City Council · 2025-12-09

Further.

Do you want—

you want to ask her, Pete?

Jen, can you hear us?

She's muted, so I don't know if she's talking or not, but she's muted.

That's—

I'll text her. She's muted.

Sorry, I'm technology impaired. Yes, I can hear you. And yes, I agree. I think it would be great to get started.

Wonderful.

So then with that, uh, Taggart, do you want to help introduce our partners with UDOT and UTA on this item.

Okay, first presentation is a Frontrunner 2X project. Got John with HDR and Janelle with UTA. I'll just turn the time over to them to present.

Uh, we also have, uh, Braden Anderson with UDOT as, as well here. Project manager on the construction phase, and then the project manager from UTA.

We're ready.

Recognize many faces from the UVX days.

Yes.

We'll start with an overview of the Frontrunner 2X project, and feel free to just ask any questions as we go along here. Discussion. Um, technical impacts in the city area. Just to have you guys up to speed with where we are on the project and how it is going to impact your— so, um, Frontrunner service started in 2008. The Frontrunner North project was, which was from Salt Lake City to Ogden, and Frontrunner South project, um, Provo from Salt Lake started in 2012. Last year we had an average of 14,500 riders a day. 16 stations along the corridor, 83-mile corridor. The trains currently run at max speeds in certain areas of the corridor at 79 miles an hour. 48 million passengers since 2012.

Thank you.

The purpose is we are seeking a federal grant from the Federal Transit Administration in the Core Capacity Grant. So what it does is it helps— what do you call it— crowding on the trains. It will help alleviate crowding on the trains. And the way that this project is going to do that is to increase the service so that trains are coming more frequently.

So we can Or more passengers.

Right now, if any of you have ridden during the peak hours in the morning or in the evening, we're getting to be 90% plus full on those trains, and it's uncomfortable, especially if people are riding for long distances on that. So, as I mentioned, the benefits of the project are that we will be Doubling the amount of service that we're providing. So currently, Frontrunner runs every hour in the off-peak and every 30 minutes in the peak hours. We'll be increasing that service to every 15 minutes in the peak hours and 30 minutes in the off-peak hours. So a significant increase in service. What's your peak hours? It ranges from where you're starting from, but approximately from about 6 to 9 in the morning. And like 2:30 to 6 or 7 in the evening, depending on where you're at. Yeah. So this project is intended to double track more of the system. So currently our system is about 75% single track, and we have a video here that will kind of Explain that a little bit more. But with the single track means that the trains running northbound and southbound are using the same track. Therefore, they can only pass each other at very strategic locations in the system. And right now, that is mostly only where our stations are. So we have to have the trains timed very specifically. We can't provide any more frequent service because of that, because then the passings With those. And so we have to have more double tracking in order to increase the frequency of service. This also creates issues with, in our service currently, if any train is late, that we get what we call cascading delays, which then causes the next train to be late, the next train to be late, and the next train. The only way we can get back on schedule is when we get back to our service. take trains out of service. So this will definitely help with the reliability of the service as well. Having additional double tracking gets us to about 50% double track when we're done, and Utah County will have almost 100% double track. Very significant amount of double tracking. So there are 11 double tracking sections. There is a new station in Bluffdale at the Point development. Um, there'll be one track realignment. That's a slow curve around the facility in Salt Lake City. To run that additional service, we'll need 10 more train sets. We'll be putting 8 more in service in the peak hours to run that additional service. And then we need to use the facility in order to maintain those additional trains that we're purchasing.

Thanks.

I don't know if you can make this play.

They have a video.

Rid of it, probably. Got a train every 30 minutes during peak time, which is great, but Utah is growing, you know, which means more people will take the train. So as time moves forward, we're going to need more trains, More off-gauge. But here's the thing, you can't just stick more trains on the track. It's not that simple. Which is why we have the Frontrunner 2X project to get us twice the trains. From one every 30 minutes to a train every 15. Here's how it works.

Most of Frontrunner is a single track like this one right here. That other one is for coal and, I don't know, Amazon packages, things like that.

Frontrunner doesn't use it.

So we have one track for both directions that then separates into 2 tracks or a double track at each station so trains can get around each other.

Computers coordinate this. It's very sophisticated, very safe, but sharing that single track limits how often trains can arrive at stations. So for instance, say you just missed the train.

Update.

Sorry, buddy.

Oh.

Okay, you're waiting for the next one and it's 30 minutes away.

Now, if we just added another train right here, It'd have to stop because this train is on the single track. But we don't want to stop except when taking on passengers.

So instead, Frontrunner calculates the most service we can provide without having to stop the trains. And your original train is part of that calculation. It arrives at the single track right as it opens up.

The additional train wouldn't make any difference. And calculations show that the most service we can get on Frontrunner is 30 minutes between trains. Okay, that one leaves, you wait 30 minutes, another one shows up.

You get the point.

And if we want that gap any shorter, well, actually, go back to the train thing. Try this again.

Okay, this is you.

You missed the train.

Next one's 30 minutes away.

But this time, let's extend the double track. Now the other train gets off the single track sooner, which means we can put that other train on the tracks. And just like that, we have a smaller gap between trains. And that's our plan. We're extending the double track in key areas all along the 83-mile FrontRunner corridor, getting us more trains with a smaller gap between them, from 30 minutes to 15 minutes during peak hours and from 60 minutes to 30 during off-peak time. That's twice the double track, twice the trains, Twice the departures.

That's the Frontrunner 2X project.

So next time you miss a train, you know another one isn't far behind. Learn more about the Frontrunner 2X project at frontrunner2x.utah.gov.

The first time I've ever seen that work on you. So you can go on the next slide. Or there's the timeline. Anticipated— we're in the final design phase of the project right now. We have hired a contractor. It's a progressive design-build project. They're doing their final design right now. We're in the process of procuring trains and getting the grant approval. Construction is anticipated to start in 2027 with starting the new service around 2030. Forgive me, did you already say a cost? I did not say a cost. Do you have a cost? I have a cost. Is it coming later in the presentation? It's not, no. So we are working with the Federal Transit Administration on the final cost right now. Since they are providing more than half of the funding, or likely providing more than half of the funding, where we have to work with them a lot right now with a 40% contingency, it's anticipated to be around—

And that's the total cost that will be shared by you guys and the federal government?

Total cost, yeah. The state has provided about $845 million towards the project between the 2 different bills that provided funds for building the project for the Portland to Mountain Station, and then as well for the double tracking. And that includes the maintenance facility and the trains and everything. So that's not just What percentage would you say is still not double-tracked? Once this project is completed, it will be about 50% not double-tracked.

Wow.

Is there ever a plan that they would double-track the whole thing?

Yeah, the ultimate plan is to double-track the whole system eventually. Yeah, there's a plan online called the Frontrunner Forward Plan. It's kind of a long-term vision for the Frontrunner service, continuing to increase the frequency of service and continue with double tracking, also increasing the track speeds, things like that, as we continue to improve Frontrunner over time. Have you considered, instead of double-tracking the full length, doing a— I don't know what to call it— like a bullet train? You know, one spot in Utah County to 2 or 3 other spots before downtown Salt Lake? Yes, actually, we, as a part of the Frontrunner Forward plan, we had put together, I think, it was probably over 200 service scenarios and analyze them. In the market analysis we did, we did an in-depth analysis of how our riders are using Frontrunner. And our riders are very much using Frontrunner, especially after COVID, more like a regional rail system than they are like a typical commuter rail type system.

Interesting.

Meaning that boardings are pretty even across the stations. And people are not necessarily going just between Provo and Salt Lake and Ogden and Salt Lake in a typical commuter pattern. People are kind of traveling all day. The peaks are still more, but we're getting ridership kind of all over the place. And as you can imagine, there's a really big reverse commute that happens that comes down here to UVU and BYU. So for those reasons, the frequency became kind of the top thing as a priority to work on first, because there has been ridership between all of the stations. Who do you take service away from? No, it's a complicated system. And then the other, the other issue with it is, if you're, say, just some of the trains are bullet trains. Well, if you have local trains in the system, you catch those trains pretty So at most, what you would ever save on a trip time by skipping so many people is saving maybe 4 minutes. So it didn't show a huge benefit yet. The Phase 6 of the Frontrunner Forward plan shows quadruple tracking, which is what you would need to really achieve high-speed kind of skip service.

Service.

Trains so that those trains can get actually get around the local trains. Do you have the corridor preservation in place to do the quadrupling? It is not in place right now. That is, uh, that is the biggest, one of the biggest challenges to doing that and to actually, frankly, to just double track the entire existing system.

So that's still a constraint as far as getting Even though it's to double-track it.

For—

yeah, we would have to purchase property in order to double-track the entire system. And in fact, John will show you just even in warm what the property acquisitions would look like in order for us to do just this project.

What is the timeframe as far as if you were to double-track the whole thing? Track the whole thing?

That would be solely dependent on funding to be able to do that. So it's kind of— it would be Can get the funding. Love it sooner than later, but it— as you just heard, it's very expensive to double-track an existing corridor. There's a lot of right-of-way acquisition and that has to happen.

I'm curious, as far as in your master plan, how far are you putting out, or do you have that?

We didn't really put timeframes to it. I joke that I won't be alive, but yeah, so there was a 2030 plan. That I saw about 4 or 5 years ago. Is that still in place, or is that— So a 2030, I think that was the title. Yeah, 2030 would be this project. That's when that one's intended to be opened by. They evolved that very much.

And what's that?

So your 2030 plan, that was— it's like 5 years ago you did that. I think that you had to adjust that very much. I don't know what was in the plan, if it was anticipating this project or not.

I don't know.

I would have to look that up. I'm sorry. Yeah, can I just want to say, I rode BART in the Bay Area.

It was great.

It was 10 minutes if you missed the train, which was very hard. I can relate to that running and the train pulling out of the station. 15 would be a huge improvement. Yeah, yeah, it's anticipated to increase ridership quite a bit. Any other questions about the general project? This map shows our existing double tracking is where the dark blue areas are. The red is where each of the new double tracking sections would be in the corridor. purple is where the new station will be. So you see from Lehi to Provo almost fully tracked. So did you announce Spanish? Is there something going on in Spanish Fork? There is a project called the Frontrunner South Extension Project, Provo to Um, that one is not currently funded, but there is preliminary design and, and I think some environmental work that has been completed on that for Forente. And there is, um, you know, potentially looking at corridor preservation for that project. So do you see that, that you're— how am I saying— your money, your, your wants for money, are you going to focus that on your double track, or are you going to extension for most of it, or just corridor preservation? What's your I would say that this project is definitely everybody's priority right now. It will be up to our leaders and lawmakers to decide what the next projects are, I think. Does anybody have any other questions about just the basics of the project? And then John will get into more of the details of the impacts in the community and how that will look in the—

Yeah, I think that's it.

As we go along.

All right, next slide. Environmental. I'm not an environmental engineer, but let's see.

Brad, did you want to mention anything about the environmental process? Nope.

I mean, other than it's being overseen by FTA, there was an environmental linkage study that was prepared and completed for the entire project, or FR2 ECO project. As far as I know, I think the TEDx has been completed, right? And—

Yep.

And so I Yeah, the environmental work is pretty well complete. There was additional— it was done under a categorical exclusion, which is a model of environmental documentation, if you're unfamiliar with it, Federal Transit Administration. And then that environmental planning environmental document is what linked all the double tracking sections together. So we did a separate environmental for each double tracking section that we— these are just all of the typical things that are reviewed in the environment. Okay.

All right. I guess here. So, all right.

So the north of Orem segment. And it's— slide is unplugged.

John, do you want to sit here so we can see better?

Um, yeah, I might. Yeah, let me switch. Pull the mouse here. All right, so, um, essentially our— what we're calling the north of Orem, uh, north of Orem Station section. About 1.7 miles long. We will be double-tracking this basically from the Orem station north to the Vineyard station, or where they extended the track to the south of the Vineyard station. So basically just filling that gap. It's a single track. Pretty straightforward, although the Orem segment, as we call it, is More complicated. I'm going to start at the south end here real quick. And hopefully you can, you can see this. If I can zoom in a little bit. The double track is— so the Orange segment, or the Orange Station, is located in this area here. As you can see, the kind of the purple or magenta track colors are the existing UTA track. Existing black, or the black track is existing UP. So as we come out of the station northbound, the UTA track will— Instead of merging into a single track and running on the western edge or the western side of the corridor, we'll be adding a 2nd track that goes across the 800 South crossing, the grade crossing. Just north of the grade crossing, though, we actually start shifting the tracks to the east. And, and not only UTA, but UP needs to be shifted as well. So all 4 tracks are going to be shifted to the east, 1 track over. And the reason why we're doing that is, if you come down, maybe I'll sneak down to this next slide here. It's really about getting under the Geneva Road bridge. The existing UTA track is all the way to the western edge of the bridge underneath Geneva Road. And we actually looked at options of trying to get through this bridge. We even looked at tearing down the bridge. We looked at tunneling underneath the abutments and back behind the abutments to keep a single track over. new double track on the western side of this existing track.

It really didn't make any sense.

In fact, when they built the bridge back in 2012, UDOT, the plan was to have a 5-track section underneath this bridge.

And 2 of those would be UTA, 3 would be UP tracks.

So if we go back, so it's a little hard to see, but we are basically shifting or S-curving over Track. And the good news about that is, is it reduces the property impacts to about 7 properties to the western side of the corridor. We'll sneak down to the property impacts for that, but too far. Well, maybe we can stand it in here. Anyway, there, there's basically sliver fill or sliver takes of the— of these properties just north of 800 South, essentially right through this block here.

Right?

That's what it looks like.

Yeah, right.

Yeah, that green is a temporary construction easement, and you can see the red is the right-of-way parcel acquisition. At its widest section, it's about 8 to 10 feet. So we're not talking a lot of property, but there will be some backyards that will be impacted. And that's only because it takes a little while for the tracks to get shifted over one track to the east so that we're back on existing track. On the magenta color here. So then once Once we get to this point, you can kind of see where UP is back on existing black track here.

We do track to the east.

We do have a new UTA track between the existing UTA track and existing UP, and that essentially runs all the way through the 400 South crossing. And we are aware of the Q Cutter project that's planned for construction. I believe this summer, the 6th. And we have been coordinating with that project and locating future traffic signals that are part of that project for that. So we coordinated on that. So we get through underneath Geneva Road, and as we continue just past Geneva Road— I'm sorry, Vineyard Road here. The tracks actually start S-curving back to get back on alignment with the new track, new double track to the west of the existing UTA track. So, and then that runs, continues north, and I know we're City of Vineyard by now, but that then ties into the 2 tracks that are north up towards the Vineyard Station. So a little more complicated just because we have to kind of S-curve over, go through the intersection and Geneva Road Bridge, and then kind of S-curve back. And by doing that, we also have to shift UP, which is always a challenge dealing with UP and getting their approvals. But we've been making good progress with UP so far. So. That is kind of the track alignments. Again, there's that typical section. We'll have the 2 UTA tracks, the existing one here, and then the proposed one to the inside. Existing UP is here. We're shoving them over to here, and then the proposed UP over here, and then a future 3rd track would be over in this, this area.

So.

So there's the highlights, basically shifting UP to the east route.

Okay.

Yep. And then I guess one thing I was going to also mention was the Orem Station impacts. And we do have some right-of-way, and it's a little bit to the north of 800 South. You can see here the new track is the checkered track here. It's going to extend straight. The existing one is starting to taper back to the existing track here. So, as you can see, really the only minor impacts to the parking lot is because we have to straighten out the track. The parking lot stalls kind of get rotated a few degrees, and so we're gonna have to rebuild this middle island in here.

No, you're fine.

Um, anyway, that's, um, it's the station impacts. Um, questions on any of that?

The noise.

Oh, noise.

Yeah.

Um, so in the environmental phase, we had—

they have a—

we have done a noise vibration analysis. Um, where our trains cross over between tracks and create That noise and vibration as they're going through the switches. What we typically do for that, and what we did in the past project, was install spring— spring-well frogs, which are a type of— John could get into more details if you care, but a different type of switch that is quieter.

Mm-hmm.

From what I understand. And then ballast mats are actually mats that are put underneath the track that help reduce noise and vibration. I believe that the— with the installation of both of those things, the noise and vibration analysis indicated that there were— that they mitigate the noise and vibration impacts that are in the area. So we were fortunate that those things were enough to bring it in more existing type noise level in those areas. So I noticed on your slide, I don't know, a couple slides ago, you had a sound wall. Is that right? Did I see that?

You know, there's no retaining wall.

It's retaining. Do you guys ever do sound walls?

When they're warranted.

Measure the decibels to see if they're necessary. Yeah. Or if they would actually help the issue. So are you finding that or not? Or is it a financial thing? What's the— I don't think the noise impacts in this particular one were enough to warrant a noise wall. It was more the vibration impacts, I think, is why the spring rail frog and the ballast mat, right?

That is correct. And note that we do have our noise and vibration expert here. So if there's any specific questions about noise and vibration, Lance is here to answer any questions regarding that. But Lance, was— is there anything to note?

Mitigation.

Yeah, just what you had said, that the spring rail frogs, that was the issue, was that these types of where they cross the tracks, there's a gap in the rail that generates additional noise and vibration. By using these special types of crossovers, it eliminates that gap and eliminates the additional noise and vibration. So at the track, we were able to mitigate those impacts instead of putting in something like a noise barrier.

No.

So yeah, just general status. We're finalizing our design, as we mentioned. I mentioned we're coordinating with the Fort Worth South project. We have a contractor on board, and construction's anticipated to start in 2027. Any other questions or— so we can answer for you?

All right.

Thank you.

Thank you. Also, I was going to mention, if you guys are interested in the full presentation on the Frontrunner Forward plan, I'd be happy to come back and provide that information to you as well.

Thank you.

Thanks. Okay, next up we've got Center Street widening project. I'll take that. We've got, uh, got to fit in the next hour. We've got to fit Center Street widening and the stationary plan. I think we had an issue with the accident on this street.

Narrow this down.

Can we double track it? Can we give them both at the same time?

Sure.

I'm hoping that would not be as effective as it was there.

Yeah, I'll go ahead and get started. If you have any questions, just go ahead and let me know. The Center Street widening project is from Geneva Road to 1330 West, and there's just a map of the extents. Got currently, as you know, we've got 3 lanes out there. The center permits Left turn lane. And then as you get to the tracks, you've got the median snags down to 2 lanes. Proposed project is to widen to 5 lanes throughout that whole stretch there. Just to give you a history of the project, this project's a long time coming, as you can see. I had to put the past 15 years in one slide. There's been a lot that's happened, a lot that's not happened. So April 2010, Engineering put together a concept design and estimate, and then that was submitted in 2012 to MAG. We received $1.7 million, was approved. So the way it works with MAG is when it's— the amount's approved for the amount for the project, but then OREM is on the hook for 6.77% of that. So that's— you guys understand that. There's another thing. A couple years later in 2015, as the design progressed, we had a consultant that just had barely started. We got into striping, mainly working on the railroad crossing and right-of-way impacts. And then, um, as we were coordinating with Vineyard, found out that, that there was a possibility that that railroad crossing could be abandoned or was going away. So to save on all the costs of crossings and gates, we Put it on hold. Now here we are years later, and then 2023, beginning of 2024, we submitted again to get this project completed and received approval for $11 million. And then we've also received since then $1 million from Utah Legislature to use specifically toward the upgrades to the railroad crossing. And we're currently working with a consultant on design coordination, and they've been working with us since about May. So we're slowly working with the railroad on the crossing, and then the funding's available in— starting in January, $7.7 million, and $11 million is available in 2028.

Whatever happened with the abandoned railroad crossing?

Did that—

Get abandoned. Whatever happened with that? Yeah, didn't— never happened. They're still using it.

And/or Union Pacific isn't interested in it because it has a customer at the end of it, just to south or south. It's just being used, I think, a couple times a week. There's just a short train that goes through there and A business near there. So you can see that from this map, the regional access that really is a connector between I-15 and Geneva or Vineyard. You're going north to Pleasant Grove, Provo. It's pretty significant little piece there that's really creating a bottleneck. This is just a street view looking to the west. See there, 2 lanes. And this is looking back to the east. This is just a shot for you, a view of the annual average daily traffic counts. All along Center Street, you have in the 30,000 range. As you get to Center Street, those go down a little bit. But if you were to compare, if you look over here, it's— so it'd be like as you go past the city park over here, past 4th East, Kind of compare the 25,000 with 20,000. You can imagine if we neck down Center Street to 2 lanes with a center turn lane, it would be— it's already bad right here, but you can kind of compare there that it needs to be fixed. And then Vineyard, you've got 10,000 to 15,000 average daily traffic. This is just a map of the different MAG projects awarded in 2024. The red ones are road projects. Here's our Warren Center Street widening. Other projects, you've got green active transportation, and then the airport was another one. This is just if you were to look on the MAG website, the regional transportation plan, you could find our project there along with other projects and then different priorities and phases.

And then these next few slides just show kind of how it's evolved over the years with—

when we first looked at it in 2015, we looked at primarily widening on the north side with the reconstruct here at the tracks and then mill and overlays, 5 lanes. This is just zoomed into the west side. Mostly looking at the striping plan, showing the 5 lanes. And then as we got to 2024, we looked at possibly doing sidewalk on both sides. So there will be impacts to— I think the north side is— there's different concepts we're looking at that make the most sense and businesses and how those are impacted. And then what sidewalk. And so we're currently working with our design engineer to settle out cost estimates. And that was the thing I had. Questions?

Just explain that agreement. Yeah, got to do that again.

The resolution is for an agreement between Utah County and City of Orem To basically approve the, the funding, $11 million, which will be available in 2028, and then the $1.7 million is available January 2029. That's currently included in the consent item.

Any questions?

Thanks. I don't think there's next people.

Do you want to move on to—

Of course. Oh, it's Gary.

That's Gary, the stationary platform.

I tried to jump in.

I already gave my presentation during Taggart's.

Very good.

