City Council · 2025-11-18

Good to go. All right, to welcome everyone here this afternoon, and we'll start this City Council work meeting. First item is item 2.1, impact fees.

Yes, he was here, we were just discussing it the last time he was here. He did not build a center building, uh, that's not existing. Um, but he's since, uh, provided some updates, and at your request, he's going to be presenting on one of your requests specifically regarding helping others. Single-family home. And so, without further ado, thank you. I thought I'd revisit some of the baseline elements relative to an impact fee facilities plan and impact fee analysis as a way of a reminder of what we're doing here with this project. The impact fee facilities plan is the planning document that identifies levels of service and future facilities that go into the calculation of the fee. As well as other requirements defined in statute, and the impact fee analysis brings that information together and calculates a fee, as well as a fee schedule and formula for the calculation of impact fee assessment. As a reminder, the impact fee is a 1-time fee on new development activities. So this is not a fee we charge to existing development or existing residents. It's for all new construction within the Within the city, both residential and nonresidential. And it's a 1-time payment that is assessed to new development activity. There's a specific process defined in statute relative to establishing or amending impact fees. That includes notice of intent, and then going through the analysis itself, and then we present information and work sessions and refine that analysis. And then we're prepared for public hearing. There's noticing requirements that the city will need to fulfill relative to noticing the public hearing, noticing, and then once that's completed, you're able to hold the public hearing, at which point you can adopt, modify, or reject. What we propose in the documents is a maximum allowable impact fee. We're essentially creating a ceiling for the impact fees. The council can adopt something lower than that, or you can look at fees altogether. Recognizing that there are trade-offs relative to that approach.

Does that impact fee public hearing have to be its own public hearing, or can you do it as part of your budget?

It has to— that's probably a question for—

it has to be its own.

Yeah, typically you have a separate impact fee public hearing that is specific to To the impact fee itself. So, and the noticing is specific to that as well, that we have to notice for an impact fee public hearing and then hold that public hearing. Now, they can be on the same night. You could just start one public hearing and end the other. But thanks. Some entities also choose to hold a public hearing and then wait to make a decision. So they hold the public hearing and then make a decision on a future council meeting, but we have to hold this public hearing and receive public comment on the documents and the— Alrighty, so at a high level, every impact fee needs to include these 6 steps that feed into that 6th step, which is the impact fee analysis or proportionate share analysis. These are the steps that we've evaluated for each service that we've looked at. We have to determine demand, look at existing facilities, establish an existing and future level of service, identify existing and future capital facilities necessary to serve development. And then we need to look at the revenue resources necessary to finance those system improvements, or that have been used to finance those system improvements. That could include outside funding sources, or it can include bonding. We need to evaluate those components. And then again, all of that feeds into the proportionate share analysis, which is a cost allocation. We're taking those variables and applying a cost ratio to that and applying that to new development activity. The services that we've looked at include parks and recreation, public safety, police and fire, transportation, culinary water, wastewater, and stormwater. I'm going to summarize the elements that have included— that we've included in the calculation for those 6 steps, recognizing that the actual document is quite a bit thicker, right, when we go to publish this information. This gives you an idea of the big picture relative to the analysis. So we've broken out the analysis into a citywide service area and a Southwest annexation service area. And there were different components in some cases relative to those service areas as we looked at the services that were provided to the city proper in the Southwest Annexation area. The demand analysis is specific to each service. So we'll look at acreage, land acreage, ERUs, or equivalent residential units. We'll look at calls for service for public safety, trips, and population data. and bring all that together to establish demand assumptions relative to existing development and future development. The level of service is also specific to each service and expressed in a per-unit measurement. So when we're looking at water, wastewater, it's water utilization or production of effluent. We'll look at calls for service per land use type for public safety. We'll look at per level of investment per capita. So for each service, we take that demand variable and look at the services that are provided to calculate a level of service for that specific service the city provides. Within the impact fee analysis, we can include what's called a buy-in component. Essentially, what we're doing is we're taking your existing infrastructure and saying, Where that provides a benefit to new development, they can pay for existing ratepayers or taxpayers back for any oversizing of that infrastructure. When we've looked at each of the services, we've included a buy-in for transportation, water for source and distribution, wastewater— we're including it for treatment and collection— and on the stormwater system. The other services, we've adopted an approach where we're assuming they're at capacity. We're looking at future facilities only in the calculation of the fee. Uh, with regards to the future facilities, I've highlighted that for each service. For parks, we're looking at $25.6 million in future investment. The methodology utilized for this fee creates quite a bit of flexibility as it relates to the expenditure of impact fees. Um, we're not limiting ourselves to necessarily parkland assemblage or only amenities, but it's expansion to your system, to your park system. For police, we're looking at $2.8 million for improvement and financing costs. For fire, $4.5 million plus $700,000 in apparatus expense included in the fee calculation. For transportation, there was a separate IFFP impact fee facilities plan drafted by Wall Consulting Group, where they calculated the necessary improvements for future road costs. Included in the IFFP, that sums to $3.5 million. I'll also point out in each of these, when we're talking about the impact fee facilities plan, we're focused on a 10-year planning window for the purposes of calculating fees. So there's likely going to be more costs than this beyond that 10-year planning horizon. We have to isolate that by standard of practice to a shorter planning window. And that's really tied. Yes.

Since all of these are estimates, if we didn't spend this much, could a homeowner ask for clawback on their fee that they were charged?

Yes. So, if there's within the statute, there's language that allows an impact fee payee to request a review or challenge the payment of impact fees and receive potentially a credit or reimbursement of those fees if there was something done incorrectly, or if those assumptions were inaccurate. So—

But we don't spend it in time.

Yes. Yeah. So that's where I was going to highlight that.

6 years to spend.

6 years, yes. So, yeah, you have 6 years to spend your funds from the day you collect those funds. And so the 10-year window comes from a, again, a standard of practice where we assume because of that rolling window, rather than isolating it only to 6 years, assuming that the document may last a couple of years, that you have, again, a 10-year window potentially to evaluate the collection and expenditure of those funds. But most entities will typically update those documents within a 3-year window, 3 to 5 years at kind of the outset of that planning horizon. Some will amend them every year based on changes in assumptions, and we won't do a full revision of that study. We may amend components of the studies. So, for example, if costs are less than what are projected, we could amend the document, show those changes in cost, but change nothing else. Just say, instead of $25— well, on the police side, instead of $2.8 million, maybe it was $2 million. We would revise the document and fix that moving forward. What I see more often is the costs that are included in the analysis are actually low. Compared to inflationary pressure, and entities will come back and amend those assumptions, and we'll see the impact fee tick up as a result of that increased cost.

But if you charge me X, I don't go up if you went up. No, but if you charge me Y and it goes down, you owe me a refund. So we, we want these to be as accurate as possible.

Yep.

So it's— yeah, you can't claw back for undercollection. Yeah, the developer can claw back for overcollection on your part. Or if you don't spend the funds at all. So if you, if you hit your 6-year expenditure window and you haven't expended those funds, then you'll most likely have to reimburse those funds.

Have we ever had any problem with not spending the funds?

Not that I know of, but I have had communities that have had that problem.

We have some Southwest annexation potential problems.

What's the plus $2.2 million?

So that, that in that instance, that fee is in addition, the annexation area fee is on top of the city proper fee. Whereas on the wastewater, they are calculated independently. So we're not adding those together.

Isn't that held up by the road? Infrastructure we don't control.

And our public utilities with acquisition and agreements.

Yeah, there can be several variables that influence the timing of infrastructure. Other impacts can be general fund allocations. So if we're identifying the growth-related portion of a project, and there may be general fund matching funds or other entity matching funds, and if those get— there's— those funds become in jeopardy, then that could change the nature of spending. So. Those are all variables that we should watch. The city should watch, and those could be reasons why we amend the study at a future point. Again, an amendment can be, um, in some cases quicker and easier to do if we're just changing specific assumptions rather than a wholesale update. So something to pay attention to. Um, on the water wastewater side, there's quite a bit of future investment needed. As we look at capital facility needs. Stormwater, we're seeing about $870,000 in the city service area and $1.7 million in the annexation area. Those big dollar amounts for the water and wastewater you're going to see are going to result in some bigger changes to the impact fees on that side of the equation. I'm going to show you again what, what you, or how you compare to other communities when we look at All of these together. So I do have a slide of that, which is what was requested in our previous meeting. Alrighty, so here is the summary of the single-family residential impact fee proposed within the document. So this would be the, again, the maximum that could be implemented, barring any changes or modifications to assumptions within the document. So you can see parks and recreation, a large increase there, 178% increase going from almost $3,000 up to $8,000, a little over $8,000. This is primarily driven by the cost of land, the assumptions associated with land value within the city. The police and fire, it's a large percentage increase, but relatively speaking, these public safety impact fees are typically the lowest fees on a dollar basis. So, I see a large percentage increase. This is not the primary driver for the overall increase in the impact fees that you would experience, or single-family residential unit would experience. The stormwater, um, in this case, it's on a— I'm showing a per acre so we can make some comparisons to your prior fee. Um, but you would assess that based on a typical residential, single-family residential lot, which may be 0.2, if that anymore, 0.2 acres potentially. Um, uh, so that, that would— this just shows you what the, the fee is per acre. For, um, wastewater, um, here you see it per equivalent residential unit. So this would be what would be assessed typically to a residential, single-family residential. Um, uh, so here you can see the city area is experiencing a very large increase because, um, In your prior study, there wasn't a lot of infrastructure associated with the city service area, whereas now we are seeing infrastructure necessary for the wastewater system. Whereas the annexation area, we're not actually seeing that big of a difference in the fee proposed for that area.

It's about 21.

On the water side here, there's a big jump. And similar to wastewater, where the city proper area is experiencing a bigger jump than the annexation area, but both seeing a An increase there. On the water supply side, this was calculated independent of the source, storage, and distribution component of water. That's saying about a 4% increase, and then transportation going from $409 up to $1,296 for a single family. So again, here you can see some big percentages and some big dollar amounts relative to the Proposed impact fees.

Can you, can you show us a total on a house that's not in the annex area? What do they pay?

Yes, that's, that's going to be on this.

It's going to come. I'll wait.

Thank you.

So it's about— yes, when you look at your existing fee here, you're at about $12,000 for a single-family residential based on a 0.2-acre lot.

That's what we're charging now, or that's Okay. And what is all— what happens with all those other charges if we went up about $35,000?

Oh, it's a 180% increase, 190% increase across the board for each either service area.

Clarify for me, that's based on the size of the lot or the size of the house, or just—

That's a single-family residential.

Yes.

That would be the flat fee, depending on your service area. There actually isn't a huge difference in the service area, because in one case, the water fee is a little bit higher. And then in the annexation area, that flops. The water fee goes down, but the sewer impact fee—

So, if you're in an R-8, you'd pay $30. If you're in an R-12, would you pay more?

Flat fee?

Uh, well, it would depend on your lot size. So that's assuming— sorry, that's a 2-acre lot. That I made that assumption for this.

You're on a half acre, you're going to pay near double that.

You're going to— well, no, sorry, it's just for the storm that you're assessed. Everything else, it's per ERU, which is pretty standard. The stormwater is the only one that adjusts. So you wouldn't see a huge swing if you went from a 0.2-acre lot to a half-acre lot. That may add $500 or, you know, on top of that fee, just with that stormwater fee shifting.

Okay.

But overall, on average, assuming a 0.2-acre lot, they're going to go from $12,000 to $13,000 up to $35,000 for an impact fee assessment. Again, that's a one-time fee on new development activity, but it's a hefty increase.

And these are surrounding cities, is that what—

Yeah, so this chart shows Utah County communities.

Whoops.

We requested information from the Home Builders Association because they'll provide charts relative to comparable communities that they deliver to their members. And so we wanted to be consistent with that data that they utilize. We spot-checked some of that information, and while there are nuances associated with the data, it appeared to be roughly accurate as we looked at all these communities. So the average, if I include your proposed maximum, so that's taking Removing your $12,000 fee and putting in the $35,000, that shifts the average up a little bit. But your average for these comparable communities in Utah County is about $20,000. So you can see some are higher than that average, some lower. Salem has the highest fee within Utah County, and your proposed would be higher than Salem's maximum based on that schedule.

So you You do push—

that proposed maximum pushes Orem at the highest fee within the county.

If I can, if I can, it's important to note too that these aren't their maximum allowables. We're talking about our maximum allowable compared against their existing, which are probably artificially low.

There could be that. So just the fact that some communities will adopt a fee that's lower than the maximum. It also does not reflect present cost, right? So some of these communities may have updated their fees in 2018, just like your last study was completed, and it would reflect 2018 dollars or 2018 assumptions. I think, uh, or Eagle Mountain, they do update theirs. They have updated theirs since 2018, um, and they are updating their impact fees now. So what is shown here would be again what they're currently assessing, but I know their fees are going to go up. So they're working on the transportation right now, as well as water and wastewater, and those fees are likely to go up. So again, we're comparing, as Chris said, we're comparing your most up-to-date information to other communities' current information or adopted information, but it may be based on old studies. It's not going to be an apples-to-apples comparison.

Do you have any idea what, for example, in this chart you show Highland, um, $24,000 or something?

Yes.

Yep.

So they're, they're probably $22,000.

Yeah, I've heard people complaining immensely about Highland, and when they're trying to build a house out there, the numbers they're throwing out are more like $35,000.

There are other things that could be included in that.

So, this is—

the homebuilders will show in their chart, they also include connection fees, but I excluded those because that really doesn't have anything to do with the impact fee comparison or the impact fee level of service. So, this is impact fees only, including Timpanoga Special Service District, for example. That's— A city wouldn't necessarily have that impact fee under their umbrella, but it is an impact fee that's assessed. for a service that you currently provide as a municipality providing wastewater, whereas a district is providing that in that case. So I did keep that out of the comparison that was provided, but I did not include the connection fees, which could be a fair amount. Yes.

For—

yeah, eventually fill the house.

And, um, yeah, Highlands impact fees have been updated since 2018. I believe their last update was 20— But it's not 2025 assumptions. So again, another example of we're comparing the most up-to-date information to whatever is available relative to other communities. With that said, often developers will look at this comparison, and it does provide an economic comparison relative to Forum and other communities. Um, but again, this document is intended to provide the maximum allowable impact fee, and then you as a legislative body have the challenge of determining where you want to land relative to that maximum allowable impact fee.

Do you know how much below the max percentage-wise we did when we did this in '18?

I don't.

The other thing that's significant, a piece of the puzzle, I think, is, I mean, if we're really trying to Incentivize or disincentivize people to build homes. Um, when you look at Salem, for example, so their impact fees are high, you know, on this chart, but then their land costs are quite a bit lower than they are here. So the net-net is still less than it would be to build in Oro.

Yes, it could be. Yeah, when you look at, uh, land availability and the supply and demand of that, that equation and how it impacts your And I think technically we don't want to really incentivize or de-incentivize.

We just want to be neutral in the market, right?

Yeah, I mean, there are a lot of variables in that question because on one side you're talking about market factors, growth and economic development potentially, versus what the impact fee represents, which is a cost recovery or cost recoupment of Needed infrastructure. So the impact fee is intended to say, what do we need to build as a community relative to infrastructure? And who are we going to make for that? And this, by maximizing impact fees, communities are saying we're going to put as much of that burden on new development activity versus allowing the general fund or some other mechanism to cover that.

We also, we also have a different level of service, and I would argue often a better level of service. Service than average. We have a better wastewater treatment plant. We probably have, again, compared to average, more parks acreage per capita. So, I mean, Fred uses the term need. It's need compared to our level of service and what Forum's level of service is that we've established over decades.

Yeah, that's a great point.

Can you maybe help us see, and maybe you'll get to this, but when you talk about this is the max amount of, uh, we're allowed, allowable to charge, how does a city make a determination of, okay, we're going to charge less and this is why? Like, what logic would you use to make that decision?

