, but for major events, this is another bottleneck. Uh, this intersection here at 4th East and 1st North also is a major crossing at events, and we did install one of the rectangular flashing beacons just a block north, but we're, we're studying this intersection as well. We're also looking at potential additional crosswalks coming from the north neighborhoods. Down on 3rd East and 1st East, I think it is.

What?

1st North?

No, like coming down off of 3rd East. Anyway, we put some temporary ones in for this last Orem Fest. As you can see, we've removed those temporarily until we have a formal and real plan to do something there. This is one area where our plan even goes in a little bit into trees and how trees can enhance pedestrian comfort as you walk along the hot sidewalk. Here's a good opportunity possibly for tree improvement. This is one of the biggest bottlenecks. We have a fence, and then when it's an event, it's all parked along here, and you cannot even hop off the curb to get around people, or you can't hop on the grass to go around people. So this, this is something we need to look closely at, how to increase the capacity of this sidewalk. Another example of trying to get from the park to the perimeter sidewalks without going through parking lots. Our senior center, we could look at a little bit of study with how we improve the ADA and disabled access into these. connections. As we look at amenities like park benches and stuff, we see that the one that's always used is in the shade, and this one is not used as much because it's not in the shade. So how do we maybe think about tree planting and other improvements to, to make that more usable? This is the connection that I hope we can make What we still— we're planning to do between the Citizen Center and where the fire station is and the court building, but potentially looking at trying to find some way to cross that in a formalized crossing of the parking lots connecting our 2 campuses. Now, there's been some great work this last year. I haven't got pictures of all of it. I forgot to grab a couple, but we have a new connection. This was a desire line. I have photos of the old worn-down grass and snow tracks going from the library to the street. People crossing this all the time. So, uh, our great team here has put this connection in. They've also— another one not intended, we had a lot of trees here, but people were constantly using it as a walkway and tripping over stuff. And so that's— this has been improved to be a formal walkway. Uh, we have a couple more That I'll show you on a map. But our goals are to enhance safety, optimize parking, upgrade amenities, and do this in a financially fiscal way— financially fiscal responsible way. I forgot a word there. All right, so the plan has some major topics, and this is in draft, so I don't have anything to distribute today because we're We're still refining it. I'm still working on graphics to illustrate different issues and potential solutions, but we want to address the connectivity between not just within the block, but also to surrounding blocks. We want to address event parking management. We've already started doing this. Ryan hosts a monthly coordination meeting to help us coordinate parking, and that's been a major help. But there's a lot of other things we can do. Event programming. How do we Make sure the Freedom Plaza is utilized and other amenities that may not be as utilized as we want. Wayfinding, how we encourage people to walk through some signage and pointing in the right direction, maybe giving them some distances. Oh, it's only a 2-minute walk. I don't need to get in my car and drive. Cyclist facilities. We've done some great improvements. There's about 3 or 4 new bike racks already on the block, but We want to continue to look at that, that alternative. We want to study lighting. We don't have any formal plans, but making sure our pedestrians have, including those safe routes, well-lit routes that would actually help nighttime use of the park, but also increase their feeling of safety and, and the ambiance of the park. Again, looking at amenities, park benches.

Time for tomorrow.

I'm drawing a blank, but anything you can think of as amenity. Looking at our tree plan, where can we add additional trees? What trees can we preserve, or ones that we're worried about, what can we do to preserve them? ADA accessibility, and again, budget. So this is our working map. This graphic allows us to go in and test different ideas. So as we had develop ideas, we'll be able to go in, plop in and plop them into this base map and explore the different alternatives of what we want to try and do. Just some preliminary highlights. You know, again, I mentioned programming for Freedom Plaza, studying different connections, looking at this signal. There's the crosswalk closure for 100 North. These yellow ones are potential connections that we could study. Do we want to expand the sidewalk and how, how will that work? These red ones are ones that we've put in this last year. And so great work to our, our teams on being proactive and moving forward and Solutions already. And then beyond the block, the part of the study wants to— a lot of the study is what do we want to study? So again, we're identifying goals and things that we need to dive down deeper into. And how do we start connecting our facilities in a more comprehensive and holistic way? And then this discussion came out of Heart of Downtown, actually. Actually, and how do we create a strong connection from here to the heart of downtown? Even going further, we don't have any specific plans, but starting to study other connections like the rec center and other parks. And as we update transportation and bicycle master plans, they'll help inform that. So that's, that's where we're at with this planning process. It's not complete, but we wanted to give you a preliminary look at what our work— what we're trying to achieve with this planning process and solicit your feedback if you have any questions or comments.

I would like you to make sure that we— because I know our bike plan, transportation plan needs to be updated, right? Uh, yeah, because we're— I mean, as we've talked about bike paths and connections, that Center Street Connection to the canyon is pretty important. I'm remembering you've got a path down there. So I appreciate that you're considering that, that you're looking, you know, adding that, holding it all together. Let's put it that way. So we don't end up saying, oh, maybe we move this a little farther this way, the bike people could have used it a little easier.

Yeah, absolutely.

I'm really, really glad that you're looking at this because every time I drive by that area on a Wednesday night or one of these events, I think this is trouble. We need to do something here. So I think everything you've identified in here is stuff that we need to look at. So I'm grateful that you're doing it. I mean, I'm sure there'll be a lot more discussion about that. Um, I don't know if we've ever considered doing some kind of shuttle service for big events, or—

That's, that's it. That's one of the— like I said, a lot of the study is Or a lot of this plan is identifying things we need to dive deeper in and study more, and that is one of them. We have identified potential shuttle services, partnering with adjacent property owners even more than we are, and those are included in this preliminary draft. It's about 22 pages at this point.

Yeah, if you look at Swiss Days, I mean, they do shuttle services. At first it started pretty close, and now it's clear down the church. to the, to the south there, that state center there. And, you know, they've partnered with residents in a way that some will charge $5, $10, $20, depending how close you are, you know, and whatever.

If people want to pay it, let them do it, right?

Um, but I think to her point, to Jen's point, a shuttle, um, option would be great.

One thing I didn't mention that we addressed is also public information. Information strategy in here. And, and, you know, how do we educate, encourage, incentivize even? You know, one idea was even, you know, if you come in on alternative transport, you know, take a photo, enter a raffle, right? Or something like that. So again, we're brainstorming, we're trying to come up with these type of ideas. And then this will flush out to a more comprehensive plan. Possibly multiple plans, depending on how complicated a certain topic is.

And I love what she said about the bike path, because if we want people to ride bikes, it can't just be that area that's bike friendly. We need more bike friendly around it. So, great.

Really good.

Thank you for that.

Again, just emphasize, this is a good problem to have. This isn't a build it and they will come. It's activating the space and So we— the demand's already there. Let's put the effort to make it better.

Stop doing such a good job.

Exactly.

One discussion that I think we'll need to have in the future is heart of downtown gets refined and Ormfest and what we're doing here. We change locations of any activities that we have. How to do— can we create that? family-friendly bike path down to Sarah Park from here, or from Sarah Park to here, and use them together for activities. So this is just a taste of the beginning. This is going to be a lot, lot more discussion.

Great.

And obviously safety is the priority, but beyond that, there's so many things we could do. So thank you.

Thank you.

Okay, we'll move on to item 1.4, uh, presentation on Edison Connect, and that will be Yes, so this will just be a quick update.

So Citizen Connect, as you remember, is kind of our one-stop shop for citizen requests. It's where people need a pothole filled or their garbage picked up. They can come to us and we track it and then we report back to them. And so this is just an update on how that's going. We've been live since January. And so Ryan and Chris are passing a couple things around, but this page here has kind of the stats. As you can see, year to date, we've done Almost 700 tickets. A lot of things get solved without ever creating a ticket. If you look at this citizen texting information, our help center here texts with residents. So if they have an issue, they can just text in, and we've chatted with 4,200 people this year. And a lot of times, you know, 311 or the help center is able to just solve the problem outright. They don't have to even create a ticket because it's such a simple thing that they can handle. And their average response time on those texts is about 8 minutes. By the time you text in, within 8 minutes roughly, you're getting a response, you're getting connected with the right person.

You're getting a live response.

A live response.

Not an automated quick response saying we'll get with you. Live response.

Is that during business hours?

Yeah, so 7:30 to 5:30, and then you'll get an automated response if you text in after hours. If it's an emergency, they're encouraged to call dispatch, and if not, they're just told, hey, we'll get to you the next business day. You can see here the type of requests that are coming in. It's pretty well distributed between code enforcement, streetlights, water leaks, water problems, street signs. So you can kind of see the breakdown there. And then this map at the bottom shows you how it's distributed throughout the city. So it's not concentrated in any one area. You can see it's a citywide service, and it's, you know, it's getting a lot of success. We're still learning how to use it in the most efficient way. Trying to get the word out. And so we've created these little cards. So, as people approach you, you can hand them one of these cards. It tells them all the 4 or 5 different ways they can contact the city. They can go straight to Citizen Connect with the QR code. They can text us. I found that a lot of people choose that method just because it's simple. The number is just 801-229-7000. They text that number, they'll get an immediate live response.

That's really effective.

We have the website, of course. You can email, you can do it through social media. So if you message us on Instagram or Facebook, it actually goes through to the help center, and then they'll either create a ticket or get it to the right. So, you know, there's still some room to go as far as making this what it is. So any questions about Citizen Connect?

I do have one comment. Um, I wonder if we can, because I've had residents say things to me Is there a way that maybe Steve, or Ellie, can come in on this? Is there a way that we— or do we need to say this is a help desk information line? This is not an official, um, position of Warm City. So if someone asks for a question to be answered about code, about something else, are we concerned? Are we seeing—

Legal advice or something?

Oh, yeah.

I don't know, Steve.

Because I've had people say to me, well, they told me this, so I need to be able to—

Yeah, we do get that from time to time. I think a big part of that, the answer to that is training. You know, that's probably our first line of defense is trying to train better.

Could we put it on a recording at the beginning?

I'm not sure. People always get a recording when they first call in.

Well, it tells you, like, if you text in, they'll be like, hey, you know, You're next in line, or, you know, we'll get to you right away.

If they're on hold, but if they—

maybe if somebody's open, then you don't get that.

So, I mean, we can look into that.

That's something we can explore.

Tagline on a text or email, just to print at the bottom of every communication, this is not an official—

Well, it just took me—

it just took me 30 seconds. I text the 7,000 and it says, thanks for texting us, we'll be with you shortly.

In the meantime, you can Use this link to save our contact information. It's pretty instantaneous. Before, I— what I'm understanding, maybe it's something that would be at the end of an email or message when we're giving a response.

You know, this is—

The only thing that makes me a little bit concerned is if you have a resident saying, well, I talked to the city and this is what they told me, and then we're saying, well, don't trust what the city said. Like, it does have to be that balance of— I mean, maybe a disclaimer that just says make sure to check the books, or training our people to say, We really need to check the books or talk to our attorney or whatever they need to say. I just want to make sure we're sending them.

Is it mainly like planning and zoning type issues that you're getting that?

Yeah.

Yeah, probably.

And part of that is, I think you're right, training. Um, because if the response is, if you're asking me over the phone or at the front counter, an informal question, you get an informal answer, and we often don't know all the facts. So one of the things we need to do is, if you want a formal answer from us, we need a formal—

Request.

Request with all of the appropriate information upon which we can base a response. And part of that's training, and part of it, I think, is In our communications back, back to people coming up with something. We'll, we'll kick this around. I know in planning and zoning and engineering and building, because we get a lot of questions about that. And somebody's, you know, there, and it's a great opportunity for miscommunication. Somebody says one thing and thinking it's slightly different. We're assuming some facts that we really don't have in front of us.

of us.

Because we want to be helpful.

Exactly, it's that balance of—

We'll look at it, and I've made some notes here too.

We'll do it in the spirit of a disclaimer and trying to distinguish between informal and formal communication.

Thank you.

And Pete, thank you. This is great. I love seeing the distribution map of where they're at and just what kind of calls they're getting and what kind of traction this has. And as Councilmember who frequently gets questions, this is awesome that we can.

Yeah, we'd love to have you funnel, you know.

Yeah, exactly.

That'd be great.

So we found it to be an incredibly helpful reporting tool just to say, oh, the streetlight's out, or this, this pothole is here, or we have a water quality concern. And they just report it and they're feeding us. And then we— and then it creates a log of sorts where then we're accountable to then report back to them and make them aware of what's the answer is, or we say, thanks, we're going to go out there and fix it, or whatever. So a lot of it's not just asking questions, but a lot of it's just reporting an issue to us, because we have 100,000 people out here living in Orem that can report to us. And it makes it very helpful for us and the community at large to, to get, I think, quick responses to issues.

Yes, awesome. And so thanks for this, for all your work. Okay, we're going to move on, and I think Mayor had wanted to hear item 1.5, so we're going to wait and push that to the end in the case that he can join us to hear that. So we will move on to item 1.6, and that is Casey's licensing process.

Hey, Carlo.

Does he need to download the If it doesn't put on its own, but it should.