As we double track, thank you. Um, Jared's going to help with this, and while he's coming up, let me tell you about station area plans and the Frontrunner station area plan. The council's seen that a few times that has come before you. Station areas. State law was changed requiring all municipalities that have a fixed guideway or a station, a fixed guideway station in their jurisdiction, they needed to do a station area plan, and it's called an SAP. And so, Forum contracted with a group that came, and this consultant led a planning effort around the Frontrunner Station. You've probably seen this several times. And so that plan, we have taken that already to MAG, and they've looked at it. And MAG's role in this is to come in and say, okay, state law, when you do a station area plan, have to put certain things into your plan and address them. And so they looked at our stationary plan and said, yes, you have addressed all of the state law requirements. We also have 3 other stations that qualify in Orem, and those are on the Parkway for the UVX. One is at 4th West, which is approximately right where Honey Baked Ham is, and Hobby Lobby, that area. The other one is just right next to it, not too far away at Main Street. And that's Ashley Furniture, that area, and, and the auto dealerships across the street to the north. Then the 3rd one is at University Place Mall. So you've been to the Hillcrest Park. Pickleball courts are— it's right there in University Parkway. These 3 stations are in University Parkway. So state law requires us to go in and do a station area plan. However, state law does provide a way for a municipality to not be required to do the station area plan for those fixed guideway stations. And if you pass a resolution of impracticability, and your resolution of impracticability means you've looked at the stations and for a variety of things, including particular land use, Patterns, things like that. The existing development, land ownership, uses, opportunities for new development. If you come in and you do an analysis of that, and based on that analysis, the county determines that it's impractical to do a plan. Then you pass a resolution determining that it's impractical to do a plan, and then that, in a sense, is our plan, and we're excused from doing the full-blown plan. So before you tonight, we have 3 resolutions for the 4th West. We call it the Lakeview Station. By Honey Baked Tan. The Main Street station and the University Place station. We have resolutions for the council where you can find that it's impractical to do a plan for these areas. So, I went into that introduction to what we have, and then Jared will go through quickly our station area plan, and then we'll jump in and talk about these UVX stations and why it doesn't make sense for us to do a big plan on that corridor, on the Parkway corridor for those 3 stations.

Fair enough.

Any questions about this so far? Okay.

Okay, let me just run through a couple of things on the Frontrunner station area plan itself. This one was Like Gary mentioned, this was a full-blown plan. Um, the main takeaway comes down to 6 guiding principles out of this plan: focus growth in the stationary village, provide housing options to meet a variety of needs, provide transportation choices, connect people to nature and opportunities to be outside. There's some trail connections that can be made as we do planning for this. Encourage community with gathering spaces that can be provided in this kind of plan as well, and support long-term positive economic impacts. There are overall objectives that are part of HB 462 that requires us to do these kinds of plans. Those included maximizing development, development potential in appropriate areas, i.e., around the stations, and cities and citizens to determine how best to meet those shared objectives. Those shared objectives are in that code, increasing the availability and affordability of housing, promoting sustainable environmental conditions, enhancing access to opportunities. Increasing transportation choices and connections. And you can see how happy that makes all of these people.

So awesome.

So, just a brief history, because I know it's been a while since— you guys have all seen this stuff before, but for a while, right? So, just a brief overview of how that went. There were public workshops and open houses. There was a vision concept celebration, and there were implementation phases. For all of this that happened again a while ago. There was a lot of public engagement during 2023, Planning Commission meetings, City Council meetings, stakeholder meetings, the workshops that we just talked about, including postcards, newsletters, sandwich boards, email invites, and that kind of thing. 225+ people at the public workshop, a bunch of survey responses as well. And those were all geared toward creating a way to, to generate scenarios, and we'll look at those real quickly here too. There were tested values and preferences. 548 people responded to that. And that all results in 17 maps that were part of a workshop for mapping. And these maps, the favored ones, generated the 3 station area scenarios. The first one being the station area mixed-use village ideas. The UVU mixed-use village and the neighborhood infill. The neighborhood infill wound up being the least favored of those scenarios, the least effective viewed, the one viewed as least effective. And the focus is mostly on the mixed-use village kind of deal. There were a lot of responses to the ideas that were brought out in those scenarios, and that's the response that I was just talking about. Most people favored the mixed-use village concepts. And that is— and this is the statement that came out of that. Orem Station is an urban neighborhood that supports Orem residents, UVU students, and commuters who are living, working, playing, learning, and traveling in the area. It's a friendly place to call home, an innovative educational and vocational hub, a launchpad for workdays and schooldays, and a place to gather and enjoy time with friends, family, classmates, and coworkers. I especially like this one because it's a launchpad for my workday if I fall asleep and miss the easier stop. So, if my alarm goes, I have an alarm set on my phone. If that goes off during the public hearing tonight, you'll know what that is. I won't reach for it. I'll just let it figure out.

The—

this is the station area. This is a fun— the consultants put this together. This is the station area of an aerial view of it. I don't know if you guys got to see this before. I think you did. But it shows kind of the one of the scenarios laid over it, the mixed-use village. And this, as Gary said, has gone to MAG and the policy committee has been accepted and endorsed. If you, as a commission, as a council resolve tonight, do pass the resolution, then we'll have met the requirements of that code. And just as a final deal, those guiding principles again are those 5, or those 6 rather, focusing the growth in the stationary village and provide those housing options, transportation choices. Trail connections that are important, those gathering spaces we can get. And then again, this is— it's an opportunity at the station itself, at the front of the station, to create some really positive economic impacts in the future. Any questions about the front of the station area plan?

Now, one thing the station area plan for Front Runner, what it does not do is require or commit the council to any particular zoning at this time. It's a plan we go forward as projects would come in based on that plan. They would be evaluated by the council. It does have some action items to look at. For instance, one of the action items is working with UTA to get density at the station and to protect Single-family neighborhoods surrounding UVU. Um, it has us work on those issues first before we would even consider doing things in other places.

Yeah, and I neglected to show— there's a— there is a really good implementation plan for the area, and it does exactly those things Gary's talking about. Times those all out. That's what to work on first. When that kind of thing should be done, et cetera.

So, by, by approving this plan, a resolution approving this plan, it doesn't commit to any particular action other than studying issues forward on those types of issues and doing further study. And it does send a signal to UVU, the State of Utah, UTA, and private developers that we are interested in development around the UTA station and on UVU campus before we start doing other things that are outside of those areas.

And just because I serve or have served on this stationary Plan Committee for MAG, attending the MAG meetings. Um, one of the focuses for our particular area here in Orem has been, to what Gary said to that point, student housing and owner-occupied housing. So if I'm remembering, you know, we had a percentage, um, of owner-occupied we wanted to achieve.

Yeah, yeah, we, we talked about in, in Orem we have We want owner occupants. Now, students by necessity aren't owner occupants.

2 different—

yeah, they're 2 separate demographics. And students, we need well-designed, good, safe places for them to live. But we want to avoid that happening in an existing viable single-family neighborhood. Because we like having those neighborhoods. They are the backbone of stability in the city. And so there is a place for student housing and higher density housing. But under this plan, it starts at the station and going there.

We—

that's where we think the closer you can get to Frontrunner and to UVU, the better. It is for everyone. And study after study— I know Brigham Young University went through and did a major study, and they found that students, that the closer they live to campus, the better they do in school. And so that's another reason why to try and do this type of plan.

Thank you.

Protect our single-family neighborhoods, but yet put development, especially for student housing, where it makes sense and how it makes sense.

Perhaps, I mean, the vision, the dream, the hope is that if we can get some developer that is interested in student housing, similar to what happened along Foothill at the University of Utah. We can get someone there, then we may be able to— if we create this additional student housing, the students will move out of the illegally occupied residential owner-occupied stuff, and they'll have a— they'll have a better fit for them, a better designed housing product for them. So those were the discussions we had around this as we put this plan together. was to really focus on Orem's needs, which because of our uniqueness, you know, we have— we need that student housing opportunity or that first-time homebuyer opportunity. Am I saying that?

I wish I had said that.

Oh.

So Gary, so we are— Adopting the ARM Frontrunner station plan, but then all the next 3 resolutions are absolutely not density at those stations going up.

Yeah.

And so we're going to shift now from the Frontrunner station, the station area plan, the SAP. And now we're going to talk about the 3 UVX stations and why we believe it's impractical and would request the council to adopt these resolutions determining that it's impractical to do 3 station area plans. Mostly it's common sense. I will go into slightly more detail than— But then common sense, right?

It's a legal term.

It's a legal term.

There you go. Legal term.

Okay.

Though Dave has let me know that rarely do I use common sense except in this instance.

Okay.

Did you want to go on to the others then? Is that—

If there's not any more questions, let's jump to These, uh, you got to keep going.

I might have done it out of order. Sorry.

Right there.

Okay.

So, again, under the state law, you do an SAP unless you find that station area planning is impracticable. And there's— and we've got the Lakeview, the Lakeviews by Honeybaked Ham. Uh, the Main Street and University Place, and our, uh, recommendation to the council is to adopt a resolution of impracticability, and we'll tell you why. Next slide. As you look at this, you can see you in the Orem Central Station, and then we come to Lakeview, and then Main Street and University Place. Along the parkway slide. And so the Lakeview station, you only do a study within a quarter mile of the actual station. So if you look at this station right now, everything is already built out around it and is unlikely to redevelop. And as a matter of fact, the whole corridor that we have on the University Parkway is one of the main economic engines of Orem City. That corridor gives us a significant amount of sales tax revenue, which funds things like fire, police, parks, helps with roads and other types of issues. Now, if you go look, and now we're going up the parkway. Now, at the next station is the Main Street. Ironically, it funds UVX also. It does help fund UVX. Sales tax.

Yes.

Now, if you look at the Main Street station again, we have a completely, almost completely built out area. One of the parcels in there, there on the right there, That is a parcel that could be developed, and we own it, and we intend to develop it. We're— we have plans for a fire station there to enhance our emergency response to residents of Orange. So the major parcel, the other one you can see just south of Ashley, that's a detention basin. We can't do without that. So these areas are already developed. Now, if you can go to the next slide. This is University Place. And that's Main Street. It's supposed to be University Place that we, we've messed up and didn't put in University Place. So in your mind's eye, picture University Place.

We all know what's there. How much housing is there?

Now, University Place and the Frontrunner Station, the student housing that we have there, we look at those as bookends of our major corridor through the community. So, at University Place, we spent a lot of time and effort as not only a city and a community working with Woodbury and the time and effort they've spent putting in Uh, revamping the mall, putting in residential, uh, doing all of the things that you see. Part of our economic development plan you have on the agenda tonight, uh, Costco— or not Costco, Home Depot. Um, we just spent a lot of time and effort and money putting into Hillcrest Park, which is immediately adjacent to The station. And so, as we've looked at that with the bookends and the importance of the economic corridor, which we have, and that the property in the station areas are already 90-plus percent developed. And it's unlikely, especially where you have the single-family homes. that those could be aggregated to come in and put in higher density housing is really remote. It's impracticable to do that. Also, in addition, we have current plans that are bigger than these individual stations. It does no sense to do an individual analysis around the Main Street station here. To look at transportation and things like that, when frankly, we're in the middle of a major update of our Orem City Active Transportation Plan right now, which will take into account these individual stations. But not only will they take into account the individual station, it will look at the larger picture of the corridor as a whole. Also, our economic development plan. One of the things coming up in the near future would be to, as we look at our economic development, what are the gaps in services we provide in Orem, the types of businesses? Where do people in Orem leave the city to go purchase things or get things that we could provide here? That'll help us with this strategic corridor. So it makes no sense to go in with auto dealerships and tell them, no, we don't want you in the community. We'd prefer to have moderate income housing there. You need tax revenue to be able to help and fund these types of programs. When UVX, when Janelle came in doing the double tracking from UTA, We looked at each other and waved because we've worked on the UVX program and BR from the beginning. And one of the reasons why these stations are on this corridor is because of the commercial viability and what it brings to Orem in getting people to those places. What I can tell you, One of the main reasons in Provo we wanted UVX stations where they are, and why Orem wanted some UVX stations where they are, is because we needed that to help enhance our commercial corridor. So we already have our plan. We don't need to do a plan. It's not likely to redevelop, and frankly, we don't want it to redevelop. If anything, we want our commercial corridor not to redevelop, but to develop, enhance the commercial activity that's already there while we can use BRT for those purposes along those corridors. So, with the bookend of student housing around UVU, putting it where it makes sense, working with that station area plan we have there, what we've already done with— Uh, you are not Utah. University Place Mall in the Woodbury Corporation, trying to enhance what they do. The more successful they are, the more successful we are. The more successful every single commercial, uh, business along this corridor, the more successful we can be as a city in providing the services and the, uh, things that the residents need. And so for those reasons, and, and I don't want to just read the report to you, but other things in our report, uh, we would urge you to adopt a resolution of impracticability for the Lakeview, Main Street, and, uh, University Place stations. Uh, even though you didn't see the map of University Place station, we'll We'll fix that and put that in the presentation. Question. Barry and/or Jared, maybe you could summarize the analysis that we did as we looked at within a quarter mile of these stations, or even a half mile of the station, or how many housing units are already existing just off of the University Place corridor, because there actually is a surprising amount of A lot. Yeah, townhomes, duplexes, fourplexes.

I won't have the number in front of me, but for example, the Lakeview station, just about 60% of the land in this area is used up with single-family condominium and apartments in this area. Another 30-some-odd percent is commercial. 10% or so is institutional. So there's literally almost nothing, and those numbers are similar, though they start to skew more toward commercial development as you get to University Place. But again, at Main Street, same, same kinds of numbers. There's hundreds of units living in these areas.

So, for instance, in the Lakeview, within a quarter mile of the Lakeview station, there are almost 850 units— or I mean beds, total beds. Okay, um, within a half mile, so from a quarter mile to a half mile, boy, total beds, there are roughly almost a little over 2,500. So what you're saying is we can't really do this as specified because we've already done it. Not only have we already done it, And this activity just outside it, to do something would damage us and be a net drain on the city and a deleterious impact to what we've already done.

And we've already, like, 40, 34 years ago, right? We gave RDAs or CDAs businesses to develop that corridor to Cement and our foundation of sales tax for our budget. So we have made significant investment in this area that would be undone by following a plan that somebody in Lehi is using for vacant land. You know, um, it would destroy our economic engine, our commercial corridor that we have had 30, 40, 50-year investment in. So that would not be a wise— that would not be practicable.

To summarize a message that we both heard and expressed to state legislators, to ULCT staff, and even recently to MAC staff, is that the intent of these station area plans was to try and get in other places what Orem already has.

Yeah.

So this isn't, uh, plan it so it'll come.

It's We probably got it here, and that's why we have these stations in the first place.

And Orem is not the first to have done this. South Jordan did one on the, uh, uh, on the old— off just off the old Bingham Highway. I think it's the red line for the, the, uh— oh, good heavens.

Tracks.

The tracks. Yeah. Um, they've done it there. Salt Lake City just did this for 5 of their stations. Community, and part of the justification is, one, is it's all a single-family neighborhood. No, and not only that, single-family neighborhoods are small lots owned by lots of different individuals that they could all come together and aggregate several acres to build a large apartment complex, even if that's what you wanted to do, is infeasible. is just not going to happen. So it makes no sense to us to drag the community through a planning process for a tiny little quarter-size area around these stations when we're already addressing these issues. We've already have addressed them, and we're continuing to make refinements through transportation planning. We're, we're working on our general plan. Or our economic development plan. It just, it just is impractical to do it. We, we could call it resolution of common sense.

I like it.

Well, but that would be shocking because you'd have to do it 3 times.

Yeah, they are separate resolutions. Each one. Um, and this is just— sorry, just one last thing that this is just kind of a summary of different stations and the different kind of things that are in the statute that we were able to find at all the stations and site and say we have development issues, ownership issues, land use issues, market readiness issues. Gary's described all of these and development impediments. And just some highlighted findings from those reports.

So we will then take— assuming the council would be favorable towards this and you adopt these resolutions, we will then take them and give them to MAG and say, MAG, the City Council of Orem has determined that it's impracticable, and go from there. And that should take care of our requirements under the SAP laws.

Any questions? Then we're pretty confident that that will meet their demands. I mean, as you're saying, other cities are doing this. This is not an uncommon thing. And just makes sense.

Yeah, I think so. To be honest, it's been a little hard. for Summit Mag to get their arms around this, but we've been working with them, helping them understand what the state law requirements are and what their role in it is. And their role really in this is not to replace the City Council of Orem's judgment with their own about, you know, if we were on the council, would we do this or would we do a plan? Did you follow the state law requirements? And we think we have. State law allows you to make this determination. And it's, it's, uh, we think, uh, there's ample, uh, findings and conclusions in the report upon which you can make that. I mean, practically, you'd have to tear down the area, build new, you know, new buildings, which makes absolutely no sense.

Yeah.

And even conversations with BAGD, they're saying, you know, Yeah, we don't think that you would disrupt your whole economic corridor to build high-density housing all along it. And it's like, exactly. So that's one of the major—

Which is actually kind of what it says we should do.

Yeah, and that was one of the major reasons for the SAP law was to go in and take a look at it and see if you could leverage near transit stations, higher density residential. And we've done that in the Frontrunner station area. But in these, it doesn't make sense. One of the core things that a council does is, is in protecting the health, safety, and general welfare of the community is looking out for the tax base and making sure that that's robust for the entire community. Not just a little line along there. I have a hard time imagining Orem would have said, yes, let's have 3 stations here if this means in 10 years we've got to come back and get rid of commercial and put in high density along this line. I don't think anybody would. I hate to resort to common sense when we're talking political things, but I don't think it. And part of the answer to that question too is trying to show that we don't need to replan.

And Ryan could maybe speak to this better than anyone, but done that anytime the city has done RDAs or CDAs in the past, it's not just done in isolation.

It's done through a planning process too, and envisioning what is going to go there and what's going to be attractive there and why.

Why would I have to engage in an RDA with that extra tax dollars that it is creating? And I think when presented in that way, it's, it's, it's hard to argue with. Um, I, I look at near where I work in American Fork, near their station, and that's open land. So to Council Member Millett's comments, they have open land that they can develop, not land that's already developed.

But it just, it makes sense to do that there and to keep us where we're at here.

And to add to that, that's already developed and invest prior investments. That's the key, right? Is in the past, our taxpayers, our city, you know, forego some taxpayer dollars in order to— I remember when Lowe's happened, right? They tore down houses there and brought that in. to add more revenues to our budget. And now that RDAs rolled off, we are reaping the benefits of that. We're set. We're a community such that we don't have to offer more RDAs. We have businesses that are remodeling and redeveloping and refurbishing because Orem is the place to be retail-wise. So why do we need to do revitalization with housing? We don't. We're supplying it. I mean, it's been fun working on this. Over the last year, because we have seen— I have seen what a great place Orem is in and what decisions that were made 30, 40 years ago that have put us in that place. And let's keep it. Let's not destroy it because some other city around American Fork Station, it fits for them.

Right.

And we have a very robust housing situation already. We're 40-something percent rentals, right? And then we've got all the other housing in the city. And so why would you tear down the commercial base that supports all of that existing housing to add more housing in there and decrease your commercial base? That makes no sense.

Thank you. Thanks. Some wildland going on.

All right. So that will be on the consent items, right?

Yes.

All right, um, why don't we, why don't we go ahead and take a break, uh, for some food, and then we'll come right back. 5-minute break or so. We have a volunteer to say the blessing on the food.

Our beloved Father in heaven, we're so grateful for the opportunity we have to meet tonight, for the environment of what we have to meet in, and for the blessings of the city that we live in. We pray, Father, for a blessing upon the food that we're about to partake of, that it will give us the nourishment and the strength that we need, and we can use that strength in serving thee and those around us. Pray for thy continued blessings in our decision-making processes and on those who are in need of thy blessings. And we say these things in the name of thy Son, Jesus Christ.

Amen.

Thank you.

All right, let's go ahead and end the meeting.

Come back to item 1.4, Wildland Interface Code.

All right, good evening. Um, so we're here to talk about the Wildland Interface Code. This is before us because of action taken by the state legislature last legislative session. If you'll remember, about a year ago, a little bit less than a year ago at this point, there were those large fires in California, the Eaton Fire and the Palisades Fire, which resulted in loss of thousands and thousands of buildings, primarily residential buildings. And, you know, that had effects all over the place. And so the legislature passed HB 48 in response to those fires. To kind of help prevent similar disasters from happening here in Utah. The aspect of that bill that affects us as a city is that as a city where we're required to adopt the Wildland Urban Interface Code, which is a building code. So, um, basically what it does is it requires buildings that are being built in Uh, an area that is pure wildland in the city. So basically on the east end, by opinion, um, being built there would have to comply with this, basically requires them to have exteriors that are more flame resistant in terms of roofing and siding and that kind of a thing. Um, and Uh, as, as part of, as part of that code, uh, you, City Council, the legislative body, has to determine where that applies. Um, and, and that is on recommendation of our building official and cooperation with the state in determining where there are high risks for fire. Wildland fires in the city or next to the city. And so again, as part of HB 48, the state created a map that showed risk of wildland fire. And that's what I have up here is a map that we actually made. It came from their data. You'll see the shaded areas there are where there is risk for wildland fire. And as you can see, the biggest risk again for us is just in this northeastern quadrant here. And so, as a result, the state and our city building officials have come up with this map, which is the wildland urban interface defined area, meaning any new buildings in this hatched area here. Have to comply with this new code. The way it's drawn up doesn't really include any current buildings. Until we get over here next to the canyon, you've got a bunch of water infrastructure buildings, and then we've got our Timpanogos Park, and then there are a couple residential homes way up here on this end. Um, but it really affects just a very, very small portion of the city here. Uh, the importance of adopting this code is that it's, it's tied to money. Um, if there is a wildland fire and, uh, we're required to respond to it, our fire department is required to respond to it, um, the state will help pay for the cost, especially the most more expensive costs like the aerial support. Um, and, uh, adopting this code, uh, allows us to be eligible for those funds in, in the event of a fire.

Sure.

In, in the end, for, for our city, this is mostly just a housekeeping item.

Um, again, very, very little property will actually be affected by it. Uh, we are aware of push to either repeal or change HB 48, um, in the coming legislative session.

And, um, Councilwoman may want to speak to that more directly, but, um, we would keep an eye on that or a finger on the pulse of that and come back based off of what the— Yeah, whatever changes happen there, we would definitely Take action on as soon as we could.