Yeah, that is the million-dollar question. Uh, there really isn't an answer for that because it is really taking all of those variables and saying what is most important for us as a legislative body, recognizing the trade-offs. If we don't assess the maximum allowable impact fee, something has to happen. Either our level of service drops because we're not collecting impact fees, impact fees to, to cover that cost, or we say no, we're going to use other funding mechanisms to help bridge that gap. So we'll keep our level of service, but we're just not going to use impact fees as the funding mechanism, which is what you've done in the past, right? So you, you've had a proposed impact fee, you adopted something lower than that maximum, and so you use other funding to, to help maintain a level of service for the community. And that can work, especially with a community like Orem where you have— you're primarily built out other than, again, the annexation area. You're going to have some big needs there, and you have redevelopment potential. But it's not like Eagle Mountain, for example, where it's really the wild, wild west when it comes to development and the population that they're adding every year. And residential units, it's just a completely different scenario, right? So, um, it's understanding those variables and who you are as a community. That's really what's going to help influence what you choose to adopt. Again, this is the maximum, so you can't go above it, but you really have from 0 to the maximum as an option relative to the impact fee.

How does this affect Revitalization, as far as if you're going in and you're just completely overhauling, remodeling a house versus—

So you want to make sure we're evaluating any development activity from the perspective of increased demand. Are you adding demand on the system, or are we just replacing existing demand? If we're replacing existing demand, that would most likely not be impact fee eligible. If you're adding demand, let's say we're taking something there and we're changing its nature such that it goes from 100 ERUs to 200 ERUs, the difference between that is the impact fee eligibility. That 100 ERU count would— what is what would be considered impact fee eligible, but not the base 100 ERUs.

Okay.

If I were looking at this again, this is now— I'm stepping away from the IFFP and IFA relative to the question on recommendation. That's, that's partly why I included that average. That may provide you some insight on a bellwether, essentially, or an element that you would want to look at. Again, right now you're well below the average on your existing allocation, whereas our proposed is well above the average. So looking at that average may help you determine where you want to land. Do we want to be above that average? Do we want to hit the average? Are we comfortable being below average?

Yes.

Relative to impact fees. And that, that question should all be evaluated within the lens of, again, this is intended to collect revenue to pay for infrastructure for all of those services that we're looking at. So it's, it's not, um, it's not for operations. It's not for deficiencies within the system. It's saying new development is going to help us build infrastructure through the assessment of this impact fee, and that's why we collect it. I did want to provide another piece of—

yeah.

A couple of comments too. One, I think the average shows that it is common for cities to do less than their maximum allowed. And then 2, another strategy could be to phase over time as well. So rather than— so We probably want to not get caught in this position again in the future. So we could essentially say in year 1, get to average or just below average, but then over the next 5 and 6 years, we should do incremental increases from there, stay more up to date.

So we're not limited to do this every 5 or 7 years, whatever. We can do it annually.

Yeah, and then it stays up to more current pricing.

That makes sense.

Would you determine that a percentage or something?

Yeah, we could just—

I mean, we could do a straight-line increase, or—

We wouldn't need a new study if this year we accept 60% of the max. Next year you could do 65%, and the next year 70%, and you wouldn't need to do a new study, and you'd be pretty safe you're below it.

That's right.

But we are in an unusual time in that the last 5 or 6 years have been super high inflation.

Correct.

And so that's part of what's causing this whole spike. Whereas long-term normalized inflation, it wouldn't be like this.

And so we can use that as something of a gauge as well, right?

CPI or something. Yes, and that's a great point of establishing a schedule that phases in the impact fee. Again, you could determine what that looks like for your community. We'll just want to again make sure that if we're utilizing this document as the justification for a 5-year plan, In year 3, the assumptions may get stale, for example, and, and you may say, hey, we're going to revisit some of those assumptions and amend it while addressing that phased-in schedule. So we're not necessarily tying your hands either. This would, this would be a proposed schedule for the adoption of impact fees, but you can amend that moving forward or make changes as those impact the city, and that could change that. That schedule.

And I think it's also important to note that in 2018, we adopted less than what we could have, and in 7 years, we never hit the top end of it for any of our impact fees, is my understanding. Maybe Brandon can correct me if I'm wrong in that statement, but I don't think we ever charged the maximum allowable for 2018.

Changed it since the study.

And where did we come in at? Was it like 80%?

80%.

It's never reached 100%.

It's largely based off of— we established the cost of land as less than the market. That has a big impact, but then that's also why you see such a dramatic increase in parks, for example. Today it costs us— we know it costs us at least $600,000 to $650,000 per acre.

Yes, and we assumed $575,000 for the studies.

Oh, you're already behind.

In 2018, I think it was $175,000.

That's a huge difference. Yeah, so all of those elements can be considered relative to the adoption of the fee. Again, we're setting that ceiling. That's the most important thing to remember there relative to the proposed schedule. I did want to point out, um, the— there was a request also to look at just inflationary pressure from 2018 to now. So I pulled some indices relative to that. So your municipal cost index, this is total change, so it's not annualized. Um, really, we're sitting about a 30-35% change just from the cost index approach. So just saying inflationary pressure. And that takes out some, some big years prior to that, but also includes some high inflationary years. I did want to also compare that, though, to the National Price Index when it comes to the home price for all transactions in Utah. That's actually seen an 88% jump. So what this shows to me is inflation has impacted development. Internally for the city, as well as externally from the job. But the price of a home has outpaced that. So essentially, what the, what the home buyer is paying for that product, it's gone up more rapidly than just construction inflation. So, um, there is often an association with impact fees and affordability. And while that is true, that impact fees will impact the overall price of a home, there other variables that, that impact the, the, uh, the price of a home that gets sold. Uh, again, going back to supply and demand, for example, uh, and appreciation of property. Uh, so that delta there, um, can be telling relative to construction costs versus the actual selling price or, um, price index relative to, to Utah. Um, I also pulled another indice here for the Producer Price Index, but it's showing a similar 30%. So really that kind of gives me some comfort relative to these indices showing that general inflationary pressure that communities have experienced. With that said, this is national indices other than this, the, that HPI index is specific to Utah. It is a national database. through the U.S. Federal Housing Finance Agency, but it's specific to Utah transactions. But the other indices are more national. There are other variables that may influence construction costs that are much higher than these indices, like concrete, for example, or— road base or something like that, you know, those, those prices may be quite a bit higher than this when you look at a specific component of this indices. But generally speaking, this, this was what the data is suggesting relative to general inflation. So that, that was also requested to see what that looks like. So again, at a minimum, that, that 33, the 33th 4% increase would just cover inflationary pressure, not to mention level of service changes and the actual nature of infrastructure that you need for Orem City. That would be over and above just inflationary pressure relative to what was presented in 2018. Alrighty, that covers what I wanted to present. So happy to address additional questions, go into more detail if you have specific areas that you want Kind of dive into more specifically.

So just because I'm stupid, I guess, what, um, single-family home you're talking about, uh, what about townhomes? What about high-density housing? Are those different indices?

Yes.

Yep.

So they would have a different fee based on, uh, the report formula. Typically, your, your high-density housing is going to be less per unit. So you'd likely experience the same Percentage increases, so they're going to have an increase to their fee. Um, but it wouldn't— it's not the same, you know, $34,000 that I'm showing for a single-family residential. They typically pay less.

Do they have less of an impact on all those services?

Yes. So usually their demand per unit is less. The population per unit is less. The trip count per unit is less. So all of those demand variables are less per unit. But when you look at the total development, there's quite a bit more units. Uh, so their overall fee is, you know, going to be much larger than just a single-family home, but we have so many more units going into that space.

Can we ever use this to incentivize the building of a particular housing product?

Uh, any sort of adjustment— yeah, so we don't deal with that sort of policy decision in the fee calculation. The impact fee needs to be proportionate relative to the demand, so you can't make adjustments within the fee study. With that said, I do know communities look at providing incentives for specific types of developments, which may include the waiving of impact fees. Um, but there are specific cost-benefit studies that have to be done to show that, that why would you be, you know, why would you be doing that sort of incentivization policy? Um, in addition, I've seen impact fees be evaluated from an RDA perspective, your redevelopment authority, and saying, you know, how might we incentivize development and utilize tax increment funding to help mitigate infrastructure impacts. The key there is, again, if you reduce an impact fee or eliminate an impact fee, the cost doesn't go away. The infrastructure cost doesn't go away. You're just now diverting that cost somewhere else. We're saying, okay, maybe the CRA or the RDA is going to cover that cost or help defray that cost, or the general fund is going to help pick up that that cost, and, and through that cost-benefit, that may be justified. But, um, it doesn't go away under that.

Mayor, about a year ago, the council did pass a resolution giving a break on impact fees to affordable senior housing for that.

And that actually can be included in your statute. So the Impact Fee Act, uh, based on Utah state code, Does allow for consideration of adjustments to impact fees based on affordable housing.

And that was in the 2018 ordinance that the council passed. So, pursuant to that, this council is part of a moderate income housing plan strategy. So that's one of our strategies that we would deal with. An affordable senior housing project came in, we would give them a break. To encourage that type of housing use.

Right.

So my question is more related to the— because in order to— so how do I say this? If you want to have multi-unit buildings, housing buildings that have units that are purchasable, owner-occupied, they have to be built a particular way to qualify for Loans, right? Certain FHA loans. So they have to be built a certain way. So can we— maybe this is a Steve question— can we use this to encourage a particular type of housing?

I think to kind of echo what Fred has said, I think the impact fees that you charge typically have to be based on what the actual impact Those types of housing have on services or on parks, police, roads, whatever it is. So, if you could do a study that showed a demonstrable difference in those, then potentially you could use those. Yeah, I think you'd have to be able to show that they did have a different impact.

Did we do that for the seniors, or did we just say— did we go through the thought process that they're making less trips, they're using the facilities less?

Basically, the state was giving us options of things.

Yeah, right.

And that's how we met one of the requirements.

Busting back the state's recommendation.

It was just a checkbox on that form, right?

Yeah, yeah, it's like a year ago. Yeah, there was a— I was working with South Jordan on an impact fee, and we received a request for review similar to this where a 55+ community was building quite a few units, and they wanted a review of the impact fee suggesting— they were suggesting that they had less of an impact. So it wasn't an affordability question, but they, as Steve indicated, provided data that said, we, we feel we have less impact than, than what the fee schedule suggests.

And the argument could be, we have a facility here with a park and a tennis court, so we're not using the public parks or whatever, right?

Exactly.

Or lower household sizes on average.

And so the, Senior housing could be less trips per day, so less on the transportation.

So they provided all that information. The city considered that and made an adjustment downward. So your, your impact fee ordinance and the report itself can also include a formula for the calculation of a fee to address those issues on both sides of the coin, right? Lower impact, we could make an adjustment downward, or if you see a high use, come in and you say, hey, this, this is really just not contemplated in our schedule, but here's the formula that would produce this fee. Now let's have a discussion, right? So there is within your ordinance a way to have that back and forth dialogue between the developer to come to a proportionate fee. That is the key to all impact fees. It has to be roughly proportionate to the demand that is produced by that development.

Does that have to be specifically outlined by statute, those scenarios?

You have a negotiable thing.

You have within your ordinance language that allows for the consideration of additional information, typically by the developer. They'll want to present that information to show that reduction. But you show that impact.

Also, sometimes developers, if they're developing enough of a piece of land, they can offer to put in Yes, infrastructure in lieu of the impact fee, thinking that they can save a few dollars. They still have to do it to our standards. No, don't take it. It's another path.

And in that instance, they're usually incentivized to maximize the fee, especially if they build something that is oversized. So let's say their impact fee is $2 million, but they build infrastructure to $10 million. They'll want to get through a reimbursement agreement, that payment back. And so in that instance, they want to ensure that the fee is calculated to its maximum level so they get all that money back. But that is definitely a way that they can also pay for infrastructure.

One other, just for future reference, is on this chart We're showing the average. It's a baseline, but I really think the median would be more accurate because you've got variables in there. And I think the median would actually bring it down.

So with regards to next steps, again, this is all still draft form. We do have a draft document that we've provided to staff, and we feel like it's at a point where we can move forward, but we still have the ability to modify that as needed. So we'll distribute that again one more time to staff for final review, and then we move towards the public hearing process, which I believe is scheduled for December 9th. So if we maintain that date, then we will help you prepare for that date by providing the appropriate noticing requirements. It's been simplified over the years, but we need a 10-day notice window where we have to have all the information made available to public and fill certain requirements. And then if you choose to hold the public hearing on December 9th, then I'll make a similar presentation. You receive public comment, and then you have the decision to again adopt, modify, or reject the proposed fees based on the documents that are published.

That wouldn't happen until next year then, right?

Yeah, so if you adopt Any increase, there's a 90-day wait period. The statute actually indicates that if there's a change to your fee, there's a 90-day wait period, but by practice, we assume that's for any increase. If there's a decrease to a fee, then we say just adopt it immediately, because if you don't, they'll hand you this document and say, I want a lower fee, you know, so it saves you the headache of doing that. Adopt— any decrease to a fee is effective immediately. Any increases, a 90-day wait period. You went to the next, uh, the next calendar.

Are you saying at the next meeting, though, we would— you would have a proposal, or we just— what are we throwing out to the public at the next meeting?

It would be, uh, the proposed maximum. So this document as presented, those fee levels, um, again, we don't, uh, as the 3rd party, we don't propose a fee if, if you're wanting to adopt something lower than that. We just provide the information, but that is what we would present at the public hearing. Again, unless you wanted to go a different route, some— maybe some continued discussion relative to recommendations that would likely need to come with collaboration with staff on where that might land. But the public hearing is intended to present the maximum impact fee, the allowable impact fee, and receive public comment, after which you take action on that as a council.

Well, we could either vote that night to adopt impact fees, or we could say we want to discuss this and do less impact fees and go to a future date.

I mean, we'd need Steve to just verify that, but I've seen entities do that where they say, hey, we're going to hold a public hearing, fulfill the requirement of statute, but not make a decision that evening and postpone that decision to a future point. I think you would maybe run into some perception issues if we sat on that decision for a long period of time. Um, it, it could create some challenges from a development perspective. That's what I'm trying to understand, if that's what was on here next, is if we want to do that in the next meeting.

It seems to me like you should be pretty darn ready to— well, If you're going to present.

You can only present the max allowable, can't you?

Correct. So again, my job is to present the maximum allowable. But yeah, I guess from your perspective, if you're saying, hey, we want to have our recommendation ready at the night of the public hearing, that may influence the December 9th deadline.

If we wanted to say, You know, we want to be 15% above the average. Will you put forth a new comparison for us and present that to us?

Yes, that would be maybe challenging on the fly, right?

If we—

I mean, we knew that in advance.

We want you to know that in advance.

Yes, we could do that.

We don't want to put you in that position.

Yes, we wanted to look at doing the grade graded, you know, so much this year that if we were leading that way.

Yeah, yeah, we could give you some advance notice.

Yes, we can have that, that type of schedule prepared where we say, hey, based on that, here's what it looks like. If I had a spreadsheet, my spreadsheet open, I could do that on the fly, but I often don't put those up in a public hearing.

It's not good to legislate in a public hearing.

One other possibility too is before you have this public hearing where Fred presents the potential maximums, you could have, for example, another work session You discuss— you already know what the maximum allowables are. You could have a work session to kind of talk about where do we want to land ultimately. And so then if you wanted to adopt something at the same time, you'd kind of know where you stand and do it all at the same time and not have to continue it, drag it out.

Yeah, one recommendation, um, I was thinking this before I came to this meeting, is saying the challenge we have, right, relative to the Most fee. If we go back to one of the slides, I talked about buy-in fee. That's a repayment of a cost you've already incurred. So some entities will pull that component out of the fee, say, well, we're not going to reimburse ourselves for dollars we've spent. We're going to keep that off the table, and that pulls the impact fee down. I don't know to what magnitude that would pull the impact fee down, but that's a comparison I could make and say, if we pull that out, here's what it looks like. The downside of that is that's the easiest component of your fee to spend because you've already spent it.

Yes.

You're just paying yourself back. So that creates some expenditure challenges because now your fee is 100% focused on future infrastructure, and if that changes, you've increased your risk. Relative to the fee. Now, you already in reality have that risk because we're not reducing— under that scenario, we're not reducing, or the max proposed, we're not reducing the future component of your fees. That risk exists, but you lose that cushion essentially in the fee through the removal of that buy-in calculation.