Sometimes you just need the wizard to come up. Okay, um, so thank you everyone for your time this evening. What I'm, uh, presenting to the council, uh, today is a look at our current ordinance that deals with how we go about revoking, suspending a business license or denying a business license. So currently, what's on the screen is our— is a portion of our revocation and our hearing process for business license revocations. It's pretty brief, and it's pretty summary, which has caused some concerns over how we go about doing this system. And how businesses understand what their expectations are and what their rights are. So if you just kind of look at it, some of the areas we want to address is currently we identify the director. The director is defined as our finance director. Well, business licensing is housed in community development. So we want to, we want to change that. We want to provide a better definition and process for suspensions, revocations, how, how that takes place, who provides the notices around, um, you suspend or revoke a business license for. Right now, our code is pretty ambiguous. It's pretty open. Any violation of any code, ordinance, or law We wanted to provide a clear definition. So there's expectations for if I engage in this type of conduct, I am likely to face some sort of administrative action as it regards to my business license. One of those being, for example, if I fail to pay my sales tax and the Utah State Tax Commission notices up, we want to be able to revoke or take administrative action against that business. To ensure that they're actually remitting the sales tax correctly. We want to make sure that we define and provide what we mean by a full and complete hearing. We want to give businesses clear notice of what their rights are and how they can protect their interests in their business license. We want to make sure that that is a, is a neutral hearing and one where due process is given. Currently, Under our ordinance, Bren, our city manager, he has the, uh, the obligation to conduct all of these hearings. He, under our ordinance, can't even designate this to anybody else. He is the sole person that can do this. Um, given his time commitments, we want to look and make sure that we have an individual that, one, um, has the time to do that. Two, we also have a perception of being neutral. There might be a perception out there that if the city manager is the one doing what his staff is saying, then how neutral, how fair is that hearing? So we want to take away that perception issue. And then again, we want to address this other line in here that says no license shall be revoked or suspended until a show cause hearing has been held. Sometimes when we take an action against a business license, the business owner is like, yes, I haven't been paying myself. Sales tax, and in fact, I'm going to close my business down. Well, we're not going to be doing a hearing into those circumstances. So why is our ordinance requiring us to conduct a hearing when the business owner may not even be challenging the administrative action? So just doing a little bit of cleanup there. So the main areas of amendment for our, our ordinance are: 1, we're going to move this over to our administrative law judge process. Where we have an outside attorney come in. He's hired as a hearing officer. He is trained in the law. He will be able to take evidence, understand the rules of evidence, how this hearing would proceed, as well as the standards and the burden that are required here to make sure that businesses get their fair and neutral hearing. The second is we are going to establish some clear guidelines for the grounds for revocation that's Make it clear, let the expectations be known, as these are the circumstances in which you may face administrative action if you engage in such conduct. Third is really more— provide a more detailed process of the hearing. How are the notices being sent out? What are the requirements of the notices? When is a notice deemed served? Again, just providing clear outlines for how we conduct our business.

Thank you.

business here. And then last is conforming our ordinances. We issue— I don't even know how many different types of licenses we issue, but quite a few. We offer a solicitor's license, massage establishment license, a checking business, cashing, check cashing business license, or a pawn license. Each one of these businesses, what we've done over the years is we've created different mechanisms to revoke, Or suspend or deny. And really what we're trying to do now is conform all those to the same process so we don't have 5 or 6 different ways that we go about administering the license. To give just a little bit more detail about the clarified grounds for revocation, basically, if you violate any federal, state, or local law, again, that's the more catch-all ambiguous provision. But then we get into much more detailed. If you've engaged in any sort of misrepresentation or fraud in the application of your business, for example, we have some restrictions on spacing for pawn shops or check cashing businesses. And if they've lied about the address or if they've done anything that was deceitful in the application to secure that license, That could potentially be grounds for us to come back and say we need to review that license and potentially suspend it. Or deny it or revoke it. Failing to pay the required taxes. This is actually quite surprising, a pretty common occurrence for us is that our Business Licensing Department will receive notification from the Utah State Tax Commission that we'll have businesses who have stopped remitting sales tax. And so we want to make sure that's really clear to businesses that they need to be following all tax laws. And then for some businesses, we, we go out and we conduct annual inspections, whether that's fire code or building code, or we do other sort of premises inspections based on the nature of the business. If they interfere or refuse to do— refuse to allow us to inspect the business, that, that could potentially be grounds for revocation or suspension. And then last is knowingly allow illegal activities on the premises itself. So if they have reason to believe or know that there's illegal activity occurring and they're allowing it to occur on their property as a part, as a part of their business, then that would be grounds for us to, to close down that business.

Again, that whole knowingly is interesting, right? If I have a gym and someone is selling steroids there, which are against the law, and I haven't given tacit approval, but maybe I should have— I knew or should have known, to quote legal wording— at what point do we try to enforce something like that?

So again, it comes down to the wording that we use. So if we use knowingly, that has a legal definition that you knew or should have known.

Yes.

If we said intentional, again, that's a higher standard than knowing. But if we went to careless, if we use the word careless or reckless, that would be a lower standard. So again, we would— we need to be careful which word.

Wittingly is somewhere in between all those.

Yes.

Thank you.

Noticing. We wanted to make sure that businesses get the proper notification of these administrative actions. What we don't want to occur is we don't want to send out a notice and not be received, and then they'd say, well, I had a right to protect my business license, and now you're saying I'm suspended, I'm closed, I can't do business. We want to make sure that that notice is, is given, that it's been received, and it details the information that they need to know as far as the grounds for why their business license is being suspended or revoked. And secondly, what administrative rights they have to challenge that decision. And then creating that appeal process. That appeal process is the process that goes to the administrative law judge. This next slide has a lot of information on it. Um, basically, it outlines the process that is adopted in the code that we are suggesting. Um, and that is that all appeals are heard by our administrative law judge. Um, they have a business that has an administrative decision notice sent out to them. They would have 10 business days to submit a written appeal to the city recorder. That way it's logged correctly and that we know that they're appealing that. If they fail to take any action to appeal the administrative decision, then that administrative decision would be final. If they do appeal, filing the written decision with the city recorder, then they would— the city recorder would schedule with the administrative law judge a hearing. The burden is on the city for us to establish by a preponderance of the evidence the grounds for which we are suspending one's license. So again, it's establishing the clear burden is on us as the city to prove prove this. It gives the standard of proof, a preponderance of the evidence, and it also indicates that this hearing is an informal hearing, meaning that it's not like when we go to court and you'd have all the rules of evidence and you have all of the procedural requirements of court, but it's a more relaxed environment. So if somebody doesn't have the ability to hire an attorney or they don't want to hire an attorney and they feel like they can represent themselves, through this process, they could do that because it would be an informal, informal process. Up to this point, are there any questions that I can answer?

How far out is your ALJ?

Um, depends on the case, but Teresa, where are we right now?

Um, usually he comes in once a month, and, um, so they're usually one in like a few weeks of that. So anything from the last court date to about 2 weeks before the next court date, they would make it on that schedule. So he kind of breaks it up where we have a slot for new cases, review cases, and then we would add business licensing as needed.

And if, as that calendar grows, or if it were to grow, we would look to either adding another date or potentially Adding another ALJ attorney to be able to provide another date for us to handle these cases.

Can they operate their business in the meantime?

So, um, it would suspend the license until there is the final decision.

And how many times is this applicable during the year? Like, how many times do we have to revoke a license, would you say?

So we have not actually revoked a license in the That's not super common. Uh, no, but as far as the reasons why we would want to revoke a business license, I would say approximately about once a month we get a notice from the Utah State Tax Commission. And then there are other more problematic businesses that fall into these other areas where we would want to take some action to, to perhaps clean up some issues.

Well, I really appreciate you looking at this and providing more transparency and more clear definitions so they know what they're accountable to, and then a better due process. So this, this is awesome. Um, I guess that's, that's all my question.

So in essence, ultimately what I would like to do is come back at the next City Council meeting with the ordinance and the ordinance amendments to present that to the council. That's agreeable.

Thank you.

That's great.

Okay, then would we vote on that in that meeting? Yes.

Okay, thank you.

Um, we're going to move on now to item 1.7, which— Jake, you can just stay in the hot seat there. Uh, we'll be talking about short-term rental update. We have been talking about this for several months now, so this is nice to hear an update. I do want to make clear we are not making any decisions today. We're just discussing it, um, hearing What the latest is, and then maybe determining where to go from here. I know this is something of interest to many residents in our city, both owners and residents. So, um, I appreciate the time that you're taking and careful nature that you are taking to address this so that we can make sure and land in a place that's fair for everyone. So go ahead, Jake.

Before we do, did you send something out? I think we got a notice that something was coming. I never saw it.

I did not send anything out to the council.

Thank you. This is, this is something else, live and in person.

Thank you.

Um, so thank you, uh, thank you for the kind words. Um, I also would like to thank those that I have met with over the past several months, uh, for, you know, the general professionalism, civility that I've been able to engage in this conversation with both parties. I guess I'm going to say parties in that their viewpoints points are different. Um, and that's generally neighbors in one category, and then the other category would be those that want to operate or do operate short-term rentals. As I've met with these individuals and these groups, in essence, every time I've been able to have a very civil, logical conversation with every party, and I appreciate they're coming at this at different angles with different perspectives. And it can be very charged emotionally because there's finances, investment involved. And it's, you know, from the neighbors, it's also finances, investment, because it's their home. It's their neighborhood that they've invested their time and energy in. And so, again, I just, as those that are listening or maybe present, as I've met with you, thank you for the civility and the kindness. Um, as, uh, Councilmember Gail indicated, that this is just really— this presentation is an update. Uh, to, to give feedback to the council of where we've been over the last several months, kind of where we're charting and where we're going. Um, as I indicated, I've met primarily with 2 camps or 2 groups of individuals. Short-term rental operators. I've met with some individually, and I've also met with those that have, have joined collectively with a group identified as the Orem Short-Term Rental Association. The logo that's on there is not their logo. It is a logo that AI generated for this presentation, so it is not theirs. But they have been a very well-organized group of individuals. They've taken the time to be educated on, on their business, on their practices, on how their practices and their businesses affect their neighborhood. Again, they've tried to be proactive on ways to better their business within the neighborhood, to fit in with the neighborhood, and address some of those issues and friction points on their own as an association. And so I think that's been really, really good as I've met with them, is to see the efforts that they've taken to try to be good neighbors. I've also met with concerned residents, and again, these individuals have come in. They're not collectively organized as group or as an advocacy body, but rather these have been homeowners that have either come to City Council meeting during personal appearance and have made comments, um, that I've been able to speak with individually and then schedule time to meet with, um, outside of City Council time. And there again, they've been very level-headed. Um, this is something that they view as a problem within the neighborhood, They don't necessarily want to call the cops on their neighbor, but it is something that is affecting their neighborhood and the quality of life as they, as they see it. And so, as I've, as I've met with these groups and I've, I've had, you know, this proposed ordinance out there is, how do we, how do we address this? And some areas I think we have room to address, other areas there's going to be a clear winner or a clear loser. And other areas I think that we're not quite there yet and that we can work towards some sort of common ground. So with that, as I've met with neighbors, I'd identify maybe 8 general common themes that I hear as I've met with neighbors. And these neighbors I've met with, those that I can identify where they come from, have— I've met with neighbors in Aspen, the Aspen neighborhood, the Geneva Heights neighborhood, Heather Ridge neighborhood, and Sunset Heights. There may be others that I have met with that I just didn't get their addresses, so there may be other neighborhoods represented as I've met with individuals, but these I do know for sure I've met with. First and foremost, almost unilaterally or across the board, is The first remark is, I thought these are banned. Why are we lifting the ban? So that is, that is a common refrain amongst the neighbors. And please don't change the law. Keep the law as what it is. And as we've talked, they said, okay, well, if you're going to lift the ban, at least try to address some issues or some friction points, and we can, we can get them there. But again, by and large, Even most recently last week, I met with a group and they were very adamant about not lifting the ban, not allowing STRs to operate. Partly because they view it as they become strangers in their own neighborhood. All of a sudden in their neighborhood has been dumped a hotel as they see it. And we don't know who's coming and going. We don't know who our neighbors are. We don't have the consistency of a neighbor. We don't know where these, these people are coming from. We don't know any of their personal history. We don't know X, Y, Z, et cetera. And so there are very, very serious concerns from neighbors as to how it affects them and their neighborhood feel. Concerns about negative property value. The Heather Ridge neighborhood shared, and it's anecdotal. I don't have any hard data to provide to the group tonight. So this is anecdotal, but there has been a home for sale on— in their neighborhood, and it's been home— a home that's been for sale for a while. And anecdotally, they're reporting that it's not selling because it's near an STR. Um, so take that for what it's worth. I'm just wanting to make sure that this is a perception that is If there is an STR in your neighborhood, people won't want to buy your home. And neighbors have said, if I knew that there was an STR in my neighborhood, I wouldn't have bought my home, or I wouldn't make the choice to buy my home today. If it was— if I knew that there was an STR in my neighborhood. I think it is undeniable that STRs in some areas increase neighborhood traffic. Based on the type of property that it is. Um, there are certain STRs that are advertised for large groups, um, or party homes or event centers, and these will drive traffic. We've seen photos and videos from neighbors, um, with 50 cars parked up and down the street. Um, leads to congestion, leads to Pedestrian safety. Um, one of the complaints is that, again, as you get transient— and I use the word transient meaning short-term— transient renters, that they don't know the neighborhood. They don't know the safe walking patterns of children for the elementary school. They don't know— I mean, you live in a neighborhood, you generally know the sense of so-and-so's kids play in the yard. They may dart into the street more often if there's a soccer ball. You kind of get to know what your neighborhood is, and if you have, you know, weekend stays or 3-night stays, those tenants, those renters may not know the natural tendencies of that neighborhood. And so it does increase potentially pedestrian safety within the neighborhood. Again, as we deal with on-street parking access, again, as I've seen these photos and videos From the neighbors. Garbage can collection becomes an issue when you have 15 cars. There are times that neighbors are having to knock on the STR to get the tenants or renters to move their vehicle so they can pull out of their own driveway because a vehicle is blocking their driveway. And so, in many instances, as I— as you hear this, it almost paints a picture of of, you know, mass chaos in the neighborhood. Now, that may not be every operator, and it may not be even the majority of the operators, but it is something that is being documented and is being shared with our neighborhood improvement team now pretty regularly by, by neighbors and residents. Increased disturbances. I almost said lights, camera, and action. But lights, camera, and noise. As you get lights, you cannot blame short-term rental operators if they want to add amenities to their home to make their home more rentable. They want to make the improvements to the home. So they'll add a hot tub, a pool, a sports court. Oftentimes they'll add outdoor lighting. Some of those might be pole lighting to light up the sports court. Oftentimes these lights are not shielded lights, so you'll end up with light trespass. Or you'll have security lights. You'll have a renter come in or leave the residence because they're here on a hunting trip. So they're leaving at the early hours in the morning. So as they exit the STR at the side of the home, security lights go off. That lighting is unshielded. It goes into a master bedroom or a child's bedroom. It wakes the occupants and the neighbors.

owner's home up.