Aaron, um, so when we had the fire years ago, and there were some neighborhoods that were pretty close, so if we put this in place, is that just for— would it be helpful to those homes that are already in existence to receive— I guess the help is more for the firefighting end of it. It doesn't go towards Helping the homeowners.

That's correct.

Yeah.

Yeah, the money doesn't— wouldn't go to the homeowners. Um, you know, if there's a disaster declared, FEMA might get involved. It would be mainly between the homeowners and their insurance companies.

Um, this helps us be able to—

but it affects the city. Um, the money comes to the city to help fight it. Thank you.

So, just to summarize, so, I mean, the way I understand it, As the state is saying, based on this new law, that we need to change our zoning, provide a better buffer for those buffer areas. And if we do that, then they participate in their cost for firefighting if a fire occurs in one of these areas.

So, technically, we're not changing a zone in any way. Right, we're just saying that there's this map and any new buildings within this, this hatched area have to comply with the new building code. As far as our zoning goes, it doesn't affect our zoning at all. Annually, we do things to maintain this agreement. This is just an addition they've added on to it.

Well, this is an addition to an existing—

yeah.

So we have this agreement where we do mitigation work up on the foothills every year. We buy a new wildland apparatus, that goes a long way towards this. Also our training. So that's an annual cycle. This is just a new part of that agreement.

Um, any other questions about how this affects the city or, or its residents or anything?

Like I say, it's a, it's a, it's a fairly small housekeeping thing just to ensure that we have access to that money in the event of a wildland fire. All right, sounds good.

That's it.

Thank you.

Okay, let's go to 1.5, General Plan Preservation Element. Yeah, so last time we were here, we talked about A new chapter or element to our general plan. State law requires us to put it in, and it deals with water conservation preservation. And this went to Planning Commission. Planning Commission has made a recommendation to you, and we, we have to put something into our code. And we gave a presentation last time and The conversation, uh, at one point came up about, okay, people are taking out their park strips and things like that and using pesticides and herbicides and fertilizer on other things. Does that get into the groundwater? What do we do? So what we are coming back and having looked at that, we think there are 2 things. One, Is, uh, in, in the document, we would add a— there's a Policy 5.0, we'd add a 5.1. And it basically says promote responsible and proper use of herbicides, pesticides, and fertilizers to protect water resources.

And this is—

Section 5 deals with our Our public education to reach out and help people understand what's an appropriate use and how to use it. And as we were doing that in planning, uh, Reed went out and talked with our consultant to see what more else is out there and what their opinion is, because frankly, um, we didn't quite know what to do as, as a city with this issue.

Yeah. So, yeah, the takeaway that I had, or the questions that were raised at the last meeting, are, were, does changing from grass to xeriscaping increase the use of herbicides?

And then what is the risk of these chemicals migrating into our aquifer?

So, with those questions, I did some research on my own, looked online to see what was there, and there was, there was, uh, there was primarily, um, information suggesting that the risk was relatively low, uh, but not nonexistent. And then there were other sources that said that we should be cautious with, with it. Um, of course, it's, it's chemicals. Uh, it's not necessarily something that we want to expose ourselves to in, in high concentrations. I also— a friend of mine who's a professor of agronomy and horticulture at BYU and asked him, and he said that the risk is relatively low for it to get into the aquifers. And then also talked with our engineer Lance Nielsen with Hansen Allen and Luce.

Okay.

Lance is a well-recognized well expert in the water industry here in Utah. His team designed well number 10 that's been drilled and that we will— we'll be using with the tank here the next year and a half or so. And he He helped educate us to better understand the risks associated with xeriscaping and the idea that there would be an increased use of herbicides. And so the quick answer to those questions is that conversion of park strips from grass to xeriscaping does not increase the risk of groundwater contamination.

And I'll And why?

And that when stored and used properly, the risk of mitigation into the water aquifers is extremely low. So, so why, why does it not increase? Because it makes sense that if you're going from a grassy area to weeds, which the easiest way to, uh, to control those would be with a, with a chemical. Um, and What I've learned is that every type of landscaping that we have has some sort of demand for some sort of chemical on it, whether it be a pesticide or fertilizer. So, when you convert from a grass to a non-vegetative landscaping or xeriscaping, then you're essentially exchanging Use of one for the other. So something that was grass no longer would be that you would apply herbicides to, used to receive fertilizers and pesticides. And so you're basically exchanging the use of fertilizers and pesticides on grass for the use of herbicides on the xeriscaping. So, what I've learned is that changing landscaping does not increase groundwater risk. It just changes which chemical is involved. So, knowing that, what's our solution?

Can't ban it altogether.

That would— that would— that would— is not a Excuse me.

Arguably not the best solution.

Um, but what we can do is help the public know what they should be doing. Um, I believe in the last meeting we mentioned that there are— when you apply these types of chemicals, you should follow the label or the manufacturer's instructions on how to apply it and how frequently. how much, um, and in what weather conditions. And, uh, the experts that I consulted with said that by simply doing that, that will mitigate the risk of groundwater contamination and decrease it low enough that it's acceptable. So, That's the purpose of Policy 5.1 that, uh, that we, that we included in the general plan. And that, that, uh, that new policy, which just states things that we are already doing, is to promote responsible and proper use of herbicides, pesticides, and fertilizers to protect water sources. I said that we already do this. We, we have a drinking water source protection plan. It's a plan that we update every 6 years.

Yeah.

In fact, in 2026, we'll be updating the water source protection plan for our wells. We also have a water source protection plan for our springs as well, which is also updated every 6 years, but That was updated 3 years ago, so we'll update that again in 3 years. But these— this plan, or these plans with springs and wells, they include public education management strategies for residential use of herbicides, pesticides, and fertilizers. We also have the annual— the city's annual water quality report, which we have to update and publish online. Uh, the water quality report has to be on the landing page, the city's website. So, if you go to forum.gov, you'll see a link to the city's water quality report. In that report is a section that reminds all residents that they need to apply chemicals in accordance with the manufacturer's recommendations. And, uh, and some other, other tips related to that. We also have a booth that's at Orem Fest, where we get out and try to educate the public on the importance of, of making sure that we, that we protect our water supplies by following the manufacturer's recommendations for herbicides and other, other practices that can help protect all of our sources of water. So as I mentioned, these are things that we do. We do recognize that we could probably do a better effort and use social media at times of the year, you know, the herbicides are going to be used a bit more and just put little blurbs out there reminding them that they need to follow manufacturer's recommendation and perhaps post those. So, uh, that's my report. That's what I learned and felt that the best way to address the concerns that were brought up was to create a general plan that we will, uh, we'll have. We've created a policy that promotes, uh, the correct use of these, these chemicals as, uh, in our landscaping.

Uh, he brings up a really good point. I know in Provo we had, uh, an educational campaign actually on fertilizers, uh, because of Utah Lake and people over-fertilizing their lawn. When I mean over-fertilizing, getting it onto the sidewalks and out into the street, and then that got in— was getting into our stormwater system, and the phosphates and nitrogens were from that go to Utah Lake and cause a lot of problems. So, so it's not just herbicides or pesticides, the fertilizer, and a lot of people don't realize that, that. And so now, if you see me, I overapply my fertilizer, I'm out there with a broom sweeping it back onto the lawn because it's okay if it's on the lawn, but if it just gets into the stormwater system, it often will find its way into the lake with high levels of So, I think this is a really smart approach that Public Works has come up with, that it's not just herbicides. We need to think about fertilizer too.

And we can commit to doing, you know, like a cool, catchy little video that helps educate our public on proper uses and maybe putting in an easily applicable way.

Have you ever seen a neighborhood where somebody does what you're talking about, Gary? Basically fertilize the road and everything, and then somebody turns the sprinklers on and then it all turns orange. Yes, all through the concrete. That would be a good video. And that actually ends up often in the storm drain and heads out to the lake.

Oh.

And I'm just going to comment because this is my little catch-all about the science of everything, right? And I always say, when I grew up, eggs were bad for you and avocados were a luxury you never ate because they were so fattening. They had bad fat, right? So what do I do now?

We—

now we know that eggs are the perfect protein, and I put an avocado in my smoothie every morning. So I think just being cognizant and, and identifying that, yes, right now our science is telling us this is dissipating, this is fine, but still let's be responsible with how we're doing it and what we're using it because we don't know all the science. We could be proved wrong in another decade. So I appreciate your adding that.

Welcome. Okay, anything else?

I believe this will be a consent item.

So I think this is a, uh, should be a hearing.

And maybe I've misread it.

Yeah, there's one more, the very last one, because it's a general Thank you. All right, thank you. A couple more things. One thing I want to bring up, um, we talked about this in a previous council meeting, and we kind of, uh, round and round about it. It was when we were having the election and we were having the conversations about dark money, and we had, you know, we had a whole conversation about that. At the end of that, I suggested that we put boxes on the election forms where a candidate could check a box and say, I'm accepting dark money, or I'm not accepting dark money. And, or there could even be a box that I don't know if I'm accepting dark money. We talked about that and went all over the place. But then after we left, and Tom, if he's online, Talked to me later and said that he had talked to those that usually vote with him, and they had agreed to put that on the form. And so just following back up on that, bringing that full circle, I'd like that to go on the record that we— as long as everyone's still okay with that, that we put that on our election forms.

Yeah, and just to clarify, Dark money sounds like a nefarious term. It's just an identification of a type of organization that doesn't have to report where the donor money comes from. That money is then tagged dark money. And I really appreciated Steve's presentation where he said both sides use it. You know, states are starting to come online with that. So I appreciate, Mayor, you're being proactive in saying in Orem, Want to kind of track this now or identify this now, and we really have no solution, but let's do that solution, which is the best we can do right now.

So identify it. Yeah, and it is fairly simple. I mean, if a person is receiving donations from donors like regular people, real people, they don't have any dark money concerns. If they're receiving money from an organization that has layers, then they have potential dark money concerns. And so it would be up to the candidates to kind of look at where they're getting their money from and say, is this potentially dark money or clearly not? So it's just a way that a candidate can come out and identify this is who's funding my campaign. Because as we've talked, who's funding our campaigns is critical to influence in our elections. So, okay, so significant. Good with that. Okay, um, let's run through this agenda really quickly.

Actually, you got, uh, you want to do reports on your council?

Sure.

Um, Stationary Plan, you saw tonight, that was wrapping up. Now these plans are done. Um, oh, I serve on that commission. I serve on the, let's see, America 250 which they're using, coordinating that with a lot of what's happening in the state. There's a neighborhood potluck coming up in July that we're going to do citywide, just some fun things like that. Utah Lake Authority, that one has been just fantastic. They are really helping the public understand why Utah Lake is the way it is, why we have these labels that aren't necessarily true. It's, it's a beautiful place to be on and sail and Really, one really important thing with that is they have just kind of fun created at BYU these carp boats. So they go through and they are pulling the carp out with these boats that are specially designed to pull it out. They have a carp hunt where you can bow hunt carp. So basically, you've done that. Basically, the carp are the problem. Right, because they're stirring up the bottom, making the, the rise to the top, which, which is creating the algal blooms. So anyway, they're getting a great handle on that. They're, they're replanting, just really bringing back the beauty. There are plans for trails and all kinds of great things going on at Utah Lake Authority. Neighborhood Commission, we have had just kind of a new revamp of that within the last couple years, some real opportunity for Because the whole idea is for that to be a representative, kind of a liaison for the council to use to get feedback from the commission. So doing some great things there. I'm trying to think what else I'm gonna— oh, Arts Commission. Yeah, arts is really great too. We've— we're really— so in Orem, we don't produce art. We have enough groups that produce art that our Arts Commission supports them. So we have a wide variety of artists on that commission. They especially— Durham Orem Fest and those, uh, the Rock Fest— introduce, um, organizations. They're doing— looking into some street art, some sidewalk art, and of course the heart of Orem will have some great opportunities for art. So we're looking for someone who has some great experience in sculpture and outdoor art. If you know of anyone, get them to apply. For that commission. I think that's it.

Okay, thank you. Thank you for that update. Let's just run through our agenda tonight. Uh, we'll start at 6, call to order. Like, there's a lot of stuff on here. We'll have invocation, uh, Jack Rhodes. It's my pleasure to introduce Patrick. Who invited you, folks?

I did.

So you'll introduce them.

Okay.

And then we'll go into the mayor's report, items referred by the council. We'll have a presentation from Orem High School football state champs. Uh, 7.2, a presentation strategy from our strategy and innovation on grants and where we're at with that. Item 7.3, a report on the Cultural Arts Advisory Commission. Item 7.4, a presentation about the 2025 Gold Star Family Memorial fundraising report. And 7.5, presentation farewell to mayor and city council. Item 8, personal appearances. Item 9, consent items. A lot of these things we've been talking about. Approval of meeting minutes for November 18th. The appointment of Mayor Pro Tem Chris Kilpack. Item 9.3, appointment Transportation Advisory Commission, Carol Walker. Item 9.4, a reappointment to the CARE Advisory Commission, Frank Shoemaker. Item 9.5, an appointment to the Recreation Advisory Commission, Jill Bowler. 9.6, I don't know if this is coming up on everyone's— it says Shiona McKay was on the reappointment. They have to clarify.

She's out of the country, so she's not going to be able to serve.

Okay, well, that's scratched out. So it's only Mary Shoemaker.

Uh, and I believe the direction—

appointment to the Recreation Advisory Commission, Joe Baller. 9.6, a resolution approving, advising the mayor to execute a local agreement with Utah County for funding improvements on Center Street. Between I-15 and Geneva Road. 9.7, resolution to adopt the wildland urban interface area map. Getting a new record. You guys are trying to get a whole bunch of stuff gone through.

I tried to get them to do public hearings on each one. Thanks, Gary.

I appreciate that.

Trunky. 9.8, Fortran building code update. 9.9, another resolution adding the oral for owner stationary plan. And finding conditions of impracticability, a good one, uh, for a stationary plan. That word doesn't even make sense. Impracticable.

It's impractical.

We're following state—

they don't work.

9.1, another resolution to find impracticability, and another one, uh, 9.12, 9.13. So 13 items on the consent items. An ordinance amending Section 2-7-6 of the Orem City Rules, add new subsection T pertaining to exceptions The bidding requirements. Um, item 10, scheduled items, a resolution, fiscal year 2025 independent financial audit. So we'll hear from the auditors, approve that. Item 10.2, a public hearing ordinance for 17 South Geneva Road, from OS5 to C2, for retail concept. Item 10.3, a public hearing ordinance text amendment for PD 36, Okay, so just to be clear, so we're gonna have a public hearing on all these things, and then we're going to vote to approve or deny the ordinance after that public hearing. There's no time frame that we have to wait for, 30 days or whatever, on any of these. These are public hearing and then we vote.

Is that right?

Yes.

Okay.

If all been properly noticed as public hearing.

Item 10.4, public hearing ordinance, 575 East 1000 South from RA through 34 for Home Depot. Item 10.5, public hearing ordinance, general plan update, water and preservation.

You are kidding.

As far as Said items, 13, and public hearings like 5. We, we've never had this before. Is this like messing with me? You skipped a couple, so we've all added up last 6 months worth of meetings. We got the famous number 11 financial information. Have to see if we need to start doing that with Um, item 12, city manager information items. Item 13, adjourn to a meeting with the Urban Redevelopment Agency, the RDA, which will simply be— we'll just have a motion to adjourn to that. We'll still stay there. We'll do the RDA consent items, um, items, and then we'll adjourn. Any questions?

No, just breathe.

Just breathe.

I'm just kidding.

You want to make a guess of how long this lasts?

Did you bring your glasses?

I'm not even going that loose.

I'm hoping early.

I hope we can— maybe nobody will want to talk about it.

Maybe.

If you're out by 7, I'll buy you prime rib. I'd say by now.

The adjournment—

if we go past 8, ice cream.

Of course, oxygen on staff. I will be depending by—

Yeah.

That's right.

That's right. Okay, let me go ahead and start. They're so petty. It was faster. Faster is always better. Surviving is thriving.

And they have that orientation book.

Oh yeah, I bought mine. Good on you.

The thing is, I was reading through it today.

Oh man.

Here.

Hey Paul, how you doing? Doing good, how are you?

Same here.

Looking good.

Oh, thanks.

What do you, uh— oh, you got a reason?

I hope so too.

I think it will be.

You never know.

What are you up to these days?

Yeah.

Yeah, well, it's nice you can help people and you can provide some services, right? No, no, no. Like I said, you're still looking great.

So are you?

I hope I look as good as these.

Is that what it is?

Well, you got to tell me which one.

You too.

Thank you.

Hey, how are you doing?

Doing good.

How you guys doing?

Good, how are you doing?

Party and crap.

Well, I'm over there too.

You need it?

Test, test.

We'd like to welcome everyone here tonight and call this meeting to order. We'll start out with an invocation, uh, from Jack Rhodes and then a Pledge of Allegiance with Kelly Kirkpatrick, and then Rodney Gardner would like to make a special presentation. Uh, these are folks that Dave Spencer invited to come. Would you like to introduce them, Dave? Yeah, so we have Jack Rhodes and Kelly Kirkpatrick. Patrick and Rodney Gardner.

They're from the American Legion Post 72, and they put in a lot of time, um, and help veterans as they pass on, and they do a lot for the community.

So I appreciate their service, and they're just awesome individuals. So thank you for coming tonight. Let's go ahead and start with our, uh, our invocation. with Jack Rhodes. Our dear Heavenly Father, we're thankful for all that we are given here as, um, thy servants who live in this valley. In this state and in this wonderful land. We're grateful for a nation of laws.

We're grateful for people like the ones who are in this city council, for leaders, our leaders who will take the time to help us make sure these laws are, are living in a good manner.

We ask thee, Father, and at this time to watch over and protect us. May, may the things that are proposed to be presented tonight be thoughtful. May the decisions made by those in charge be, um, Good for the citizens in our area. We're grateful for freedom. We're grateful for this great Christmas season which is upon us. We pray they will be mindful for— of this season and what it's all about, and do our best to reach out and help others where we can.

This we say in the name of Jesus Christ.

Amen.

Then Rodney Gardner would like to make a presentation. Thank you, Mayor and City Council members. You know, this Christmas season, the inspiration to me is our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, and I'm thankful that we have a mayor and city council members that share the same faith in Christ that I do. Now, a couple of you will be leaving or sitting in front of us here, and we wish you the best, Tom and David.

David.

And in recognition of our mayor We came up with a little award here. It says, in appreciation for your service to our community in support of families and veterans, Armed Post 72 honors Mayor David Young.

Thank you, Rodney.

Do we have any in this audience that have served in the United States military?

Okay.

If you have veterans that have served in your families, you know people—

Congress enacted a law in 2005 that says whether you're in uniform or not, You may salute the flag. You've earned that right. May I ask all of you to stand up, place your right hand on your heart, and follow me in the Pledge of Allegiance?

I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. You may be seated.

Okay, item 7.1, we have a presentation about the Orem High football state champs. Well, we had a very exciting occurrence happen in our community. The Orem Tigers won the State 5A Football Championship. We wanted to invite them, get a picture with the council, hear about the season a little bit. And one of our very own, Mr. Mike Hickson, is here. He works in the Police Department, but he's also, I think, the offensive coordinator for the Tigers. So come on up, guys, and let's hear about it, and we'll get a picture with the mayor and the council.

Okay.

We're glad to be here. I know this isn't the whole football team, if you can believe it. It's about 1/11th of it. But all these gentlemen had a huge part in our success this year. But what we'd like to talk about is just our season real quick, what we learned from it, and what these guys will continue to learn throughout their lives. It's— We're happy to win the state championship, and we came together as a team right at the right time, rolled through the playoffs, and I think we outscored our opponent, what, 155 to 43 throughout 4 games. We just really, really kind of came together, and that's kind of what we want to talk about is early on in the season. I don't want to say we struggled, but we did a little bit trying to find our identity as a team and to play as a team. We had an immensely talented team full of stars, full of great players. A lot of them are right here. But we didn't know how to play as a team and work together to reach a common goal. And we pounded that and we pounded that and we pounded that until it finally came. So what these guys and what we take as a school and Pride in is that this goes far beyond football. They learned how to go through adversity. They built character while they did it. We had a lot of ups and downs, some personal tragedies throughout our team that we had to overcome and and and bind together as brothers to lift those those players up. A few of the players lost loved ones right in the middle of the season, and it was an amazing thing to see these guys pick those guys up and come right back to football when, when they were hurting so bad. And it was just awesome. And they learned finally how team is always going to beat talent and and worked together, and it showed. And so we're very, very proud of Orem High School, and we're very, very proud to represent them, this community, and the city of Orem. And we hope you're proud of us. That's all I got. All right, everyone say state champs on 3. 1, 2, 3.

All right, thanks.

Thank you. And I just want to give it an extra shout out to our Orem football team. That is a very big deal to win state. Uh, I played football in high school. We won state. I still remember that, like 50 years ago or whenever it was. So it's a big deal. Congratulations. That's awesome. Let's go to item 7.2, a presentation from our Strategy and Innovations team.

Carrie.

Thank you, Mayor and Council. Um, while I'm getting ready and started, I would like to invite our strategy and innovation team to come up here with me. As you recall, in 2022 we did an efficiency study to see how we could be more efficient here as a city, and one of those efforts and recommendations that they gave to us is that we create a strategy and innovation team that centralized here in the city administration side of things so that we could even do more efforts. And with that, we started tracking all of our grant efforts. We were going for grants previously, but we weren't tracking and centralizing it. So now we want to show you an update of some of the grants that we have done since 2022. So this first one is a— the library department was awarded a grant for adaptive computer stations at the library paid for with the LSTA grant funded by the Utah State Library Division. These computer stations help address the higher level of difficulties that differently abled residents deal with when using computers and software. These stations have hardware and software that meets the needs of various disabilities. Hey Pete, I don't think they can see it on their screens. Can you see it on your screen?

Yes.

You can?

Okay, great.