Yeah, so just to follow up on the The comment I had before, one other potential advantage, if you had kind of a, say, a work session to talk about where you might want to land. Another advantage of that is when you have the public hearing, then the people who are there to hear it and to potentially comment, they're not just considering what the maximums are. They're not just commenting, maybe freaking out a little bit over what the maximums are, but they're actually able to comment on what you're actually— what level you're actually thinking of implementing. We have a discussion about that, you know, whether that, you know, that could be adjusted up or down, obviously, too, based on what kind of feedback you might get.

I mean, that makes the most sense to me. And then there is kind of another issue, I think, and that is, so we're talking about the impact fees that we want to raise, but we've just had an election, and people in this election ran on the children and grandchildren of everyone in Norman be able to afford to live here. And so this would affect that directly. So it would make sense to have those people in this conversation, I think. I'm just saying.

Often I like to see different scenarios myself. I mean, right now you've said this, right?

But Also, the vibe I'm getting, I think that no matter what, we can still be better than Provo.

It's always zeroing on that, don't you?

I mean, I think, I think if you land in the median, you know, you're gonna be in a pretty good spot, and you could arguably be more than the median because of the extra services that are on the line. But I think if you go to the freaking top twin towers over on the right, you're going to have a problem.

I mean, we've just recently approved like 100 homes, right? So then does that make them unaffordable?

Um, yeah, they, they wouldn't, they wouldn't have to pay this fee, but there, there could be.

Yeah, this is only for future.

Well, at what point was future?

Yeah, I think that typically gets assessed at the time of somebody pulls a building permit. So you've got a subdivision, for example, what you're being talked about. I don't know that they've pulled any building permits for that yet.

That's 100 homes, right? We've got 100 coming, which we, you know, tried to provide, and now we're like, are we making that unaffordable?

Typically, they don't pull 100 building permits all at the same time, right? It goes in.

Well, and we're talking about maybe 2 different Levers that get pushed or pulled relative to affordability. The impact fee, you're definitely pushing or pulling that relative to potentially the cost of a home. But I mean, if you separate that, really, it's supply and demand that influences—

Like, almost—

For example, right now, Perception is the market is cooling and high-value homes are having a little bit harder time moving, getting off of the MLS. If you raise your impact fees under that type of environment, it would be unlikely that you could then turn around and see a corresponding increase to the price of a home. We raised the impact fees by $20,000. Could a developer turn around and raise the price of a home by $20,000 to recoup that change? Again, I don't know the answer to that, but depending on the market, that could— that answer could be no, they could not do that. So your price would actually remain the same regardless of the change in an impact fee. But what is affected under that scenario? Profitability. So that profit margin now is impacted, which creates its own challenges relative to whatever perspective you're, you're looking at. Um, in other markets, they could potentially raise the— they could say, hey, we've got a $20,000 increase to impact fees.

We could—

the price of a home more than that, you know, it could go up more than $20,000.

Isn't this why you're required to wait 90 days from before?

Yeah, that's really more to help with, I think, the developer pro forma. not necessarily address market fluctuations, but it does help in some regards relative to that. So, if I'm sitting on the envelope relative to, you know, pulling a building permit, and I know, you know, every unit's now going to have a $20,000 increase, I better pull those now so that my profit margin isn't impacted in that short term. But that covers you for 90 days. But anything beyond that, you know, you're gonna— They're going to have to absorb that. Either the market absorbs that through price increase, or profit margins absorb that through reduction. We've had a huge change.

So 2018, before the impact fees went into effect, huge amount of—

just prior to those impact fees taking effect. Oh, yes, building permits getting pulled.

Yeah.

Yep.

And that's typical, especially with— if this type of swing were Adopted. Yeah, you would want to capture your— anybody who's sitting on the margins would. That's a lot to risk. So I'll work on and coordinate with you on scenarios and timing, but we have all the information to do that, to help with some additional scenario analysis. What I've heard is potentially looking at removal of buy-in and then looking at scenarios that may phase that in over time. And what does that look like versus maybe just a percentage adoption saying if we adopted 80%, what does that look like? And so I can provide some of those comparisons. Thank you, Fred.

Any other questions or requests of Fred or staff on this particular subject?

Just a comment about Brent's comment. You charge 100% of the allowable and you'd still be better than Provo. They may be more expensive, but we'll still be— just wanted to make that clear.

Well, you are a trader, aren't you?

Okay. Thank you, Fred.

Appreciate it.

Trader upgraded.

Upgraded.

Not a trader upgraded.

That's what every trader says.

We're glad you're on our team.

How about that?

Okay, let's go to item 2.2, General Plan Update, Water and Preservation Elements, minutes.

Um, Matt Taylor?

No?

All right, I'm just passing out the draft text. Well, we'll just skip the slides. What we have in front of you is a resolution for an update to our general plan. The general plan— the state legislature, um, some time ago adopted a new provision in our, um, the general plan provisions for state code requiring a water and preservation element. The water and preservation element is required to address certain topics. Those topics are outlined in each section of this resolution. Planning Commission reviewed an initial draft of this back in August and put forward a recommendation of approval. It's been streamlined since then, but essentially, yes, Senate Bill 110, 2022, and its goals is to affect the permitted development of water-on-demand and infrastructure. So there's a land use connection here, which is why it's part of this. Address methods for reducing water demand and per capita consumption for future development. And this for reducing water demand and per capita consumption for existing development. Opportunities to modify operations to eliminate or reduce conditions that waste water. And integration with land use planning and development aspects of the general plan, evaluating water use and demand rather than assuming Adequate water supply. Um, these— I'm gonna skip back. Most of this resolution is drawn from our already adopted stormwater conservation plan, which is also a requirement of state code that mandates that, uh, you have this water conservation plan. As the Planning Commission is required by the statute to provide recommendations, there are 7 primary ones. Each one is identified in the general plan text with data from our Water Conservation Master Plan to support those policy goals. Also, some potential recommendations for possible future legislation. But not committing the council to any particular action, because Reed Price is the primary lead on water conservation with the Public Works Department. Um, from the rest of the time.

So, as Matt mentioned, uh, the general plan, uh, this, this change to the general plan. Is just taking a broad overview of what has already been adopted in the water conservation plan. The water conservation plan was presented to the city council in October of 2022, where it was adopted. The elements of that— broad elements of that water conservation plan have been incorporated into this general plan. Section. Nothing in it should be surprising, and it also establishes some general policies that help us to achieve the goals that have been— that were identified in the water conservation plan. So the state just wants to be confident that communities are Taking a broad look at water conservation and preservation so that their water sources will be— will last well into the future.

Can I ask you a question about number 4? Have we—

so have we—

are there studies based on Contamination of our aquifers through weed killers. You know, we're doing away with the turf, and we're adding places where we tend to use more Roundup, more of those types of chemicals that then— you know what I'm saying? I'm concerned from a health standpoint.

Yeah, I'm—

that has been considered.

I'm not aware of any studies that have done so. What is legally required is that someone needs to follow what the label of the herbicide would be. But I don't know what the impacts would be on the aquifer, and I don't know of any studies that recommend prohibiting.

Having had environmental factors that have affected my family personally. I think we need to start having those conversations.

And affected our group here too.

So is— what you're telling me then is that's a conversation with the legislature?

Yes, it's an action that the city council could look deeper into if it so chooses.

As well, and make a recommendation. You know, I mean, make some sort of recommendation that would go to the state. This is an important thing for our city.

We'd like this looked at because we're seeing a lot.

Yeah, well, in our entire city drains into Utah Lake. So, I mean, that's where it goes.

Yeah, we— and just to make you aware, we do have, uh, we do have policies in place where we have, uh, protections set up in our wellhead.

Areas.

There are certain distances that we don't allow stormwater drainage and infiltration because we want to protect those areas that have been identified as prime areas that will be the first areas that the— that any deep well would pull water out of. So we have taken provisions to prevent that when it comes to stormwater infiltration within certain areas.

I don't know how the rest of the council feels, but that's a conversation I'd like to have.

I'd like to bring some awareness to that. It's just happening too much.

Mayor, if I may speak to that. The, um, the purpose of this document is to capture policy directive from the council ultimately. And so if the council would like to study that issue in more depth, that certainly could be a policy goal or consideration. Implanted into this text that further look into that issue.

I think it's an unintended consequence that we need to look at.

This document you hand out, the 3rd whereas, says a public hearing was considering this was held either in 2020, 2025. I assume that meant 2025. But I don't see this on the public hearing for today.

No, this is—

this—

that was a placeholder date, and I didn't—

I—

so some future date we will—

yeah, when I first drafted this, I assumed we were on public hearing, and I was incorrect when I drafted that. So that should just be a blank for a future date.

Thank you. We're not adopting this. No public hearing. This is informational. Thank you.

This has to be adopted by the end of the year.

Yes, this does have to be adopted prior to December.

We give you one more date.

That's right. It's going to be on the December meeting because state law requires us to adopt this by the end of the year.

And can we put in what Lynnae raised as a future goal?

Yeah, sure.

I'm not comfortable with that right now, taking that, um, flip the strip thing. I don't think that the unintended consequences have been fully studied.

On that.

It looks good. You know, it's the little virtue signaling thing, but do we know exactly what that is bringing to our city?

How would we do that? What does the study look like?

Or how do we gather more information on something like that? Or is it just out there? Maybe somebody did it. I don't know.

There's potential that it's out there. I haven't, I haven't heard of it, so it would take some research. And to determine impacts to aquifers. We could certainly look into it. In the meantime, if this is a concern, it's— we should probably remove it from the general— from this update that we're doing. We can always add it in later if we want to. Is this something that's required? There were certain elements that—

No, no, no.

No, number 4, I believe, is what her—

This is, uh, yeah, there was the language within that.

Number, uh, 5, very broad. I don't know what that means.

The actual state code reads, the Planning Commission shall include a recommendation for landscape options in a public street for current and future development that do not require the use of lawn or curb frontage. That's straight from state code. So now that's a recommendation, not an enacted order.

Oh, it is a recommendation.

I wish I included a recommendation in the thoughts.

It's just saying do not require.

Correct.

That does not prohibit— it doesn't prohibit the use of—

Isn't that what people can do anyway? Or do we have a requirement for right there?

Our ordinances already allow for either option.

So we're kind of covered, right?

What we say here is the state's just that.

Does that satisfy the concern?

Recommendation for landscaping options. Oh, are we recommending it?

I don't want to recommend it.

Well, what we're doing is we're answering the state's—

Soften that so it doesn't sound—

Well, the language here is just a quotation from state law. They ask you to have a recommendation. The response in the text Is that you have already responded to that by adopting an ordinance that does not require it. So it's already in effect. So, in effect, any recommendation made has already— the solution's already been created. That's what we're just outlining right here.

How do we—

this is already fulfilled.

How do we send a message?

If you want us to, we need to. So, it would be working with our local representatives and expressing concern about this particular issue and what could be done.

So, maybe that's just a good recommendation that we do more research on the impacts of non-structural interventions, particularly herbicides, in Well, that's probably the best we can do right now, right?

It really is. State law is requiring us to do this. In this document, we're reflecting what we have already done, but we could put in language in there. And because, again, it's a general plan, it's not code. We're not saying, people, you have to do this. We can say, For lack of better language right now, for next time we can amend this area and add in something like the city council intends to study the issue of pesticides in, in the aquifer as a result of xeriscape and weeds and things like that. And then that doesn't commit us to anything. It just says that's our intent. And then in the meantime, from a water resources standpoint, a planning standpoint, you can engage with state organizations and city council, with state legislators about this concern that has anybody looked at this? This could be a big problem. We don't know right now what's happening to the aquifer.

So you could position it as a study that we're going to study that. Something along those lines. But ultimately, the result of that study would be to come up with solutions that minimize the use of herbicides and that sort of thing. That would be the goal.

That is the goal.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So, let me add that to the draft text.

Anything else on that?

Are there additional questions? Thank you.

2.3.

Let me come back to that. Yeah, that one will be short, probably.

Yeah.

All right, let me— this one's short.

This one's gonna be 45. That far.

It seems like that's a lot. So do you want to go last?

Yeah, should we do the next—

the last 2, and then we'll come back and let you—

Yeah, we could. We could do that. That's a good idea.

Let's do that.

Let's go to item 2.4, local limits for wastewater ordinance.

Price, you guys just can't get enough.

Yeah, that's it.

Okay, City Council and Mayor, thank you for Putting me on the agenda. They've got some, uh, some code cleanup that we need to do, um, in the, uh, water reclamation. It was an error on my part, which I'll, I'll explain. Um, but before we dive into what that error is, uh, for the, for the general public, I thought I'd quickly go over, uh, what pretreatment and local limits are. So pretreatment is a federally required program that regulates pollutants and wastewater flow from certain industrial users to reduce pollution at the source, protecting the environment and extending the life of OREM's infrastructure. So we have a pretreatment program. We have employees that go around to various industries, sample what they, uh, what they're sending us in their sewage, testing it and making sure that they aren't sending us anything that's going to be dangerous to the environment, to our employees, or damage our infrastructure. Um, in order to determine, uh, what levels of contaminants we can receive, we need to do a study and determine what are called local limits. And local limits basically define the amount of certain pollutants that are allowed in wastewater discharge by certain industrial users and commercial users. So just because it's a pollutant doesn't mean that our wastewater treatment plant can't handle it. It can, it can handle a certain amount of it, but not too much of certain contaminants. So what we do is we limit the amount that industry that would, that would typically send those types of pollutants to the wastewater treatment plant to a certain amount. If they exceed that amount, they would be given a surcharge. They will pay for anything over a certain concentration that they send to us. Again, this protects our workers and it protects OREM's infrastructure. So, uh, previously, um, this city council last year approved— we made some changes, we did some cleanup to, uh, the Chapter 20 of, of, of the code, which addresses water reclamation. Uh, we made a standalone pretreatment ordinance, which is in the health and Sanitation Section Chapter 11, and we included those local limits there. This was approved on June 18th, 2024. However, shortly after that was done, later in the fall, when we were looking at the local limits, the numbers that were presented to you on the screen, which were correct, we realized were different than what were what were reported or provided to you, as well as to the state of Utah. A draft copy was unfortunately sent to the state of Utah, and I am the guilty culprit and I'm accepting responsibility and have taken measures to get it corrected. Um, so this draft was approved by both DWQ as well as the city council. When that was determined, we sent a corrected copy of the report to DWQ. last December. By the time they got through all of their process of public comment, we received a letter from them on July 31st of this year approving the new document. So this was the original slide that I presented back in June of last year, and you can see that it's— and these are the correct numbers. So what was presented to you on the screen was correct, but again, the document was, was not. Um, and, uh, so what we, what we show here is that there were certain analytes that went— that the concentration that was allowed went down. Those are represented by the red numbers. And then there were certain analytes that, uh, the concentrations that would be allowed that went up. So we could— we determined that we could treat a higher concentration of those at our wastewater treatment facility. in conducting the local limits study. And so this is what should have been approved. Um, it was represented to you, and, and it still is true that, uh, that there, there would be very limited impact to our commercial and industrial businesses that would be regulated by this. The ways that it was caught was we were sampling at an industry that had higher than document said in copper. We were— you can see that copper went from a 0.89 to a 2.71, so we can take more copper, but the actual approved copper amount was less and made us look at the document a little closer. So this is the— this shows What it was previously. This is what the paperwork said, and this is the correct amount, which was again shown to you on the screen. You could see the copper went from 0.89 to 0.07. So that's a drastic decrease in the amount of copper. That was incorrect. It should have been 2.71. So again, the correct paperwork was, was submitted to the state. Re-reviewed by them, approved, and now we're bringing it to you to, to reapprove the correct documents. And thus establishing these local limits for— So, the next steps, this particular ordinance is on today's consent agenda for your consideration. If you have additional questions, now's the time to ask them again. This was already approved by you.

We're just—

Doing it with the right numbers.

Officially approving the document with the right numbers. Once it's approved by you, I will take that report, send it to DWQ, and let them know that we've— the city council has approved the correct documents by, by resolution, no, by ordinance, or it's approved an ordinance creating these, these local limits.

So, does anybody have a problem with that? I'd like to hear the argument if you do.

David and I were just discussing if a public flogging or caning— that's our only question over here, Mayor.

Give me, just give me 30 seconds to head start.