So issues with lighting. There's also been a lot of expressed concern about, you know, again, short-term rental operators want to ensure that their property is not being damaged, it's not being vandalized, that stuff isn't being stolen. So they install cameras, privacy cameras. I think most people have gotten used to Ring cameras on doorbells. But again, as you've added more and more security cameras Neighbors are reporting that there's a sense of loss of privacy because now that camera's pointed into my backyard. And what is the loss of privacy to me as the neighbor of a short-term rental? Noise disturbances. Again, these are, these are more of the more problematic homes that are identifying as more of the party and event centers where they rent to a corporate event Most recently, we've had one that was rented to a group of door-to-door salespersons. And so at 1 o'clock, 2 o'clock in the morning, they had bypassed the security light system. They had automatic lights that got turned on even though the automatic lights switched off, so they could hot tub at 3 o'clock in the morning. There were allegations that there was potential drug use. Um, at that property as well. Officers unfortunately weren't able to respond on that time to collect any evidence, but as we have more of those party and event-style homes, this is a pretty common refrain from neighbors of, you know, I'm now up at 1 o'clock in the morning based on what's going on in my neighborhood.

As you move on, I meant to mention to you we're targeting about 5:25, 5:30, so just as you Oh, that's what we're shooting for.

Thank you. And then the last is, there's a general concern of people want to be good neighbors. They don't necessarily want to call the cops on their neighbors. So how do you address a system where basically you are enlisting the neighborhood to become the enforcers of our ordinance? Um, they don't necessarily want to be that neighbor. who's calling the cops. But at some point, as I've met with neighbors, they say, I'm going to reach that point that I'm just going to be that neighbor. I'm going to quote unquote become the Karen, and I'm going to be the one that's the squeaky wheel.

Can they still report anonymously?

They can.

Okay.

They absolutely can under our, under our nuisance code. Absolutely. Again, to give the opposing viewpoint, as I've met with short-term rental operators, again, By and large, those that I've met with, they want to be good neighbors. They want to fit into the neighborhood. They want to be able to protect their investment. And part of the messaging that they present is, look, we are— we operate based off a rating system. So it is an incentive for us to be good neighbors. Because if we have neighbors that don't want us there and they're surly, they're mean to our tenants, We're going to get bad reviews. We want to take care of the landscaping. We want to provide good amenities. We want to provide a good home and a good experience based off of the fact that we operate on a rating system. Um, and so, again, by and large, they want to be there. They want to be good neighbors. Some of the friction points that I've— as I've spoken with, um, SCR operators is Concern about occupancy limits. If you impose occupancy limits, in effect, you may put short-term rentals, some short-term rentals out of business. If you put a cap at 8 people, then some homes, it does not financially work for those operators to operate their home as a short-term rental. And it is, it is something that would be Devastating personally for them in their business, and it would change some of the individuals I've met with the way they live, because it would change and disrupt quite a bit how they function. Um, so occupancy limits is something that, that is a friction point and is a concern. Uh, noise regulations, by and large, again, they want to be good neighbors. It's not a question that they don't want to regulate the noise. The question is, how do we regulate the noise? Um, as we've talked about different ideas, the installation of a decibel monitoring system, having again the property manager to be able to respond, et cetera. There's, there's ways that we can meet this that I think we have some pretty common ground. Um, off-street parking, um, again, is the enforcement. They don't want to clog up the neighborhood. They want to provide parking for their tenants, their renters.

This—

how do we get to the calculation? How do you, how do you address parking? You allow tandem parking? Do you not allow tandem parking? Do you— what counts as a parking spot? Can parking be offsite? Can it be on— does it have to be onsite, et cetera? Licensing limits again, by and large, as we've talked through these issues, the biggest issue has been caps. Caps and spacing. And so licensing limits would be the numerical cap. The idea, if we put an artificially too low cap, does that create some sort of a land rush? And who's the lucky winner and who, who gets left out in the cold? Um, as well as the frequency of being able to rent, how, how many nights a year can you rent? That was, that was initially a friction point. Density limits, again, that we talk about density in the ordinance as far as geographic spacing. You cannot have a short-term rental within 1,000 feet of another short-term rental. There have been some concerns that if you were to take that and throw that into a GIS system, that that is going to give you a numerical output less than what we've even talked about as far as a potential cap.

Um.

This is a good point they've brought up, the idea of having an educational requirement, requiring any sort of short-term rental operator to go through some sort of educational series to learn actually how to host and how to conduct the business as a way to help prevent or mitigate future harm to the neighborhood by having somebody go through and say, this is actually how you host a short-term rental, as opposed to individuals saying, hey, you know what, there's a there's a license available, I'm going to go get my license, and then when we go on vacation, I'll rent my home out. And they haven't really put any forethought into actually operating that as a business. Um, again, we've talked briefly about rental frequency. Um, the idea that putting a cap of like 182 days or 183 days a year, that was very concerning to the short-term rental groups because that would effectively limit the number of nights that they could operate their business. And then there's been advocacy for the creation of a short-term rental committee, some sort of committee to help guide or steer the conversation of the ordinance drafting as well as enforcement mechanisms in the future. So that's been the feedback I've gotten from the short-term rental side. About 10 minutes, my time's correct. Okay.

This is a hot one.

Um, so, as we've worked with these groups, some areas where I feel like we've reached some common ground, particularly with the Short-Term Rental Association, is we've removed the number of nightly cap, the nightly rental cap requirement in the originally proposed ordinance. That was very concerning. And so we ultimately were able to reach a point where we felt comfortable removing that from the proposed ordinance. Also, as we've presented to the city council, um, over the last 18 months, um, I felt that there's been a growing trend to allow more of an owner-occupied system.

Right.

And if you were to do an owner-occupied system, that, that owner-occupied Given the fact that the owner is likely to be present at the time the rental is occurring, that they should be granted some sort of exceptions or more leniency from more of the restrictive areas of the ordinance. And so, as we've looked at this ordinance, we've reached the point where, um, we would be proposing creating basically the STR licensing system. With the geographical requirements and the numerical cap, but exempting owner occupancy from the geographic spacing and the numerical cap. So, in essence, they wouldn't be subject to those 2 requirements. I feel like we've also reached a closer agreement on the density and numerical cap with that inclusion of the owner occupied. Just given from what we believe some of the numbers may be for the owner-occupied, if you— if a good segment of the current operating short-term rentals are owner-occupied, then that really reduces the need for a larger cap, a numerical cap. And again, as we've met and talked about ways to mitigate and deal with the party and and event-style housing, again, from the short-term rental operators, um, there's been an acknowledgment that that is not necessarily how they want to operate their business, that that's not the perception that they want to have. And based on that, they recognize that, no, we don't want to have, you know, us to be the next quote-unquote goat house that makes the news. And so I don't feel like there was a lot of having to do a lot of give and take. It was a recognition from the Short-Term Rental Operation Association that, yes, that's not the look we want. And then again, by and large, agreement on the need to include owner information on the home so the neighborhood can be able to reach out to the owners or property manager, the 24/7 contact person, providing information. to the renters about what the expectations are and those other qualitative regulations that we've discussed in previous work sessions. Um, so again, I've already kind of spoken about the owner-occupied and non-owner-occupied. Um, really kind of disassociating parking with occupancy, but still There still is a tie between the 2, right? So, if you have more bedrooms, you're likely to have more occupants. If you're likely to have more occupants, you're not necessarily going to get them all to show up in 1 vehicle. In today's day and age, you're likely to have them show up in multiple vehicles. And so, based on bedroom size to require parking based on bedroom size is really, in essence, the direction that I think we're tracking on. On the proposed ordinance. Um, other areas where we've, we've looked is where we're tracking to remove regulations is the elimination of the prohibition for short-term rentals to operate in an ADU. If we were to go the owner-operated route, in essence, we want them to be operating in an ADU. That's exactly what it would be. Uh, so we would remove that, that restriction. Eliminates the numerical restriction on the number of nights to be rented. Um, allows— and this is what I feel is a pretty big concession and a change from where we started— is we've adopted the short-term— sorry, the single-family definition for short-term rentals. So you could have a single-family that is over 8 Uh, rent a short-term rental. What's going to cap occupancy is the number of bedrooms available. So you're not going to put a family of 12 in a 2-bedroom condo. That would have to be a larger home. Um, but you would allow a single family that can fit with that bedroom size in a, in a home as an STR. Or 8 unrelated individuals. So, basically, we've modified where we had started from to allow 8 unrelated or single family. Clarification of other regulations, um, basically establishing some regulations for lighting, requiring, requiring shielding on lighting, especially security lighting, to help prevent light trespass. Clarifying the STR ordinance to really indicate that this is for overnight accommodations and not for events. And then clarifying that each violation counts. Um, so the way that we need to either clarify this is if you have a short-term rental and you have one instance, so you have one episode where somebody's parking on the street And you've got loud music coming from the backyard at 11 o'clock at night, and you have an occupancy issue. Is that 1 instance, or is that 3 instances for a violation? And we can either go either way. We can say, you know, we would treat that as 1. All of those violations occurring in the same episode, we treat as 1 violation. Or you could go the opposite direction. There's some questions about equity, fairness. If you were to do it, bang, you had one chance, one bad renter, and now your STR license is going to be revoked. That may not be the route we want to go, but we would want to clarify that in the ordinance.

How many strikes till they're out?

Within a 12-month, a rolling 12-month period.

So I'm renting, I'm terrible, Jeff and his family is wonderful, and 6 months down the road, they have another bad one. But counting the 3 bad things I did as throwing them out seems over the top to me. Yep.

But then on the opposing side of that, Councilmember McDonald, it would be, I'm the neighbor. How many times do I have to call the police before this thing stops?

Is there any kind of probation?

Um, so the way it works currently in the proposed ordinance is You would get 1 violation and you'd be brought into the ALJ. Potentially, you'd receive a fine. You get a 2nd one within a 12-month period, that fine escalates up. And if you get the 3rd within that rolling 12-month period, then your SDR license would be revoked and you'd be given a fine. So that probation is basically from that 1st one is a rolling 12-month period.

Okay.

Thank you.

And would those fines have enough teeth in them financially so that if someone's looking at this and saying, well, it's only cost me this much, but I'm getting this much in rent—

$50 and I'm renting it for $500, I don't care—

there's got to be some teeth in that. So currently, I think our ordinance, the proposed ordinance, the first fine I want to say is $500, the second fine is $750, And the 3rd fine is $1,000. Again, as I've talked this through with some neighbors, they say, well, my neighbor rents their home for, for $700 a night, so what a big deal, I lost one night's revenue. So again, but another home, they may only be renting for $200 a night, so it may actually have more teeth that way. But for some larger homes, it may not have a lot of teeth.

Can you base the fine on the size of the home?

We could, we could try to come up with a calculation based on that.

Didn't the legislature up those, give us an opportunity to increase those if we need?

I believe so. Um, and again, I view this very differently than I do our NIT violations. Those, again, we, we're dealing with— sometimes we're dealing with people who are indigent and may not have the resources to take care of a And so we're not really looking to be heavy-handed with a fine where this— I think you have to look at it from a commercial aspect. This is a money-making business, so you want the fine to be commensurate with the action. Um, again, I've tried to explain the occupancy. This slide does a little bit better job, is, um, and just acknowledging that there's more, more time of discussion. Because I don't think everybody on the short-term rental side is in agreement with the idea of this type of occupancy restriction. Again, I've heard specifically from some operators that this type of restriction would, in essence, put them out of business. Um, but, you know, I feel like this is a pretty big movement from the cities where we, where we started on the proposed ordinance. And that again is 1 single family. Or up to 8 unrelated individuals, and then you would do a calculation based on bedroom size for a maximum occupancy.