The Orem Arts Council was awarded an arts grant from the State of Utah to host concerts, workshops, and other artistic endeavors at the city. The library department was awarded a grant for the Bibliotheca Smart Shelf by the Perk Collection, and it was paid for by the Community Library Enhancement Fund through the State of Utah. This smart shelf makes self-checkout easy and fast for residents. 2 new ChargePoint EV chargers will be installed within the next 2 weeks, 1 Level 2 charger and 1 fast charger. These are the top-of-the-line EV chargers that will accommodate several charging types. The funding was provided by the EV Reliability Accessibility Accelerator Grant. By remodeling the library courtyard, removing much of the grass, and installing drip lines, the city qualified for a conservation rebate through the Utah Water Savers Program, an entity funded by the state of Utah. The LSTA grant funded by the Utah State Library Division paid for the Hillcrest book lockers. These lockers expand library access to more residents. The Land and Water Conservation Fund grant is funded through the National Park Service. This funding allowed us to make park improvements at Windsor, Community, and Northridge Parks. Look at these famous pickleball players up there. And Jen, I'm hoping that you're watching this. The Utah Outdoor Recreation Grant funded by the Utah Division of Natural Resources funded the Phase expansion of the Mount Timpanogos Park mountain biking trails. This project will be fully completed within the next few months. The Energy Efficiency and Conservation Block Grant funded by the Department of Energy allowed us to buy and install solar panels on the roof of our new City Hall. The Law Enforcement Mental Health and Wellness Act grant funded by the Department of Justice has helped fund our mental health unit at the police department. This is one of my favorite ones. The Utah Jazz Community Grant funded a new sports court at Windsor Park. Members of the Utah Jazz organization, a jazz player, and the Jazz Bear all came out to the grand opening. The Public Works and Recreation worked with staff and received the TTAB, the Tourism Tax Advisory Board funding to the tune of $2.9 million. This funding was used to install infield turf on the softball fields at Lakeside Sports Park. The Utah County Municipal Recreation Grant helped us— helped the Orem Fitness Center pool and deck flooring resurfacing. Along with replacing wear and tear, this new flooring material will help prevent slips, trips, and falls, especially among the elderly. The water reuse facility was awarded over $10 million through a combination of funds through Utah County and the state of Utah. This facility was built for the provision of water reuse and the removal of phosphorus from Orem Water Reclamation Facility effluent. We have received additional funding for projects that are now or will soon be underway. This includes a new connector trail that will link the Bonneville Shoreline Trail and the Murdock Canal Trail, and a new youth mountain biking program that will be taught at Mount Timpanogos Park, and more. We will continue to prioritize and find grant opportunities for applying as many as possible. Since the strategy and innovation team was created, we have started tracking citywide grant efforts, and we've applied for 78 grants totaling over $46 The city has been awarded 47 grants totaling $26.1 million, and we have about $5.8 million pending award. So with that, I would like to honor the strategy and innovation team headed by Jenica Jones, Heather Cox, Whitney Kingsolver, and Ben Maxfield. And Bradley Day. Oh, and Bradley Day.

Go, 1, 2, 3.

Thanks.

Thank you, and thank you for— thank you for all of your efforts on those grants. That's a new department that we started 4 years ago, and it's been incredibly effective, and it's been a part of the reason we've been able to not raise taxes, because you guys are working hard to get grants instead of going to taxpayers. So thank you.

And I'm going to say thank you, Mayor Young. That was your idea, so thanks for pushing that forward.

Appreciate it.

Thank you.

Um, let's go to item 7.3. Uh, this is a report, Cultural Arts Advisory Commission. This is Pete Wolfley. Hey, thanks for having us here. We're here to report on the Orem Arts Council, and with me is Leah Collins, who serves as our chair. And so we're just going to go through a quick couple slides and talk about what we do on the Arts Council.

So here are some of our Arts Council members. You can read them there. Something I love about this conglomeration of people is that they represent many different aspects of the arts. Adam Robertson is the president of the Sierra. Stephanie Goodman and David Blackinton are artists themselves. Stephanie is a visual artist. David is a musician.

We love Linnae, our City Council representative.

My job is to keep the family city part of— in the Arts Council. I have 8 children and I'm running them to music lessons all day long. And then Pete is our fearless leader that runs everything.

So one of the things that we've really been focusing on, and Lynnae mentioned this in our work session, but basically it's not the Arts Council's job to create art. We've got so many groups, so many talented people in Orem that we don't see that as our role. Our job is to promote the arts.

So something that we do is each of us are assigned a few of the CARE tax recipients, and we're kind of the liaison. Mine, for example, are the Chantinets and Mountain Strings and the Haitian community of Utah. And then as far as art promotion, We go to the events and through our own social media channels promote and then just be in contact with our groups about what advertising and resources they might need.

One of the fun things that we tried this year was the Sweetheart Sing-In. So one of our members, Nathan Christiansen, he is a talented a cappella singer, and so he organized this little event at Library Hall where we'd all get together and sing. And, you know, we didn't have a huge crowd, but it was a really, really fun event for those that attended.

So the summer concert series, we helped decide which groups of the many talented in our Utah Valley community, and with an emphasis on Orem specifically, would provide concerts at the farmers markets. And it was really great. It was— we took— the Arts Council took turns introducing them. And I know from my visits there that we say wide variety of performers and styles. We tried to pick ones that represented Orem, and I think we accomplished that well.

Agreed.

One of our favorite things over the last 2 years has been able to partner with World Folk Fest. So they bring in groups from all over the world, and this year we had the privilege of hosting Mexico and Slovenia at the library hall. And so they put on a free performance thanks to the Orem Care Tax, and that was a wonderfully attended event and a great night for Orem.

So Taste of Orem, hopefully everyone here attended. If not, come next year. It was delicious and so fun and so well attended that many of the restaurants ran out of food pretty quickly. So, but then I heard of people who then visited their brick-and-mortar places because they had been to Taste of Portland and seen them there. So it was a great business advertising opportunity.

So as you've all been well aware, the Heart of Downtown project is one of the biggest initiatives that we've got going on, and the Arts Council had a chance to spend 2 of our meetings going through this, getting the presentation from Gary and the consultants and weighing in on what the heart of downtown could be. A big component of this is the arts district and doing public art and doing— making things happen for artists in town. And so this was a great opportunity for the Arts Council to really weigh in on some long-term planning.

And we're all really excited about it.

Mm-hmm.

So we're excited about the music stroll happening probably in May.

Which is also a chance to highlight Hidden Jewel Nielsen's Grove Park that will happen there.

Once again, hopefully using a lot of care groups, but then others to just wander through the beautiful park listening to music, eating good food, mingling with our fellow citizens.

And we're always looking for new partnerships, those that receive the care tax, new cultural groups that start up. We want to do everything we can to help them succeed and promote them to the public. And then finally, you know, our— as always, we'll just keep making sure that the arts have a place in our city. One of the things that I love most about working here and living here is that this is a city that supports the arts, both through the CARE tax, but also just as a council, you've made it a priority that this is going to be who we are, and it really enriches our lives. So thank you all.

Amen.

All right, any questions?

I just want to say we do have a great group. That is just an incredible Arts Council that does— has a lot of talent and really cares about bringing the arts to our community and our youth. And wow, thank you. I just want to do a shout out to our Arts Council. Arts Council members, and thank you to Pete for all the work he puts in.

Thank you. Thank you. Definitely a fantastic job by our Arts Council. We've got item 7.4. Pete, I see you're not going anywhere. Uh, it's our 2025 Gold Star Family Memorial fundraising report. Yes, so, uh, we're now in essentially year 3 of our Gold Star Family Monument fundraising. And so we wanted to come before you and just give you a quick update how we did in 2025 and what we have going forward. So first up, one of the cool things that happened just a couple weeks ago was we got our final rendering for what our Gold Star monument will look like. So across the country, they all share similarities, like the one that says Patriot is the same all over the country. So that's the same image you're going to see wherever you see a Gold Star monument. But then we got to pick the other 3. And so under Homeland, Family, and Sacrifice, those are images that are near and dear to us. As you can see, we've got Timpanogos, we've got one of our Orem orchards to represent family, and then the sacrifice is actually a photo from Brent Taylor's funeral. That's his wife's hand holding the rose, placing it on his casket. And where, you know, she and he were the inspiration for this, we thought it was very fitting to include them on the monument. So that's So, this was huge progress to be able to get this done. We also got the bevel, Gold Star bevel. And basically, what's written on here, you can't read it, but it explains each of the panels. And it tells you the symbolism behind the pictures. So, when people come to visit the monument, they'll be able to see why we chose the pictures that we chose. This picture was just taken today. I took it this morning.

And that's where it stood.

In the time since I took the picture, more has happened. You'll see big, tall pillars along those bases there. So things are moving right along, and the foundation is in, the footings are in, so we're getting closer. This year, we did some conventional things and some unconventional things to help raise money. I want to give a shout-out to all the restaurants that partnered with us today. We probably had close to 12 restaurants step up and do these spirit nights where basically they would give anywhere between 10% and 25% of the proceeds from a given night to the cause. Chubby's kind of led the way. They were our first ones who donated $1,000 to us. And so all the restaurants, both locally owned and chains, really stepped up. One of the things we tried at Sarah Poole was to do unlimited snow cones. So if you paid for the cup, the Gold Star Cup, you could have unlimited snow cones throughout the year. The coloring book we've been selling both online and in person, and every penny of those proceeds goes to the Gold Star. Currently over in Library Hall, we have our wreath auction. There's 9 wreaths that were made by members of the community, and they're up for auction, and that's raising money right now. Well, we set up a pop-up merch tent at Orem Fest in that middle picture there, and the shirts, the Orem is Very Cool shirts, we sold like $1,200 worth of those shirts. And so people are loving those shirts, and it all went to a good cause. And then I'm especially proud of our employees. They raised big money this year during our employee giving campaign, which is in September. You have options of donating to different charities, and the employees donated almost $30,000 to the cause. So thank you, city employees. Here's our results over the last 3 years. So in 2023, we just barely gotten started, raised roughly $5,000. Most of it from the American Legion. They're here tonight. Thank you, guys. 2024 was a huge year, raised nearly $50,000, and we just crossed over $40,000 for this year for a grand total of $94,000. So, you know, we, we are welcoming more donations, of course, but we're happy with where we're at. We're just going to keep going. We have some ideas for this final stretch. We're hoping that this is all wrapped up by the spring and we could dedicate this thing and get it open. So we have maybe 6 months-ish left to raise money, but we've got ideas. And it's been an amazing project to work on. I think it's really brought people together. It's helped us appreciate the sacrifice. You know, you hear a lot about the people that pass away in the military, but what about the families? You know, they've also sacrificed. And so I'm so proud of Orem for doing this and taking this on and making it the first one in Utah County. Thank you, Pete. Thank you.

Go ahead.

I just wanted to just kind of perspective here. If we can see how small things can make great things happen at one of our Orem Business Alliance luncheons, we talked about how we have over 3,000 businesses in Orem. If each one of those businesses, new businesses in That's right, new businesses. If each one of those businesses gave $100, only $100, right, we would be at our mark. We would be able to get this completed immediately. So put that in perspective, and, and I think if we can all pitch in and help out with this, every little bit helps and makes it happen and gives honor to these wonderful families.

I just want to say a few things. For me, this Gold Star Memorial is really special. When we started down this path 4 years ago, we had a vision that 3 things would represent Orem, and that was God, family, and country. As you can see in our city council chambers, we've got In God We Trust on our council seal over here. That wasn't there 4 years ago. We're only the second city in Utah to have In God We Trust on our city seal and on some of our buildings. There's one other city, and it's a small one, and I can't remember— it's either Roosevelt or Duchesne— but we're the second, and we're the first large city in Utah to do this. And then Family City USA, that's what we've institutionalized. That's what we've, we've changed, and we've made that the benchmark for which everything is measured. And then finally, this Gold Star Memorial— this is a big deal. This is the first one in Utah County. And these 3 things bring our city together and make us who we are and represent our core values. And so I really appreciate, uh, early on when Brent came out and he said he was going to donate $10,000 to this monument because it was that important to him. And I, I spoke with my wife Kathy, and we'd like to also donate $10,000 towards this. And I tell you this with Brandon and myself just to inspire you to step up and do whatever you can to help make this happen, because this will be the heart of Orem. So, and, and as a trivia Uh, if you do it before the end of the year and you donate it through our city foundation, it's tax deductible on top of that. So that's just a bonus. But I want to encourage everyone out there to step up and do what they can to help us get to this, this $300,000 number. So thank you.

Thank you, Pete.

Next up, we've got item 7.5, and this is a farewell. All right, I promise this is the last time you have to hear from me tonight. So, um, we've really appreciated serving with, with each of you, and we wanted to do something to kind of bring all those feelings together. You know, we've accomplished a lot, and so we put it into this video. We felt like this might be the best format to express how we feel about the time that we've had together. So let me just make sure the sound's going to work. Members Tom MacDonald and Dave Spencer, we just wanted to take the opportunity to celebrate some of the wonderful things we've done together over the last several years and express our gratitude and appreciation for you You've been wonderful to work with, easy to work with, and we've gotten a ton of really cool things done together.

With that said, let's roll the film on the things we've accomplished together.

Thank you very much for everything they have done over the last 4 years for the fire department. We're going to miss you and we wish you the best in your future endeavors.

From your police chief and all the members of Orem Police Department, mayor and outgoing city council members, thank you for your dedication and support to our police department. So I just want to say thank you for your service over the Thank you, Mr.

Mayor, for the past several years.

I have really appreciated the opportunity to work with you and to get to know you better.

I appreciate all the great things that you've done for the City of Orem.

Wish you all the best in your future endeavors.

Thank you for your service and for always helping the Finance Department be its best.

much for your service to our community and for the help that you've given our employees. You have helped us build a better Orem.

Thank you from the bottom of my heart from Public Works over the last many years of your support for the Public Works Advisory Commission, for all of our master planning efforts, all of our rate studies that that we've done, impact fee studies and so forth.

You've been very instrumental in where we are today. So thank you for Public Works, and we wish you all the best. On behalf of Community Development, we're grateful to you for your service and your support in our activities, especially dealing with the heart of downtown. Congratulations on your retirement and good luck. Thank you for your service. It's been a pleasure to work with you the last I'm grateful for your support for me, for my team, for the department I used to lead, for all the city projects we've done, from the water tank to Hillcrest Park to City Hall. We couldn't have done it without your support and the resources you've provided for us. I'm gonna miss working with each of you, and I hope to see you around.

Hello.

Thank you for everything you've done for us and here as employees and also for the city. We appreciate your many years of service and wish you all the best going forward.

Aren't these images and videos fun? I know they've been super motivational and inspiring to me, to your exec staff, to the city staff in general. We want you to know that this isn't the end, it's just a new beginning. We want you to continue with us We want to hear your opinions and feedback because we will continue to build a better Orem and do new and wonderful things moving forward.

Well, thank you. Thank you very much for putting that together. That means a lot. Um, and we'll talk about this more, but it's been an incredible 4 years. And, uh, all these people sitting over here, they've done an incredible job as executive staff. Helping to accomplish and making all these, all these amazing things happen in our city. And I think our city is in a phenomenal spot, and I'm excited for the future. But so, thank you. Okay, we've got some personal appearances, item number 8. And we'll start out with Tony Kretschmer.

This is a big microphone.

It's like— there's proof.

Uh, Mayor, City Council members, uh, you may notice I'm wearing the same shirt that I custom made exactly 20 months ago on April 9th when I discussed the importance of the Alpine School District and how important it is to split. I have lived in Orem for 30 years, more than 30 years, my wife for more than 50. And I just want to thank you, Mayor, and the rest of you for helping accomplish something that needed to happen for the last 20 years. When we started this endeavor, when you voted to allow us as Orem residents to have a voice on whether or not we wanted to become our own School District with Orem's Prop 2, it opened the door for us to have more local control. Back then, there were 7 Alpine School District board members, 5 of which did not live in Orem, yet controlled the fate of Orem schools. They chose to vote and to close a number of our schools. You helped make it possible so that we have local control. We went from only 2 members of a school district. Now we have 4 members of our new school district, which I hope they name Timpanogos. 4 that live in Orem. And if you include the students that attend junior high and high school here, the one from Vineyard—

look at the difference.

We went from just 2 members representing us to 4 or 5.

Thank you.

Local governance is best. I was privileged to help in that endeavor. And though we didn't get an Orem school district, we got the next best thing— a 4-city school district instead of a 14-city school district.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Next, Mike Christensen. Sorry, Mike A. Christensen. Hi, Council and Mayor.

I know I don't have to stay for this whole thing, but sometimes it's fun.

I came by—

oh, there we go.

I came by to say hi for my first City Council meeting here in this New building and the last one of the year and the last one for some of you probably ever in your current positions unless you pull a Trumpy and somehow make it back in after being out for a season. I thank all of you for your service, particularly a last official thanks to those of you departing members plus sadly Magic Mayor Dave. Thanks, Dave Spencer. And Tom— oh shoot, he's not here— for all the work— okay, for all the work you've done with This Other Dave. This very building stands as a testament of not just some of your work, but, uh, that of the remaining members, and— but I guess some of the previous administration too. And despite some opinions, I liked Rich Bruntz also. Kind of sad that some of you did all this work and then hardly got to use it, but I love that because it's here now and you— and you had to move the Christmas program, you've made that bigger and better than ever. My friend Scott Payne and I really had a blast at this time, and then right after that we went to BYU's first program like it for their 150th birthday. I know you guys have done much other work, and as I've watched you go through some of that voting, I see that it must not be as easy as it might look As for the new council members coming, I'm excited to see them bring their strengths to the desk. But honestly, I believe we'd be in good hands whether they had won or not. I'll miss our departing members in some ways, specifically Tom McDonald, because now I lack more opportunity to come here to these meetings and joke about his association with that fast food restaurant right across the street.

And as for you, Magic Mayor Dave Young, it's been a treat for us to have you, have a magician who doubles as our mayor.

You've pulled off some good tricks for our city, and I'm sorry for your loss.

I was just getting used to the idea that you weren't quite the new mayor anymore.

Of thee, it might be said, we hardly knew ye. Um, I'm going to miss you as our mayor, and let's just hope that the new Karen of a mayor will do well to fill your big shoes.

And I think she will.

You'll always be young, but she'll always be a Karen, and you can't help either one of that, can you? I'm just kidding. Um, and with that, I wish all you and your family members a very happy, safe, and fun Christmas and New Year's. And best wishes in your new endeavors.

Until the view—

see some of you next year. I've been Mike Christensen, and I yield the remainder of my time. Let's give them a big hand. Thank you.

Uh, Greg Carlisle.

Sorry, get this out of here, out of your way there.

Okay, my name is Greg Carla. I'm reading this because I just wanted to get it so it's right and not ramble. I'm a homeowner since 1979, and I I've had a very good experience getting to know all of you current Orem City Council members over the years. I thank you for running and the time commitment you make, and those of you like Tom McDonald, Dave Spencer, and the mayor who are making their final city council meeting here tonight after spending years serving Orem. I specifically wanted to thank the mayor and David Spencer who have shown up to so many Orem City meetings, events, socials, citizen gatherings, and have given your All to us, but most importantly made Orem a better place to live. I've been involved and have given volunteering with numerous city councils for over 40 years, going back to the time of Mayors Washburn and Joyce Johnson. And I can honestly say that, in my opinion, Mayor Young, you're the best mayor ever.

And David—

For sure. And David Spencer cares and shows up and does the behind-the-scenes work and gets things done as well. or better as any city council member I've worked with, and that's a lot. And I appreciate their wives, Kathy Young and Julie Spencer, who are so supportive. I imagine I've been to at least 40, 50 meetings or gatherings over the years with all of you, and both Julie and Kathy were always there actively participating with their husbands. And that's one of the reasons why you're successful. Through your influence, Orem City has so many fun events now. We just saw it on video from the Christmas lights and City Center to the recent taste of Orem. Thank you, Lenee and Dave and the mayor. Orem, Utah, and frankly America needs city council members, more of them like both of you. Let me take a request first now, just in closing. Of all those who are in office and those who were just elected, please let's get rid of the political baggage maybe and divisiveness. How about if each one of you just serves Orem, us citizens, and eliminate your being influenced by those Orem citizens and non-citizens or organizations who are almost obsessed with Orem City School District vote and feasibility study in Alpine School District and our new school district. I know a whole bunch of them and they're my friends and they have influenced Orem politics, I think, for too long. I love public schools and I volunteered for 15 years with the Utah School Board of members and also the State Office of Education, so I like him. But you're elected as Orem City Council members. You weren't elected as a Democrat, Republican, if you like Trump or not, or a liberal, conservative. You're not school board members. Alpine School District will split. The Orem City Council had the foresight to lead out to determine what would be best for Orem as an inevitable split.

Thank you.

Other cities like Lehi, Sarasota, Saratoga Spring, Eagle Mountain. They made it happen. It's done now, and it's up to the school boards. So let's, let's focus on safety, crime, high density, and parking and traffic, which isn't getting worse.

And we hope that you'll be a city council member and do your homework again.

Thank you very much, Dave. And anyway, bye.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Karen Adamson.

Hi, so I'm not going to be as eloquent as those guys are, but I just wanted to take this opportunity to thank you guys for serving on the city council. Being here for the last several years and watching these meetings, I have really learned how much of an effort it is for you to serve on this Council, how much of a personal sacrifice it is for what you do, and I just wanted to thank you for that. And Dave Young and Dave Spencer, as you guys are both finishing up, I really wanted to tell you personally that I have benefited from watching you serve on this council. I have benefited from watching you serve with integrity and respect and professionalism, but also you always have an energy to protect those that you could see the needed protection, and there are lots of those people in our, in our community. And I'm grateful for your example. It's also been evident to me that you have spent extra time in this responsibility to always be very informed about the topics that have come before you. And I am truly grateful for the comments that you share each night that there's been a major vote. You have been very clear with your information on why you voted the way you did. And that to me is very transparent, very clear, and it also tells us who you are, and I really appreciate that. I truly hope that those who follow in your footsteps will choose to also follow your example. And I just want to thank you again for your personal sacrifices that you've given to our city.

Thank you.

Carol Walker.

Well, I could just say ditto, but thank you to Dave and Mayor and to Tom McDonald, to all of you for your service. It's a— no, it's not truly a labor of love because I know it's a lot of frustration, but I have appreciated working with you, especially the ones of you that are going out, for your dedication and for your service to Orem. I especially want to thank you for the beautiful display of lights we have. I think I came and thanked you last year, but they are so beautiful. And they want to tell you the drone presentation was phenomenal. That was amazing. Thank you so much for all you do to make us have a better city.