I have a question that doesn't have anything to do with the document, but more of the gathering of the information, the samples. Is that done at the facility, and is that on a regular basis? Is it kind of surprise, show up and here to do a sample test?

That's—

well, that's a study that we do. Are you saying on the industry?

No, I'm talking about how we gather those numbers, how we get that information, how we know how much copper, how much You know, what all of those things that are in the water— I'm just curious how we get—

So we'll take samples at the influent, and then we'll take it at the effluent, compare them to see what our removal rates are. And that helps us to— we're able to calculate what the treatment capacity of the wastewater treatment plant is to be able to remove these pollutants.

Is that on an annual basis, or—

We do that every 5 to 10 years.

We work with the consultant on that to develop that. So there's a pie chart, if you will, and that shows all of the different contaminants and what our capacities are in that facility. And we have to limit these locally at each of these sites so we don't exceed what our treatment plant can actually treat and take care of efficiently and effectively. And I did— I failed to mention, we don't cover Roundup in any of these. So I don't know, Lynnae, on that.

Just kidding.

I think it's a little different, but I could be wrong.

Those are contaminants, but not in our sewer system.

Well, I appreciate your patience with me to take up a little extra time, but, uh, I'm being held accountable. I'm making sure that we get this correct, not sweep it under the rug. And good.

You'll help us catch the phantom dumper.

Get out of this case.

He moved out of town.

Scared him away. Okay, thank you very much.

Um, okay, next up we've got item 2.5, CDBG participation plan. Heather Cox.

Okay, this should be short and sweet. So every year we approve a CDBG participant citizen participation plan. And really all this plan is, is it's required by HUD for us to be able to say, this is how we allow our citizens to participate. These are the comment periods, the windows that we have to pass this through every year. This resolution we have today, there is one small change at the request of MAG that we're going to— that we have put in here. And really, this just applies to the year-end report called the CAPEER, the Consolidated Annual Performance and Evaluation Report. This is our annual report that says what projects we completed and how those projects benefited low- and moderate-income residents. So the only thing we are changing and adjusting this year is we're shortening the comment period for the CAPER from 30 days to 15 days to better align with HUD's recommendations and reduce administrative burden. And that's the only change that we're making this year. As an exhibit to this resolution that is on the consent agenda is our citizen participation plan. So this has been reviewed by our legal team, and really that's the only change that we're planning on making.

And this was in our sent— what you sent out, right?

Mm-hmm.

It was in the packet there except for the one she never dealt with.

Any questions?

Okay, very short.

Thank you.

All right, um, I think we'll go ahead and grab the food and we'll have you go after that.

Here, also birthday treats as Councilmember Tom McDonald, most recent birthday.

Share that with Brent Sumner.

We were—

week or so, so we, we can celebrate Brent too.

We have a volunteer or somebody who would like to say a blessing on the food?

Sure, I will, Mayor, if you would.

Father in heaven, we're grateful to be gathered in favorable circumstances and be able to discuss the needs of the city. We're thankful for the food that's been prepared for us, and we ask a blessing on it. Help us to Think clearly this evening as we go through events and be able to serve the people of the Lord.

In the name of Jesus Christ, amen.

Amen.

Building heights. There's a home on Palisade with a flat roof that has caused a lot of consternation in neighborhood. And As we talked with you last time, what the zoning code does is it describes a box within which you can build a home. Uh, rarely does somebody build the box, uh, and which is basically what happened this time. So we've been looking at some possible solutions and, uh, Jared and his team has looked at some, so we have a couple of approaches that we think we could go that would resolve this issue from happening again. We do have flat roofs in the community, and you'll see them around. Rarely does somebody max out where you build to the 35-foot single-family height limit. And then it's just a rectangular shoebox. It's, it's the, the shoebox that Shaquille O'Neal's shoes come in is basically what they built. So we'll let Jared kind of now walk you through this, and then we can, uh, talk about what, if anything, there is that we can do about the existing home.

Great.

Okay, so, um, as we, as we go through these, just feel free to jump in anytime if you have questions or Comments. Um, like Gary said, um, we allow 35 feet. I thought it just would be good to really quickly run through the standards. They're in 2268. You have, uh, again, to read that section, feel free. Um, right now, so I've listed the R-20, R-12, R-8, R-7.5, 6.5, 6, and 5. Um, 35 feet is basically the height that's allowed. I neglected to put Right there on those, and 7-5, 6-5, and 6 as well. Those are all allowed at 35 feet. The only difference is that in R-20 and R-12, if you— if you are in those 2 zones, you can— 20% of the roof area can go up to 45 feet, but you have to meet a greater setback. That's the only kind of nuanced version of anything we have really in our height restrictions for residential. Other zones that allow single family would be open space zones, and they're all just allowed at 35 feet.

Period.

They don't actually include the language about the 45-foot exception, although they're on 5-acre lots and 1-acre lots and things.

So, and we're proposing to keep this standard.

And basically, yeah, with maybe some modifications to be made, like Gary mentioned, it's very seldom that somebody wants to go all the way to that 35 and then build out to their setback lines too. That doesn't happen often. And we don't have anything that would prohibit that currently. Um, we do have a couple of state codes we have to make sure we step around and don't fall afoul of. A couple other things to note as we're talking about height is that we measure from what we call grade level.

Um, so, if the house is on a slope and the street is grade level, can it be 35 above that, even though the back part might be higher?

That's the definition we're going to decide on.

Kind of. Right now, the definition of height is the legal distance from the grade to the highest point of the structure, and grade is our average elevation of the finished ground level At the center of all the walls of the building. So this is kind of a simple illustration of what that would mean if you're on a slope. We take those 4 corners and all those elevations and average them and say that's where we measure our 35 feet from. So regardless of where you are, you do more complicated versions of that, but that services most lots.

Can a developer artificially raise the ground level with that definition?

With that? Well, yeah, lots get graded all the time in subdivisions. When they're making subdivisions, they can raise lots up. We worry about Differences between subdivision heights for grade, grades between subdivisions, grades between lots.

You have anything regulating that?

No. And that happens frequently, and that's one of the issues. And we'll probably see that on Canyon Park. Be able to remember the, uh, WordPerfect, uh, rezone as they go in there to meet all the sewer grades and things like that. They have had to bring in some fill. And so now you'll bring in fill of 5 feet, and then you'll go up 35. You could go up to 35 feet from there. So, this is, this is a thing that does happen, and our code doesn't prohibit it. That some communities might have a total absolute Height, or they define grade differently. This is a very common way of defining grade, and this is what we do.

This is problematic for me, just for the—

Yeah, and, and this is a, is a related but slightly different than the problem we have on palisades where somebody built the box.

Yeah, true. Um, does that make— does that make sense though, how we do it? Problematic notwithstanding, as long as it makes sense. There are, there are other, there are other ways to try to do it that might make more sense depending, but right now that's what we do. Um, a couple of things to note is cupolas and domes and things like that aren't subject in our code. That, that does say those are exempted from that 35 feet. An uninhabited dome. Air pits that are hiding, uh, pertinences like air conditioners on roofs, that kind of thing, are also exempted. They don't get to account for more than 50% of that upper floor, though. Um, so with those things established, and that's how we— those are our definitions. A couple of things we ought to talk about. We may want to start defining what flat roof is versus a pitched roof. Um, in looking at lots of different examples of homes and things like that over the, over the months, um, the 2:12 and 1:12 pitch, that's, that's an inch of rise over a foot of run. At 2:12 and 1:12, it basically looks flat as you're looking at a, at a structure. So a lot of that same problem that we're having, or we've had with that Palisades home, will be an issue if that was considered pitch and we were trying to to delineate between flat-roofed structures and the heights that they're allowed and pitched roof structures. So, if we define pitch or flat as 212 and under, flat is 212 and under, pitch is anything greater than that. That's something to consider. Those are just kind of examples of what that looks like in real simple forms. Um, the exceptions, I don't think that there's any reason in looking at the places where they're allowed and the kinds of lot sizes they get. That get put in place in the R-12 and R-20 zones. There's probably not any reason to be concerned, and we don't have any cases where people have been super concerned about that 45 feet that's allowed when you're 50 feet off the property line in those 2 zones. We haven't— we haven't thought about proposing getting rid of that necessarily.

Seems like 212 is still pretty narrow.

It is. That's— we would say this. I would suggest that it might be appropriate to define flat roof as this is a flat roof. And that's a flat roof, and 0/12 is an absolute flat roof.

Right.

But I was thinking you might say flat is 3/12 or 4/12. So you get a— anyway, I don't know how much 3/12, how many inches on 12, 3 inches to 12 inches. What's that on a normal size? Uh, if you've got a 30, I don't know, what's 30, 20 feet? I don't know. What do you have, 20 feet?

I don't know what that would be.

20, 20. So 3 times 20 would be 30 inches. That's only 2.5 feet.

It's not a lot of rise.

It seems to me that we'd want to define flat as something more than 2:12. It's my thinking.

Yeah, absolutely.

I don't know if that's 3:12, 4:12, or 5:12, but something.

I do 4:12 as your base.

And keep in mind too that a lot of times there are multiple pitches on a house.

Yeah.

So you could, you could. Not to overcomplicate it, but you could also say no more, no portion. If any, if more than 50%, I'm throwing out a fake number here now, more than 50% of the different roofs or roof structures in this building are 3:12 or less, that's a flat roof building, and that's going to be your standard. Or you can say any pitches that are like that. If we go, if there's sections of the home that are like 8:12, that's a, that's a 45-degree angle, or 12:12, 45-degree angle. I think that's 30. Sorry, if different pitches could have different heights allowed. So, if the flat roof section of your home, it's 3/12 and under or whatever, that's got to be a certain distance or setback, or maybe that's subject to different rules wherever you choose to define it.

If it's lower than 20 feet, like over your front door, you can have that.

Yeah, a little shed roof over the porch or something like that. That's a lower slope. That's what it's like. You don't see in Utah with snow loads, you don't see a whole lot of really Low pitches or flat roofs.

Changing because of the products that are now available for flat roofs.

Right, right. So, and changes in the weather too. So we don't see as much snow load anymore. Getting colder above base. We can consider all of that, but don't see a whole lot of a whole house with a 212 pitch or something. It's just not common. But it can be done. It's not prohibited.

Jared, a traditional common single-family home, is it typically 8/12?

8/12 is pretty common. 8/12, 4/12. The 3/12 you usually see on shed roofs, on porches and things like that. A lot of garages that are attached will have a lower one. It's like a 3/12.

I have 6/12 and 8/12.

Yeah, yeah, you probably don't go 35 feet.

Yeah.

And the different sections will have different pitches a lot of times. It just depends. Um, so that's something to think about. And we couldn't— that's a number that could be set. You guys just need to think about what it might mean and how flat is— how leveled out is too flat. One of the things that we talked about doing— sorry, let me make sure I do this. Varied heights for varied roof styles. Flat roofs, if we were talking about a flat roof, a maximum height of 24 feet is pretty typical. Some cities allow 28, some say 20. Um, but 24 for a flat roof maximum, we could go that route. And then pitched roofs would still be allowed the 35 feet, and then leaving those exceptions in place. Another way that we could look at it is to say different roof types, pitched roofs any greater than 212, get that maximum 35, and then flat roofs. You could say flat roofs at 212 or less, or 20, they get 20 feet or 1.5 stories. We haven't used stories to define our heights, but we could with something like flat roofs. Part of the issue with the house that brought all this up is that it's 3 stories above grade.

And no basement, is there?

There's a floor and a half below.

Oh, is there?

There's a crawl space. They really filled that box even underground.

Well, sorry.

Yeah, there's a lot of space there.

You know, there's a sign out front of the house now.

I didn't know that.

And it just says, hey, we're building this because housing is expensive. It's multifamily. They go through 7 or 8 little reasons. And don't worry, it'll be done by Christmas. We just don't know what year.

Nice.

Well, this, this picture of the home, um, kind of just to illustrate some of those issues, uh, we could say, look, flat roofs like this would get 20 feet or 1.5 stories above grade, whichever is less, at the front setback that's required. So 25 feet in this case, front setback. If they wanted to go higher, then they set back an additional 5 to 4 is a typical ratio.

From the front or the back?

From the front. I would propose— I'm not going to go to the next slide and say there's a— there's an interesting couple of interesting concepts we could look at for sites, because sites are an issue as well. Especially as lots were more built out in Orem, as lots are more infill. Yeah, there's not as much space around anymore.

Let's—

I want to introduce this concept and see if this is something that's interesting to you, and we can look at it further if it's something that we should explore. It's called the graduated height envelope. Um, they do this in, in Holiday. That's where I found it. Um, what it is, is it's in addition to an allowable height. The home is limited by a graduated height envelope that's created by— you take a starting point at 8 feet on the property line. So this is the property line. Here's the total allowable height right here. 35 feet. At 8, at the property line, this is a side yard right here at the property line. You go up 8 feet and you start right there, this imaginary line at a 45-degree angle. And you do that on all, all side property lines and go toward the center of the lot, and everything on the home has to fit inside that tent that you just made with that 45 degrees.

Well, that one part doesn't, right?

Right.

And that's an exception. We know whatever that thing is out front, this gable right here gets an exception. And I'll go to that in the next slide. But the basic concept is the roofline and the bulk of the house has to fit underneath that plane you create. And if you wanted to, for example, if they didn't want to gable that, they could still do that. They just have to push it back further from the side yard to get under that imaginary tent. And what that does is keep you from having— it protects those side yard neighbors from a large blank wall. Like this, this was on the interior side, right up against somebody's 10-foot side yard on their side. Ostensibly, there'd be 16 or 20 feet between them. But looking at a 35-foot wall, no one expects that. They expect, like we've talked about before, they expect a shorter wall and then a pitched roof on top of that. You don't think about that 3 stories of box. So this kind of concept would keep that from happening. The other added benefit it has is this little gable right here. Let me go to the next slide here. That gable would be an exception, and that kind of puts people in the position of saying, well, I want that room there. I can't have the flat roof over there. I can't just do a normal straight-out pitch that way. But if I gabled it, that provides interest and kind of varied architectural feature that we're not allowed to require under safe mode anymore. But this isn't requiring architectural feature. It's just incentivizing you to use it if you want to use your height right up to the edge of where you're allowed.

setback.

So that's an added benefit of that. Chimneys and other minor architectural features are not part of that envelope, just like they're not for our— they're exceptions in our overall height too, and they're not subject to this kind of graduated height envelope where they would be.

So if you had a chimney on this, is that the same as like a covered patio? That's below the 15 feet, so it's okay?

Yeah, that would be below that, so you'd be all right.

Can you guesstimate how many homes in Orem would In line with this currently? Like, how many of our properties now would—

I couldn't tell you that. I would have to— we'd have to do more work.

Like, generally, most of them, some, like, any kind of—

A lot of them would. I think this is because most people, most homes in the city are either— either they're older stock homes and they're not— they're not built right to property lines, or if they are, they're simpler rooflines, or they're newer homes that have steeper rooflines and more very Different pitches all over the home. And so you don't have that problem on the side yard that's 10 feet or whatever, where you're so close with the 2nd story straight up with a blank wall. But this ensures that doesn't happen. I wouldn't dare guess a number because I would be way off. And, you know, we can look at that. But again, that's one of the things. There is a simpler version of this, so I'm glad you asked that. Let me go to one. This would— this also, this would be for side yards. They Holiday does not apply this to front yards. They don't apply it to public street-facing or a street side. So it's not for the front elevation. It's for the sides. Kind of protect that where it's in the closest proximity. Usually there is an alternate way to do this. Salt Lake City does this. Um, they just have a simple exterior building wall height requirement, 20 feet. So your exterior building wall is limited to 20 feet, and that, that's imposed where the home is placed at its Direct setback. So let's say your setback is required at side yard, interior side yard at 10 feet. Well, you can have a 20-foot wall there, but then you've got to start pitch. That's the highest wall you can have, period. Now, if you want to increase that, they do— it's not like it is a 1-over-1 ratio increasing. So you're 10 feet, you want to go a little higher, you want to do 21 feet for the wall, you need 11 feet of setback and just keep going. And that's where they've had infill homes all over the old city. That works for them. So you don't get, uh, you don't get this. If there were a home right here, that's kind of a lot of wall to be looking at if you're only 10 feet off of that. So they wouldn't have that, that'd have to be further over. It doesn't limit anyone's ability to build a taller house. It just increases the setback if they're going to be on certain walls. That's a simpler way of doing that, of accomplishing the same thing that the graduated height envelope does. And then people like me don't have to do as much math, which is a win a lot of ways. Less math I'm doing. Better off you all are. That's a chance for mistake.