And I'm not sure, maybe I missed this, but where's the safeguard to where it's not becoming a student rental home?

So you're capped at 30 nights, a 30-night rental. So actually 29-night rental.

In a row?

Yeah, in a row.

In a row from the same tenant?

Yes.

So they can't write a new—

I mean, if you've got a really savvy student, I mean, I can't plug— I mean, we can try to plug all the loopholes, but I mean, if you had a really savvy group of students and they said, well, I'll rent this one for 29 nights, then you rent this for 29 nights, and then they just kind of do that in sequence, but could that potentially happen? Yes. Okay, the price Of short-term rentals. I think the amount— exclude that.

Yeah, I think so.

But again, $200, some of them are $200 a night. Some are just not that nice of homes.

Yeah. But would you pay $6,000 a month for the place?

So, to answer your question directly, we haven't solved that problem completely yet. I think I have a question. I've talked to quite a few people and Um, you know, these short-term rentals are basically competing with hotels, right? So can we levy a, a room tax or something that we can keep money into Orem?

And maybe that—

I don't know, I'm not sure what the parameter is, but a lot of people have brought that up. Like, maybe you look at that.

I don't know how that would even—

So there's a transient room tax that is levied, and maybe Brandon can speak more to that.

What percentage do we get of that?

And, um, it's—

I believe it's 1% for every—

that was—

went to the county. Single largest.

What's that?

Airbnbs are by far our single largest.

So we do get that if it's targeted for that. We get that back because some of that other tax we don't necessarily get back, right? It's at the benevolence of the county.

Yes.

What percentage we get, right, Bryn?

There's a bunch that, that is overseen by the County Transient Room Tax Committee.

That we contribute to, but we don't get what we contribute to back.

We don't get—

yeah, it's typically in most recent years a lot of that's gone to like the Provo Airport, the Provo— but a few years ago we got for the Lakeside a big chunk for our improvements at Lakeside Park.

That was because of the lobbying efforts of our mayor, right? So could— but can we target those so we don't have to lobby every time?

For our money back.

I mean, I, I don't think we could do it without—

It has to go in that pool, and then we have to just hope we get it back. So if we increase the fee, we may not be getting that back.

Well, didn't we talk at one point though about doing a fee to help us enforce some of these things?

Yeah, so the application fee, we would want the application fee to In essence, cover both our enforcement mechanism as well as the application administration of the short-term rental licensing program.

Right.

But to Dave's point, he's looking for another source of income.

Yeah, revenue.

I mean, I'm looking at Brandon and Steve. I, I don't think we can add an Orem-specific, Orem-charged transient room tax to what's already—

I'm not aware that we could. even increase the transient room.

I don't, I don't think increasing that doesn't necessarily help us.

It just puts the money into the county. It hurts our people who are trying to run that business and gives them—

I don't even think we could do it.

I mean, unless we can reset, we can set our change.

Can we do an impact?

We could take that information to the county to lobby more, and hopefully they'd be Or will they be amenable or listen to that argument?

Can we do an impact fee if someone— if the police are called, if the tow truck's called, if there—

if there's some other—

if we have an expense, uh, and people, resources that are being expended to take care of a problem, can we charge an impact fee for every one of those instances?

Response fee or an alarm fee?

I don't know that we could do a response fee, but if we've taken some sort of administrative steps to mitigate or clean up something, right? Let's say you have a short-term rental that for whatever reason there's a large party and it damages property nearby or something like that, and we've taken— we've expended some sort of cost, we could try to receive restitution through the administrative law process.

This be different than the fine they pay? Yes.

Yep.

That's the illegal drug use or whatever that happened already.

Police goes out.

Can we charge for that?

I don't believe we can charge for that.

Bottom line, we'll look at what are justifiable and legal fees that we can charge that has a nexus with providing the service and access.

Yeah, under the, under the, the Uh, idea that we don't want taxpayers to have to incur costs because we're allowing—

yeah, we just want to—

right.

Um, really quickly, just because we're out of time. Um, but if we've talked about occupancy, one of the areas where, um, some of the comments have been is Orem's proposed ordinance seems out of line with what other communities are doing. And so, So what I wanted to provide to the council is just kind of a snapshot of what other cities, specifically in Utah County, are doing and how we would potentially line up. So Alpine, Eagle Mountain, Mapleton, Pleasant Grove, Salem, Santaquin, and Vineyard either outright clearly ban STRs, or they're banned based on their, their use tables. So their, their access, their, their allowable land use.

Table.

Um, 3 cities are pretty unclear on what their occupancy limits are. Cedar Hills, Lyndon, they say it's determined on the license application, but it's not really clear how that calculation is done. Um, Springville city code is completely silent as to occupancy. And then those that actually have a cap, On occupancy, clearly stated in the code, is American Fork and Highland at 12, Lehi and Provo at 10. And then if you look outside, Sandy is also at 8, and that's where we would line up. In essence, is 8 unrelated. But really, if you look at this, Highland— these are persons, these aren't family. This is related or unrelated.

They're captured here.

12 or 10. And so we're potentially being even more liberal by doing a single family. Um, I'm going to skip this real quick and just go to conclude. Kind of, we're getting to the point of where do we go from here? Um, I'm going to kind of give a really poor analogy at best, is I've kind of been a trail guide trying to point out this is maybe poison ivy. Poison oak. Let's not pet the rattlesnake. Let's not try to get too close to the baby moose. But I want to make sure that we get to the destination we want to get to. And that's kind of where the council— you're driving the train, but we've got passengers on the train too. So I'm giving you a way mixed metaphor here.

I don't even get it.

So ultimately, we've got to ask the group, do we want to get to the summit of Timpanogos? Do we only want to go to Emerald Lake? Or did we really want to go do Timpanogos Caves? I understand that.

Very good.

Got it.

So I don't want to lead you where we don't want to go is ultimately what I'm getting at.

I'm impressed with the progress you made from 2 opposing sides. Very good.

And I appreciate the care you're taking with it, because it is a difficult issue. And I know Brent had some ideas on where we might go next.

So, yeah, if I can interject, and I agree, I think Jake and Steve and our legal department have done a phenomenal job in making a ton of progress and refining from where we started to where we are today, obviously in proposed draft form. And, and also genuinely, you as a council have been approaching this True spirit of public service, trying to be open and conscientious of all viewpoints on it. And during that process, as I've heard from you and talked with you, um, it's on the one hand, uh, you wanted to consider, you know, do we, do we have a short-term rental operator-specific committee?

Or on the other, side of the spectrum?

Do we do, you know, a full survey process with, with all of our residents? And, and as I've considered that in other projects or studies that we do, um, we tend to try to find a middle ground, and especially when there's a wide spectrum of where we can go. And typically what we do is we try to establish a focus group of sorts. And so my thought is, what if we took— what if you consider taking an existing commission? Like the neighborhood commission. It already has representation all over the city, something of a diverse background of viewpoints and opinions. And would also be interacting with both neighborhoods and operators. We could have Jake and team go and meet with them and educate them. They could provide feedback that would hopefully be informed from here, both from staff and the public. You could have access to those meetings. Those are open meetings as well. Engage or not as you see fit there.

Um.

Anyway, my thought was maybe that could be our sort of middle ground path forward to continue to refine here. Essentially, use an existing group who we know cares about the city, we know cares about people's viewpoints. Um, they can also provide feedback not only in a more informed way, but also in a more timely way. We don't want this to necessarily go on forever. We don't want to keep everyone in suspense for too long. So I think we could make concerted effort and not delay too long either. That's my thought on it. It's just a suggestion. Um, I don't know what you think about the idea.

Okay, good. Does anyone have anything to say to that?

I just think the homeowner-occupied thing is a different animal than the other one. I agree with the homeowner-occupied, that Just a question. What does that do to momentum? I feel like we're making really good progress. I'm losing more hair.

It feels like we're down to the 2—

occupancy and parking are the 2 big sticking points.

This is about ready to go.

I think it definitely does.

Reverse us, because we could take where it's at today and say, hey, look, we've refined it to this point. Help educate you on, you know, this process that we've already gone through. And here's our remaining, you know, rattlesnakes on the side, or here's the difference between Emerald Lake or Timpanogos Cave.

We want to have a time limit so that we get the response, because there's so many that are a little impatient in our process.

I think we absolutely could do that.

Yeah.

And I think it would be helpful for this group of STR that has become organized, maybe an OREM—

the OREM Short-Term Rental Association.

I think it would be helpful to at least let them present to the group or involve them in the discussion with the group. But I think—

I don't think so. I think we need to let the Neighborhood Commission have their open conversations.

Well, I don't think they need to be there for the discussion, but maybe they could like have some kind of Before the discussion.

I, I love what Jake just did.

I like his presentation.

I mean, I feel like he covered the whole scene, both sides.

Yeah, um, I just don't want either side coming into the meeting. I, I just feel like if we give one side, we have to give the other side, and then we're choosing sides and we're creating this push-pull for these neighborhood commission members who are volunteers, you know, who live in the neighborhood with some of these short-term rental people. To, you know, it's their neighbors. I think no one wants to disagree with their neighbor, and it's just a tough position to be in. So I really like the objectivity of Jake's presentation.

I don't mind if anybody comes and sits in the meeting, you know, listens.

But, um, I think there's a lot of information, great information there. We've got great people on our commission.

Is he here?

I don't see I mean, they cover all the warrants.

Yeah, I just say I think we've made so much progress, like Jeff said, maybe we just see if they can button it up.

You just want to do a timeline and say have it figured out by—

I don't think we need to put a deadline right now.

No, our next meeting is scheduled. I think what would be great to help our people understand where— what our timeline is, because I think a lot of people are asking. You've been talking about this for a long time. We're leaving the homeowners in limbo, we're leaving the residents in limbo. I think it'd be great to just shoot for some kind of end goal.

You're going to send out this information, we'll have a chance to dig into it a little more depth. I got to believe by our next City Council meeting we could give a little more feedback and be ready to go.

I think our next meeting's September 11th, and then you need to give time to think about it, right? To meet a second time. I don't have a problem with that. I mean, I'm just— if, if I'm hearing a 2-week timeline, I don't think that's going to—

we're talking like end of October, maybe November.

Yeah, by the next city council meeting, not going to happen.

Hopefully for sure, kind of a thing after we've done all of this extra.

Yeah, I think that's always been the goal.

Okay. All right, you good, Jake? I mean, I'm looking at my—

because I would hope that we could continue to have Jake's help to manage it from here. So, so making sure he's got a couple of meetings with the committee.

And I think we can use city funds to buy some Rogaine.

Hey, listen, a hike to Tim Cave is harder and hair's overrated.

I think he looks great.

I do too.

He's used it. He just spilled it on his back.

Thanks.

Visual cue.

I think Jake is also a pretty tough guy, and he can help ensure that people see the commission feeling safe and protected.

Yes, that's my biggest concern right there. We just need to make sure— we've had some commission members attacked on social media, so we need to make sure that doesn't happen.

Okay, thank you, Jake, for that. Um, and I hope our residents know that all of us just want to come to a place that's reasonable and fair because this is a tough decision and a tough discussion. And we know it impacts a lot of people either way. So everybody in this room and beyond is really trying their best to make that. Should we move on to 1.5?

Yeah, food.

Okay, why don't we take— I love you people. Take 5 minutes to grab food, and then we'll come back and do item 1.5. And we're going to hustle through it because we also have to do the agenda preview.

We need to bump it.

Oh, it's a 30-minute presentation.

Uh, I thought it was 15.

I'm okay bumping it too.

Is anyone object to bumping it?

We get this thing moving.

1.5? I'm, I'm— if nobody's opposed, I can bump it.

For which?

1.5?

I'm okay to—

the mayor wanted to be here.

Majority of you?

Okay, sounds great.

Okay, then we'll take 10 minutes to eat. We'll keep that one.

You can do the agenda, and then we'll do the—

Jeff's going to say the prayer.

Jeff will say the prayer for us.

Thank you.

Okay, time for prayer.

Father in heaven, we're so grateful to be together this evening under such favorable conditions. We're grateful for this time together and the conversations and discussions that we've had. Pray that thy spirit will continue to be with us through the remainder of this evening. We're grateful for this meal which we are about to partake of and the means in which it has been provided. We pray, Father, that thou would bless it, we might receive nourishment and strength, and that we might use that to do good. We humbly pray in the name of Jesus Christ.

Amen.

Amen.

Update on the mortgage.

Yeah, I told you he didn't care. That's why he's not here. So this is a short version.

Otherwise, I'll take much longer. Um, Library Commission is, um, moving forward. There are plans and updates for the remodel as we have been through various— had various activities. We've all walked through library, we've been back into different parts of the city with the demolition that's occurred. So it's well underway for The upgrade, remodel, enhancement— the library is in good hands with all of those. They're the scientists and trying to meet the needs of the public. I personally, just as a, as an aside, we've had several who have mentioned that there were the old— is it the parent—

what's it called?