Thank you.

Ken Millett.

Thank you, Mayor and City Council. My name is Ken Millett. I've been a resident of Orem for 30 years. I want to take this opportunity to pay tribute to 2 of our elected officials who will be completing their public service this month, Mayor Dave Young and Councilmember David Spencer. I was fortunate enough to meet Mayor candidate Dave Young 4 years ago on the campaign trail. Since then, I've spent considerable time with Mayor Young and I've gotten to know him on a more personal level.

I've seen him in many different situations and I found him to be a man of unquestionable character.

Mayor Young is both an excellent leader and an excellent representative of the city of Orem. Because of Mayor Young's visionary leadership over the past 4 years, Orem has accomplished some amazing things and And is enjoying amazing success as a city. It isn't possible to list all the accomplishments, but let me just list a few. Mayor Young challenged each of the Orem City department heads to make their departments the best.

But he didn't just leave them to do the work alone. He worked with them.

Each of the department heads accepted his challenge, and each was able to make significant improvements in their departments. Because of Mayor Young's leadership, Orem City is a much better place today than it was 4 years ago. And according to an employee survey, Orem city employees are much more satisfied with and engaged in their jobs than they ever have been. Another accomplishment is this beautiful building that we're meeting in here today. While years of planning and preparation occurred prior to Mayor Young taking office, it took his leadership to get the project approved, launched, and completed. We now enjoy this new City Hall building with no new debt and no new taxes. I would also add my own personal personal observation. In every situation I have observed Mayor Young, he has been genuinely concerned with the welfare of the city of Orem and of its residents. I believe that is why he was able to accomplish so much good for our city, and I thank him for that. I'm equally impressed with and grateful for Councilman David Spencer. I also met David on the campaign trail 4 years ago.

David Spencer is a hard worker and an excellent representative Orem City.

I've seen David at countless city events. I've seen him at ribbon cuttings, work meetings, service projects, concerts, parades, going door-to-door and talking with Orem residents.

I've even seen him serving Thanksgiving dinner at the Orem Senior Friendship Center.

David truly enjoys being—

excuse me—

with and serving the citizens of Orem, but he has taken that one step further. There have been many Orem citizens who have David Spencer directly with an issue or problem they are facing, and he has always been there and been able to help them get their problem resolved. He truly gets things done for the citizens of Orem, and I will always admire David Spencer's willingness to help and represent each city. I have more to say, but I will just finish by saying it's disappointing to me that you both won't be able to continue serving the city of Orem.

It's truly Orem's loss.

I believe Orem is a better place because of both of you. I want to thank you both for your leadership and your service, for your contributions to the city. And I wish you the best in your future endeavors, and I'm honored to call you both my friends.

Thank you.

Thank you, Ken. Next up, we have David Bousaith. Mayor Young, City Council, staff, Brynn, manager, I want to express my gratitude, uh, on behalf of myself and my wife especially. My name is David Buseith.

I've been living in Orem for 30 years, um, but didn't really get interested or involved in any way in the city until the Southwest Orem Neighborhood Association Association, which Murray Lowe and I founded together with Greg Carlisle and several other people, started worrying about the impact of a large student body from UVU on Orem's housing situation.

And I am grateful that your city council, under your leadership, has made great strides with great backbone, helping us perhaps level off in our family housing situation so that we can keep Orem as a family-friendly city. Dave Spencer, you've just been a magnificent support and help. I also want to thank Lenee Millett, Tom McDonald as he's leaving, but Lenee for Thank you. Helping to found— helping bring my hometown, I mean, into Orem with 2 neighborhoods now.

My wife and I got to serve in the first one last year, and it was a wonderful experience.

Great blessing, great part of In God We Trust and Family City USA. Thank you for all you've done. Thank you. Next we've got Karen Turner.

Orem stands stronger, safer, and more united because of Mayor David Young's leadership. And thank you, David Spencer, for your years of amazing service. Also, from day one, Mayor Young set out with a clear mission: protect families, preserve community values, and keep Orem the best place in Utah to raise a family. Under his direction, Orem embraced its identity as Family City USA, placing the new branding at its city gates, parks, buildings, and in city decision-making. And he also led Orem to adopt In God We Trust on its seal and council chambers, and he honored military families by establishing Utah County's first Gold Star Family Monument at Freedom Plaza. Mayor Young protected Orem's long-term future through the Orem Land Preservation Act, permanently safeguarding parks, schools, and public lands from development. He also passed the City Identity Ordinance, ensuring that public property reflects community community values and not political agendas. He restored strong, accountable government by reclaiming the City Council's legislative authority and hiring a responsive new city manager and leadership team. Under his watch, the city launched the ORM Transparency Portal and the ORM Contact App, giving residents unprecedented access to information and direct tools to engage with city services. Mayor Young championed responsible growth, overhauling the state street and transportation master plans, eliminating 10,000 high-density units, and refocusing development on families, businesses, and safe, connected neighborhoods. He modernized city operations by creating Utah's first Department of Strategy and Innovation, conducting Orem's most comprehensive operations review, improving employee morale, morale and encouraging excellence across departments. On infrastructure and finances, Mayor Young delivered one of his signature achievements, a $35 million debt-free City Hall built with no tax increases.

Yay!

Orem also earned a AAA bond rating, achieved a cost-saving dispatch merger with Provo, and secured tens of millions in grant funding, all without raising taxes. He strengthened Orem's water security with a 10 million gallon tank, a 1,000-foot well, and a $20 million water reuse project that will save millions and reduce consumption. He also oversaw award-winning parks like Hillcrest and secured major upgrades for Lakeview Park. Culturally, Mayor Young transferred— transformed the Orem Library, strengthened the city's partnership with Sarah, supported nationally recognized school resource officers, and revitalized community outreach, including a modernized communications program and a record-setting Orem Fest. For his leadership, Mayor Young was named Utah's Best of State Mayor in both 2024 and 2025. His term concludes. Mayor Young leaves behind a legacy of faith, family, fiscal responsibility and a stronger, more stable Orem built for generations to come. I challenge the new City Council to keep it that way, and I challenge those council members not in attendance to take their responsibilities more seriously. Please show up and attend all City Council meetings. Thank you.

Lisa Bullocki.

I do agree.

I am disappointed that all of City Council is not here tonight. I know December is busy, but I feel like this is an important thing tonight. I want to express my deep gratitude to Mayor Young and Council Member David Spencer for the remarkable support they have shown our fire department from the beginning At the beginning of his service, he made it a priority to strengthen the department's culture. One of the first things he did was he hired our fire chief, Chief Sanderson, who is amazing. He focused on professionalism, training, and creating an environment where highly skilled men and women can thrive. Because of that commitment, we've seen a real transformation. Today, when applications open for new hires, we receive significantly higher numbers.

Thank you.

compared to the teens we once saw. That shift shows the trust, respect, and strong foundation he has built. In addition, I want to thank him for his strong support of Chief Sanderson and for embracing the forward-thinking ideas that have lifted the department to a whole new level. His leadership has helped make the job easier, if we can ever call this job easy, for the men and women who serve. As a result, They're able to perform with a level of excellence that truly stands among cities in our state. As a mother of a family of sons who serve in surrounding departments, I am deeply grateful for the relentless work of our first responders and for the leaders who support them. And Mayor Young has relentlessly, and I mean relentlessly, supported them. As we know, the safety in the other cities, surrounding cities, affects our city and our city affects them. And so as a mother of all of these sons that serve in this capacity, I am so grateful for that. I especially want to thank Councilmember David Spencer for his remarkable support of our department and the families of those who serve. His engaging support, his genuine care, and his unwavering dedication make him someone we can always count on. It is well known which cities truly care for their departments, and word travels quickly, quickly within the brotherhood of first responders. Councilmember David's efforts are recognized all around. To our incoming mayor and council members, I want to express hope and confidence as you step into your new roles. We look forward to your continued dedication to our first responders, and we expect that and their families. The strength of our fire department and any public safety team depends not just on funding and policy, but on leaders who stay aware, involved, and genuinely invest in the well-being of the men and women who serve and their families. Your out— your ongoing support, your willingness to listen, and your commitment to their well-being and success will be key to building on the progress we've made and keeping our city strong and safe and thriving. thriving. And thank you so much.

Thank you.

Miriam Murphy.

My name's Miriam Murphy, and I am here because Phil Murphy is in Phoenix And he really wanted to be here tonight. He really wanted to express his gratitude to, uh, the mayor and to David Spencer. And I'm the worst speaker of all, so you're just gonna have to deal with it. I have lived here in Orem for 56 years, which is weird because I'm only 40, and I don't know how that happened. But anyway, um, Phil— took Phil a minute to— he had marry me, and then he moved here to Orem and became a police officer here in Orem and worked for 30 years. Things were kind of struggling there for a minute, and we— a lot of officers were approaching Phil, and so we came in, and it was very evident right away who was listening. And I'll tell you right now, I've never met a mayor who listened and listened intently to our concerns and took them seriously. And it was, it was just unbelievable to us, the support that we got. And to David Spencer too. I told BJ when I came in, I said, BJ, Phil worked with both Mark and BJ and loved— oh, we love them so much. And I remember I told BJ when Phil retired, BJ was sad about it, and Phil reminded me, said, you know, BJ, you're going to go places. And you look where you are, and we are so— you guys could not have a better leader. And Mark too. We love these men dearly with all of our hearts. I look around this room, I look at these police officers in here. They are the heart and soul of a city. My husband was shot in the line of duty and survived miraculously. And through it all, he said, I loved that job. I loved the citizens of Orem with all of my heart. And I would do this job all over again. And I hope and pray that we don't have to come back. Um, you guys need to pay attention because under Mayor Young's leadership, like they brought up before, I've never heard of those statistics of employees being as happy and content. We run into people all the time They love working for Orem, and that lays directly here with you. And I just want to thank you from the bottom of our hearts. You've been the best mayor we've ever had, and I'm very grateful for you and your service.

Thank you.

Heather Frye.

Thank you all for being here, those of you who are. I know it's a busy time, and thank you so much to everybody here. I know a lot of times we only see these, but I also want to recognize All of you here on the side that they can't do what they do without what you guys do. And so I applaud each of you and thank you. I just want to share from Theodore Roosevelt, The Man in the Arena, or woman. It is not the critic who counts, not the man who points out the strongman, how the strongman stumbles Or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly, who errs, who comes short again and again because there is no effort without error and shortcoming. But who does actually strive to do the deeds, who knows great enthusiasm, the great devotions, who spends himself in a worthy cause, who, at the best, knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who, at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly. So that his place shall never be with those cold, And timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat. Thank you seems inadequate to express the depth of appreciation for your service, Dave.

Dave.

Tom.

Few will ever understand the toll on your family and friends. As critics, naysayers, and ignorant foment a level of animus I never would have believed if I hadn't witnessed it personally. To our mayor, thanks to your family. I've known your kids for 25 years. I taught them swimming lessons. I never knew you until you ran for mayor, and it was only because I knew who your kids were that I knew you must be a good guy.

So you earned my vote.

Thanks to your family for sacrificing time, their time with you, shedding tears for you. And serving alongside of you as you served the residents of Aurora. I echo what Greg said about Julie and Kathy. Thank you all. I restate my public request that our city clock be named Charlie. I'm putting it out there yet again.

Thank you.

I know that 2 of the 3 council members present tonight and our mayor support this action. I'm stunned that such a simple action is not supported by all of our elected officials to honor a young husband, father, advocate for free speech, and courageous disciple of Christ.

Thank you.

Who was assassinated in our city, and that 4 of our leaders refused to collaborate on a way to commemorate the service and sacrifice Charlie Kirk gave to our country as he was a guest in our city. I implore you to put aside your divisive ideas and remember that charity suffereth long and is kind.

Thank you.

Charity envieth not. Charity vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up. I appreciate the example that Dave Young, Dave Spencer, and others have given to the city of charity, and I thank them for stepping into the arena.

Thank you. And last on the list, we've got my wife, Kathy Young.

I have to read from one of our citizens who just recently lost her husband, Kathy Minster, and she sent me her Message. Mayor Dave Young, I wish I was here in person, but circumstances beyond my control prevent— prevented me from doing this. For over 37 years, I have been the office manager of the dental practice of Reed and Taylor Robinson. Others in the offices have also remained employees for more than 20 years. Surveys say that dental offices have one of the highest percentage of turnover in employees. But Robinson Dental retains excellent employees for years due to these key reasons. Our dentists do outstanding dental work and stand by it. They only do what is needed. They're ethical, have great integrity and honesty, and make our group feel like a family because of the appreciation and kindness afforded to each of us. We have patients who have moved far away, have tried other dental practices, and then call months ahead to make their dental appointments when they come to Orem for vacation because they cannot find dentists as good as ours. Because of the long duration that I have worked there, I'm aware of dental practices who have high turnover employees who do unethical work, overtreat, exorbitant prices, and just generally shoddy work. It matters how long you have been able to observe things over and over again. I've lived in Orem my whole adult life When my husband and I moved here expecting our first child 53 years ago and counting, Woodbury was building their very first store when we moved to Orem. Through those years, I've watched our city government closely. I've seen wonderful mayors. I've seen wonderful city councils. I have also seen unethical mayors and councils. I've seen mayors and councilmen who choose to line their own pockets from others who want to have our land for themselves here in Orem, Utah. Mayor Young, it is with greatest appreciation and gratitude that these last 4 years you have been the best mayor I have ever seen. Apparently I'm not the only one because other cities have called and asked for your ideas. I know, know this for a fact. It has never been about you or money or status. You've been the leader of the freemen, and I have absolutely loved being a citizen of Warm City under your watch care. My heart is broken that the King men have treated you as a criminal, as a robber, and less than honest. Those of us who know the truth marvel as you have taken every lie and every slander with such grace, and you suffereth it. You truly are the finest mayor who ever served in the state of Utah. May the finest, most choice blessings be upon you, Kathy, and your family.

I'm shaking.

With much love and admiration, Kathy Minster. Thank you, Mayor Young. All right, the title of what I'm going to say is called Service Over Politics: The Dave Young I Know. When I think of my husband Dave, I don't see a politician. I see the man I've loved for 47 years, a man of quiet strength, deep faith, and a lifetime of service. Long before he was mayor, he was already lifting others and solving problems and helping people simply because it was right. Serving as mayor brought challenges, some very public and very difficult, but through it all, Dave held to one guiding belief: you don't fight darkness with darkness, you fight it with light. That light guided every decision he made, and it carried our family through the hardest days. Tonight, I want to focus on something simple and sincere: gratitude. We are deeply grateful for the thousands of residents who supported Dave, supported the good work, being done and believed in the positive changes taking place in Orem. Every kind word, every prayer, every moment of encouragement meant more than you will ever know. Thank you to those who volunteered, who showed up, who gave their time, their energy, and their hearts. Our community grew stronger because of you. Record participation in city meetings, events, and elections didn't happen by accident. It happened because you cared. I'm shaking, guys. Your support helped make possible the transformation Orem experienced these past 4 years, from community events that grew 2, 5, even 10 times bigger to major improvements in parks, public safety, infrastructure, and water security. These weren't political projects, they were investments in the people. Thank you to those who believed in fiscal stewardship Because of your support, Orem kept no new taxes, the lowest fees in the county, and the strongest financial foundation in the state. Together, we even built a new city hall without taking on debt. That kind of leadership has become a model for other cities and candidates throughout the county. They are now campaigning on the idea of doing for their cities what they've helped do to Orem—

for Orem.

To our city employees, thank you for embracing a culture of service, excellence, and kindness. Orem being named one of the best places to work in Utah this year is a reflection of your dedication and your belief in the mission of this city. And thank you to every resident who wanted a more open, more responsive government. Your voices inspired the transparency portal and the contact portal, tools that will continue to ensure that government belongs to the people. The last election showed how engaged our community has become. Nearly 19,000 people voted with only a 500-vote difference. No clear mandate, but a clear message: the people of Orem care deeply and their voices matter. Most of all, thank you for standing with my husband Dave, not only in successes but in the difficult moments too. Your faith, your guidance, your kindness, and your willingness to serve alongside him made all the difference. Dave leaves office with a heart full of gratitude, grateful for what you accomplished together, grateful for the friendships formed, and grateful for the privilege of serving a city he loves. His belief in the Orem is stronger today than ever. And as we look to the future, my prayer is simple. May we choose unity over division, healing over hurt, and light over darkness. May we remember that we are one community, one community and one family and one Orem. And may God continue to bless this beautiful city and all who call it home. I love my city, Orem. Thank you, Mayor Young.

Well, thank you. I wasn't really expecting all of that. Um, Yeah, that wasn't on my radar. I really appreciate all of your kind words, and I appreciate your trust and your support and your respect. And for all the volunteers, I appreciate your help in just making Orem the best place it can be. Uh, this has been an amazing ride with an amazing executive staff. I could go off and tell you each of the amazing things that each one of these executive staff members do for your city. I can tell you about a phenomenal city manager who's truly a servant leader and does a phenomenal job. Guiding these folks. But most of all, I, I could go on, but I won't because you guys have said it all. But I appreciate your love and your support and your friendship and all that you do for Orem. So thank you. Now, believe it or not, We've still got a meeting. Um, we've got some records here. I swear this is a record on our consent items. So my lucky number is 13. Guess how many things we've got on our consent agenda? Usually we have 4 or 5, maybe 6. We've got 13. But the good news is, is consent items go really quick. So, Mayor. Yes, I got a text from Councilmember Jen Gale.

As you begin to go through the rest of the agenda and make votes, just be aware that I believe that Councilmembers Jen Gale, Jeff Lamson, and Tom McDonald are, are online.

Okay, so we'll need to listen for their, their votes or their comments.

Yes.

Okay. Thank you, Gwen.

Okay.

Um, as far as consent items, we've got item 9.1, approval of the meeting minutes for November 18th, 2025. We've got an appointment to mayor pro tem of Chris Kilpack. We've got item 9.3, an appointment to the Transportation Advisory Commission by— with Carol Walker. Excuse me. We've got an item 9.4, a reappointment to the Care Advisory Commission with Mary Shoemaker. We've got item 9.5, an appointment to the Recreation Advisory Commission, Jill Baller. Item 9.6, a resolution approving and authorizing the mayor to execute an interlocal agreement with Utah County for funding of improvements on Center Street between I-15 and Geneva Road. Item 9.7, a resolution to adopt a wildland urban interface area map. Item 9.8, an ordinance, a building code update adding 2006 wildland interface code. Item 9.9, a resolution adopting the Orem Frontrunner Station Area Plan. Item 9.10, a resolution Finding conditions of impracticability for Lakeview Station Area Plan. Item 9.11, a resolution finding conditions of impracticability for a Main Street Station Area Plan. Item 9.12, a resolution finding conditions of impracticability for— and most of you don't know that's a real word, but welcome to the state. Finding conditions of impracticability for a University Place Station Area Plan. Item 9.13, an ordinance amending Section 2-7-6 of the OMC Code to add new subsection T pertaining to exceptions to bidding requirements. And so those are all of the items on the, on the consent items. All these items we've, we've discussed extensively in our work meetings and, uh, and other meetings. So we, we've discussed them all. Now we just need to block them all together and vote on them as a group. So, would somebody like to make a motion? The mayor, I'll make a motion that we approve the consent items. I second that.

Aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Okay, we got everybody.

Who was the first aye?

Tom and Jen both did. I don't know if Jeff did.

Is Jeff online? We need to wait for his vote then, right?

Is Jeff there? It shows he's on but muted, Mayor.

Somebody text him and tell him to unmute.

Aye. Thank you.

Okay, thank you.

Okay, the consent items pass. Next up, we'll move to item 10, scheduled items. Item 10.1, a resolution for fiscal year 2025 independent financial audit.

And this will be—

our presenter will be Brandon Nelson, our city accountant. Our Our finance director, and John Hederle, a partner with Larson Company. Is John here? Okay, you can come on up. Thank you, Mayor. So, uh, before we— I turn the time over to, uh, this is John Hatterly from the CPA firm of Larson and Company. But before I turn the time over to him to discuss the independent audit that they performed, I just wanted to touch on just a few items in relation to our annual financial statements, um, just, just to kind of give you an idea of some things where people always ask, you know, what, what can I learn or find out about the financial statements without having to read through everything and look at all the numbers? And I just wanted to give a few key areas where it doesn't tell you a story, you still need the information, but it's a good place to look to start. And so one of those first places That is on this particular statement, which is a statement of revenue expenditures and changes in fund balance. Everybody else in the world might consider this called an income statement, but in government accounting we refer to it slightly differently. On that, you'll notice that first column we have the general fund, and the third column is the capital projects fund. And I've highlighted 2 particular numbers, which is The change in fund balance, in which case both of these are happening. One is positive, one's negative.

Now, that's not—

negatives aren't necessarily always a bad thing. So we'll touch on that general fund item. Sometimes that number is a positive, which it is this year. Primarily this year, that number is a positive number because we had an increase in sales taxes. Uh, an increase in our ambulance revenues and an increase in our B&C road funds that we receive.

In other years, last year for instance, we had received ARPA grant money.

Well, as we spent that money, we had already received it, and as we spent that money, that actually made that number a negative. So that's why I make the point of that's just a good place to start with your question. How come, particularly maybe last year, how come It was a negative number, right? This year it's a positive number.

That's great.

Why is it a positive number and what makes up that positive number? You'll notice the rather large negative number.

We've touched on building city—

the City Hall. Guess where those funds came from? That particular project fund. And so therefore, obviously, when we, we had saved that money, it was sitting in that fund, and as we spend that money, that number will go down. And you can see that right there, case in point. Another place to look is we always ask questions about our utility funds and, you know, how are they doing and what do they look like. So you can see we have the water fund, water reclamation fund, which is sewer, and our stormwater funds. And those are the 3 major funds of our utilities. And again, I just highlighted that bottom line change in net position, which is again the kind of the income for the year. You'll notice the water fund had a relatively large year comparative if you look at the prior year of $5.8 million and this year $11.7 million.

Well, why is that?