But, Jared, both of these options, from what we understand, fit within state code.

They're both still in use in Holiday and Salt Lake. I don't know that they've been tested, but they seem to fit it as I read the code. Yeah, they're not directly requiring a certain pitch or certain architectural elements. They're still dealing with setbacks that we're still allowed to regulate. And height that we're allowed to regulate. So they're tying them in a way that seems to— I don't want to say skirts the state code, but doesn't fall afoul of it.

And the idea, the concept behind this is we're redefining the box. And rather than just a plain vanilla shoebox, in this case, it's, uh, the boxes has, uh, you go up a certain height in the box. goes in on a 45-degree angle, or, or the box. If, if you can have the box, you can have this box here. But if you're right next to the setback, you could have that box, but you just got to move it back a little farther and do things like that so that you just don't build traditionally just looming over your neighbor. So we're really trying to merely define the box. We're not telling anybody you can't have a flat roof. We're not telling anybody what pitch it has to be, what kind of roof, anything like that. We're just— if somebody's going to build the box, we want to enact an ordinance that has a better box.

So how do they— I mean, I, and I'm thinking of these, these developments out Lehigh and Saratoga Springs where you basically got 50, 100 houses and you can't even tell which one's which. Yeah, you know, I mean, they're houses, but there's just Hardly any space between them. Yeah, they're all stacked in there. This wouldn't work with that, would it?

No, it would not. This would prevent— this would not allow that. It wouldn't work for that. You'd need— if you want to do that, you'd have to have some other code to do that. It would have to be a different exception or a different kind of zone, one that we don't have. But those are those homes.

This seems like it works great for single-family neighborhoods and our traditional neighborhoods.

If you were doing one of those truly small lots, yeah, I mean, truly small lot developments, it would be hard to meet these kind of The exceptions— this alternative exception is maybe a little easier to deal with in those instances. Then they wouldn't be super tall houses all close together like that, where they've basically taken townhomes and separated them with 12 feet. Yeah, and those might have their place. They would not deal well with this.

But you could have a different zoning area or something to deal with that.

You just have to have special exceptions for it.

This really is designed for existing single-family neighborhoods. You know, our standard R-8 neighborhood or an R-10 neighborhood that somebody's going to an older home. Burns down, they replace it or something. You know, some of the housing stock's getting a little older. We're going to see this more and more. For if somebody wanted to come in and do a development, say, where— and you'll see this all the time. You have a 6-foot side yard setback on this side, the other side of the house, it's 0. And you've got only 6 feet in between homes. Well, this code and our normal zoning code is not for that. That's a special housing type development that we'd have to work with. But anything new, somebody wants to do an R-8 subdivision, this would work well because that's a traditional neighborhood. This is a solution for a traditional neighborhood.

I like your example with your sandwich box, Gary.

Thank you.

So, if it's going to be just a plain box, you make it small, or you set it further away, or you make your box, dare I say, house-shaped. That's really what it's trying to do. My first house was a flat-roofed house. I hated that roof. But there it is. They're out there in the world. You don't see 3-story ones, and this wouldn't allow that anymore. So this is one way to approach it. I don't know if any of these ideas are— do these make sense? Or this is the right kind of direction, do we think? Or what do we—

So I have a question. I think there's a place for this. I think in our neighborhood I saw a house go in that I thought, wow, that's really not appropriate there. But I think there's a struggle between overregulating and protecting neighbors. Like, where is the happy medium?

That—

what is the least regulatory approach we can take to this and still protect our neighbors?

Sure.

I think— let me go. Well, I don't need to go back to a slide. Like a home like this, these are unintentionally, these are flat roofs. This is a very nice home.

Yeah.

It's on a very big lot. There's no— if you were working in our code, in our code right now, you could do this. And if you were working in this code right now, if we were proposing something like we're talking about tonight, you could probably do a lot of this. Because you've got enough space on the lot to move the house away and make it unobtrusive. This is really designed for— we're trying to maximize regular-sized 8,000-square-foot lot and really going crazy with that. If we did something like this alternative, the 20-foot— 20 feet is still a lot of wall. That's still a story and a half, at least, even with a vault in there, with a vaulted ceiling somewhere. That's still plenty of wall to start the pitch of your roof. I don't think it would really harm. That's a pretty easy one to do, the Salt Lake version. So I— but it's a good question, and I think they are kind of like Gary alluded to. They're kind of separate questions, and the mayor's question leads to that too. There are places where we would want to do potentially smaller lots, kinds of subdivision where it makes more sense. In the neighborhoods like on Palisades where this has happened, that's not where we're looking at that. This would make more sense perhaps, and maybe not be over-regulatory. In a small lot neighborhood or somewhere where we wanted to do smaller infill, true infill housing developments as opposed to an infill lot. Yeah, it might be overregulatory. You'd want to look at different possibilities for those. We don't really have that kind of zoning right now.

I could suggest, I think the state to some extent prevents us from overregulating because they don't want it to be purely design or aesthetic. standard, I think the intent here would be for essentially to encourage being a good neighbor and to protect sightlines. And so I think as long as that's the focus and the main priority of the regulation, then I think that naturally keeps us in check to a large extent.

Gary or Jared, is it oversimplifying it to say, like what we talked about at the beginning, if it's under a pitch of 4— 4:12, I think you mentioned— it's got a 20-foot limit, and if it's up that, you have the 35-foot limit?

Would that solve most of our problems?

Um, well, we're going to show you a house Right now.

So I want to see the— did you adjust for your setbacks?

No, not in this at all.

So that's a new home, or a significantly rebuilt home next to 2 older homes, right? They probably don't like them looming above them.

Yeah, and it's—

and it's—

you got a major, uh, I don't know if that's completely flat, but it's Flat.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Don't quite know what it'd be. Let's assume that that's a flat roof. And you could go there.

Yeah, but that's probably not much over 20 feet. It's only 2 stories, right?

Yeah, it's, it's 2 stories.

Um, 20, right about there.

Yeah, this is kind of a good example of what we may start seeing in Orem as older homes are tore down. As lots are not available. This is in the Hillcrest neighborhood by Hillcrest Park. A beautiful home, but it really stands out against the existing housing stock.

And that's probably within code. I mean, everything's good on that, isn't it?

It's all within code.

We just want to give you a visual of kind of another— instead of just the shoebox, but shoebox with some really—

Homes next to it are single-story homes, right? Maybe with a basement.

Ramblers with a basement, you can see the pitch on them.

He has a flat roof down there.

It's right there.

That's only a high home.

0.12, and this is probably a 2.

So it depends on what your goal is, right? I mean, it's arguable that, okay, this is the new house in the neighborhood. Maybe the other 2 will become like that.

Yeah.

And you wouldn't have the issue.

So add-on or something else, even if they kept the bones and added on or something, and we don't want to overregulate and prohibit People investing in the property.

Was that a total demolish and rebuild?

Yes, looks like it.

So, I think the conversation that also has to be had is the property rights on both sides of the fence. You know, overregulate. Well, who uses that definition? The person who wants this. Yeah, but the person next door that says, I don't want that 3-story box next to me. You know, they're not— the property rights that they thought they had in place when they bought that house or built that house have now been violated according to the spirit of the law, right? According to that landscape of that area.

Yeah, this is certainly outside the expectation most people who currently live in that neighborhood have, and we're going to see this more and more. As Orem redevelops all of these older homes, I grew up in a neighborhood just like this, you know, and—

Not the white one, the brick one.

Yeah, the brick one. And, you know, that neighborhood's a 1960s neighborhood. And more and more homes— I drive through the old ancestral manor area, and every time I go by, it's like, oh, wow, somebody's doing something like this. In that area.

Also, another thing is the trend, right? That looks to me like you've got 10-foot walls here. Yeah, 10-foot ceilings. Well, maybe at that level it looks like a bi-level, right?

Most likely.

Yeah, yeah, like level for the garage. So you've got 10 over there, maybe 8 over there. So right now the trend is 10, 12-foot ceilings. I mean, you know, is that gonna change the height?

Or, um, it would just depend— it would depend on the architecture. A lot of times it's not the whole first floor vaulted ceilings, but part of it.

So tell me about the back setback.

So the rear setback is just the 25 feet. So the stuff about the— sorry, the ideas about the limits on the height of a wall here, the external wall, or the exterior wall height, or the envelope deal, they're mainly to treat the close neighbors, which would be on the side. Here it's assumed is going to have 25 feet and another 25 feet on the back end of it. And 50 feet between, so you're not going to have the same kinds of impacts front to front and back to back. You're not going to have the same sorts of problems. We do with— we have the visual problem of the Palisades house just because it is so boxy. But that overall massing and height isn't as big a problem for people when they're looking at it across 100 feet of yard.

That first example you gave in Holiday, yeah, that makes things fit better, wouldn't you say?

As far as—

so you don't have this problem, it just makes people's houses forced to fit on their lot in a way that's not overwhelming their spot.

That's exactly what it's intended to do. Their purpose statement for us is this, and I think it uses the term overwhelm, to not overwhelm the adjacent. They go further in Salt Lake with that external building height and match heights and massing and things like that for homes on the same block face and things. Suggested that because that's a lot more, um, that starts to impact people's ability to add a 2nd floor or whatever, as you're looking at little homes that have not changed in years and years and years and So, I think we really have to define what we're trying to accomplish, right?

And what started this whole thing is that house on Palisades that has all kinds of issues, you know, for the neighbors. And so that's that. So, I don't know if there's a way— We've got the bigger issue of, as lots are sold and houses are— because why this is a problem is because the lots are so stinking expensive. Somebody takes out a lot. Now they want to put as much as they can as far as the house, but then you've got to make that all blend. So it sounds like these are a little bit— this is a big conversation to try and bring it together because we're trying to address the infill future of where we're going with this.

Address the issue without impacting the future ability of people.

If I may, can we also say from the time you pull your permit till completion has to be done within a year or year and a half, or you start paying some penalty fine? I mean, the other thing is, this isn't good enough. That, yeah, being done by Christmas, which year? I mean, not only is it bad, it's, it's an eyesore for the whole— can we set a limit on how long the permit's good for?

That's a much more difficult question to answer, and I don't have—

That's why I asked you, Gary.

I knew you'd know the answer.

And I'm going to give you a great answer that you will appreciate. It depends.

Okay, thank you.

Good advice.

Under the building code, You get your building code and you can move forward. And what it says is basically, as long as you have— you're making progress, which is basically defined by you get an inspection of something every 6 months, you go on. So, and the building code is imposed on us by state law. We have to adopt and use the building code and follow the rules in there. An issue, could we have something else in place? That's— I don't have a good idea for that right now.

I know they have like 2 years to get their lawn in or whatever, right? There's some requirement. Seems like we could do something on start to finish.

And there have been some things. NIT's been out there and they have some enforcement going on right now for some issues. But even if they had an issue with the building code, I don't know that the remedy at the end of the day would be, you're tearing that house down.

Well, I know, but you fine them so much and then they get motivated to finish it.

Yeah. And, but that issue is something we need a lot more research and thought about.

So, could we also— I would like to look at flag lots and the impact. I believe we have different standards for those.

Different setbacks for them, same height restrictions, but different setbacks.

Okay, so when you say different setbacks and height restrictions, is that gonna create more obstruction? Can there be more obstruction in a flag lot?

Um, right now, not, not really. It's the same size. You have to have 2 25-foot setbacks.

We just don't Let me tell you what I see with flag lots. Instead of the house facing this way, you're pulling in and they set the house this way. So then the impact on the backyard neighbor becomes a side yard, which is 8 feet instead of 25 feet.

Right.

Well, or 10, depending on how you split it, right?

So that's what I want to have addressed, because that expectation of having your backyard neighbor 25 feet from your fence. Should be the same. Those, those people who are already living there should be able to rely on that expectation of that setback.

Okay.

That's my opinion.

Bottom line, I think there's a fix that's fairly easy, could be fairly done to stop something like the shoebox house from being done again. Now, having said that, The issue of redevelopment in our neighborhoods as that happens, that's a much more complicated issue, I think, as you can see, than just the shoebox house problem. So, and, you know, and the where do we measure grade from problem, you know, because think of it, the grade problem similar to if you have a 70-foot-tall pyramid. It would only be 35 feet tall because you would measure from the middle of the pyramid. And, you know, and that's not— doesn't really make sense. So we need to kind of figure that issue out.

Those are 2 separate discussions is what you're saying?

Yeah, I think those are 2 separate discussions. Yeah, so there's, there's something we could do, I think, with the shoebox issue. But then these other issues, I think we need to have a more comprehensive look at what do you do in a community like ours that's now redeveloping older neighborhoods that were built in the '40s, '50s, and '60s. And you've probably heard of McMansions and things like that. That's— they refer to that when really big homes come into neighborhoods where they're traditional, you know, a rambler or a split level or something like that. And now people want to come in because they can afford to buy the home and tear it down and then maximize the box.

Right? So, yeah, to wrap up here, because we're gonna have to jump—

I just have a quick question.

Go through the agenda. Yeah.

So this graduated height envelope, how does—

how would that have affected the house that you just showed us?

So, so my, my take on this, I think this is a really good thing to explore, that graduated height. But major implications, you go through all your redevelopment, right, as far as that, that top floor. So I, I think you— I think like what we're saying is we need to have separate discussions about this, but we need to have a path where we're going to go down this path. And number one is fix the shoebox house situation so we don't have that again, but then have a real serious conversation, take some time to go through redevelopment and what we want that to look like and how we can I mean, because basically you have, you have to visualize these redeveloped neighborhoods, but then you've got to do it in the constraint of these are smaller lots. So this will be a really good project for you guys to figure out.

Looking forward to it already.

I can hear that coming.

So here, it's like your gift to us to keep on giving.

Okay, but I, I do, I do think it's really important and it's super timely. So I think Those are things that we should keep going down this path. So, so fix the shoebox house and we'll talk.

You guys come.

I think this is great.

That white house next in the—

I like that neighborhood.

And that's the good thing. We want to find out what's good and what works so that when we enact regulation, we don't prohibit that by mistake.

Okay.

Right.

All right, thank you. Hey, we're going to run through the agenda really quickly. Um, Jeff and Tom, you want a 1-minute report or none?

No report?

Well, we need a report at some point. Um, do you guys have a short—

I have a short report. I don't know, Jeff, he has none evidently. He left the room.

He's got me back up here.

You want it now, Mayor?

Sure.

So I serve on the following committees: Utopia, which is almost 40% complete. Norm and Bren, I thank you for sending out that information we got today.

Thank you.

I'm on the IHC Outreach Committee, but for future reference, they're not going to have that anymore. They're changing. They're doing a more regional-wide IHC reach out, so that probably won't exist. I'm on 2 Utah League of Cities and Towns committees, but have been released from those. The audit committee's once a year, and I probably won't come back for that. And CDBG, we had a great report today. So that's— those are my committees here.

Mayor, thank you.

Uh, my, my commissions, uh, the Transportation Commission. Um, we've been— I've had a lot of great discussions. Um, happy to see The 1200 South roundabout completed, uh, that's been on the agenda for years. And, uh, also 1600 North and 400 East is a continual discussion item, uh, hawk lights and bike routes, the exciting things there. I also serve on the UVU Outreach Commission, and we deal with little things as they pop up, concerns with neighbors or other things that come along. Serving on the CARE Commission, uh, with Dave, we've done our work there, and that will come around again after the first of the year, the wrap-up for that again. And we'll be hearing from Adam Robertson tonight, one of our major recipients of those CARE grant dollars. Um, and then the Orem Youth Council Um, we just got our new council put together, uh, a couple months ago. Um, just looking around to see if any of the staff that were involved in that were in here with us. Jen and I serve on that together, and, uh, they're amazing young men and young women that are excited to learn about what goes on in the city and how things work. And, and, uh, we had a mock city council meeting In our meeting last week. And we could strive to emulate their enthusiasm. They were so cute as they were participating in that and learning from that. Jake and Trevor both had some great points of discussion for them and things to think about and kind of internalize. So, but excited, excited for them and great things that they will do. Also, they've got some fun projects lined up throughout the year, service projects and different things that they can do to serve in the community as well, along with their learning process.