All of the games and toys?

Perk.

The old park, they just are now more accessible. And so there are many who have been able to utilize that resource that hadn't been the past because they were provided to. So there's many good things happening there. Historical Preservation Advisory Commission is the one where we just have that survey that's just occurred by our person who's come into the area and Professionally taking care of that floor. And let us know, basically, the older historical homes in each neighborhood within the city, geographical kind of area, going through a mapping process. And so every few years they are able to map out a new area, and the process is ongoing. When we hear more back on those details, we'll be able We're also heavily involved in going to the neighboring cities that have historical cabins or other types of resources and making sure that those that we have, we're taking proper care of, preserving, and providing access. And so that's an ongoing pursuit. For example, several of the parks, we have some of those things. As time goes on, we'll be preserving and providing access to the public.

Yep.

The Events Commission, which, which has sprung out of the, uh, is now an ongoing commission that helps with all of the ongoing major events, not just Orem Fest. And that's evolved into creating ideas for, for example, the Lights On The, uh, taste of our evening events on Wednesday, just being aware of what's there. And, and I think the most important thing that happened, this will relate to all of you, the Planning Commission, we're putting in place safeguards that allow, uh, the city to have proper priorities, licensing, insurance. Staff oversight, as well as interaction by all the volunteers that want to work on this commission, so that there can be that balance between organized proper paperwork and licensing, as well as citizens being involved in the volunteer basis and creating these amazing citywide fun events. I can see as a future for that events commission. We've addressed it slightly by the Heart of Orem and many other things. As we expand and the city grows potentially into the next decades, um, there will be lots of things that we need to look at, try and help mitigate the 300,000 folks in the city park in 3 days. Other things that we— the blessing of success is the blessing of success. We have more and more people. So I think those are good opportunities for us to look at. Anything else you want to say on events? Because you're part of that. And then I'm involved in, and most recently, uh, the Utah League of Cities and Towns. Monday we had— yesterday, I guess that is. Feels like it's a week already in 2 days. Um, a 2.5-hour meeting regarding housing and water and state. Um, and the state's response to the various housing kinds of things. Um, the pushback of the league versus the role of others who are trying to state mandate zoning and other things. I think he's talking about the, um, another, another internal and external. And so that they just provided information. The goal of the league is to try and get the state to let the cities manage those. We're managing them, so as long as the state sees managing, they can just let us do our stuff and not make that roll out. And then we had a long, um, presentation by the water person in the state talking about water fees and water ability. Um, so that's just the latest Every Friday fact sheet. I think all of us want to receive those. Um, and, and we've all been invited, as we wish, to be involved and engaged in any of the commissions, any of the individual small structures. They have study groups, colloquies, various kinds of things. If anybody wants to get involved, they're happy to have you. And, uh, always looking for folks to just speak up and share, help all of us do better as a state by, by city involvement through make sure that you're not getting run over, kind of like what the federal does, the state does, the city.

We're just trying to all work together and make it better for all of us.

That's the fast version about kind of what we're doing.

Thank you, Chris.

Thank you.

Uh, thanks, Chris. We are going to do a quick agenda review, but since you're back, what do you want to do?

Carry on.

Well, I'd like us to start on time if we can in council meeting, and I just realized that clock is not actually right. It's slow. So we are already behind.

Is that why we're behind?

Yeah, it's 5:56 or 7. Yeah. So, are you planning to— okay, well, then if you want to review the agenda, we'll let you do that.

Otherwise, my—

By the way, some of you will know that a man named Andy Jacobs, who was a Track coach for a long, long time, passed away this last week at the age of 50. And, and he died of a heart attack. This is a guy who didn't just ride his bike with his runners, he ran with the runners and could try to keep up.

Yeah, but he died of a heart attack.

Wow.

And the family was gonna— had asked me to, but they determined that they weren't emotionally ready to be here, and so that's going to be delayed. So that little thing you see written on is not going to happen today. I'd asked Bran and Mayor—

So we don't want to do—

I think they want the same way we do.

We could do a moment of silence, but then we'd do again in 2 weeks or 4 weeks, or I just think we—

His funeral this weekend.

Yeah, they moved it to Saturday. It was going to be yesterday.

They had a lot of tributes.

The coaches came and take my trash, you know, that kind of stuff. So they had a lot of fun and he's a member of my LDS stake.

And anyway, we're going to wait on it.

Okay. And when it does, I'll bring it up again if you'll let me.

That'd be great.

Yeah, thanks for bringing us up to speed on that. That'd be great. I'll just race through this.

We've got a couple minutes.

That clock is— now we have like 2 minutes after this. Yeah, no, wait.

And then City Council, I've given you, um, a copy of that.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Right, traffic.

Okay, that was all yours.

No. Thank you, Jen.

Happy to help.

Can I get Mayor?

Bruno's right next to me babysitting.

Our meeting short today.

Do you need an agenda?

Again, I don't want to answer that question because I don't want to jinx it.

What's going on today?

Short-term rentals. Oh, you know, I'm like, be more patient.

Test, test, test, test.

Test, test.

I'd like to welcome everyone here tonight. We appreciate you coming, and we'll call this meeting to order. We'll start out with an invocation by Anita Palfreman and a Pledge of Allegiance by Robert Palfreman, and these are friends of Jen's who asked them to come. And so, Jen, if you'd like to introduce them. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

I would love to. Nina and Robert are my neighbors, and they are some of the most civic-minded people I know. They're always doing things to support their community and fulfill their civic responsibilities. They also volunteer extensively. They've worked with the Boy Scouts. Robert substitute teaches in the school. He has the best laugh, and we are grateful that they could come tonight.

Our dear Father in Heaven, we are so grateful to be— live in this wonderful town, this wonderful city of Orem, and for the leadership that we have.

We're grateful for this great community.

We're grateful for the rain that has come. We pray, Heavenly Father, this day that thy Spirit will be here in this meeting, that we can discuss and, and the most pertinent things and come to the best conclusions, that we can truly make Orem a better place. And this we pray in the name of thy Son, Jesus Christ.

Amen.

Amen.

Would you please join me in the Pledge of Allegiance? 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, both of you. We'll move on to item 7.1. We have a presentation with Elder McCann on the JustServe plaque.

My name is Val Hale.

I'm the JustServe specialist for Central Orem and back again after You, you signed the proclamation, and so Elder McCann is here to actually present you with the official plaque. And Elder McCann is one of 2 Area Authority Seventies assigned here in Orem, and so I'll turn the time over to him.

Hey, can we make sure that mic is turned up all the way? We're having a hard time hearing up here.

I'll yell.

We want to, on behalf of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, present the city of Orem with this JustServe city status for the JustServe program.

As you know, this is a worldwide effort.

And this confers city status. There is also something known as global status, and we would encourage Orem to continue to seek that increased status. The last time I checked on the JustServe website for the city of Orem, there were almost 600 projects and opportunities to serve. Which is a significant opportunity for this community and the people in it to bless lives and serve others. And so we present this in proclamation of our work to unite the community with hope and goodness through service.

Can you tell us what the global requirement is?

Because Um, you know, I, I don't know if Val knows those requirements, but should we?

You're well on the way. One of the things is identifying and honoring citizens who exhibit exemplary service in your community. I'll get with Debbie D'Amico and share with her all of the criteria so that you'll have them, but I think Gorham won't have much of a problem achieving that status. So thank you.

Thank you. Yeah, let's do a photo.

Here we go.

1, 2, 3.

All right, thanks.

Thank you. We appreciate that. Next up, we've got item 7.2, the citizens budget, and this is from Jenica Jones from Strategies Innovations, is going to present that.

Thank you, Mayor and Council. Uh, I'm excited to be here tonight to kind of just announce what we have done again this year. So if you'll remember, last year we did the first citizens budget in just an effort to increase transparency, um, and foster trust among our residents, help them be able to better understand our finances even if they're not an accountant. I know people love diving into the full budget document, but it's not for everybody. We don't want to replace that by any means, but we want to build a tool to help people better understand what the city's revenues and expenditures are, kind of how our departments are funded and how the city is funded. Also understand our property sales taxes, kind of how those are distributed amongst various entities. So our team has created this. It's been a great project for our interns. Um, so this year we've had Ben, who's here today. He's our intern. He's taken the lead on this project, and we're grateful for his efforts. Uh, so it's really a condensed way to be able to look at, and I'll just kind of show a digital version here. Um, so some of the major projects and accomplishments in Orem. This is available online right now on the city's finances webpage, just some kind of generic overview information about the city. And then where this represents our revenues, how those are broken up amongst various sources, our expenditures and how they're divided into different funds. And then also kind of information about our general fund, as it's the largest operating— major operating fund of the city. Uh, kind of go through how we fund different departments, essential services in the city as well, uh, major capital projects and things that are exciting to come. So, again, I'm not going to go through all of this, and I know that you all can do that. So we just want to help people better understand our finances and. I hope this will be a tool that you can use as you communicate with residents, and also that our residents use as they strive to understand the city's finances. So with that, any questions about the citizen's budget?

Where can citizens access the citizen's budget?

Yeah, so right now it's on orem.gov/cityfinances linked, and we'll also have printed copies available soon in the help center that they can pick up and take as well.

Yeah, no, any other questions? No, I think that's great what you guys do. I mean, just take a complex document and get it down to something that everyone can understand. So that's, that's awesome. Yeah, and I like the way that it shows up so low on our property tax category too.

Yep, we're always at the bottom there.

So that's great.

Okay, that's all I have. Thank you so much.

Okay, thank you, Jenica. Next up, we've got item 7.3, uh, BABO Build a Better Orem Award winners, and Amy Peterson is going to present that.

Okay, thank you, Mayor and Council. I'm excited to be here tonight to recognize all of our 2025 BABO nominees. our awardees. If you guys can all—

all of you that are here, come up and stand in the front.

The BABA Awards were instituted several years ago as a way to recognize employees who were fulfilling the city's mission to build a better Orem. The award process starts in the early summer as employees submit nominations for their peers. The nominations are taken to the Employee Advisory Council, a group of employees elected by departments in every level of leadership to represent the employees as a whole. The EAC deliberates for hours over the awards and makes the very difficult decision on who to award. The BABO Awards include the Rising Star Award, which recognizes outstanding contributions from part-time employees who make a full-time impact. The Rookie of the Year is the new employees bring new ideas, new energy, and new life to the team, and this award recognizes those who have been with us— been with the city for less than 2 years. Then we have our BABO Award. There's more than one way to build a better Orem, and this award recognizes full-time employees in every department for the many great things they do to make Orem a place where families can thrive. And then our Employee of the Year, which is our big award, and it is given to the employee who arguably has the most significant impact on the organization over the last year. The Babel Awards are a beloved tradition and a great opportunity to recognize true excellence in the city's workforce. This year's Rising Stars are Jenny Collins from Finance, Tacoma Parkinson from Community Development, and our Rookie of the Year Awards go to Chris Hutchings from Management Services, Ali Leone from Legal Services, Cameron Robinson from Recreation here. And then our 9 Babel Awards went to Lori Kreiman from the City Manager's Department, Katie Stobie from Police, Aurelie Martinez from the Library, Kevin Kreiman from Community Development, Mike Hickman with Fire, Tiffany Lawrence with Legal Services, Jennica Jones from Management Services, Cody Stegel from Public Works, and Katie Smith from Police. And our Employee of the Year Award went to Carlo Okulwicz. Then just real quick, I'll just read a segment of the nomination for Carlo. Carlo was a cornerstone of the new City Hall project quietly ensuring its success. His leadership on the technology side of the build was nothing short of extraordinary. From design to move-in, Carlo was involved in every detail— relocating servers, configuring fiber optics, deploying security systems, and managing the phone transition. His expertise prevented countless costly mistakes, and his tireless work, often late at night or early in the morning, kept the project on track. Thanks to Carlo, Orem's tech infrastructure is not just functional, it's ready for the future. His leadership, diligence, and unwavering dedication continue to raise the bar for what's possible. So please join me in recognizing our 2025 Babbo awardees.

Can I just say something? Um, I want you to all understand that this is a really big deal. We had a— we had an event, uh, just last week where all these, uh, employees got— received their awards. Uh, we had all the, all the employees except the few that had shifts going were there. That was their peers. They, they voted for them because they felt like they were the best and, and really doing a phenomenal job. Now, I'm just gonna have Brian, if you could just kind of give it a— give us a You know, the audience an update, or not an update, but just an overview of how this came to be and what your take on it is.

Yeah, so, um, the city's done some type of employee award for, for many years, and a few years ago we wanted to kind of take it to the next level. And in part it was because we were getting a lot of suggestions and compliments. and appreciation expressed by our employee body. And so we have, we've kind of ramped up our training, and we call that Building a Better Orem training. And we have kind of a series of trainings that goes along with that. And so we wanted to kind of incorporate that, I guess, that message in the awards we give too. And so each employee and employee group, they come up with the write-ups. Uh, for these awards and nominate them. And then we have an employee committee that looks at all of those nominations and then puts them under different award categories. And then ultimately, that's what we bring to our annual employee appreciation event. So, um, this isn't like a top-down, you know, coming from the city manager, picking and choosing his favorites. This is a kind of a full-on, um, everyone watching out for their team member and, and really genuinely wanting to express appreciation and kudos for the incredible work that they're doing that is just beyond themselves, right? And it's part of building a community, building a team, and, and doing something that's more than just the individual.