Your question might be when you looked at that, if you go look at that and you say, hmm, that's interesting, why did it change so much from the prior year? And I've highlighted a number up above. We've earlier, you heard Kerry Rugg discussed the donations and grants that we received. This is one of those grants that we received from the account for $7 million that went into account, and that's why you see such a huge increase. The city paid for that, those costs up front. In prior years, that would have caused a, a negative, if you will. But obviously then, as we're reimbursed and receive that grant money, causes it to go back up.

Thank you.

Um, we've recently had changes to sewer rates, and you can see the gradual increase in relation to the effect of those sewer rates there with the $9.1 million compared to the prior year's $7.2 million. And the stormwater fund has a similar thing in relation to increasing rates. And you might ask, then, what do we use those funds for? And obviously, The main thing we do with those, if you will, excess funds is for capital projects to keep our—

those—

all of those systems in good operating condition. Another item that always tends to come up is property taxes. And I'm not going to go into any too much in-depth, but I just want to make you aware that this document exists within our annual financial report. And these are the rates that make up everybody in Orem's property tax rate and where those rates come from and who is the one assessing those rates. And this is where you can go and you can see a 10-year history in relation to those, those mill rates, just to give an idea of, you know, where those are assessed from. And at the bottom of that, you can then also see that shown in a percentage graph format. So a very quick place when questions arise about property taxes, you can go to this page and find that document. And then another one that always, you know, we touch on a lot— sales taxes, the number one revenue source for the City of Orem. We've talked about University Parkway and the importance of the parkway, but the city as a whole, obviously the parkway plays a big role, but all businesses within the city play into that. And this is another 10-year history, and I've highlighted here the, the local tax portion. We receive some others such as CARE tax and some other sales tax-related items, but the, the 1% sales tax for the local here is highlighted there, as well as the percentage. And this is a 2-page document, so you can see this was the first 4 years And then if you go to this second page, you can see the last six years, and it just provides you with you could see the growth from 2016 to 2025 in those sales taxes, and and then it gives you some idea of what type of things are happening here within the city of Orem, as well as what kind of a growth rate maybe we're seeing. And if you look at those last three years comparative to the prior 7, that brings into some question whether that growth, those prior 7 years kind of growth rate, is that continuing? Because those sales taxes are a primary funder of how we provide the resources to the city within the general fund. Say, Brandon?

Yes.

Can you just explain, uh, as far as 2021, 2022, That drastic jump in sales tax revenue? People went to Home Depot. Is that it? Yeah, I mean, that's a lot. We didn't have a Home Depot. Well, in our case, but, uh, yeah. So I mean, obviously coming out of the, um, pandemic, um, you know, we had actually changed our budget thinking that it was going to have a pretty negative impact. And to surprise not only Orem but many Many, many cities, especially here in Utah. Um, that was a COVID anomaly then? Yes. Interesting.

Um, yeah, you—

if you look through that, I, I don't think any of the other years had quite that same percentage increase, if I remember correctly. Yeah, so, you know, that just gives you an idea of maybe what this— what was our standard, what do we normally expect to see, right? In those, those 4 years there, you see an anomaly when it comes to the pandemic from '20 to 2022, and then what's happened recently in the last 3 years. And there's potentially lots of reasons as to why that has flattened out, but it is something to pay attention to. And again, just a quick page in the document that you can go to and see to potentially ask those questions about what— hey, what's kind of going on? And you can see it in his history format. And then the last page I just wanted to point out is in the very last page of the annual financial report is this general fund summary that kind of gives you a visual perspective of where does all of the revenues that for the general fund that support the general fund come from. And really the one I just wanted to point is, as you'll notice, the sales tax percentage on the right side and the property tax percentage below it as that sales tax percentage continues to grow and that property tax percentage continues to decline.

And I did—

not that there's a good or bad about that necessarily, but it is again another one of those things that, you know, if you take a quick glance and you look at it and you can go, okay, what, what kind of questions should I be asking about that? That maybe seems a little high or seems a little low, especially and maybe the way I was thinking. So, so that's an important graph to just, you know, quick glance, kind of keep, keep in your mind. And then just to give you an idea, within the general fund, where's the money spent? Where is all— where do all those revenues go? And, uh, you can see obviously your 2/3 of that money goes to personnel. And in there you can— gives you an idea, especially if you were to take a few of these years and look them back to back to see how is that changing over time. So anyway, are there any questions you have of me in particular before we get into the audit items, results in relation to our finances for— this was fiscal year 2025, which ends on— ended on June 30th, 2025.

Great.

I will now turn the time over to John to discuss the audit results. All right, thanks, Council, for letting me take a few minutes of your time. I know it's not going to be as praiseworthy, Mayor, as all of the other comments that have happened earlier, um, but I am thankful for the opportunity that we've had to work with Orem City. Uh, the council's been great to work with, and Brandon's staff. So just want to express thanks, uh, before I get into my report.

Thank you.

As you know, we've been contracted to audit the financial statements of Orem City. We finalized the audit for fiscal year ended June 30th, 2025. So I just wanted to go over the reports that we're required to issue as part of our audit and explain kind of what's in those reports, what they're saying, and then express our opinions, what opinions we're giving. And why we're giving them. So I'll start with the audit report. The audit report is found in the annual financial report. That's the only report that is in that particular packet. Because Brandon prepares an annual financial report, there really isn't room for the other reports. They don't really appropriately belong in there. So we actually have a packet of supplemental reports that get attached to to the state and to the federal government. But we'll start with the audit report. And this report is directly related to our audit of the financial statements. And our opinion is an unmodified or unqualified opinion. And I use that— those terms, you're not going to see that— those terms in the audit report. But if I read the audit report, our opinion is that the financial statements present fairly in all material respects the respective financial position Also part of the audit report is your responsibilities as the city. These financial statements are your responsibility, and Brandon and his staff, as well as the city council, are required to know and understand the accounting principles, make sure that they're being followed in the accounting practices and in recording transactions, and also preparing the financial statements.

Thank you.

Making sure that all of the pronouncements that are issued are followed and are implemented correctly. Also, and this goes back to what Brandon was talking about with a lot of the statistical data that he showed and why it's good to have that in your financial report, is now because of COVID you as a City Council and Brandon's team are required to look for conditions or events events that arise that have a negative impact on the city, such as a COVID-type event. That's why standards changed. Not everybody wanted to talk about how COVID was affecting their business. Governments really weren't affected a whole lot in Utah. We actually did fairly well, but not so much outside of the state. And as you know, there were a lot of private businesses And if you look, your sales tax is, you know, 40% of your revenue. And if you have a COVID-type event and nobody can shop, that number drastically declines and then picks back up. But if it doesn't pick back up, then that's a negative effect to the city that could affect your ability to continue as a going concern. And I think that's a great point. Into the future. So just know that that's also one of your responsibilities now, and that's a standard change across the country. We also are required to look for conditions or events. So when Brandon prepares the financial statements and when I'm reviewing my staff's work, I appreciate the statistical information that Brandon puts in the financial report because it makes My job easier to look at trends. Typically, I have to do that through looking at trial balances and running analysis. I'll typically do 5 to 6 years of trends, looking for negative trends that are affecting the city. But I appreciate the way Brandon puts the financial statements together. They really are one of the better put-together financial statements across the state that I review. So I appreciate that.

Thank you.

There really isn't anything else on the audit report, so I'm going to move to the supplemental reports that we're required to issue. So the next report that we're required to issue just outlines that we performed your audit in accordance with government auditing standards, and part of those standards state that we have to look at your internal controls. We don't test your controls with enough of a sample size in order to give an opinion, but we are testing to make sure that, A, you have controls in place, and B, that they're actually functioning the way that they should be. And the reason why we're testing the functionality is you can implement all of the controls that you want, but if they're not doing what they're intended to do, then they're doing you no good. Really what we're looking for is significant deficiencies or material weaknesses that are causing misstatements in the financial statements. We didn't identify any, so I'm not going to I'm not going to spend any more time on this letter. The next report that we're required to issue is for the federal government. This is because you spent more than $750,000 in federal money this year. And when you spend federal money, every time you get a grant, and this is specifically related to grant money, every grant comes with its own set of requirements. requirements and compliance items that they require that you do. So we're looking at every one of the federal programs that you get. We look at the grant agreements, make sure that anything that you're required to do as far as compliance, that you are in compliance. And then we will, based on the numbers, we will pick 1 or 2 programs that become major programs that we look at specifically. And that's based on what? And then test the expenditures to make sure that they're spent appropriately. So the opinion that we give here, and this is the second opinion that we give, is on your compliance with federal awards as well as your internal control over that compliance. So this one actually has 2 parts to it. So we are giving your— an opinion on your internal controls over compliance as they relate to federal awards. And the reason why is because they want to make sure that any grant money that you receive from the federal government, you have the controls in place to make sure that noncompliance is not going to happen. So we have to— we actually have to test enough of your internal controls there in order to give an opinion. And happy to report there were no findings related to the federal awards.

All right.

The next report that we're required to issue is for the state auditor. Every year they outline in their compliance guide areas of Utah state code that they either feel are important enough or that they've had issues with that we need to test your compliance with. This year you were— there are certain areas where they say we have to test them every 3 years. That's kind of the cycle that you're in this year. So kind of surprise to Brandon's team, we tested more than we typically test. There were a couple of compliance issues that we'll talk about, but as far as material noncompliance, there wasn't any. So our opinion here is also on your compliance with state— the state compliance audit guide, as well as internal controls over that compliance, also an unmodified or an unqualified opinion. The couple of findings that we'll talk about— sorry, I'm just getting to my— all right. So the first one, and this has been a finding, so this is kind of a repeat finding. It's been a finding for the last couple of years. And what the finding is, is the deficit fund balance. So in the facilities maintenance fund, which is primarily funded by charges to the other funds, has typically run at a deficit— in a deficit position. What the requirement is, it's not necessarily a necessary— oh my gosh, I can't even talk, sorry— a necessary evil that you You create a deficit, but in the subsequent budget, you have to decrease— budget for a 5% decrease the next year of that deficit. If it's below 5% of the revenue that that fund collects during the year, then you have to eradicate the whole thing. It just so happens that where this is kind of an internal fund, it's really hard to generate a lot of revenue other than charging other funds. And so it's kind of a work in progress. Really, our recommendation is, you know, you really just need to transfer the money into that fund to get that fund out of the deficit position. The city did transfer a significant amount of money into that fund this year, but with costs and things that happened, it didn't quite decrease that as far as it should have. However, the city has put in their budget a line item to reduce that, and that budgeted amount is not going to be touched this year is my expectation, and I think that's Brandon and Bren's expectation as well, and that should eradicate that deficit. So I'm hoping next year that this finding is corrected. The second finding is the deposit and investment report. This is one of those 3-year cycles that we test this, and so we're not looking at these reports every year. Twice a year, the city is required to file with the Utah Money Management Council an investment report that shows all of the deposits and investments that you have with institutions. Typical mistakes that we find are people reporting not what the bank says, but what your books say, which can be different. Because of reconciling items. What that report requires is that it's what the institution has. They want to know what your deposits are. And the other ones are sometimes there's so many accounts, one or two accounts will get missed, and that was the case this year. However, once it was identified, that report was immediately corrected. So this finding has already been corrected. I will check on it again next year to make sure that the controls are in place to make sure that's correct going forward. So not a concern as far as we're concerned about being corrected in the next period. And then the next one, this is a repeat finding as well. This one is the general fund balance. So state requirement says that you cannot maintain more than 35% of your actual revenue as fund balance that's going to roll forward into the next period. Fund balance, in layman's terms, is the equity that's contained in the funds. So you have your assets, you have your liabilities, and then you have your fund balance, or in private company terms, the equity. And what we're looking at is your unassigned, your assigned and committed. And unfortunately, the unassigned and— or the assigned and committed are funds that you have already earmarked and are going to be spent for certain purposes that have already been identified. Um, but we have to include those in the calculation because by council you can elect to not spend those monies the way that you've already said. Um, therefore, um, I think the city was, was over You were— I think they were sitting at 40%. Is that what we figured out? Um, it's a finding, and your state code says 35%. This is not a bad problem to have, to have appropriate fund balance. Um, in, in my world and my recommendations, I would say that you need to stay around the 30 to 35% mark anyways because that provides the rainy day funds for anything to happen in the future where it prevents revenues from, from coming in. So our recommendation is if you're going to save money like you have for, for this building, that money is better suited in a capital projects fund where everything is assigned for specific capital projects and not just sitting unassigned in the general fund. Really, the city, over the time that we've been the auditors and previously, have been very frugal with their funds. And I've actually used Orem City in a number of examples that I've used in presentations because all the cities ask, okay, how are we doing? How are we doing? What can we do better? Most of them are sitting at a fund balance of 10 to 15% because the requirement used to be 25% before everybody started getting the huge influx of federal money, and then costs all went up, so they bumped it to 35%. They've left it at 35%, but a lot of cities haven't caught up. But the reason why I use you guys as an example is because you were able to pay cash for this building. You've been frugal with money and you've moved that money into the funds where it's more appropriate. So all of that boils down to, yes, it's a finding. We're going to report a finding. You're going to have to address it with the state auditor on why you exceeded the 35%. But in talking to Brandon, it's one of those things where— I'm sorry, I'm sorry. If you are frugal with your money and you get to the end of the year, it's hard to all of a sudden amend your budget and then move a big chunk of money out into another fund. At that point, most of the amended budget, it's already set. And so you either have a budget finding or you have a fund balance finding. So kind of a catch-22 at that point. Nothing else that I really need to go over other than just to have to identify to you guys are the significant risks that we identified as part of our audit. That's now part of our required communication, and that's in our communication letter that Brandon sent out to you. And just by way of information, it's not anything directly related to the city. You can't get out of those significant risks. It doesn't matter how good you are. That's our standards. So we recognize revenue recognition as a significant risk. That's set by our standards. Government auditing standards requires that we set that as a significant risk, and that goes all the way back to Enron, Arthur Andersen, that whole mess. Our standards changed, so we now have to recognize that significant risk. The management's override of controls, that's also set by Yes. By our standard, our governing body, that we have to recognize that as a significant risk. What that means is, the best example I can give is all of your financial system is built on transactions. So as people come and pay their utility bills, that's a transaction. If you collect property tax, that's a transaction. So individual transactions make up your financial statement system. However, we recognize that there's going to be mistakes that are made, or at year-end you're going to make accruals, you're going to make adjustments, you're going to capitalize equipment, all these things. So when you create a journal entry in a financial statement system, that is overriding the transaction control. So only certain people have that authority to create that journal entry, which is a control itself, but with that authority they can create journal entries that then misrepresent the financial statements or do nefarious things inside of the financial statements themselves. So we plan specific tests. We look at every journal entry that's created the entire year, make sure that we understand the purpose, that it's being done correctly, that it's approved, so that there are controls in place. So anytime management has the ability to over- out of control, that becomes a significant risk. The other significant risk that we have is just cash disbursements. You're dealing with public funds, so that's always an issue. Cash is very easy to misappropriate.

It's very easy to misstate. So that becomes a significant risk.

What we do in our audit is we plan specific tests targeted towards those 3 significant risks, making sure that there are not misstatements in the financial statements being caused by those risks, and we found none. So, um, with that, any questions for me? Any questions? This is my 2nd trip through this, so I don't have any questions.

Okay.

Any questions from those in the air?

No.

Okay.

Somebody like to make a motion? I can make a motion, Mayor, that the city council accept by resolution the completed independent audit performed by Larson and Company, PC. I second that.

Aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Aye. Aye.

Aye.

Okay, the resolution passes.

Thank you.

Thank you. Down in American Samoa, let me know. I'll be down there.

All right, sounds good. Good luck down there. Okay, let's move to item 10.2. Here we have a public hearing, a rezone for 1750 South Geneva Road. From OS5 to C2, Jared Hall.

Theresa's going to do it instead. She's been asking.

Okay.

Thank you. Um, so this is a zone map amendment request at 1738 South Geneva Road. Uh, we, we refer to it as Johnson Farms. Um, it is 4.43 acres. They are— the Washburn Associates have asked for a zone change from OS-5, which is the current zone you can see right here, um, to C-2, a commercial zone. This is the, uh, the property. It's hard to see on the other maps, but. You can see the property here. These are rights of way that are planned that will be coming, and they kind of make that triangle leftover parcel. Um, and that's the piece of property that they're seeking a zone change on. Um, that's not the right thing. Let's see. Oh, let's— I'm sorry, give me just 1 moment. Make sure of what I've got going on here. That's really weird. Here we go. I apologize. Um, so this is again, OS-5 is the current zoning. That is a low-density residential zone, single-family homes and 5-acre lots. Uh, again, this is a portion of the Johnson Farm. It'll be left as a remnant when the new rights-of-way come in. Uh, so they are asking for a zone change to C-2 to allow them to do a retail-focused flex retail space is what they're calling it. Uh, the C-2 does allow different commercial uses like auto sales, restaurants, shopping centers, and different business and personal services. Um, we do ask for concept plans when we ask for zone— when we receive zone change applications like this. The concept plan that they've provided again are these flex retail spaces at several buildings. Um, says 13 parking spaces. That's an error. It's 130-something parking spaces they show there. Um, I apologize for that. And then they'd like to do something like this. Uh, these are different individual spaces. Uh, different users could come in and do tenant improvements for larger spaces, smaller spaces, carve it up as they would see fit. So that's the, that's the flex in flex retail that they would like to see done here. Um, there was a public hearing held at the Planning Commission on November 6th. The commission at that time did vote to recommend approval to the council, uh, 5 to 0. Um, and that's where we stand. Do you have any questions for staff at this point?

Do you have a Google Maps view of that area?

I don't, but I can pull one up. North should say—

did many people come to that public meeting with the Planning Commission?

Um, that's a good question. There were several. We had some public—

as far as neighbors and that sort of thing.

I don't— this isn't my computer, so I don't know if it's going to work as well as I want to, but So, my question is, oh, as you do that, where is the—

well, there's Cherry Hill. Oh, go ahead. I'll let you—

Cherry Hill's there. When you recognize it, you tell me, because I'm flying blind here. Should be here. There we go. I can't tell on Google Maps if I'm in the right place or not. So right here, I see Geneva.

Here.

Okay. So that's—

yeah, you can't—

it's hard to identify because there aren't— those roads are just rights-of-way that are dedicated but not installed or built yet, planned.

So—

So I guess I'm— I just want to Just kind of make sure when you say they're dedicated, but just not built yet, how— what are the percentage chance that those won't be built or they will be built?

How does— I don't think the percentage— there isn't really a percentage chance they won't be built. It's the plan and the land's been set aside for them and purchased by UDOT. These are— so these are UDOT roads. They'll happen. Okay.

Yeah.

Mayor and council, one of those roads would be the Lakeview corridor that would come off of Geneva Road.

So this would be right where, like, the Lakeview corridor that will eventually connect down to the Provo Airport, where it pivots off of Geneva Road there on the left, or the west side of where this project is proposed.

So is that part of Geneva Road that continues? Is that the part that's not going to be Um, maintained or widened or maintained as it will— it's a main thoroughfare.

It won't be the main thoroughfare anymore. That's right.

Like, and show me that one more time, that Google Maps, please.

So Lakeview Parkway will cut this direction. That traffic will start to flow more that way. And Geneva will become less trafficked.

But the entrance to this is off Geneva on that side, correct?

That's the way it's planned right now in this concept. Yes. And I, I'm— I think that's, that's related to, to UDOT, whether they'll allow access onto those, onto the new Lakeview Parkway, things like that.

So that was at the request of UDOT that the access be on Geneva instead of Lakeview.

It could be an assumption on their part that they're not going to get those accesses. I think they were told they won't be getting accesses that they'll need to access from Geneva for the project.

Okay, thank you.

That's my recollection.

So, while you're on that map, can you just draw with your cursor a triangle where this is at?

I will do my best. I think it's like that.

And right now, that's just all farmland.

It's the remnants of that farm.

Can you go back to the red triangle?

Yeah, originally, because I think if I remember the Planning Commission, it's its own island, right? It's so secluded. So, um, that's why they voted 5-0 that That was the best use of that property because it goes out onto Geneva and then the main highway is going to go right behind it. Yeah, that's, that's a good, that's a good assessment of kind of their view of it. It was, it was, it's going to remain very isolated once that's done. And I apologize, that one slide is out of order and all these others, so I got to find my way back to it. Right there for some, somehow got put to the very front.

So you sort of see the road in the yellow, it's going to go behind it and it's just going to be an island.

So this is that cutoff that Brent was mentioning. The Lakeview Parkway will go this way now, and then they'll allow another reconnection up to Geneva, but it will isolate this piece of property quite a bit.

And for that triangle, I think you have to maximize the property. I think the developer has utilized that space very well.

It doesn't leave a lot. 4.43 acres isn't a lot of commercial land.

So, in simple terms, what will be built there versus what was going to be built there?

What type of product?

That's a, that's a good question. And the challenge with zone changes is always that it's, it's a concept plan, but they're not bound to build exactly that. The C-2 zone would allow these flex retail spaces. Washburn's plan is to build flex retail that's available to different kinds of users. It's not going to— without access directly from the higher volume roads, it'll probably be smaller businesses. Um, some services, I could see salons and things like that being typical for uses in that kind of a space. Um, different, different kinds of users might, might want that. It's hard to say who would take them because they're going to build them on spec for whoever might want to take them as tenants. Um, but what's there right now, what it's been used for in the past is for agriculture. Um, it is. Residential land, low-density residential land, for all intents and purposes right now.

As far as if it were approved as C-2, would that be locked in that it would be for this use that's been presented, or could they do whatever they want on a C-2?

They could do anything that's allowed in the C-2 zone. Um, the Washburns, um, are willing to— they talked to the planning commission.

They talked about a development agreement.

Yeah.

And I think Paul was in favor of that.

Yeah, they're willing to look at that kind of thing if that makes it more palatable. So, they're locked in. The Planning Commission didn't bind them to that, but they were interested in that, thought it should be up to the council.

So, what were the issues that they wanted included in a development agreement? That the planning—

that what they were showing is what was going to be—

is what they were going to build.

Okay. And I think Paul was good with that.

Yeah. Yeah, I would let that development agreement— because it's away from all the other commercial.

Yeah.