So, Mayor, I forgot to mention Chris and Public Works and the great work they do.

I'm on that committee and neglected to mention. Thank you. Yeah, we'll run through the agenda really quickly here.

We've got, uh, item 6, invocation.

Mr. Rodriguez, Pledge of Allegiance.

Debbie Lamb, introduce comments.

Um, you got item 8.1, report from the Neighborhood Advisory Commission. 8.2, a report from the Metropolitan Water District. 8.3, a presentation, Hope for Aurora Gold Star Memorial donation. 8.4, presentation, Lights On preview. 8.5, a report from the sheriff. 8.6, presentation from the fire safety event recap. And then we have 9, personal appearances. Item 10, consent items, uh, approval of meeting minutes September 9th, September 23rd, Approval 2026 City Council schedule. Uh, 10.3, appointment Neighborhood Advisory Commission.

Are they all new or are they reassignments?

All new.

And we've got item 10.4, resolution on the CDBG participation plan. Item 10.5, an ordinance approving local limits for wastewater. Um, item 11, Scheduled items: canvas acceptance and certification of the 2025 City of Warren general election.

And item 11.2, a public hearing, resolution, fiscal year 2025-2026 budget amendments.

And the one we never— we always have but we never do, but we'll offer—

Financial information.

And then item 13, Bren. And then item 14, adjourn to closed-door session, but we're not going to have that closed-door session. So we'll—

That was by mistake, unless you want to talk about national character.

So do we—

what do we need to do, Steven?

Drop that from the agenda?

I just ignore it. Basically adjourn, move to adjourn the meeting.

Thank you.

Made everyone's day.

Stay longer for this.

Oh, Dave.

Oh, yeah. But it was, it was beautiful. They had toys, of course, there. They have their little dress-up outfits. They've got butterflies, they have ladybugs. Of course, flowers, pictures, like so many pictures. Yeah. And then they did like finger foods, like they had sliders and she loved these little donuts. So they had like donuts and it was just, it was just so beautiful. It was an open house. It wasn't like a, you know, there was no program, there was no speaking. Good. Right. It was just an open house. I mean, it really was, but it's still this like, maybe I would've been at that. That's what I do prefer for my— everybody stand up, everybody might give things about me. Almost supposed to tell— fighting. He's gonna talk about moms. And it's funny because where they had it is where I've— like, I've been there one other time. It's dark on like 39-ish bar at night area.

Basically.

Um, but it's just beautiful. Should they have— you walk in and they have a memorial room over here, so you— that's where you put the candles and the photos and like all of that. And then over here, it's like a couple of couches and they have like a video rolling. Then you go in the back and it's also big. Outside they have fire pits with all these conversational areas. Like, it's really— it's an old home that's been remodeled into this. Like, I don't know how long it But I was gonna say, I don't— 39.

Oh, oh, good morning.

Yeah, maybe it was a house when we were— I don't know. Yeah, Stark's Funeral Home.

Yeah, test, test, test.

Yeah, so thanks, ladies. Yeah, you got this. Test, test.

Testing 1, 2, 3. Can you hear me okay?

Yes, Chris, we can hear you.

Thank you.

Thank you very much. Do I have any stuff on?

Thank you, everyone.

Oh, there you are.

I am on dice too. No, right, Bryce?

You have your— you have your $4.55, uh, Carl Hurst Sports Club. I mean, I know some of those others, like visiting artists for libraries. The America 250 is right here. Your citizens' fund, you have to— Kitchen plumbing.

I'd like to welcome you to our City Council meeting tonight. And we'll start off, we'll call this meeting to order and we'll have an invocation by Tammy Rodriguez and a Pledge of Allegiance by Debbie Lamb. And Lynnae invited these folks to come. And so if you'd like to introduce them, Lynnae.

Yeah, so Tammy and Debbie serve on our Neighborhood Advisory Commission and have done a wonderful job there and want to tell you we are grateful for your service. So thank you for coming tonight.

Okay, Tammy, if you'd like to give the invocation, and then we'll have Debbie come up after and give the Pledge of Allegiance.

Our Father in Heaven, we are indeed grateful for the opportunity to gather together as a community this evening to discuss the needs and the progress of Orem and ask for thy Spirit to be with us as we discuss these things We pray for blessings that our minds and our hearts might be touched to be open to new ideas, and that we can remain positive and work together for the betterment of our men. We are grateful, Father, for all the blessings that we have, especially for this land of freedom that we enjoy. And we pray for these things, Father, in the name of thy Son, Jesus Christ.

Amen.

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

Thank you. We'll move on to item 8.1. We'll have a report from the Neighborhood Advisory Commission with Debbie D'Amico. Uh, Reed Farnsworth, if you'd like to come up.

Uh, thank you for inviting us to do this today. Um, let's go to the first slide. Or even let's go to the second slide. While she's bringing up this slide, Orem is divided into neighborhoods. Each of them is about a mile by a mile in size.

We have—

and then we combine them together to form neighborhoods. So we have 9 neighborhoods. I'm the commissioner of one of them. In fact, each neighborhood typically has 2 commissioners. If you go to the next slide, it shows what those neighborhoods are, um, and who the commissioners are. If you look through the names, you'll probably recognize some of those people. We're a varied group. There's young and old, male and female, and our opinions are varied. And we all care passionately about Orem. I'm sure you know the value that comes from having a variety of opinions that are passionate and care about the City of Orem and how it all works together for the better good. Let's go to the next slide. Oh, these commissioners typically serve— they're invited to serve for about 2 years. Some have to quit early because of family things. Some continue longer. I'm, I think I'm my 4th year now going on my 5th year. So it's a good group. Over the past year, we've been working together to learn more about the city, worked with the Orem City Council and staff to plan and execute ways to get our residents more educated about, involved with, and connected with our community. Uh, let's— this is the 4th slide here.

Thank you.

We've been learning from public safety, the community-oriented policing neighborhood improvement team, the community development, uh, regarding planning. Um, we've been learning from developers, engineering, and various divisions, and the Orem City legal team regarding short-term rentals, etc. We had a wonderful, uh, meeting last week where we talked about the concerns, and it's interesting because now we get a feeling for what you have to deal with. These are not easy decisions, and a lot of people Pro and con on each side, and we appreciated learning that and look forward to giving you some input on what we think might be the best direction to go based on what we learned from our neighbors. We continue to work with the city to improve communications, ensuring all residents are informed about events, happenings, and other activities in their neighborhoods and throughout the city. This is something we look forward to continuing and enhance in the future as we work together. We had a Kindness Week, shared activities. Let's see, are we in the right slide? Let's go to the next slide, I think.

Yep, there we go.

We had a Kindness Week where we shared activities on social media platforms with the communications team, celebrated Orem's 106th birthday, had kids activities at Nelson's Grove Park, as well as service projects cleaning up the flower beds. Police awarded students who they caught doing acts of kindness with gift cards for treats from The Chocolate. We hosted a booth at the Sharon Park My Hometown grand opening. Some of you were there. It was quite memorable. We distributed information from the neighborhood improvement team. We gave away candy. Orem City jigsaw puzzles, challenge coins. It had kind of a windy glitch, we call it the Oremnado. And I appreciate you putting me first today because as soon as we finish, I'm going to head over to the chapel 2 blocks away to participate in my hometown. I, every Tuesday night, I tutor students who need help with homework. That's just one of the things we do. We have English as a second language, Spanish as a second language, sewing classes, piano lessons for free.

Thank you.

Homework help, lots of good things for the neighborhood, and it brings a lot of people together. Uh, let's go to the next one. I think we held 3 open houses, 2 for Sunset Heights at the Orm Recreation Center and 1 at Hillcrest, uh, at Hillcrest Park. Let's go to number 6, slide 6. We absorbed the beautification committee and are awarding 36 $25 gift cards to winners along with a $100 gift card for the grand prize. We judged those last week in our meeting. It was a difficult competition. We have some beautiful homes in our city. Slide 7. As we look ahead to 2026, we're considering small-scale service projects that will be planned in coordinated by district leaders, and we have unique challenges in each of our neighborhoods, but we are working to build a better community each day. As you well know, each of our neighborhoods have different needs, and it's a good committee that we have that gets together. They know their neighbors, they're getting to know their neighbors more. We do a lot of outreach and we try to get input from the community, and we try to take information from the city back to the community. Thank you for this time. Any questions?

All right, I think we're done.

I just want to say, Reed, we appreciate your service. Um, I'm over the Neighborhood Commission, and we really do have a lot of energy on that commission. Um, our members care about Orem, and we're so grateful for that. And I really liked how you touched on on our goal of creating connection and unity and service in Orem. And I don't— he didn't really say— there have been opportunities that, you know, we've seen our commission members pass out breakfast at the— oh my gosh, what was that rock fest called?

Come Together Rock Fest.

Come Together Rock Fest. You've been in the booths to sign people up for the Orem newsletters. I really appreciate the car shows. Thank you for all of those extra the hours you put in.

Thank you. I'm going to go do some tutoring at my hometown.

Perfect. Thank you.

Thank you.

Can I, can I have one more thing? We have some commission members here. Will you stand up, those of you who came for this presentation, just kind of in support? So thank you. Thank you all for coming.

Thank you. Next, next up, item 8.2, a report from the Metropolitan Water District. And if Chris, if you'll introduce yourselves.

Sure.

I'm Chris Shirkey, Orem Public Works Director. Casey Shaw is the district chairman of the Metropolitan Water District of Orem. I'm the vice chair. Reed Price is here as our, uh, well, our manager. Actually, our general manager for Metro Orem. He also is my assistant director at the Orem Public Works. We don't have any other members from our district here present. I'll turn the time over to Mr. Shaw.

Thank you. Appreciate the opportunity. I've been challenged to make this concise, so we'll do that. The Orem Metro District's purpose is to provide and protect the water supply for Orem citizens now and in the future, and our, our District is fully staffed and functioning. We recently completed our audit for the '24-'25 fiscal year. We received a clean opinion and indicated that we were in good shape, both financially and, and controls in the district. A couple of issues we are facing. The current Deer Creek outlet is many years old and is being reconstructed because we have water rights that, uh, with the organization that runs Deer Creek, we're responsible to pay a portion of the cost. That's a $100 million project. The city has been gracious enough, the city council, to approve a special water fee on our water bills to take care of that, and they're finishing up and anticipating that they will come in under budget. So that's a good thing for us. You probably have heard that although Orem is no longer an agricultural city, 2 canals that have historically served Orem are in the process of being dissolved. The Canals can no longer—they don't have enough users, and they have a lot of trouble keeping them up so the water doesn't leak out. And they've elected—the water users have elected to dissolve those water companies. We have a good portion of our water in those water—in those canal companies, and we've been working with shareholders. They're mainly. homeowners that water their garden or their lawn. A few remaining, uh, uh, urban farmers do fruit trees, and we've been working with them to provide them alternatives because the water will no longer be delivered, uh, as of this summer. And they're in the midst of dissolving those companies right now. Um, and we're participating in that, uh, in that dissolution, and perhaps we'll be able to pick up some additional water for Orem City as well. Anything you would add, Chris?

Yeah, so between Reed and Casey and myself, we have met with a few shareholders who are interested in connecting to Orem City supply. And for those larger users, those that may have 5 to 10 shares, we've encouraged them to consider looking at drilling a well on their respective properties if they wouldn't to continue to farm on their agricultural areas. So we have developed a plan moving forward to accommodate their needs. And if they have— if they are interested, we have a 0% interest loan for them. They can pay us back over 5 years to, to help them make this transition.

Mayor, if I may, they've all been informed. Everyone who's affected knows this and has communicated with you.

That's correct.

Yes.

Thank you.

We have no other info unless you have some questions.

Hot dog.

Thank you.

Okay, thank you for that report.

Appreciate it.

Okay, next up, item 8.3, a Hope for Orem Gold Star Memorial donation.

I was hoping my friend Gary would be here. from the VA, but I'm guessing he is stuck in Salt Lake traffic. Um, thank you for having me. Um, Kathy Ambrose from Hope for Orem, and thank you staff and council for having me here today. Um, I think it's fair to say that everyone here has been affected in one way or another by mental health issues or suicide. In 2018, our nonprofit was founded by Janice Lindley because she was deeply moved by the suicide crisis in our city, especially with young adults and teenagers. Since then, our mission has been to support Orem through suicide awareness, prevention, and mental health resources. As the executive director, I work continually to research and implement effective strategies to help reduce suicide in Orem. Since our beginning, Hope for Orem has awarded more than $10,000 and scholarships to high school seniors at the 3 high schools with an essay they write on what does kindness mean to them and how they implement it. We've also given several grants, over $60,000, to local schools and their PTAs to run their suicide prevention curriculums And help them embellish these programs. We also do community outreach, our yearly booth at Orem Fest and our yearly mental wellness fair at Library Hall. All of our services are complimentary. Our goal of giving individuals and families the tools they need to support mental wellness and prevent suicide. We know the challenge is great, but we remain fully committed to this work. When we learned of the Gold Star Family Memorial, we immediately began working on a contribution of $1,500, recognizing that veterans and their mental health is a critical part of the suicide prevention effort. Supporting this memorial aligns perfectly with our mission. Hope for Orem is also part of the Utah County Hope Task Force. a coalition of nonprofits and mental health partners working together to reduce suicide throughout our county. It's a membership of hospitals, Wasatch Behavioral Health, Aspen Grove Health, many more that I can't list. BYU and UVU are part of this coalition. I had invited Gary Blair from the VA to speak about his mission And with the VA on suicide prevention, but we will excuse him. But thank you. And I have the fake plastic check because I walked in here and gave the real one to Peter because I know I would lose it between here and there. So he has the real one. So thank you very much.

Thank you.

If you'd like to come up and take a photograph.

1, 2, 3.

Excellent.

Okay, next up we'll have item 8.4, Lights On preview.

Perfect. Well, we are just going to preview what's coming for Lights On this year and— Excuse me, you guys just introduce yourself. Oh, so sorry. I'm Sydney Wong or Bailey, whatever you wanna go with. Um, and I'm an events coordinator for the city.

I'm—

my name is Kenise Whitaker and I'm the events manager with City of Warren.

Perfect. So yes, we're just gonna talk about Lights On, our upcoming Christmas event in the park. Um, the Hallmark special per se, an exciting one to finish the year, be December 1st. 5 to 8 PM. That's Monday after Thanksgiving in the City Center Park. And we are gonna have a lot of holiday tree lights. Obviously, that's where the magic happens. This year, 105 illuminated trees. You can see the colors on this map is the colors of the tree, and then over 700,000 bulbs, which is more than we've ever done. So bigger and better every year.

We will have a program on the stage which starts out with our own Orem High Jazz Band who will start us off, and then we'll have a short program where the mayor will introduce, um, Santa Claus to the arena, and we will have a lights on where we'll count down and turn on the lights. We will also have a drone show following the program. Yes, should be a good time. It's about— it'll be about a 12-minute show with lots of fun holiday Lights and images that will be illuminated in the sky. When the drone shows end, the fun still continues with stage activities and entertainment.

So we have some returning activities that we've seen in previous years. Again, that onstage, um, stage entertainment, like she said, the Orem High Jazz Band. We have an a cappella group that's at UV— from UVU. We have Steven, he does the saxophone, which maybe you guys have heard before. The live reindeer will be back. We'll have letters to Santa and pictures with them. Yes, the holiday drone show— cross your fingers it works. Um, we'll have the rides on the Orem Express, free hot chocolate thanks to, um, Trio and Walker Sanderson, and then the holiday market will be back.

We have some fun new activities that we're introducing this year as well.

well.