And this year we had a record number of nominations. We had 107 come in, so the EAC had the task of narrowing it down to 15. So we have a lot of nominations.

And I just want to say, you know, they— we were invited as city council to go and hand out these appreciation awards, and we got to, um, read the write-ups that were submitted for these individuals and more. And it was just very heartwarming to me to see the heart and the soul of everyone who makes Orem such a great place. And, you know, shout out to legal who got someone. I know it was so fun to see the different groups— library, legal— when their people would be called. That, um, loyalty and those relationships and that culture. And, you know, I've worked places that don't necessarily have a great culture, and I've worked places that have. And it was fun to see that on Thursday, all you guys just cheering for each other and yet having your own little groups too that you were cheering for us. So thank you for all you do. That was amazing to hear and to read those write-ups.

Well, thank you. Let's take a picture.

All right, here we go.

1, 2, 3.

Thank you.

And, uh, I just want to emphasize that we really do appreciate our employees, and we really feel that the last few years they really stepped things up and, and, uh, really have an agenda to be the best, be the best in the state. We've got item 7.4. A report from Chris Shirkey on our Public Works Advisory Commission.

Just give us a moment to set this up, please.

Just to let you know that Chris runs a tight ship.

There we go.

Just to let you know, Chris runs a tight ship here.

It's been good working with him.

So, Mayor and Council, I'd like to recognize Jim Michaelis as our chairman of our Public Works Advisory Commission. I believe we have a couple other board members here tonight. If you, if you wouldn't mind standing, we could recognize you as well. Uh, Brent Tobler and then Gary Morley are also on our commission. We have a 7-member commission, and we'll be presenting on that right now. And so, let's go ahead and start. Jim, if you'd like to introduce everybody that's on the commission.

Uh, yeah, we've got myself, and then we've got Todd Hadley. He's a senior network and security engineer at Nelson Laboratories. We've got Joe Gordon. He's lead linguist project manager at Utah Translation and Analysis Center. Uh, Robert Moore, general counsel at Central Utah Water Conservancy District. Gary Morley, retired DPM. Brent Tobler, Vice President of Products Engineering at West Tech Engineering. And Michael Wimpey, assistant general manager at Central Utah Water Conservancy District.

Over the years, we've had a wide variety of volunteers that have served on this committee and commission, and we'd like to recognize that they've done an outstanding job for us and represented the city quite well. Jim is serving his 2nd term consecutively. He actually was an inaugural member in 2014, I believe. And, um, so it's been a pleasure working with Jim. Just like to outline some of the duties and responsibilities. I'm not going to read through all of these, but— and give you some background and history. This is taken directly from our city code regarding our duties and responsibilities. I think some of the main responsibilities of this commission are to make recommendations and review and perform and assist in studies relevant to city infrastructure. Such as water, sewer, stormwater, streetlights, roads, telecommunications, broadband fiber, cemetery, parks, and fleet. Um, in 2014, when, when this was created originally, the, um, the commission was— the thought was, is that we needed assistance and help from our community at large to review some of these master plans that we were going to be embarking on in 2014. And that's when that was— the actual commission was created at that time. In 2017, it was expanded to an additional 2 members of a 9-member commission to address some of the concerns and issues relevant to Utopia and UIA, at which time we had 3 members that were broadband experts that were added to that commission. In this last year, we were able to meet 7 times. In August of '24, we met with our GIS, or our Geographic Information Systems Division, that was recently created. It was about 2 years ago. We also met and had a tour with Central Utah Water Conservancy District at the Olmsted Hydroelectric Power Plant, which was originally created over 120 years ago. We had an opportunity to also review the Women and Children Memorial that was presented by Rob Beischlein of Method Studios, as well as our Timpanogos Skills Park expansion, which we're in, in the midst of our phase reconstruction right now. Uh, the commission also met with Bowen Collins and Associates to review all of our utility master plans, and subsequently we met with our financial advisor, Lewis Robertson Birmingham, to review the associated financial plans that would support the implementation of those master plans. In April of this year, we also had an opportunity to meet with our financial advisor, advisor Fred Philpott, Regarding our, um, our, uh, let's see, the utility master plans and also the impact fees, impact fees associated with sewer, water, stormwater, uh, transportation, public safety, parks, um, and so forth. And then lastly, we met just a couple of months ago at the, uh, and took a tour of the Don A. Christianson Regional water treatment plant, and that was just recently. Just to give you an update, we had our— a GIS division was created 2 years ago. Over the years, over the last 25 years or more, we've managed geographic data, and I think we've done a relatively good job of that. However, GIS is an emerging technology and a growing technology. It's not new, but we're refining it and growing it over time. Jim had the opportunity to work as a facilities— he was the associate vice president over facilities at UVU. And so he understands the importance of knowing your assets, where they are, what they are, what kind of condition they're in. It's important that we do a regular condition assessment on all of our utilities, including street lighting, water, sewer systems, so forth. Um, do you have any comment you'd like to make regarding that?

It's just important to make Sure, you know what your assets are because you need to be able to repair them. If you take care of them beforehand, it's much better than trying to go back in and repair them on Christmas Eve or something like that. So it's important just to know what you've got and be able to track it and, and be on top of it.

So, thank you.

Yeah, so they really dovetailed into our master plans also because we needed to know the size of the pipe, the condition of the pipe, how the age of the pipe, the frequency of repairs we've had to make in that segment of pipe and so forth. We try not to spend taxpayer dollars too soon. We try to spend them at the right time. Um, you know, we can't predict the future, but we don't want to spend them too soon in order to repair or replace a system that might have damage or needs. Um, we did also visit the hydroelectric plant, which is, in my opinion, Quite a fascinating feature that we have in the city of Orem. It's one of the first hydroelectric facilities west of the Mississippi in the United States. It was implemented, originally created in the early 1900s. Prior to this, there was a hydroelectric plant at Nuns Park. You may have heard of Nuns Park. That power was used to generate power, or that plant was used to generate power for mine— mines on the west side of Utah Lake. So the lines were 100-mile-long lines were laid all all the way out to the west side of the lake regarding mining projects. This supplanted that. And how this generates power is we take water at the Olmsted diversion off the Provo River, and that same Olmsted pipe, we convey about 60% of our drinking water today to our treatment plant. Some of that water is diverted through this power plant in this facility that was refurbished, or actually reconstructed, about 4 or 5 years ago. So it was a really neat opportunity for us to see, look back on some of the history and learn about some of the men who had served there, such as George Westinghouse, Thomas Edison, and Nikola Tesla were all there as a part of that facility. There was an electrical engineering, I would say, a course that was there. There were— there was much trial and error. Regarding hydroelectric power that resulted in potentially in some deaths that occurred at that location as well. Historically, it's very fascinating, the history that we have that's deep and rich here in the city of Orem. Um, Jim, would you like to speak a little bit about these memorials?

Um, yeah, this is a memorial that's been talked about. Um, we've discussed the location of this, uh, Memorial. It's kind of interesting where that location is. It's a rather busy intersection right there. There's some talk about just moving it to the cemetery instead, where it'd be a little bit more convenient there and more reflective to have that, that there. But it's a gravesite.

Yes, so there's a— there are 2 pioneer children that were actually buried at or near this location.

It's—

we've tried with others to try to determine where those burial sites are located. We have not been successful in locating them, but we know— in fact, Lynnae and I actually know the people that had lived there before the Callander family, and it was some of their relatives, and they maybe homesteaded in this area. And we also worked with a volunteer at— and Mrs. Barrick as well, and a volunteer student at BYU, who helped investigate and determine and generate some interest in this history and recognize the need to perhaps create a memorial at or near this location.

Can I just say something about that?

Yeah.

Just the incredible thing to me about that is, like Chris said, we've heard this story about the pioneer babies for 35 years, right? The whole time we've lived there. And it was just considered lore. We didn't really know if that was actual or not. But it was this BYU student who found the journal of the woman who had the children, who was the mother of these children. So to connect all that, and to just see the reverence that we feel about this area, that that family felt about this area, that was just kind of really heartwarming to see that actually come about.

Yeah.

It's an interesting history that we have right here, right, right in the midst of us. There's a similar memorial that we refer— that we have also considered and are reviewing to be located on the northwest corner of the lower cemetery in Orem, which is south of and adjacent to the Murloc Canal Trail. This memorial is anticipated to cost around $1.8 million. We are looking to generate an opportunity for people to make donations, private donations to that. Um, we do have $400,000 set aside for the trailhead portion of this, which would be an interface with the Murdoch Canal Trail. But there would be some duality there in terms of providing a restroom facility and parking, and perhaps a location for people to come and sit and maybe have a picnic lunch or take a break on the trail. Um, both of these projects were designed, at least at this kind of level, by Rob Beischlein with Method Studios. And we were, we're looking forward to this coming to fruition. So we did have an opportunity to review that and work with, with the, with the design team on that. The next thing that we did review and discuss was the Mountain Timpanogos Bike Skills Park. This is phase 3. We have 3 phases total. Phase 3 is under construction today. What this map represents is the west side of the Timpanogos Park. You can see right here as I move my mouse, this is the very west side of west, um, of the Mount Timgundus Park area. So this is about a 6-acre property in this area that's not currently owned by the City of Orem. It's owned by the Central Utah Water Conservancy District. And we have a series of bike skills and things that can be offered in this location, such as represented here. You got the flowy berms, the jumps and dirt lips, I guess what they call it, timber features. And then jumps with wood lips and so forth. This is not for the beginners. This is phase 3. Phase— if you're a beginner and you want to learn bike skills, you go to phase 1 and phase 2, which are on the east, northeast side of the park, just east of our dog park at Mount Timpanogos Park. We are entertaining and going to be entering into an agreement with Central Utah Water to obtain those 6 acres of property in exchange for access through our park and the development of a sedimentation basin that's going to be between the Provo River Trail and the drainage off of the 10 million gallon tank to clean out their tank. They're building a new facility there. It's going to be tucked in away and next to the mountain and inside of some tree locations, but they needed to have access through our park and we needed to formalize that and, and monument, and then also. Uh, tie together that agreement to make that all happen. So it seemed like a very good exchange of property for their access to our site. And we're excited to be able to announce that that'll probably be open at the end of this year. It's well underway. Um, we also had the opportunity to meet with Bowen Collins and Associates regarding our master plans. I mentioned that a minute ago. It's a lengthy process. It takes several months to review the data, to update the data. To, uh, and for example, we're in the midst of finishing our construction on our 10 million gallon tank in Orem on 4th South and 4th West. We haven't broken ground yet for the well or for the booster station. Those are all a part of our 2016 master plan. So here we are, it's 10 years later, and we're going to have them done at about 10 and 10 and a half years after the actual, um, the idea, the concept, and the design was completed. So it does take some time.

Yeah.

But we need to strategically move forward and plan for those future items that are, are improvements that are multigenerational and a great benefit to our community. Um, we also reviewed the, the, uh, the ensuing, um, and justifiable, I would say, rates that are associated with that. This is something that we're proud of, that we're providing great services in the area for a really good value. What we see at the bottom is our rates. Excuse me. For all of these utilities, we're 2nd at the bottom. And this is compared against other communities against their FY25 rates. And those— so these are our FY26 rates. So our rates are still very comparable and very competitive, and we offer a great value to the community.

And I think that's— we get into a discussion on that quite a bit on the rates and, you know, the public doesn't want the rates increased, obviously, but on the other hand, we have to maintain the facilities that we have. And without some kind of increase, how are we going to maintain the facilities that we've got? So those are quite the discussions we get into during that time.

So.

I would say we've even had some debates as a commission, which have been healthy. They've been very good. We've gone back and forth on certain ideas, some debates that you perhaps have had from the dais right here, very similar. And, uh, it's good. It's good to have a healthy, uh, robust, uh, commission that can review, uh, some really tough issues and then bring, bring forward a professional recommendation on behalf of those professionals that have brought them forward to us. So, the last thing, or second to last thing we did— was there a question?

No.

I'm sorry. Now, the 2nd to last thing that we did was review the impact fees. Um, the, the contract was with Lewis Robertson Birmingham to look at impact fees in our community for sewer, water, stormwater, but also includes parks, public safety, including police and fire and transportation. Impact fees are updated about every 5 to 7 years, and we're, we're at the tail end of that and having a final recommendation that will be coming for you to review soon. And that's all been vetted and reviewed on behalf of the commission as well. The last thing we did this last year was we met at the Don A. Christianson Regional Water Treatment Plant. This regional water treatment plant provides us a lot of, uh, a series of water treatment processes, including Ozonation, and then sedimentation, flocculation, um, and then the processing of that and the filtration of that water, and then chlorination is the final element to provide drinking water. So, this is strategically located and associated with the Provo River system, where we divert the water off the Olmsted— or excuse me, in the Olmsted flow line, which is— there is a diversion upstream of Timpanogos Park off the Provo River. 60% of our drinking water is treated here. And then put it, put into our system. So we have a very good and robust relationship with Central Utah Water. We're grateful for the treatment facility that was initially constructed in 1976. Are there any questions you might have for the commission?