So, I think if you're going to Change this commercial right in the middle of agricultural. You want a development agreement to ensure that what's promised happens.

And we could let that— we could let the applicant speak to that too. I know they were— they talked to the commission about it, like, like Councilman Spencer said, about a development agreement. It's not out of the realm of what's doable for them.

Any questions? Any questions from above?

No.

Okay, let's go ahead and open this as a public hearing. Or did you want to present? Okay, go ahead. Yeah, go ahead and present. Oh, yeah, it is.

Well, good evening, Mayor and members of the council. Um, property is an interesting piece of property. The roadway on both sides of the property, immediately to the west and then to the south, are both UDOT roadways. And we have been told it's a limited access roadway, and we will never have an access onto either of those roads. Uh, we've looked at the property. It's— triangles are hard to develop, but we've looked At it, and we've decided that the flex retail space we're proposing is probably the best use for the property. That's what we're moving ahead with. We have offered to do a development agreement. One of the things that the developers are very anxious to do is we don't want any automotive uses on the site. Uh, we don't want car lots. We don't want anything. We have actually provided to the city a draft Of a development agreement. We're ready to sign it, or if staff wants to redo it, we can do that as well. But within the CC&Rs of the property, we'll ban those uses. But if you want to have it as part of the ordinance, we're glad to have that as well. We're looking at flex retail space. We're looking at trying to design the project to mirror the historic farm uses. That's what the buildings are designed. Flexible space. We'll build buildings, probably 2 at a time, and then as people fill those spaces, then we'll add the other buildings. We have not marketed the property at this point. We won't do that until we have a site plan in place. However, we have had some casual interest. Beauty salon. We've got pest control business who would like to move out of their house and into something a little more formal. And I think we'll continue to fill those spaces that same way. Had one other point I wanted to make, and it just flew out of my head. I'm sorry. The last one I want to make is we are anxious to get the zoning in place and to get a site plan approved and One of the things we're trying to do is coordinate all of the utilities with UDOT on that— those roadways to the west. That's where our water, storm drain, sewer all has to go. We don't want to be in a position having the road done first where we have to either bore the road or tear it up to be able to put those utilities in place. Trying to work and get that done quickly. The developers that are involved in this, it's Russell Yowd, Ron Mortimer. They are both seasoned traffic engineers with Horix Engineering. They both retired from that now. We both have very good relationship with UDOT. That's one of the things we want to do is make sure this is done right, so we're not having to alter roadways in the future. And I can answer any questions you might have.

Yes, I guess I'm— can I just ask? I mean, I'm just kind of surprised that this wasn't presented as a residential use, because you've— to me, it seems ideal. You've got— it backs up to 2 streets, so you could have the backs of the residential to 2 areas while Geneva is not going to be continued to be used as a main thoroughfare. From what I understand, that Lakeview Parkway is— they're just planning on the traffic going down that way. So was that a consideration by anyone? Did you see interest in that?

How—

We looked at it, uh, in drawing it out for, uh, conventional residential uses, R-18, so we couldn't make work. Triangles are just very difficult to work with. It probably could be developed as an apartment project. However, the council has pretty much said they don't want any more apartments in Orem. Probably not a fight we want to make at this point. We believe there's a good use for the retail. We don't see a lot of Orem residents down there at this point. There's a lot of Provo residents, and I've been an Orem resident for 74 years at this point. Any sales tax I can push from Provo, Lindon, anywhere else, I want to do it. And I think we've got a good opportunity to do that with this site. It's going to be destination retail. It's probably not the kind of thing you're going to be driving down the street and say, geez, I want to jump in here and buy a popsicle. But there's a lot of businesses that this will work very well for. Probably the best use we can get for the property at this point.

Steve, I've got a question for you. So, if we do a development agreement, it has to go back to the planning commission, or clarify that?

Yeah. So, if you do a development agreement that controls land use, in other words, controls what uses can be on the property or cannot, and they're different from the C-2 zone or has different standards. in the C-2 zone, then that would have to be something that's considered by the Planning Commission. So, yeah, if we were to— if you wanted to have a development agreement to control or limit the uses, it'd have to go back for their consideration and discussion. So that would delay it a month.

Would that be fine with you?

We'd prefer not to, but if that's what we have to do, we will. As I said, we're going to have those uses banned from CC&Rs on the project. In terms of automotive uses, this is probably the worst place in the world to put them. It wasn't much of a sacrifice on our part to say we don't want those here. They just don't fit.

By automotive uses, do you mean like a gas station? That's right.

Gas station, auto repair, a brake shop, anything that would have cars stacked in the parking lot, we don't want. This would be a horrible location. Location for a gas station. It's not on a main road.

It's not going to work.

This one, I think what's going to work best is basically what we proposed.

Any other questions? Let's go ahead and open this up as a public hearing. We have any questions, comments from the public on this topic? A friendly question. I wanted to know what the offsets are between the red triangle and the yellow roads. Paul, you said there was going to be no access allowed to the red triangle from the yellow roads.

And so I'm wondering—

I'm sure I misunderstood that. And so I'm wondering, will these buildings be facing the roads to the west?

west and to the south?

Will they be facing Geneva Road? Um, will, will they be serving people driving to the temple, which is just north about 2 blocks?

They will be facing Geneva Road, adjacent to the 2 roadways that— to the south and to the west. It's 25-foot landscape setback.

Again, if you're coming down Geneva Road, you could access the site.

Otherwise, it would be something you'd have to plan to do, either access it. There will be 2 access points, both on both ends of the triangle.

Both ends, the north and south ends.

Yes.

Jared, could you pull up the concept design?

Concept plan. I'm sorry. Yeah, we're considering at least 2 access points, possibly 3. That'll depend on the city engineer.

Uh-huh.

So just to clarify, are the backs— so on these off-roads, is that gonna be the back of the buildings?

That will be the back of the buildings.

Buildings on both of those, on the south end though.

Yes.

There won't be any access from those roads. We're going to decorate the buildings so that they're attractive, but there won't be entrance from that side.

So, yeah, so you have a 25-foot landscape.

20-foot is what this requires, going right up to the back of the building. Yes.

Thank you.

What's the circle in the corner?

That's going to be a silo that will have our signage on it. So people driving on the busy streets at least know we're there. Okay. Silo is— be fairly short. That's where we're going to keep our lawn mowers and maintenance equipment.

Any other questions, comments? Okay, well, we'll go ahead and bring this back to the council. Any questions, comments from the council?

Yeah, I have a question, Mayor.

It's interesting that the Planning Commission was willing to approve it as is, and I hate to put another burden on them to come back with a site plan that may change because they're trying to sell it. I'm okay with The approval of it in the zone that they've requested. So, so, Tom, they— the Planning Commission did recommend a development agreement, but they can't say that because they're just giving a yay or nay to us. Thank you, David, for that additional insight. Yeah, and I actually agree with that. I agree with— I'm okay with this, but I want a development agreement that basically locks it down as that's what's going to happen on the C-2 development, because I think C-2 is too broad to be out there in that rural area. I think we want a development agreement that— I think this is a good concept. I just want to make this happen.

Yeah, we've got residential across the street. So I think we want to be, um, just for the peace of mind of those people, if you're willing to do it, I, I feel a development agreement would be a great gesture and, um, a good plan.

I think we're willing to do it. I would hope we could facilitate it. We've— because of election, a number of other things, we're about 4 months into this process already. I hope we wouldn't have to go another 4 to get there.

Paul, you're quicker than that. It won't take you 4 months.

Yeah, I mean, I just barely went to the neighborhood meeting. You guys got it here pretty quick. I was gonna say, I remember just going to that neighborhood meeting there. So anyway, yeah.

Okay, would somebody like to make a motion? I'll make a motion that the city council approve the rezone of 1750 South Geneva Road.

So, oh, we can't—

can I interject?

So I thought the direction That you were going, which you wanted to have a development agreement. I would suggest that you refer this back to the Planning Commission for them to consider, you know, terms of a development agreement, and then make an additional recommendation back to you to come back.

So I'll make a motion that we defer this back to the Planning Commission for a development agreement.

I'll second that.

Oh, sorry.

Aye.

Above.

Jeff.

Aye.

Aye.

Yes, we, we agree. And this goes back to the Planning Commission on those terms. So, thank you. Thank you.

We'll be back in touch.

Okay.

Thanks. Okay, thank you. Item 10.3, a public hearing on an ordinance. A text amendment for PD-36.

Jared, thank you. This is, um, this is a text amendment request in the PD-36 zone, which is a planned development zone specific to a technology park, um, in this area between 1600 and 1200 North and Geneva Road and I-15. Um, the applicants in this case are— it's a really simple text amendment request. They would like to add a specific land use code, 7425. Gymnasiums and athletic clubs to the list of permitted uses in that zone. It's to allow for them to— they're, um, they, they want to run a padel gym there. Padel's a sport kind of like, uh, pickleball, kind of like pickleball, racquetball. Um, it's a, it's a big international sport. Um, and the, uh, the request is simply to allow for that to happen. This is the building that they would like to be in. The being a specific planned development zone, it has a list of permitted uses, and it doesn't just— it's not as comprehensive as many. So the most recent addition besides them would have been the go-kart tracks that were allowed not too long ago. So it fits in with those kind of things. The general plan is regional commercial in this area. It fits in with that. So that's really, that's really all there is to it. The Planning Commission did vote to recommend approval to you as the City Council. At the hearing on November 5th.

Okay, do we have any questions? We'll go ahead and open that up to the public for a public hearing. So my name is Parker. I'm actually one of the 2 individuals that put this text amendment forward with my brother Kyle. Jared did an amazing job of presenting this. Just one quick correction, it's actually not that building, it's the building right there in the corner, that tiny one.

Nope.

Oh, this?

It's that one right there.

So that's the building that we are going into.

Like Jerry was saying, it's a sport called padel or padel. It's very popular internationally. Again, like, it's much like pickleball. It's one of the fastest Growing sports in the world, it's just not quite here to the United States yet, which is what Kyle and I are working on doing. It's a mix of tennis and racquetball, so you are on a court about the third the size of a tennis court, surrounded by some glass walls that you can play off of. Personally, Kyle and I play it whenever we can. There's not there's only one other facility here in Utah, and it's up in. North Salt Lake, and we think it's significantly more fun than pickleball. And as 2 individuals that attended here to UVU, we are very excited at the idea of bringing something that other students and young professionals and families can do together. So thank you.

Okay, so you probably didn't hear my off-mic moment, but I said blasphemy when you said it was better than pickleball. Here in Orem, that's Like the god, right? But I'm excited to see that or learn about that. I don't know anything about it. It sounds like it's fun.

Yeah, no, these guys are smart. I mean, Orem's been rated in the top 10 in pickleball and all these different categories and rankings. So, you know, now that you guys are here, paddleball, I mean, yeah, it makes sense. I mean, this would be the place to launch something like this, right? This place that makes things happen. Any, uh, any questions from the council? Okay, any— anyone else on the public hearing would like to come up? No one's going to be against this? Okay, it's your lucky night. Okay, uh, we'll close the public hearing and we'll bring it back for a vote.

Let me do it. I move to approve by ordinance the text amendment for PD 36.

Second.

Aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Okay, that's a lot of ayes. It all passes. It's unanimous. Thank you.

Thank you. You've made Parker and his brother very happy. We've— planning staff's come to know them as the paddle bros. So paddle bros for the win.

There you go.

Good job. Okay, moving on. Item 10.4. We have a public hearing for an ordinance, a rezone for 575 East 1000 South from R-8 to PD-34 Home Depot.

Jared, thank you again. That PD zoning, the planned development zone. So, um, this is the— this is a small piece. You can see here, 575 East. 0.31 acres. It's a single-family home. It's adjacent to that PD-34 zone, which is the University Place specialty zone. This is Costco that you can see here, and this area to the south and— or to the east and south of the subject property is already part of that PD-34 zone as well. And where the Home Depot would like to build a new building, they want to include that piece in their larger development, and that's the reason it's the subject of this request for zone change. Um, so again, I probably should have— that slide makes it a little more clear. You can see the PD-34 kind of surrounding that home there. So the only, the only property— I just want to make sure everyone understands— the only property that's up for rezoning is this little piece here. The rest of it is already in the PD-34 zone. Um, again, you can see the home here, 575 East. This is where it fits into the larger scheme of what the Home Depot is hoping to build. Um, in terms of process, this is the zone change request. If, if there are approved for the zone change request, then they'll move forward with— there's a subdivision that needs to happen to clear up some lot lines and combine some things. And there is a, um, the site plan that would be necessary at the Planning Commission as well. Uh, but this part of it is— this part of the request is to make this portion, uh, this lot a part of their larger site plan. Um, the— see what else I wanted to make sure I understood for you here. So just a couple of things about the PD-34 zone. It does have development standards that are specific. to that zoning, as opposed to C-2 or whatever other kinds of commercial zones. It is principally a commercial zone. However, uh, there's a minimum 20-foot setback required from the west boundary of that zoning. That, that whole line along where the subject property is, is the west boundary. Um, an 8-foot masonry wall is required, uh, as a buffer. Uh, an 8-foot landscaping buffer is required, although in many instances in the site plan, they'll have more than the 8 feet. Uh, heights are limited in this hatched area. Certain distances from that west buffer, um, 35 feet, and no access is allowed on the west side of the PD34 zone. Um, so there won't be any vehicular access or anything like that allowed either way, whether this was rezoned or not. There's still no vehicular access from the west. Um, yeah, so that's, that's the, uh, gist of that zone and how it relates to what this property would— how it would develop if it's included. In that larger PD-34 zone. Um, the Planning Commission held a public hearing on December 3rd. Uh, they did not forward a recommendation. Their vote was 3 to 2 on a motion to recommend approval, so that there's no recommended action from the Planning Commission.

What?

How does that work? If it's 3 to 2 in favor of the motion, how is it not recommended?

They would have needed 4 for it to formally be recommended.

So they were missing people. Yeah.

Okay. Weren't all in attendance.

So, is there anything anyone else is going to present, or should we do the public hearing?

Um, I believe the applicants are here tonight. I believe they would want to speak.

Okay, why don't we have the applicant speak? Mr. Mayor, City Council, executive team, and staff, thank you very much for your service. It's actually been an inspiring evening to be able to attend. So, so we really appreciate you and appreciate the opportunity to work together. You know, as we have looked at this, we have been very conscientious and careful to work with the neighborhood and to work to try to continue to develop the PD-34 zone. In a manner that would accomplish the goals that we all set out to achieve, um, you know, over the last 15 years as we've been working to redevelop this part of the city. And that is to provide a mix of uses here to make the retail asset, as well as everything else happening at the campus, more relevant and continue to be relevant into the future. And we think that this is a critical part of what we're doing here with what we're proposing tonight. We, um, as you look at this map, you can kind of see essentially what we're proposing here is that we would straighten out the property line to allow for this development. Um, you know, as we work through it, we hadn't anticipated that this would be necessary, but as we work through the development process, um, as we laid the site out, looked at our constraints, both from a topography, um, our underground constraints from an infrastructure perspective, and as we looked at how we would optimize the use of this land, this is necessary and something that we would hope that we would be able to accomplish tonight. Um, the, um, only other thing I might mention is that we have, as part of our proposal, we will be constructing the 8-foot masonry wall that is actually already constructed in a large section of the Red Line. That's shown there. We also are proposing to construct a 12-foot masonry wall in the area to the north. I'm not sure if we have a map that we might be able to reference where we could show that. We had submitted something earlier today, but in any event, we have studied sound and noise potential nuisances here. We have worked with our acoustic consultants to understand these concerns. And we believe that the 8-foot wall combined with this 12-foot wall, as well as a generous landscape median or buffer, I should say, between the new proposed use and what we're doing here, will help to mitigate that sound and create a condition that should be acceptable for the city and for the— for our neighbors to the west.

And so.

Happy to, you know, jump— go into more detail or explain that further. But that is the summary of our proposal. Can you, can you show us that just where the 12-foot wall would be and where the 8-foot wall would be? Yes, I'm not sure if we had sent a map earlier today. But I could, I can just point it there.

Yeah.

Yeah, sorry.

So.

So, all right.

So as you look at—

let's see if we went— I think it's probably 2 slides down. So on this map here, the Pink or magenta color is where we're proposing to build a 12-foot wall that would provide additional sound mitigation. This is where the setback for— from the property line is at its narrowest, and it's also adjacent to the loading dock. And so that's the reason why we would construct a wall in excess of what's required under the zone ordinance. And, uh, We believe again, as we study this with our acoustic consultant, that this would mitigate the nuisance and create a condition that should be acceptable.

Can I ask you if that does not— because this is, if I'm remembering, correct me if I'm wrong, but it seems like the loading dock was not going to be enclosed. And so this was the effort to Mitigate the sound because you didn't— they didn't want to necessarily enclose the loading dock. Um, may I ask, is there some flexibility with if it turns out that we are having an increased decibel output that affects that home right there, that, that could be entertained? There could be an opportunity to create more enclosures around that loading dock, or what, what's it looking like for that? If we find a problem? I mean, we have an issue in our city right now of a car wash that they thought it wouldn't cause a problem. There's no fix, you know. So here, is there a Plan B if Plan A doesn't work?

So we have with us here today the Home Depot team as well, and they could probably speak to that. I think from a developer side, and I'll let them speak to this as well, But I would say that it'd be very difficult for us to do something probably after the fact. We have, though, studied this in detail, and we looked at the enclosure, and the enclosure actually doesn't mitigate the sound as well as this wall would. So this is actually, from our understanding with the acoustic consultants, the best solution to mitigate sound for that. And so that's why we're proposing it, but maybe I'll let the Home Depot team speak to that as well.

Pretty tall. Thank you, Council.

Dan Zoldak, Lars Anderson Associates, representing Home Depot.

As Arthur mentioned, yeah, the pink wall is the best mitigation associated versus enclosing what you see in the yellow. The large amount of the noise that will be created will be from the braking and the backing up of the truck. And so within the yellow, The truck actually backs up against the store and all the offloading is actually encased in the store already. And so all the offloading activity, the truck is backed up against the store and that's all taken in place inside the store. So the noise that you'll see encountered kind of is the blue, blue line of the actual truck stopping, the beeping of the, of the truck backing up into the yellow.

And that's why the pink magenta.

Is the noise buffer that, that is needed to mitigate any increase in noise. That increase that you're seeing, or mitigation that you're seeing, you know, you guys actually have done a great job writing the code, and the 8-foot wall already is a significant buffer.

Already presented, you know, Home Depot was already allowed use within The bigger global area of the zoning.

And so, um, you know what you're— what you're— there's already a significant buffer already with your 8-foot wall and your landscape and your setback associated with all of that. So the additional buffer that, you know, the owner is offering up here of additional 4-foot will mitigate— I think it's right around 5 decibels. Which is what's pretty equivalent what you're seeing in the increase in the ambient noise today.

So I'm available for any other questions that might come up.

Well, while you're up, what's, what's your take on the, uh, the green fence going down? That's, that's a parking area right there next to it, right? So you just have cars coming in and out for parking. Is that employees? I don't anticipate all that parking to be used a lot.

I think that's just going to be maybe some overflow.

You know, I think, you know, it's part of the required parking. All of our customers, and really we want our employees to be actually parking out front also.

So we anticipate, you know, the front door being our main primary parking area associated with customers and And our employees.

So you think it's fairly unlikely that parking will be used heavily or every day or anything?

No, I would not anticipate that would be a high-parked area.

Yeah, you have to walk all the way around, right?

We'd—

yeah, we would discourage actually for most, most part, you know, that would maybe be some overflow for if we had to put some of our employees during holiday seasons or whatever, but we would For the most part, discourage parking back there.

Okay.

Well, so when are your delivery hours? Is it during working hours or is it after working hours?

Because they come in different, you know, the trucks come from different places, you know, across, you know, our things. But their delivery hours, uh, but off, off hour, you know.

If your store closes at 10, let's say your store closes, you still have people unloading at midnight? Or I, I would say we would probably unload maybe before the store opens, but there could be, you know, off-hours unloading after, after and before, uh, store hours.

Can we get more specific, please? What time of day do you start receiving deliveries? Because Costco already receives deliveries before noise ordinance allows That noise to happen. It's extremely disruptive there. The garbage, the garbage is empty. Those big dumpsters are empty before it's allowed to be heard. It wakes people up at 5 o'clock in the morning.

So, Steve, do you know, do you know what the noise ordinance is? It's 7 AM to 10 or something, or? Yeah, the noise ordinance. I can look that up real quick. Why don't I do that just so we know that for sure?

That sounds about right.

I think it's 7 to 10. You know, we do open the store, I think at 6, and so we would, we would actually be open prior to the noise ordinance. We do accept deliveries off hours. By off hours, you mean in the middle of the night? 24 hours a day? They wouldn't be 24 hours a day, but You know, they do come in after the store closes and before the store opens.

Sure.

I guess I'm just trying to understand if it is in the middle of the night versus right before and after the store, because, because some car dealerships, they're bringing cars 24/7 kind of thing. Yeah, there's— I would say the majority of them are going to come right after the store or right before the store.

There's not something that comes at midnight or 2 AM, you know, that's That would be very, very uncommon to happen at those hours.

You know, they would—

it would be—

Is that because you need employees in the store to help? Is that why?

Yeah, we'd have the employees there to unload and offload.

We don't— sometimes we're not in control when the truck shows up, traffic or whatever. I guess what I'm saying is trying to clarify why it would be unusual. Would it be unusual because there's no employees there in the middle of the night?

Correct.

They're there maybe an hour before, an hour late.

Exactly.

So yeah, that makes sense. Sometimes the truck shows up off hours and sits there and puts the truck physically there and it gets offloaded when the employees show up.

Okay.

So that's kind of what drives it then as far as employees being there to participate in the loading and unloading? Because I think in reality, the trucker could park in the front of the store and then pull it around when the store's open and unload it because it's the beep, beep, beep, So, can you, Jared, can you go to the picture of the house?

The fence is, to me, is quite close to the houses. How close is it?

You have the 2 houses with the fence and then the, the one right there.

Yeah, I'm right there.

That—

there's a buffer, but how close is it? So, these, these homes actually, because there's— it's side yards, it's not the rear yard or the front yard. So, it is closer. I'm not sure what the actual distance from that home is to the property line.