Last year we had kind of a spontaneous, uh, photo opportunity happen with our own Orms Grinch, and so this year we're making it a little more intentional. He'll have his own spot where you can come and get your fun picture with him. The Events Commission has also introduced a family scavenger hunt where families will be able to look for special moments in the park and encourage them to Explore all of the activities that we have to offer throughout the park. When they complete this scavenger hunt, they'll earn a special ornament that will commemorate the Lights On for this year. We also wanted to provide a couple of activities and options for the community to give back. So we have a holiday wreath auction that we'll be doing this year. It's kind of our culminating fundraising, um, event for the Gold Star Memorial. We have some community members who have donated some wreaths and also some of our own city employees and some departments who will be donating wreaths for people to start auctioning on, and they'll be on display at Lights On. The Youth Council, our Orem Youth Council, is also hosting a donation drive where you can drop off some donations that night at our information tent any new books or toys or clothing for children who are in need. We'll have some really fun photo opportunities throughout the park as well. Sarah is donating a Santa sleigh, and it will also have some custom-built, uh, or opportunity like photo opportunities, so make sure to check those out. In celebration In celebration of America 250, we have one of our trees that will be dedicated in red, white, and blue, and we'll have a little story in front of it about the Liberty Tree from the Revolutionary time period. So make sure to enjoy all of these fun new activities. We certainly couldn't do this without some of our very generous sponsors. We have MountainStar, who is our Timpanogos Regional Hospital, also TRIO and Walker Sanderson are providing our hot chocolate complimentary to our attendees. Utopia has also generously provided some cash donation as well as Rocky Mountain Power. And the CERA, of course, is going to be there supporting us in, uh, with master of ceremonies and also with our decor.

Do you guys have any questions?

I just want to— I just want to frame this for you guys as far as what a big deal this is. So, 4 years ago, we had— we had a Lights On celebration that we'd had for years with a few hundred people, and it was a, you know, it was the traditional Lights On. And then the next year after that, we started construction on the new city building. And so we were told that we would need to cancel Lights On and just bring it back. after the new city building was work— was done. But instead, our innovative staff came together and said, no, we're not going to cancel Lights On. And we went from this small little Lights On to— the first year was 2,500 people came. Last year, 7,000 people came. And, uh, we, we're now up to 700,000 lights. So this just shows the innovation of our, of our staff and our team and what you guys do. So thank you.

Thank you. Speaking of innovation, Pete's team is working on like several videos to get whether or not we want that many more people in the park, but we have—

follow social media.

There's some fun videos coming out. They're very creative. Watch one of them today and stay tuned.

Yeah.

Can I ask a quick question? In years past, we've left the lights on well past Christmas and New Year's. Is that the plan again this year?

We don't know, but we've—

Yes, it is.

Yes, but it's kind of a surprise.

We will keep the surprise hidden until later.

Tune in for the surprise.

Any other questions?

No, thank you for doing an awesome job.

Thank you.

Okay, item 8.5, uh, report from our favorite, the SIRA, Adam Robertson.

Oh, look at that.

Well, thank you very much for having us today. We're happy to come and, and talk to you. We, um, we love being a part of Family City USA, and, uh, that's, that's important. This year we, uh, we just started our 92nd year as an organization and just completed our 41st summer at the Shell this summer. Sierra's mission is to enrich the mind, touch the soul and unify family and community by producing and presenting wholesome and affordable arts, entertainment, and education for all ages in quality facilities. Our goals for serving the community are to produce, present, and provide a wide variety of opportunities for citizens of all ages to be enriched, entertained, and educated, whether it be as an audience member, a student, an artist, a teacher, a performer, or a volunteer. And we have our great Cirrus Center here. It's quickly turning from fall to Christmas at the Cirrus Center as we have a lot of Christmas decorations. As I mentioned, at the Cirrus Shell, we just completed our 40th first summer. We're so grateful for our partnership with the city and, and are still just enjoying this new beautiful fence thanks to our partnership with the city and new add-ons this year. We love on the north entrance there the, the new benches and, and cans, and on the south, and makes it much, much more inviting for people as they come and go. Of course, if you didn't see the tulips in the on the north end there, they just looked amazing this year as people came to the shell. We're also doing everything we can to continue to update and enhance the facilities. Just this last summer, we added two new pads and electrical and pavilions on both sides of the the main. Concessions area. This is, this is the summer season that we just completed. There's some— many of you were there through many of these, but we had some great, great productions with Newsies, and there's Lone Star, Annie of course on the stage. We've got lots of slides here, so we'll go— there's Hunter Hayes. We didn't get them all in here But, uh, Hello, Dolly! was a fun show. This was our 20th year for Dancing Under the Stars. This is one we started with 2 other studios, uh, 20 years ago, and everyone that is huge in the dance world has been in this show sometime in the last 20 years. In fact, many of them for the 20th did video messages, like Derek and Julianne Hough. and many others, and just said, we grew up on the Siroschel stage in this show. And so it was kind of fun to bring back some of our favorites. Of course, every year we have the national award-winning Cougarettes on there as well. This was just our closing number. Lots and lots of up-and-comers in the dance world. Aaron Tveit, big Broadway star, movie star, and Of course, we love our partnership with the Utah Valley Symphony every year that, that we produce that concert with. Um, again, more concerts, lots of fun. Yeah, Commodores. And then I, I thought this was fun. Our concluding concert was the, the Beatles, and I loved the couples dancing. So many of them just up and dancing. It was great. Of course, we ended with a bang at the end of the summer. Our outdoor movies continue to be very popular. People love to come out under the stars and see on a big, big screen and lay there and, and have fun, watch good movies. We continue to have a great relationship with Centennial Elementary. As they come, they have an— every student in the school comes every month. And so it— there's only 3, 3 or 4 classes a week, but they come through and have an art experience, a dance experience. They come up and they— we do Q&As with them and, and they learn the technical aspects of shows. It's a lot of fun. Every month we have different exhibits in our gallery. This is the public art show that's currently in the gallery, which also serves for recitals and meetings and other things. Our volunteers are awesome. We have more than 1,000 volunteers that come, youth and adults, come both at the center and at the Shell. And of course, it's always worth mentioning we're 100% community theater. So every single person on the stages are volunteers also. Um, anyway, Michelle, lots of kids. We also have a lot of community projects that come through. This was one just a few weeks ago with the Day of Giving in the courtyard, working along lots and lots of special events. Literally hundreds of groups use the Seara that are not Seara, and We also have many special events of our own. This was just last weekend, our annual celebration of veterans. Our Christmas Makers Market is coming up this December 12th and 13th outside. These are handcrafted, handmade items. It's always a lot of fun for the kids. And Sarah likes to come alive as well. And nowhere near 700,000 lights. But we love Christmas, uh, always love participating in the, in the parades, um, as well. It's so, so fun. The Colonial Days, which we heavily support every year, is a favorite of the community. Um, lots of community workshops, uh, of course our annual fundraiser that we do at Sarah. We love our partnership with the UVO Culinary Arts program. They do a wonderful job and always tie it into whatever theme we have each year. The, the Zion's Indie Film Fest is another collaboration that we've, we've done for many, many years. This was just last year when Brandon Fugal talked about Skinwalker Ranch and all of, all that they're doing. Lots and lots of special events at the Sierra. 2026 marks 50 years since the founding of the Orem Heritage Museum, so we're gearing up for that as well. It was founded in 1976 and was for many years in the basement of the Friendship Center. And for whatever reason, as the programs continued to grow there, they said we need more room, and, and the museum moved out of the basement, and that was fortuitous because a few weeks later it burned down and all of the Orem Heritage Museum belongings were in our storage unit and safe from that, that incident. It then in the early '90s was home in— housed in the second floor of the Sierra Center, and now of course in the historic seminary building. We, in preparation for this 50 years, have done a lot of work ourselves in resurfacing the entire outside of the museum, getting it ready. New soffit, fascia, gutters, lots of upgrades so that it is, is ready. We also have the shops building behind the Serra where we paint and build, and all the props are, are there. The costumes are—we have—we just have the greatest staff there is out there, in my opinion. They're always working hard. Our arts education is absolutely huge. We had oh, I wrote it down here. Number of children, teenagers, and adults attending arts education programs: 63,000. Some know some of those were one class, some of those are multiple classes, but that's just in one year. Lots and lots of programs. Our choir— we just started this year the Sierra Chamber Singers. This is a large group of adults, and they've had one concert already. They have a Christmas concert coming up. Our dance program is exploding with all kinds of ages of kids. Adult programs are expanded and growing. This is some of our youth theater productions. They do a wonderful job in the youth theater department. And of course, the high school-aged kid, the oldest age group in, in our theater department, is acting up. This is their production they just finished last spring of Les Mis. And, you know, so we talk about quantity a lot at the Sierra. We've got a lot of kids, a lot of people.

But how—

what is the— what's the quality like? I mean, the only way you know that is if you leave your comfort and go out into the world and compete with other theaters of your age. Year, we're in the advanced category. The largest group on this side of the Mississippi is MTCA, the Music Theater Competitions of America, and groups from Canada, Florida, literally all over the country come. They go to California and they compete in many divisions. Again, Acting Up is part of the advanced group. And every single year without fail, they come back first or second place in the nation. So we, we feel like there's quantity and quality. They took first place in the group ensemble again this year, and you can see all the second place trophies and things. Many of these kids also garner scholarships at this competition. That they take with them to university. The Sierra Art Studios is growing and expanding as well. Our puppet studio, our pottery studios, our adult classes. This was our event that we had on Memorial Day of this year, our pottery event that we had for the public. That was fun in the big pavilion. Our art classes, our one-night-only Paint the Nights are very popular. as well. There's some stained glass students. Lots and lots of fun. And of course, our— one of our largest programs is our Theater for Young Audience programs, where we do one in the fall and one in the spring. Kids bus in from all over the county and see a 1-hour show based on popular children's books. We just closed this show right, right around Halloween time. And then the kids get to come after the show. We're doing Peter Rabbit in the spring. And afterwards, they come and they ask questions. And it's interesting, we always say, how many are you— how many of you are here for the very first time seeing live theater? And nearly 50% every time. are being exposed to the magic of live theater, and it's fun. The questions that they have at the end are just great. And each show, we bus in around 10,000 to 12,000 kids for each show. They do 21 shows of these. Our indoor season, we just kicked off and just closed Hunchback. It was very popular. People loved loved it. It was a well, well-done production. We had Joshua Creek in concert. Our annual Tricks and Treats was fun. Just last week, the Truman Brothers with their statewide tour. We just closed on Saturday night, the night of Broadway. Again, these are, these are people that are from all over the state and all over the county who come and share their talents. It was, it was just fabulous. We opened on December 5th, The Best Christmas Pageant Ever. Very great message for the holidays. We encourage you to come check that out. Lots of other things coming up. We've got a storytelling night. Acting Up's doing Hadestown this year. School of Rock and Ryan Ennis, Dallin Bayless. We have even a little bit of sunshine in January with our luau. Lots of fun things coming up. Our Cinema Classics continues continues to grow and become popular. I put both of these on there because we're just— we just finished today this last one in the fall, and then we have another 12 weeks of our winter coming up. And just today we had 300-something seniors that came at 10 AM to see a good old classic. So anyway, they love John Wayne. But lots of fun things, lots of fun Fun movies. Art has the power to transform, to illuminate, to educate, inspire, and motivate. And I put this up: The creative arts are the measure and reflection of our civilization. They offer many children an opportunity to see life with a larger perspective. The moral values we treasure are reflected in the beauty and truth that is emotionally trans. Transmitted through the arts. The arts say something about us to future generations. Just in closing, you know, we're already gearing up for— in just 8 short years, SIRA will celebrate 100 years of SIRA. We've got lots of plans in the making for that. At the same time, the Shell will celebrate 50 years. And so that's, that's lots of fun things planned for that. Um, we, we love our collaborations. We collaborate with the Utah Valley Chamber of Commerce regularly, Miss Orem, the Utah Metropolitan Ballet, Zion's Film Festival I mentioned, Center Stage, the Mr. and Miss Inspirational pageants, the Freedom Festival UVU, BYU, lots and lots of great collaborations. CIRA is— the percentage of expenses covered by ticket sales and operational revenue is 76%. That is the opposite of the national average. So we feel like we're doing really, really good, and we We very much appreciate the support of the CARE program and the city, which helps make up the difference, to nearly a quarter of a million people who come through our doors and gates every single year. And we've had in the 41 years at the Shell just a little over 1.5 million people attend something at the Sierra Shell. Lots of— nearly 5,000 people a year visit the Orem Heritage Museum and learn about the history of our, of our great city. We live in a wonderful place. We're lucky to have an organization like CIRA in our community, and we very much appreciate you guys and what you do. Do you have questions?

Just admiration.

Thank you, Adam.

Thank you, Tom.

I, I just would like to say thank you for bringing the community together. As much as I love the arts, and I do, I love even more that you bring the community together in such a great way, doing positive, uplifting things. So thanks for your efforts there.

Yeah, thank you. Um, you know, one of my favorite things is to stand at the top of the hill during an event and watch people wave to their neighbors across the way, and it just really brings that community together. Many of you are nodding your heads because you've seen it. You, you see that community, and to think that that's right in the middle of a 30-acre park in the dead heart of our city is, is just amazing. It's a great thing.

And I had a child who participated in your productions in the outdoor shell, and just that opportunity of community theater. I mean, she's majoring in theater now at BYU. Just, um, was it, you know, you couldn't replace that with anything else. It was so different from the high school experience. I mean, you had a professional tap dancer come and teach them how to do some of these things. And anyway, thank you. You run a quality program. It's fantastic. Thanks.

Thank you.

And if I could just add my 2 cents as well, Adam just recently received an award from the Utah Valley Chamber of Commerce So it's not just us folk here in Orem that recognize and appreciate your great work, but also the, the entire valley. You do an amazing thing. And, and I just want to comment on— you talked about the quality. That's one of the things that, that we've noticed. It just keeps getting better and better and better with each year. The productions, I just keep—

Thank you.

improving. And I know that takes a lot of work. And so thank you to you and your amazing staff and all of those volunteers who make it happen. Thank you. You really do make Family City USA feel like a family. Thank you.

Thank you.

I, I just want to add, as far as, um, Adam and I have gotten to know each other really well over the last 4 years, and If you were to try and create a community arts and entertainment situation, you couldn't do any better than what the Sarah does. And when the Sarah has always been independent, and it's an independent organization, and it's best that it stay that way. And then the City of Orem is like a partner, and we support and work with. But there have been times when. That relationship has been a little rocky and it's been more difficult. And what we've tried to do over the last 4 years is to bring that relationship back to where it needed to be and to make it really solid. And so Brent's worked, you know, tirelessly with Adam just to merge that together, bring that together. So I would say that right now the relationship with Orem and the SARA is in the best place it's ever been. I would encourage the council to Keep it that way and just keep that growing because it's a, it's a fantastic relationship. Thank you, Adam.

Thank you. Yeah, I, I, uh, I will tell you, I've been at Sierra 23 years and we have never had as good of a relationship with the city of Orem and the staff and the people here than we do now. Thank you.

Thank you.

Okay, item 8.6, fire safety event recap. Derek Spencer, if you'd like to take us through that.

I'm Derek Spencer, the Fire Division Chief over fire prevention. Every October we have Fire Prevention Week, and this commemorates what's known as the Great Chicago Fire. It happened in the late 1800s, killed 250 people, and left over 100,000 homeless. So, so every year we do a fire prevention night to provide education, and we try to be a little more entertaining. We go into schools and other groups all the time for education, but this is more of a fun Night for us. And you can see in the video that Pete's team put together, we'll show here in a minute, um, we have a lot of different support from different participants in our— that we work with, like the hospitals. And, and I, I can't name them all now or I'd forget. But if you want to go ahead and show that video, Pete, we'll, um, talk about it here. There's some good sound with it too, but You can see there's a lot going on there. In a minute, you'll see a fireball, and this is to show what happens if you have a cooking fire and you try to put it out with water. Everyone knows you put fire out with water, but if you have a cooking fire and you put it out with water, then, then it really creates a problem. And, and this, you know, unfortunately, we've had these fires here in Orem and, and other things, but this night's a good opportunity for us to throw some education, have some fun. We get a lot of donations, and there's one of our restoration companies that showed up and put out fire for us. And there's the cooking fire. That does a lot of damage to your cabinets. Don't put water on grease. And it's, you know, it's not intuitive. You know, we all know we have fire hydrants and fire trucks with a lot of water. You can see there's a lot of energy there. We had a lot of help from other departments in the city, and we certainly couldn't Couldn't have done it without them. It wasn't an Orem Fire Department alone show by any means, and we appreciate your support, selected officials, and the city management support. Do you have any questions or comments, concerns from the big fireball? I don't think we lost any eyebrows, but—

okay.