Do we have any questions? We should have at least a question.

I have a question for you, Chris. Are we, you know, we switch from springs to wells to the tanks with our water. About when does that happen when we start?

Oh, so we use them throughout the year.

So we have—

I thought the springs ran like low.

The springs run low in the winter and they run highest probably in around August.

Okay, so we're not quite there yet.

Yeah, we're about that. We're about peak right now.

Okay.

For springs. And then our wells, we run them primarily in the summertime when we have peak demands to water lawns and so forth. The wintertime, we use about 10 million gallons a day as a community citywide in the wintertime— or excuse me, in the wintertime. And then the summertime, we're using around 50 million gallons a day. So we utilize all of our resources at that time. And then in the wintertime, we let this— we let the wells to rest, and then we let our aquifer rebound every year. So we have a very good, well-diversified, I would say, source Uh, water source in our, in our community. And this last year, we, um, this last year, we basically are dedicating our 10 million gallon tank, which is new because all of our resources are— all of our eggs have been in the basket in Northeast Orem, up by the Wasatch Fault. We decided we needed to put that somewhere else, and that's about, uh, 2— it's like 1/3 of our drinking water, uh, of our, um, of our storage facilities is at the location there. So we are diversifying it that way as well and not putting all of our eggs in that one basket. get a nor'easter storm.

So, so you, you want to put the new water over on the side of town that's not going to get affected by the earthquake?

Yes.

And that's very appreciated how, like you mentioned, you know, the reason we have the water we have is because for those who had gone before us, right, that reserved that water and were active in understanding the importance of that. And, you know, the tank was planned 10 years ago and yeah. You know, we're, we're there where it's finally coming to a point there and we get to have a park in that area.

Correct.

So lots of great things happening, and I appreciate you guys and your forethought and your planning. I don't think people recognize that planning happens every day, and it's not necessarily for when something we're going to enjoy, you know.

So thank you.

Thank you very much.

Can you give us an update too, Chris, since you asked for questions? On the 4th South, uh, 10 million gallon water tank?

Yes.

Okay. So, is that operating fully?

The tank is, is, is operational, but we're not operating it, meaning, uh, we need the booster station, and that's going to be— we're going to break ground probably this next week. We have a contract underway, and they're going to be mobilizing over the next week for about 18 months. There'll be a booster station that'll be used, utilized, and connected to that tank, and that tank, that water from that tank will then be pumped into our system. Without that booster tank, we cannot pump it into the pressurized system. That's about 70 PSI or 60 PSI.

So, so we haven't seen any impact yet from— the reason I'm getting asked questions is if it's affecting water pressure anywhere yet, or if it will affect water pressure.

If there's any pressure fluctuation, it's not related to that, that project yet. That won't be underway until about 18 months from now.

Okay.

And we have met with some people who have expressed some concerns, and there may have been an issue with a pressure regulating valve in that area that we've addressed.

Okay. Yeah, no, that's why I was getting questions on was water pressure. And yeah, so I just want to put that together.

If I may, Mayor, please. You know, about a year ago, we had the opportunity to go into that water tank and how huge it is, is not— I don't think you can tell as you drive by. Are photos of that available at the inside of that well on our website?

We do have those available. I would have to talk with Pete regarding that.

Perhaps he's over here, readily accessible or available.

Do you have any there, Pete? We can get them to Pete and we can publish them out there.

I think it might be, it might be good, Pete, to have a social media post on that, particularly when it starts to operate. It might be good to go walk through a little bit of that history.

Absolutely, yes.

And when again will that station Station be up and going?

You're 18 months.

18 months.

Okay.

So we'll have a big ribbon cutting then. Are you going to wait?

Yes.

Yes.

Okay.

I mean, we could do it for the park. The park is going to be open. It might— I don't think it's open yet, but it's going to be open shortly. Really soon, actually. Um, regarding the tank and your comment on the tank, it's 330 feet in diameter and it's 18 feet deep. So that's over a football field long in diameter. And it's, it's incredible.

And it actually feels a lot bigger than a football field when you're inside. It does more like a Coliseum.

Yeah.

So, okay, any other questions?

No, I just want to say thank you because what you and your commission do is probably one of the most important things happening in the city and nobody thinks about it. They just go about their lives. They turn on the faucet and water comes out and we're just really grateful. So, thank you.

Thank you. Appreciate your support.

Okay, thank you. Thank you for that presentation. Okay, moving on. Personal appearances. Let me just read about personal appearances. Time has been set aside for the public to express their ideas, concerns, and comments on items not scheduled as public hearings on the agenda. Those wishing to speak are encouraged to show respect for those who serve the city. Comments should focus on issues concerning the city. Those wishing to speak should have signed in before the beginning of the meeting, and please limit your comments to 3 minutes or less. So with that, as I call your name, go ahead and come up. Uh, let's go with Jeff Harris first.

Good evening, council. My name is Jeff Harris. I'm, uh, is this on?

Can't hear you.

How's that?

Is that better? My name is Jeff Harris. I'm, um, not a resident of, of Orem. But I am a Utah resident. I represent Costco. We're a very large vacation rental management company with over 46,000 homes nationwide. I personally own a franchise of Costco, and I operate in the Heber City, Park City area. We do have homes that we operate in Utah County, including Sundance and Orem. The reason why I came here tonight, and frankly, I was very impressed when I came to the working session. I saw that there was organization. Here, I saw that a lot of forethought had been put into a potential regulation and ordinance regarding responsibly managing vacation rentals. That's my function to be here tonight, is to offer my services. I have spent 15 years doing this. I'm good at it. I helped the City of Anaheim with their nightly rental policy as part of the Anaheim Rental Alliance. I helped author the current ordinance, ordinance that Heber City uses, and I would like to.

Thank you.

To offer my services to the city of Orem. It's important to me that this is done properly. Um, I heard the concerns of the, um, uh, city attorney, or I'm sorry, what your title— don't remember what your title was, but those concerns are valid. Those homeowners have valid concerns. If this is not done right, it can be a disaster for the, for the homeowners who do not like to— who have a perception that this is a bad thing for their neighborhood. It can be a good thing for the city and for these neighborhoods. If it's done properly. Um, I don't know who the folks are that are already kind of organized together, but again, I'd like to offer my services if you all stick around. If someone wants to reach out to me, if you don't need my help, then that's fine. But I don't see why you wouldn't want my help. I've been doing this a very long time and I have a lot to offer.

So that's what I had to say.

Thank you.

It would be Jake. So Jake in the very back would be, would be the contact person to talk to. As far as exactly what you're talking about.

Okay.

Next, I've got Janet Walker. Or I'm sorry, James Walker. Yeah, James.

Mayor Young and members of the City Council, thank you and good evening. Um, I live in an area where short-term rentals are causing very problematic events for our family. Over 15 years, my wife and I have been raising our 5 children on a quiet cul-de-sac in North Orem. Next door is a large home with a beautiful backyard. 4 years ago, began— they began advertising an Airbnb for venue of weddings, Parties and photo shoots. Uh, that might sound harmless at first, but in practice, it has turned our street into something very different. The listing itself advertises the property sleeps 20 people. That means on a regular weekend, we could have 20 cars, 20 strangers, or more in our cul-de-sac. And that's for an overnight stay. When the short-term renters use it as a wedding or party venue, there can be hundreds of attendees filling our street with traffic, parking problems, and strangers who have no connection to our neighborhood, to my children, to my family. It's difficult for me to send my 11-year-old son to his piano lesson. Down the street, because we have no idea who's in our neighborhood. Since the property started being used in short-term rentals, we've seen a dramatic increase in problems. Vehicle break-ins have become common. Loud parties and amplified music go late into the night. We've witnessed open drug use and disruptive behavior from people who don't live here, don't respect the area. What was once a safe, comfortable place to raise my family has become unpredictable and unsettling. To make matters worse, the operators of this property have not been honest with neighbors. They're organized. They have an association. They know what to say. They know how to spin lies. They told me specifically that they had licenses. Although we all know you're proposing changing the ordinance, but it is illegal to operate a short-term rental property in the city of Orem. How does this go on? How do we consider making these changes for the almighty dollar? To be able to fill your pocket so you can get another park bench to solve a problem, raise more revenue. That doesn't help my family. That doesn't make me feel safe at night. I've had people in my pool, in my— in the back of my home, hop the fence in the middle of the night swimming in my pool. I put 30 cameras on my property. It doesn't seem justified that we have to do that. While we may not have an association, I'm asking the city to do more to protect our families and neighborhoods like mine. Please strengthen enforcement, close loopholes, and ensure that homes in residential zones are not turned into commercial venues or hotels. Without meaningful actions, family— families like mine will continue to feel unsafe, unheard, and forced to live with problems that we had never agreed to. When we bought our home 15 years ago. Thank you.

Thank you. Next, we've got Becky Smith.

Hi, I'm Becky Smith. I've lived here for 23 years, and I don't live in a cul-de-sac. I live in a horseshoe. And about 7, 9 months ago, the house across the street from me was bought by a doctor from Texas. And he initially told us that this was going to be a vacation home for him and his family. They love BYU sports, and this was going to be a BYU fan party house for his family. Well, um, at the same time, he was talking to a neighbor down the street who became his property manager. And from the very get-go, it wasn't a family vacation home. It was an Airbnb. It was a rental. We've had school buses pulling up in front of my house. We even had a tour bus. come by one day. One activity was a BYU recruiting party where our whole horseshoe was full of cars. Another experience we had was a fundraiser for someone who had passed away, and that, of course, cars everywhere. I love my neighborhood. It's a quiet, wonderful neighborhood. But just like James said, I don't know my neighbor across the street anymore. Sometimes they're very respectful and it's wonderful, but I never know. I never know if the people are going to be respectful helpful or if they're going to cause trouble. Um, I am looking forward to good laws and good ordinances that will help protect the quiet neighborhoods. Um, this particular BYU prop— well, I can't call it— it's called the BYU Fan House.

That's what it's called.

Um, they have beds enough for 26 people. And they have, um, parking for 7 cars. So everybody else parks all over our streets. Anyway, I am looking forward to our city doing something to keep our quiet neighborhoods quiet. Thank you so much.

Thank you. Last up, we've got Grant Rogers.

Hi, I'm Grant Rogers, and some I know and some I don't. Some I probably wish I knew better. Uh, I'm here on the Airbnb also. There's a couple quick questions. I'm representing some folks that said, can you go down to the meeting and talk with them?

So I'm—

oh, hello.

Okay, so the question we have is right now, how many Airbnbs are there? Do we know? Do we know how many Airbnbs are being operated right now? Because obviously there's some, and up the street from my home there's one also, but it's been there for 2 years. So is there anyone that has information on this? It was fun to listen to and enjoyable to listen to the meeting that This is more just an opportunity for you to speak and make your point. Yeah, I'm just asking questions. I'm not allowed to ask questions of how many Airbnbs?

That's not the format that we have right here, but you can make a presentation. You can gather that information. You can talk to Jake in the back and get that information if you like.

Okay, because right now there are a number of Airbnbs going on, uh, in the— I have a piece of paper called Appendix A. And it shows the different zoning areas, and there's nothing— there's not been anything approved, uh, for Airbnbs on your paper, uh, in the zoning, even up to R-12. There's nothing at this point. So the question is, who's going to enforce it? Talks about in the rough draft of the Airbnb that was presented, uh, that the services director or designee Designee will be the person, the community services director. Who is that right now? Am I allowed to ask that?

Like I said, I explained, if you'd like to— you're using up all your time.

I know, I'm almost—

you've got 3 minutes to basically make a presentation to the council about a concern that you've got, and then afterwards you could talk to Jake in the back who can answer those individual questions, be more time efficient.

Okay. And then the last piece is, I think, like it's been mentioned already, is the enforcement, and that's who we'd like to talk to. And so Jake will give me that information. All right, and thank you very much.

Thank you.

Okay, thank you for your comments. We'll now move on to item number 9, the consent items. On the consent items, we have item 9.1, approval of meeting minutes for June 10th, June 24th, and July 8th of 2025. We've got item 9.2, an appointment to the CDBG Community Development— my goodness, this tongue twister— an appointment to the CDBG Community Development Block Grant Advisory Commission. And we have 2 people who have been recommended for that. If they're here, if they'd like to stand up, we've got James De La Cruz, Joshua Isaacson. And then we've also got a reappointment to the Planning Commission, and that would be Gerald Crimson and James Hawks. And we've also got item 9.4, an appointment. This would be a new appointment to the Neighborhood Advisory Commission, and that's Jana Bauer. Okay, and then item 9.5, a resolution to the Utah Valley Home Consortium. The city council passed resolution approving this agreement in June, but HUD requires that the resolution contain language authorizing the automatic renewal of the agreement. This language is already in the agreement itself. This revised resolution includes the language required by HUD. So those are the consent items. And do we have any questions, or someone like—

I can make a motion.

Motion.

I move that we approve the consent items 9.1 through 9.5 as so listed.

Seconded.

Aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Okay, the consent items are approved, and we want to thank all of you that came out on these different commissions. We really appreciate your volunteering and helping and helping make things happen in the community. You really provide a big role, so thank you. We've got item number 10, scheduled items, and this is item 10.1. This is a canvas. Which is acceptance and certification of the 2025 City of Orem primary election. And Teresa, if you'd like to present that.

All right, City Council, um, you've now turned into the Board of Canvas, so congratulations. All right, um, I gave, um, a bunch of papers to you up there, so we'll kind of be referencing them. Um, the first one is the Orem summary results, and from these results, um, the following candidates will be moving on to the general election. That would be Quinn Meekum, Angela Moulton, Doyle Mortimer, Lenee Millett, Crystal Muelstein, and David M. Spencer. Um, and then those who will not be progressing, but we were excited to have them run, would be Stephen White, Truman Van Cott, Tommy, Tommy Williams, and Archie Williams. And so on there we have, um, the votes that were cast for them as well as the percentage. And that is also reflected on the large report. And then the county gave us the second form. It's the statistics one. It's kind of the bright colored one. And these are some of the statistics that are required to be reported today. Our voter turnout was 28.5%. We had— we have 4,500— 45,934 active voters. And then, um, there was 1,954 of, um, counted ballots, and that's by mail or drop box. There were 91, um, in-person ballots. There were 23 that were, um, sent back to us from, um, they call it UCAVA. It's like the military, um, or disability, they weren't able to come out. We had 23 of those. There were 6 counted provisional ballots for a total of 13,074 votes. Um, and then kind of breaking that down, there were 4 envelopes that were not signed. There were, um, no, there were 4 envelopes where the signature did not match. Then there were 10 where they were signed, and, um, there were 54 that were challenged. Um, 14 of those 54 were not, um, cured, which means they did not count. Uh, and then down to Section 3 is the rejected ballot statistics. There were 185 that were, um, that were received after the postmark deadline, so they must have put them in the mail close to the deadline and they were not received by election date.

I just want to say congratulations to you for getting the word out. I'm— I regret that 185 people didn't get their votes counted, but I was fearful it was going to be much higher than that. And I think Facebook, social media, word from the city and other people communicated. I'm really impressed that that few, I guess, came in because Years ago, you could just put it in on the day, and it was many days after they were still counting. So thank you for your— Peter, your efforts, and your efforts to get that done. Thank you.

Yeah, they probably need to change that, right? Because that's no longer accurate, that says the postmark deadline, because the, the rule now, just to clarify, is your ballot has to be received by 8 PM on Election Day. So yeah, I would maybe suggest to our clerk that we I don't know if this is on the form automatically or what, but I don't want to create confusion.

It would come from the county. Yeah, yeah.

I don't want to create more confusion because we shouldn't be talking about postmarks anymore.

Yeah.

Right? Because that's 200 people that didn't get their vote counted, and I would be bothered if that were me. You know, that's actually a lot of people.

And then there were 6 ballots that were rejected for other reasons. So that was a total of 191. And then on the provisional ballots, there were only 7 provisional, and 6 of the provisional were counted. There was one that did not, um, as they looked into it, they had previously voted, and so, um, that one didn't count. Um, and then the other thing that I have to share with you, um, that I got after we had started the work session, so you don't have this email But it is the, um, private, the—

or the—

let's see, the private, the public, and the withheld voters. So there are 22,244 private voters in Orem. There are 17,052 public, um, voters, and then 6,638—

Yes, Theresa, can you—

—withheld.

Can Can you explain what that means?

Right, I know I had to send it to him and I was like, what is this? Why do we have to do it now? So what it is, is public voters, um, that is kind of the default category. And what it means is it's the amount of information that people can request. So a public voter, they can have your voter identification number, your name, your voter status like active, inactive, absentee ballot status, registration date, party affiliation, mailing address, county and precinct, district for Congress, state legislature and state board, voter participation history, and the method of how you vote. So are you normally mailing it in, voting in person? Private voters can, um, they can mark their record as private at the time of their registration. Utah law allows candidates, political parties, contractors, employees, and volunteers of candidates and political parties to obtain voter registration data classified as, as private. So the information they would be able to provide is, um, all information contained in the public voter list and the year of birth.

So those are—

that would be what, what private voters, they would have more protection.

So, so the difference is that who gets it?

Well, okay, since we're going through this, we might as well understand it. Um, so the, the private, you said, is everything except their date of birth?

Um, well, it was the list of things that I had. So I don't know if that's exactly the same as the public voter list. That could— I would assume it would be less. I don't know exactly which ones they are. I just know that they specifically will give out year of date on private voters.

Okay, so we have, we have this public, this public group, we've got this private group, and what were the numbers on that?

So the private is 22,244. The public is 17,052.

And that's based on how they signed up to vote?

How they— when they registered, what options they chose.

So, okay, I'm sorry, did you say the information is different or it's just different people have access to it?

Um, I think the information they release is different because it says qualified individuals may request data for private voters and the following fields are provided, and then the only ones they listed are, um, public voters list and year of birth. And I think this might be a new thing we have to declare because I haven't ever had to do this before.

Um, because based on that description, it sounds like private gives more information, right?

Well, it's—

I think it's qualified individuals. So any— okay, let me go back. Anyone can offer— can ask for public voter information. Qualified people can ask for private. So it may be similar information.

Who are qualified people?

It does not tell me that.

You just told us, didn't you? People running for office.

The—

geez, what was that that you read?

Oh, um, okay. Candidates, political parties, contractors, employees, and volunteers of candidates and political parties. But they, they can obtain voter registration data classified as private. So, yeah, so I guess it's what we're releasing. Public, everyone can have. Private, some people can have.

Contractors that work for campaigns.

Yeah, correct.

Yeah, it would be related to that. Then the 3rd one is withheld, which is 6,638. And it's, um, per Utah Code 20A-2-104, um, protected individuals is defined as individuals who submit a withholding request form to protect their voter registration record. So this was going to apply to people such as domestic violent victims, law enforcement, members of the military, um, public figures that are not elected. So it's a very small, a much smaller qualification. You know, people that maybe their jobs or their safety would be violated by giving that information out.

Just out of curiosity, can anyone opt into that, or do you have to fall in one of those categories?

According to ChatGPT, it means you don't declare yourself as a Republican or a Democrat. You keep yourself undecided, unaffiliated. So you could probably do that. But that's what ChatGPT said about it.

I think Chat is wrong.

I don't think so.

Private is for people who have significant exposure to— That's one part of who they are. But you can also be just private by just CIA, you know, people, police officers who need that protection.

I don't know.

I'm sorry.

Maybe, Teresa, if you, you know, just to clarify these things, if you could just put together a memo.

Yes, and I can even send you this email as well.

Okay.

Um, I unfortunately did not have a lot of time to prepare it because it was sent to me, like I said, at about 4 o'clock after I was already in the meeting. Um, and it, it was a new qualification according to the county, um, that we have to report. Okay, so it's just—

Information.

Some more information, and, um, I'll get you that code reference as well.

Okay.

And one thing I would be curious to know is kind of what the mayor asked a couple times, is are there differences between the private and the public list, the— from an information standpoint? We know there's a difference as to who can obtain it, but the information that you obtain, does it matter based on that designation of public or private?

Um, I will find that out.

Okay.

I mean, it's, it's might be a little different because the public one, they are actually listing Listing all the items, or in private they're just kind of saying it's everything on the public voter list, and then also the year of birth. So I will qualify and see if the public information, if some of that voter list stuff is not released to the public. I would suspect it is, otherwise I think they would say the same thing. that the whole list is, is, uh, it's public information. Okay, then the next one. This is, um, all of the voting precincts, and it's a lot and a lot to look through. So we did it like this so that, um, it's not, um, 50— I think it's like 53 pages. So if you want to, um, look at the certified Um, election, and this is what you guys will sign tonight. But on there, it does break up, um, every precinct. Now, you may have noticed the precinct numbers look different. There was a change in the state code that they wanted things to be more uniform across the state. So now there's like a number, then— so everybody's will be the same. Like, I think '25 is probably the year that it was last done, which this is a new one, so it's 25. Then OR is Orem, and then the precinct number. And so each, um, city was assigned, you know, the same format. And then one interesting thing is we do have 53 precincts now instead of 52 from 2 years ago. So it did, um, increase our precincts. And then there is a 57, a 58, and a 59 that have no voters. So I don't know what that's about. For some reason, they are— they did a report for it. So I don't know if it's a potential shift in the future, but it does jump numbers from 53 to 57. So there, I put them on your report since they were part of the, um, official results, but there were no voters or any voter information from those precincts. So on there, it's broken up by Number of registered voters in each precinct, the number of ballots in each precinct, and then the percentage of voters from that precinct. So you can look through those. And then it goes over— it also has a lot of the same stats that we went over from the other report that I put on the second page, just so you have it on there. It has your provisional How many were counted, how many were not counted, how many were challenged, and how many were rejected. And that's the same information that was on the report from the county.

Theresa, although we should never be excited about 28% of our people voting, it seems like it was much higher than some of our sister cities near us. Did you have a chance to look at that?

We were higher than, um, a good amount. I think the average, if I remember right, was Yeah, it was much lower. Um, it is about on par for what we normally do in a primary.

Okay.

Um, we were— um, the final numbers put us at, let's see, at 28, and I think 2 years ago we were 26, and 4 years ago I want to say it was 27. So we're kind of right there, um, on primary numbers.

Thank you.

So we, um, you know, if anything, we did a little better than we have in the last 4 years. Any other questions?

You ready for a motion, Mayor?

Yes. Uh, any questions? And just for the record, I don't— I don't have those— the paperwork on this, so Anyway, so just at some point, probably.

Yeah, it was in the other room, and I think it's probably still sitting there for you right now.

Okay.

Well, Mayor, I would like to congratulate those who have moved forward and moved to accept and certify the 2025 City of Orem municipal primary election results.

I second that.

Aye. Aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Aye.

We certify the election results. Thank you, Theresa.

Good job. We'll see you in a few months.

Okay, thank you for that update. Okay, moving on, we've got item number 11, which is financial information, and that's just for informational purposes only. Uh, we can provide a paper financial Statement of that, if anyone wants it. Item number 12, city manager information items.

Yeah, just a handful of things. Uh, you've received emails and information from Lori Kreiman about meeting for our summer, uh, social and tour, where we're going to go look at a couple of sites that will hopefully help generate some ideas for— in relation to our heart of downtown study and what we hope to accomplish with our arts district in Sierra Park. And then, um, this time of year, we, we have a bunch of, of city events. It's kind of packed in. So, uh, just want to make sure you and the public are aware. Um, uh, we've got our 9/11 Day of Service, and that'll be on September 6th and the 13th, and people can sign up for those projects at justserve. And there's, as you heard, there's upwards of 600 opportunities to serve on those dates. We've also new this year, but it's been in the planning for quite some time, is our Taste of Orem event, and that's planned to be on September 19th and 20th here at our City Center Park. And then finally, our Harvest Festival will be— is planned for September 29th, and that would be at the Orem Community Hospital. And then I just— we mentioned our— we saw our Babel Award winners and had our employee appreciation event. And at that event, I shared a few words, and I just wanted to take the opportunity to maybe share some of that perspective publicly in an expression of appreciation for our wonderful wonderful staff. As you know, my family and I have kind of been in the battle of our lives with, with our son trying to overcome a blood cancer, a rare form of leukemia. And it's been an experience that's changed my life and changed my perspective on, on people and on work, and especially work here at the city. And during his treatment, I've seen how When his blood counts are low, you know, how that— how his strength and life fades when that happens. But then in contrast, when he's infused with blood and medicine, it's life-changing and color returns and hope fills the hospital room and it's a kind of a beautiful thing to witness. And this has given me an appreciation for the term lifeblood, which is kind of a weird, uncommon term. Um, and as I've thought about that and pictured that, I really— it's really come to impress upon me that our employees really are the lifeblood of our city and of our community. Um, just as blood keeps the body alive and its organs and different parts, our city Employees keep our city alive and its different services and parts thriving, and their, their work restores and protects and serves and energizes our community. And, um, so I just want to emphasize again publicly that what we do together, what our staff does together with you, It's more than just work. It's more than just job. It's more than just a career. It's quite literally life-saving service to our families, to our neighborhoods, and to our community. And so I just want you to know that that feeling is bone deep for me, and it is for our employees, for our executive staff. We love working with you. We love working with our wonderful employees, and they really do.

Thank you.

really do look beyond themselves and create, uh, just a wonderful working environment and employee body group. And so, again, just want to express that, uh, appreciation and, and observations publicly. Thank you.

Thank you, Brent. Thank you for sharing that. Okay, was someone— I think it's time for us to adjourn. Would someone like to make a motion to adjourn?

Mayor, I move that we adjourn to the special closed-door session.

Second.

Do I need to say the whole—

Yeah, go ahead and say the whole thing.

Okay, here we go. I got it. I'd like to propose that we adjourn to a closed session in the Summit Conference Room to discuss pending unreasonable Imminent litigation, the character or professional competence of an individual, or the purchase or lease of real property.

I second.

Aye.

Aye. Aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Thank you. We'll adjourn to a closed session. Thank you for coming tonight.