Oh, nothing really. Just, you guys also do a fabulous job.

Thank you.

Appreciate it. Okay, next up we've got item 9, uh, personal appearances. And I don't know if this is a first, probably not, there's been a couple, but there's no personal appearances, so we'll move on. Item 10, consent items. We've got, uh, item 10.1, an approval of the meeting minutes. For September 9th, 2025, and September 23rd, 2025. Item 10.2, an approval of the 2026 City Council schedule. Item 10.3, an appointment of the neighborhood— to the Neighborhood Advisory Commission of Jay Sanderson, Lisa Lesser, Laurel Martinson, Deb Beaton, Cheryl Radmill, Steve White, and Court Kendrick. Item 10.4, a resolution for the CDBG participation plan. And item 10.5, an ordinance approving local limits for wastewater. Would somebody like to make a motion on these items?

Sure, I'll make a motion that we approve the consent items.

I'll second.

Aye.

Aye. Aye.

Aye.

I can send items.

Sorry, Mayor. Thanks.

I—

okay, I didn't, I didn't realize Chris was on there. Okay, thank you, Chris. Okay, the consent items pass.

Mayor, question.

Are any of the people that were just appointed to the Neighborhood Commission, are any of them here this evening by chance? Maybe we could recognize.

Yeah, if you'd like to stand up, if you're And if you can introduce—

yeah, so we got Steve White and Lisa Lesser, and of course we had, um, well, those are our new appointees, right?

Perfect.

Thanks so much.

Thank you. Okay, we'll move on to item 11.1, a canvas. That's acceptance and certification of the 2025 City of Orem general election.

All right, I don't come before you guys very much, so, um, it's a little exciting and a little bit scary, but, um, I am here to talk about the election and And we will be going over the results and then we will ask of you guys to certify the election. So there's a couple of forms that you have. One of them is the election stat sheet and the other is the general certification form. And then I sent some other ones by email that you can also review. The other one we sent was the county's numbers, and I've just— to simplify it for you guys, we've put it in the spreadsheet. So, um, we're going to go over a few things. So for this election, we, um, we have 45,553 registered voters, and 18,835 of those voters chose to participate in this election, which brought us to 41.35%, which is up from 2 years ago and also 4 years ago. So this was, um, uh, like a— I guess a more— we had more participation than um, in some years that we've had. Uh, that we have got the numbers on here. Uh, we'll just quickly review. Uh, for mayor, Dave Young had 9,056. Karen McCandless had 9,574. Quinn Meekum had 9,474. Crystal Muelstein had 9,102. Doyle Mortimer had 8,628. Angela Moulton had 8,557. Lynnae Millett had 9,077. And David M. Spencer had 8,789. Um, we had 96 votes for our write-in, Truman Van And then there were 99 uncertified write-ins, which means they either checked the box, didn't write anything, or wrote a name that was not certified. So that's where the difference is.

You know, if they write a name that's not certified and vote for 3 council members, does that invalidate their ballot?

I don't know, but I would think so, because I think you could have voters vote times 3.

Um, so, um, they have no counts for city council.

So hopefully they were very careful.

Trying to be funny and put— because I was there, they had some Mickey Mouse and stuff like that, you know. So then they're— they just canceled everything.

They may have canceled all of their city council if they had done 3 and the write-in. If they did it the correct way, they can still be funny, but and only picked 2 or less, then they would have been— I mean, they would have just— that one wouldn't have counted, the others would have. So, um, you know, there's a chance that happened. So we're going to go over some of the stats because, um, we have some regulations that we have to do in our canvass. Um, so as we talked about, the active voters, there were 45,553. And then, um, kind of The new rule is that we have to break down how they are classified either as public voters, private voters, withheld voters. And that has to do with the information that is provided about the voter. So public voters, they allow a certain amount of general information that is given out and it's just public. There were 16,734 of those. Private voters, there were 22,303. The private voters have them withheld, but there are certain groups that can get that information. That would be, you know, people running for office, their, like, their campaign, they can ask for some of those. And it does give them a little bit more information. Um, I think the idea is so that you can reach out, um, and, you know, be able to send them information about the candidates and things like that. And then withheld voters are kind of a smaller group. It's 6,516. It is a group that you have to be accepted into. It's usually, um, people that maybe need to keep their information private for like, um, Safety reasons, or they may have a job that certain things need to be kept private. And so that process is determined by the state. So of the— so now they're going to break down how the voting worked. From the mail-in ballots, so people who mailed their ballots in, 46,114 voted that way. There were 411—

Correction, 46,000 had their ballots mailed to them. They didn't vote. Most, many of them didn't vote.

Oh yes, they were sent, correct. And then of those, 411, I think, were on a do-not-mail list. So those ballots probably didn't get where they needed to go, or they asked not to have their ballots sent. The ballots counted actually is 18,541, which was 98.44% of the ballots cast. There were some ballots that were not accepted, 333, and these are for Orem. They're on the county website or the state website. They do have them for some of that information for the county, but these are specific to Orem. There were So there was 333 that were not accepted. 14 of them were unsigned. Um, 147, the signatures did not match the voting voter record. Empty envelopes, there were none. Returned past deadline were 172. And then there was no others.

I have a question. If the— if it was because the signature did not match the voter record, was the voter informed?

Yes, so that will be part of the— let's see, signature not met. Yeah, so it should be part of the cured ones. So then they would reach out and have them try to either come in with ID, or there's different ways that they can get you to validate because there are times that your signature may look different. From the electronic Electronic. Electronic. So electronically sent ballots, so these are, we call them UCAVA. They're kind of the ones you send overseas, or if somebody has a disability and it would be difficult then to either vote by mail or to come in and vote, they can sign up for these. There were 118 sent and 32 of those were voted. So that's 0.17% of the ballots. And then, um, there were no, uh, none of those ballots of the 32 that came back, um, that were not accepted. They all were accepted. 243 people voted in person, either in early voting or Election Day. So that's 1.20— 1.29% of the ballots. And then of the total challenge, there was 460. Thank you. So 299 of them were cured, which means they were able to verify who— that they are who they say they are, and those ballots counted. And then there was 161 that they were not able to verify. So either they couldn't get a hold of the person or they didn't respond. Provisional ballots, there were 25 issued and 19 counted. And 12 of them had did same-day registration, so they became voters at that point. Of those 12 that were not count— let's see, of the 6 that were not accepted, one was they had already voted and maybe forgot they'd sent it in, one was incomplete information on the form, and 4 did not provide adequate proof of of residency. So that's why those didn't vote. So the total ballot count came to 18,835, which is a 41.35% turnout. Um, the other thing that is new this year that they are doing that, um, I need to inform you guys about is it's called the Public Cast Vote Record. And what it is, it's a spreadsheet of every single vote and how they voted. And each vote is assigned a number so that it's still private as to how you voted, but it shows how every person voted. So if you wanted to and had a lot of free time on your hands, you could go through it and you can tally those votes the same way, kind of like the county does. Because it's the entire county, it's like a humongous spreadsheet. So what we will do is tomorrow we will post that on our website. It'll probably also be found on the state website so that that is accessible to the public. And we just wanted to make you aware that that will be on, on our website for review for citizens too.

Do you break that out? Or is that the entire state?

It's the entire county. So the way you—

So is there a breakout for Orem on that, or is it just the county?

It hasn't been broken out. It's the way that it is. It's like a big long list. So it is downloadable as a spreadsheet, and you could like take out, you know, the columns that are not Orem, but then you'd have to go through and just find all the lines. If it's blank, then it wasn't Orem. And then Orem's votes, because it doesn't say like which precinct or anything, it just has a number. And then it would be like this, you know, their first— their 3 votes are like, you know, or for mayor it would be whichever one of the 2 they voted. For city council, it would list the 3 people that they voted for, or if they voted less.

So What's going to happen?

Does it show for— is there a way to break it out so you can just see Orym voters?

You have to literally go in and delete the lines because it's run by the number voter, like how they came in as a vote. It's not broken up. So it's like—

But so it's this massive spreadsheet, but then they are identified as Orym?

Um, yeah, so well, you'll know it's Orym because it will only— under the Orym columns, there'll be names, but it's not I mean, we could break it out, but it would probably take— like, we'd probably have to post what we have and then break it out later because it would take like manually going through and taking out the lines that are not. So they didn't, they didn't give it to us as each city, they just gave it to us as a county.

So it's candidate names is what you're saying?

Yes. So it would say like a number, 118, and it would say, you know, like mayor Dave Young, Lenee Millett, Tom McDonald.

But it should work out to where you have 18,541 lines.

Well, uh, ballots, yes, it should work out because if you're doing— it kind of depends, like, I guess if you only voted— I mean, the— I mean, but it should match according to them. If they did it right, then it should match exactly the numbers that are on here. So you would, you would expect Dave, to— if you counted them out to be the exact same number as is on this report. So, but it will be on there available, and I can work on getting them out. I just probably wouldn't have them ready by tomorrow. Um, so, you know, it's just— it would take a few days, but we could get that out there if we wanted. Um, do you guys have any questions? Oh, I guess I shouldn't officially announce that because with the numbers, um, the election results are Mayor Karen McCandless, City Council Quinn Meekum, Crystal Muelstein, Lynnae Millett. And now, do you have any questions? I forgot that was the last part. Okay, um, we just want to thank everybody who ran. We understand that, um, it's a big ask of our citizens And we also congratulate the winners.

Thank you.

Oh, yeah.

I guess I just want to clarify too, because there's been some questions on this. I've had a number of people reach out to me and just to clarify. So when we certify the canvas, we're basically certifying everything you just told us. And we're not certifying if there's any other questions in the election. Or things that need to be looked in. We're not certifying any of that. That's separate.

Yes, we're just certifying the numbers, right, that have been reported, not beyond that.

Mayor, I'd like to make a motion. I move to accept and certify the 2025 City of Our Municipal general election results.

Second.

Aye.

Aye.

Aye. Aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Okay, the election results are certified. Thank you.

Okay.

We're up to item 11.2, a public hearing on the resolution for fiscal year 2025-2026 budget amendments. Our Chief Financial Officer, Brandon Nelson.

Thank you, Mayor. It is on, right?

All right.

Uh, all right, our first budget amendments of the, the new fiscal year, uh, as we, we come together usually, uh, 3 or 4 times during the year depending on what things we have going on to make budget amendments as, uh, operations change throughout the year, particularly in relation to grants and donations. But I'll Obviously there are other things as well. So first off, I'd just like to thank you for your participation as you work with these and ask— have interest in, in any of them. So first off, items noted with a 1, those are the ones historically that we've talked about that are on here every, every time related to those grants and donations that are received by the city. Of note, the ones I want to particularly, uh, identify and just note on here are some of the larger ones, particularly down here. Too fast, right? So right in here, uh, we received a municipal recreation grant of $228,000. Um, though that grant, uh, will be used for the competition pool and deck refurbishing. So that's why we received that grant as part of, uh, from the county. And then another one I, I, which I'm sure you, you might look at and you might go, what is right here? The Orem Foundation, which is related to The Gold Star Memorial, which you can see down here. Um, no, that is not all of the funds that we have received for that. That's kind of a cleanup item from the prior fiscal year.

We will—

the next time we meet for our budget amendments, there will be some much, much bigger dollar items in relation to that amendment at that time. Uh, honestly, we've just, uh, with the audit and everything else, we've kind of fallen And paying attention to the foundation as far as getting the money from the foundation to the city to be able to cover those costs. So, but that will be coming. Item number 2, which you can see right here, our 2021 water, sewer, and stormwater bonds. We have actually just finally completed spending all of that money. And so the last item in relation to closing out spending all of the funds related to that is the interest earnings that have been earned over about the last 6 months or so. So that item will do that, and then those bonds will basically be completed. Then right above that, number 3, our new bond that we issued back in July of 2024. Uh, the sales tax revenue bonds that are for the fire training facility and our improvements, renovations over at the Public Safety Building. Those are the interest earnings that we have received also kind of during that same time period, that kind of April, May-ish to current. And so, so that gets added to those as available to spend towards those public safety projects. Um, number 4, are there any questions through those 3?

Great.

Number 4, I don't remember where—

there it is.

Number 4, um, in our Senior Citizens Fund, we have some needs there in relation to funding some supplies in the kitchen, a kitchen plumbing issue that arose that we need to take care of as well. As some hot water and air handler coil issues. And so those, uh, the funds— 2 of those are coming from surplus funds of the Senior Citizens Fund to be able to pay for those. And, and so those are kind of somewhat emergency items that have come up as operations there continue.

Number 5.

Right here, um, our task force, uh, had some, uh, let's see, remember my— gotta remember my notes. Uh, oh yeah, so they had some— a finalized budget that had, um, when we do the original budget, we're just guesstimating as to what those are going to be. When the task force finally, uh, finalized budget, then there was an adjustment to the participation fund revenues that they had agreed upon amongst all the chiefs. And so this adjusts for, for those, that additional, those additional funds.

Uh, number 6, which I think was up here.

Um, so we also, uh, identified a, an ambulance that, uh, we are In essence, kind of on the trying to test out with Vineyard in relation to a nonstandard ambulance that we have. And so we identified funds that we had received from insurance, a couple of insurance settlements on some vehicles that had previously either been wrecked, or I believe part of it was also some remaining funds from the fire engine that caught fire. Money as that is. Um, and so this, uh, we've pulled those money—

they'll say—

sorry, sorry, sorry, Derek. Um, uh, so we pulled those funds. We've been saving those funds and now we're using them for, uh, this purpose. Uh, item number 7, uh, the police. Uh, we act as a holder of the funds in In relation to the public order unit, which, um, for things that they purchase in relation to kind of a mass gathering equipment. And so we received some fees in relation to the various entities in the county for that, the purpose of some of the items that they need to buy. Then number 8, down in development fees. Uh, let's see, I gotta remember what that one was. Is that a vehicle? Is that what you want? Oh yeah, so we had a transfer of an asset, and in order to cover the, the cost of that asset that we were transferring, that we had to make some budget amendments to make, make that transfer happen for that particular asset. And the last item up here at the top, Library Hall, we have visiting artists that Periodically and sell product. And so we collect the monies on those sales and then remit whatever portion it is that goes to the artist out of the expenditure account that was tied to this revenue source. And so those are all the items that we have in the budget amendments for this particular time frame. Are there any questions about any of those?

Mayor, I move to approve by resolution the fiscal year 2025-2026 budget amendments.

Second.

Aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Aye.

The resolution is approved. Thank you, Brennan. Okay, next up we've got— oh, you know, it says public hearing.

Steve.

So, okay.

Yeah, sorry, I don't think we did open it up to the public, did we?

We didn't.

Brandon, come on back.

Tom got carried away and I had to wake these men up.

Good catch.

I did say I, and then I was like, wait a minute.

Okay.

Well, we're down to like 7 people. Do any of you want— let me open this up for a public hearing if there's anyone that has any comments about Brandon's presentation. Okay, this is your last chance. Okay, I'm going to close the public hearing.

Take 2.

And I move we approve by resolution the fiscal year 2025. Second. It went off halfway, but yeah. Oh, you were asking for ayes yet, or I didn't hear a second.

We're asking for—

I second.

Okay, okay, we are really getting bad here at the end of the day.

Well, Jeff looked at me.

Well, the mics turn off automatically.

Okay, we'll start with Dave.

Aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Thank you.

Aye.

Thank you.

The resolution passes again. Thank you. All right, now we'll move to item 13, City Manager information items. Brent.

Just one little quick item. So, in addition to Lights On next week on Thursday, you would have gotten an email. Just want to make sure you know, as the council, you're invited to the employee Christmas party. It's at the Sierra again this year. There's 2 options, so please feel welcome. And there's also a heavily discounted rate if you want to bring some of your family members as well. So, if you haven't had a chance, take a look at that email and add it to your calendar.

Thank you, Bren. Okay, would someone— we're going to adjourn. Uh, would someone like to make a motion to adjourn?

Well, I move we adjourn this meeting.

Second.

Aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Aye.

This City Council adjourns.

Thank you.