Right here.

So, how close is it?

10 feet.

Okay.

To the proposed wall is 10 feet. I just want to support the idea that the 12-foot wall is really important for the noise reduction. And, Mayor, we need to have him speak into the mic. Not only for the record, but the other 3 council members who are online. Thank you. Ralph Olson. My wife and I have lived here for 50 years at this address. So we've watched a lot of things happen. Anyway, we don't have a backyard. All the other homes up and down that street have a backyard. So you've got 30, 40, 50 feet plus the 20 feet. We have 10 feet. I measured it with my tape measure. And if the trucks go north before they back into that yellow space, they will be literally within 15 feet of our bedroom window. And of course, an 8 or a 9-foot wall wouldn't be adequate. So I'm very much in favor of the 12-foot wall. I'm really glad, really happy to see that. Um, I do think there ought to be just a little further space, uh, so that the truck driver isn't just within 15 feet of our house with— even though the wall is there and it would cut down the noise a lot, I'm sure. Um, we're very concerned. We are the most affected residents, uh, in that neighborhood. This is my wife Annette. Did you want to say something?

Thank you.

I appreciate all of you and all that you do. Thank you very much. And I appreciate Very much than proposing a 12-foot wall. However, I'm still concerned because all of the delivery trucks are scheduled to come in and go along that back side of the property.

The green—

along the green space, all the trucks are going to come there and go up past our house into the, to the loading dock. And drive up and back in and then back out and then go out somewhere the other way. So are there any setback regulations for, uh, a traffic pattern that is going to be quite a bit of traffic that's that close to residential people? All the other people that Have the green space and the other wall. They also have their backyards between, and they have the 60-foot setback to the building. But our house is right there next to the loading dock. All of those other houses that are along that backside have the parking lot, the green space, The— and plus their backyards.

So I just want you to realize how close it is, and we would really appreciate the 12-foot wall and anything else that would help us. Thank you.

One additional issue that we may not have much control over, um, is that one of the things we've noticed with Costco is if they don't have— if there's nobody there to unload the trucks They park the truck pretty close to our property and the engines run and run. And if it's a refrigerated truck, for example, they just let the engines run for hours. And that's right next to our bedroom window too. So I don't— maybe there's nothing we can do about that. I think there has been some good response from Costco in encouraging the drivers from all the companies who deliver there To park further away from the residential area, and we've appreciated that.

Thank you.

So, so how far is the 12-foot wall? So, how far is the 12? Is it in the—

The 12-foot wall would go on the property line.

No, but like, from where? Where's the starting point? Oh, uh, so it's all of the pink area there.

So, show the houses again.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So the pink is going to go from the border of your property all the way down.

Okay.

Right there.

That's our house.

Okay.

Right next to the yellow.

That's us.

That's our home.

Yeah. So the 12-foot wall goes from Costco, Costco's property down past the house and past the loading dock, past the cul-de-sac. And this doesn't show it, but Um, we're thinking that we would turn the 12-foot wall east-west as well.

So you'd add that where the green is, that would be a 12-foot wall behind their house. Yes.

Yeah.

Good deal.

So the house up above next to the rezone spot, what's up with that house? Is that a 10-foot side yard too?

I don't know how big this is on that one.

Go to the other, uh, or an 8. Sorry, picture again. So, um, yeah, up by here, up there. Yeah, that's, uh, it's a 20-foot wide. Oh, you have a 20-foot wide. Okay, 3 feet worth of parking. So that one, even though it's close to the house, you have a 20-foot landscape buffer zone on that one. Okay.

So, Mayor, I think, um, we should have opened it up for— Okay. Yeah. Can I come back and answer Councilman Spencer's question on the noise ordinance? Uh, so, that they're in our ordinance, it's our disturbing the peace ordinance and There are some time limitations for certain types of activities, and the time limitations are from 10:30 PM to 7:00 AM, and that covers things like construction work, operation of machinery or power equipment, or loud music from a residential property, like loud music and things like that. However, it does not cover delivery trucks. But it would potentially Cover a truck that's idling or stationary and is running a refrigeration system or something like that, but not the delivery truck itself in moving.

So, it could potentially cover a diesel engine just running?

If somebody's just stationary and they've got the heat on or they're refrigerating or something like that, that's something it could potentially cover, but not just coming And going.

Okay.

And then one other point to the dumpsters. I know for sure that they should not be dumping before or collecting before 7 AM, right? We had that behind my neighborhood and they said there, there aren't supposed to be— could you let me just talk— that they're not supposed to be dumping. I don't know if it's 6 AM or 7 AM, but there seems to be a limit on that one.

Because, yeah, that, that may be another section of the code.

That doesn't appear to be in this particular section that I'm referring to.

That might be in another section. I suspect it is. It's probably in our solid waste code.

Okay.

Yes.

Could I make one more little point?

If you put the map back up that shows where our house is.

Excuse me.

The pink wall that goes across the street and then jogs to the west and then back up again toward the north, there's about 10 feet between that pink line and the next neighbor that's across the street from us. So we haven't mentioned that house there, but they're as close They will be as close to that wall as we are on the other side of the street. So the 12-foot wall is important for that full distance.

You're saying that's important for that full distance?

Yes, that's the way it's shown, because there's another house. The property that is being considered for rezoning is right next to that house across the street. But the property line goes to probably within 10 feet of that 2nd home.

Okay.

The, the, um, the mall property.

And you, you were also making the point that where that pink line comes down and intersects the green line, if you're going down, uh, just on that little jog right there, were you saying that that was a— you were thinking about making that 12-foot also? And were you, were you saying that that was important to you?

That would be very, very helpful to us. Yes.

Okay.

Okay. Okay.

I mean, 12 feet, 12 feet is a serious fence. I mean, basketball hoop's 8 feet. This is 12 feet. So it's getting up there, which is really positive for mitigating noise.

Surprisingly, the difference between the 8-foot wall and a 12-foot wall is 5 decibels, which is—

sorry.

Say that again.

I'm sorry.

The difference between having an 8-foot wall and a 12-foot wall is 5 decibels, which is a lot. There's, um, there's a chart on here that kind of shows, um, the difference in noise noises. It's on.

Going back to that, Dave, you say going back to that other map. So we're— hang on just 1 second.

Oh, I'm sorry.

Okay, so We'll, we'll open this up to a public hearing. And then, Dave, you can go. Go ahead, you can go. We just had to open that up.

Okay.

Um, the zone change that's proposed allows for the truck access. It can beep beep beep back up into the loading dock on the blue lines, which they couldn't if there weren't a zone change and the house torn down. But it also—

right?

I think.

But it also allows for a dozen parking spots within 10 feet of the remaining house on the west. Well, um, my question is— my first question was going to be, why do they need the zone change? But my question now is, because of the blue lines, my question now is, why do they need the parking spots? Why not give up that space and build the, the blue, the red, the pink line straight north instead of jogging and then going north to give more room for the owners that remain?

That would be an amazing, wonderful gesture. But Jared, isn't the setback right now 20 feet?

What's the other picture you had? Yeah, this, this area. Yeah, so it's 20 now. Plus the parking, and then the 10, and then 10 feet.

So you're 30, and yeah, but you've got a wall right next to your house, a 12-foot wall 10 feet from your house.

You really hammered it in.

My question is, is why do we even need Home Depot? There's not any new building going on. There's stuff maybe down by In Linden, where we have one right now. But when does this bleeding of our neighborhood stop? We just keep getting taken out more and more by your wonderful company. We keep losing neighbors. We keep losing great families. The family of the home that was just sold to Woodbury was fabulous.

They're gone.

Doesn't matter if you put up a 12-foot wall or an 8-foot wall. You're taking members of our neighborhood, friends that we love. Homes that we have grown up in for what? More commercial property, more businesses that we don't need. We have enough hardware stores around here. What's next? What more is Woodbury going to do to our little neighborhood that there's only a few of us left? The bleeding needs to stop.

Thank you.

Hello, my name is Mark Gessel. I live kitty-corner to the Olsons in that same development, just a few feet from the wall, tens of feet from the wall, proposed wall.

I think I remember attending a meeting several months ago with Home Depot, and it was a good, gracious meeting. We had a good conversation, but I think one of the suggestions that we had at that point was to actually move the loading dock either to the— towards more towards the front of the store or move it to the south end as opposed to being on the north end.

And I would like to understand if that, um, if that request was given consideration and why we're going ahead with this plan where it seems to me like the reloading dock could be reasonably located somewhere else.

Thanks.

As I was looking at the satellite map, if they want to pull that up again, there's the gap between the white, you know, property of Home Depot and the funky road that if anybody drives that as often as I do, it's not really a road. It's just— do you see that gap of the parking, quote unquote, on the east side? Of Home Depot?

Of the—

yeah. So that, that road, I'm just curious why everything has to be as close as possible to the residence side rather than as far to the east of what is currently asphalt. And as well as the many Home Depots that I've been to, there are options with the garden center being like here in this, it's on the north side. And if he's talking about having the loading dock, etc., there are— I have seen creative Home Depots where there are options of how they position their loading docks, their garden centers, etc., so That the massive amount of parking that's still available to the east of Home Depot can absorb that land? This is just a curiosity question, is what's the total property acreage of the plot and why does it— why is it forced to that as far as possible to— I'm sorry, I'm sorry. Residents versus shifting it even 20 more feet that way, 30 more feet that way. This is just, I mean, a curiosity of why are we always pushing as close as possible to our residents? Same with, you know, whenever we're talking about zoning, it seems that we're always getting as close as possible to our residents and not Considering the impact of, of what that means to the residents.

So, I think that's a great question. I'd like to— I don't want to interrupt the flow of this, but would you respond to— can we see an aerial view of that whole thing and see Why it's there versus, you know, 30 feet over. And, uh, sorry, Mr. Mayor, would you like me to respond? I want to— yeah, sure, please. Um, so, you know, we, we spent, um, probably the better part of 2 years, uh, working, uh, with Home Depot. Uh, they're a wonderful company, and we think that they'd be a great community partner, trying to determine, you know, where the building would sit, how all of these traffic flows would work, et cetera. And this is the plan that we landed on after that 2 years of effort. There are some underground infrastructure constraints that would require significant reinvestment to change if we were to change things around. And so I would just say that, you know, this is, again, The result of 2 years of effort, you know, we've tried to observe the constraints of the zone. We've tried, you know, we looked at other things. I mean, within the zone that would be permitted, such as, you know, higher or taller buildings, I should say. We felt that those would actually probably create more of a nuisance potentially for our neighbors to the west. We felt that this use was the right use for this location on our site. We think we're bringing a use to the site that doesn't exist already. That's an important new retailer and new partner on our campus and in the community. And again, as we evaluated how it is that we would continue to develop the site to generate the most public benefit and private benefit and opportunity for commerce and for for new residents and/or, you know, opportunities for a place to live for the growing families in the community, that this was the right, right use in this location as we redevelop the site. So, so I think that, um, you know, we've, we've tried to be careful. We've pushed the building, you know, it's most of the building is more than 70 feet away from the property line. We've created those generous landscape buffers, most of that distance. Um, we, we are, um, Closer to, to the home here, and we've tried to listen and respond. And again, as we've studied this, we studied the enclosure, we studied, you know, various different things that we could do. And this 12-foot wall is actually interestingly the best mitigation that we've been able to determine, working with experts to achieve the mitigation that we would hope to achieve.

Thank you.

Okay, let's continue with the public questions. Thank you.

A question for Home Depot. Um, do you have policies in place for your delivery drivers? Like, are they allowed to idle the entire time that they're unloading and loading? Do you have policies with regard to being mindful of the exhaust fumes that are going to be filtered? The canyon creates a breeze all the time. So all of that exhaust is going to be flowing into our neighborhood. It's disruptive. The noise will do the same. So what are your policies with regard to your delivery drivers and idling and things like, things like that?

Sure, sure.

Thank you. Kind of maybe an additional mention here, you know, the 12-foot wall will no Not only mitigate Home Depot, but it will actually help with the Costco situation.

A lot of the sound is coming from there. I will answer. As far as the idling, we do not have refrigerated trucks. So we do come and park in the thing. We do turn off the trucks. And so we do have operation restrictions that are in place, not only about that, but But the delivery route, the route that they're supposed to follow.

And, and yes, uh, we do have— we do shut the trucks off.

Thank you.

Once again, if there have been other proposals with regard to where to locate that loading dock, I'd like to be privy to those.

We would be happy as neighbors to sit down with Home Depot And work through that. I'm not opposed to the Home Depot itself, as maybe some of the other neighbors are strongly opposed to it. I'm not.

However, I think that we are owed some due diligence and some insight as to what other configurations they have looked at with regard to locating the loading dock.

I think there's other options, and it's not obvious to me. You know, there's infrastructure, underground utility, whatever it is. I think the neighbors would love to hear those. options that Home Depot has looked at and, and why they're still sticking with this particular solution with the 12-foot wall.

I still believe, frankly, that there's other places they put that loading dock would be a lot less disruptive than what they're proposing here. So I would love to meet with Home Depot. I'm sure the neighbors would be glad to do that and take a look at all the things, the configurations of that store that they've actually considered and why they're proposing this.

I would like to know.

Thank you.

And I think the neighbors were entitled to that. Could you answer that from Home Depot, just as far as what other configurations you have in other Home Depots in other areas and what's possible? So I don't know if you want to go to the layout. You know, our layout is set as a prototype building where you're seeing the truck dock next to the garden center. That's how we build all of our stores, just how our loading operation And the stores configured. And so that's the general location where it will be on every single one of our stores. The lumber is on one side of the store and the deliveries are on the other side of the store. I can't remember the other. We did do our due diligence as far as we did do the sound study to verify what our actual noises are, what is the ambient noise in this area that is Quite high today due to the Costco and the other operations in, in the area. And so we did listen to the neighborhood. We, we did look at what our impacts are, and that's, you know, obviously how we came up with a 12-foot wall to mitigate our impacts.

With all due deference to Home Depot and the planning that they spent 2 years of, I'm curious how much of that 2 years prior to presenting their plan to those who would be most affected by it, how much time in that 2 years as they were planning did they include Any of those residents in the planning process.

So, Artie, I've got a question. If you do flip the building, let's just say, and then make the deliveries on the, on the south end, is that going to impede what you're going to be building next to it?

I'm assuming something's coming.

Yeah, that would. And, you know, one of the things I didn't mention is There are other, like any commercial retailer, there are other commercial considerations for the configuration of the building, where the front door is, how traffic flows all work outside of how customers get to the store and shop and leave the store. And so again, as we studied the various iterations of the site plan, those were key elements that were also considered and ultimately brought us to this plan today. And so, Again, it looks like, hey, there's so much room, why can't we just move this all around? But surprisingly, as you get into it, all the various constraints start to really come to bear. And this was the most efficient plan observing what we felt we had to and what we— actually going above and beyond what's in the zone, frankly, with the 12-foot wall as an example. And the wider landscape buffer, trying to ensure that, you know, the impact is minimized to the greatest extent possible.

Thank you for listening to the neighbors and for considering the 12-foot wall. But before we said we want a 12-foot wall, it was going to be 8 feet. And, um, I have a question about the 35-foot requirement for the building.

Does that apply only to the building? And how high are the things stacked in the garden center? What is the height of the things that are stacked in the garden center?

And another noise concern that I have is all of the Um, pallet loaders that run around the garden center and go beep, beep, beep, beep, beep all day long as well. As I've been looking at this and seeing what people have been saying on Facebook and stuff like that, some people are excited about this Home Depot coming in. It doesn't make any sense to me that we would have put another Home Depot in this area since we already have a Lowe's and a— the hardware store over, over by Chick-fil-A. We have a bunch of the ACES, then we have the other Home Depot that's right there, which is— it's been there long enough that everybody's just figured out how to use it. So what do we need to do this— need this one for? But my biggest concern— well, I guess it's not a biggest concern, but a concern that I have is Woodbury has built this with the idea for 2 years that they're bringing in a Home Depot, but they built these roads that are within the property that are teeny. You can't turn an 18-wheeler full of junk on some of these tiny little roads without running over other cars in the parking lot and on the roads. You've seen the 18-wheelers try to turn from State Street onto 4th South. They're tight. So they didn't build these roads within this community, within this area, to accommodate these kind of vehicles, these kind of loads that they are saying to bring in. I think that the city should push back on Woodbury and say, bring in somebody smaller whose trucks are going to be smaller. Don't bring in a Home Depot. Orem doesn't need it. We can do other smaller retail since you insist on retail right here. Force them to do something else that makes a little bit more sense. The property they've already built. Otherwise, they're going to come in and go, oh, now we have to do all this construction so we can rebuild roads because we didn't think of that before. The infrastructure has to come first. So, can I ask you a question? These property lines are kind of confusing to me. Is— so is this, um, do you own the property underneath? Or Woodbury, are you maintaining ownership of the property? How long is your lease with Home Depot? How are you doing that? And what is this Jog down here. It looks like up on the top, my right corner, you're right, that the— we have a square there, but the road is going to go there. You're not— you're planning for that not to be.

Sorry, I missed the last part of your question.

Okay. So see that? Yeah. Jared is showing you right there up at the top. That's a road. Yeah, but we have a square of the property line. So help me understand these property lines.

Yeah.

Yes. So the property lines, maybe to answer the first question, this is property that University Mall Shopping Center would continue to own. Home Depot would be leasing on a long-term lease. The property lines there in that section are really probably more a result of the existing property lines of the various parcels in that area already.

There are cross Access easements.

So exactly where that line goes is somewhat arbitrary, just because it's in common with all the other parcels that are adjacent. Um, so, um, but that, that would be the, um, the— that's our intent is that we would— the University Mall Shopping Center would continue to own that property, would lease it on a long-term basis to Home Depot, and that there would be common circulation and common access for everyone. within the shopping center, including on the Home Depot parcel.

Okay. So that little jog down there at the bottom, kind of really odd looking one. That's just because of existing property lines. You're just—

so in that instance, that would be one of the main driveways into Home Depot from the existing Park Avenue is what we call it. The road that runs east-west through the middle of the campus. So there's a main access to the Home Depot building there from that road. So with that in mind, so there's a main entrance right there. So, If you go further up into the parking lot, can you go just out of the parking lot into the rest of the property, or is that sealed somehow, or how does that all fit together? Yeah, so, so, um, there will be a fence and there'll actually be some retaining wall. Um, again, there's some elevation change there. So this isn't a totally flat site, which is another one of the considerations as we work through the, the plans. So there'll be a retaining wall actually on the south end of the site, um, and along that east Eastern border, there'll be retaining wall and fence. Um, and so traffic won't be flowing, you know, from that parking lot into the other parking areas where the red arrows are, is really where the traffic will be flowing. We are working, continue to work with Home Depot. There may be one final 3rd access point along that east border of their property line, but essentially all of the traffic would be flowing in through those, uh, through those entry points. Okay, so it's, it's actually segregated off just like—

Yes.

Off of another street. So can you go back to that previous closer-up of the property right there? So with that in mind, so is this fence, um, on the east side, is that going to have those parking lots all— are those parking spaces all butted up next to that fence? Is that what you're talking about? So that's right. So the parking space is inside the Humdee of a parking lot are butted up against that, uh, either retaining wall or fence. Um, and then what's labeled Block F to the east of that will be future development area where more redevelopment would occur. And if you, you know, to this question about just shifting the whole thing 20 feet or something, just to get it further away from the neighborhood, what, what precludes that from happening? Well, again, it's, it's, um, Efficiency, uh, use of the site relative to, um, you know, again, the, uh, what's allowed in the zone. Um, and so, so essentially, uh, what we're hoping to do is to be able to more efficiently also continue to develop Block F. We tried to create as large a buffer as possible, um, you know, from that western border, given the existing constraints. Um, and Um, and so the hope is to, uh, you know, to, to develop, you know, to the east as well.

Okay, so I have a question, and this would be like a Ryan question. Um, what are you— what are you, PD-34? What are they, 34? Um, for some reason, I'm remembering that PD-34, um, has a 20-foot setback. Back all the way around. Does that—

it does.

Which would mean that— is there— so the wall by the home doesn't meet that then?

Can you say that again? I'm not, I'm not sure I'm understanding. There's a 20-foot setback.

So show me where.

So the building setback that's required would be 20 feet no matter what.

So I thought it was from residential.

There's, there are limited, there are further limitations when you're adjacent to residential. The 20-foot setback is standard throughout PD34 from what I'm reading. Then there are other limitations for, like, the building can't be taller than 35 feet if it's within a certain distance of residential zoning. Um, but the— so the 20-foot setback, do you mean a 20— uh, do you mean a buffer or buffer? The building?

Yeah, I'm sorry, buffer is only 8 feet.

The required buffer is only 8 feet. They've got a 20-foot one in most of this area.

And that's because of this. Side, the standard zoning side setbacks, but I thought the PD-34 had a buffer, a 20-foot buffer.

The PD-34's landscape required landscape buffer is 8 feet. So they've done more than that in most cases on this site that they've— that they're preparing.

Okay.

Jared, I think you showed some of those buffers and setbacks towards the beginning of your presentation.

Get back to that. Well, while we're doing this, can we— we just never answered the question about the everything coming out of the garden center, how high that goes. Yeah, I believe the garden center racks are 12 feet tall, and so they would, they would Foot stuff on a 12-foot-tall rack that could be as tall as 16 feet. But that would be below the 35-foot. It'll be below the 35-foot, right?

Correct.

Okay. Okay, thank you.

Go ahead.

Thank you.

So I think that one thing that, that bears maybe a little clarification is that this minimum 20-foot setback from the west boundary, that's a building setback. So, um, if it were a building that were 20 feet tall or something, they could put that building 20 feet from the property line. That's, that's what the PD-34 zone would require. 20 feet for a building setback. The landscape buffer is different than the setback. Not all of the setback has to be landscaped. So they've got an 8-foot requirement. Nothing can be less than 8 foot of landscaping on their side of the wall, their side of the property line. But they've, in some cases here, they've got more than that. Got 20 feet in. 20 feet of landscape buffer in some cases, but that's not required. The buffer only has to be 8 feet.

Okay, the building at its closest point to the property line is 43 feet.

And Jared, sorry to keep making you go back and forth.

Maybe you could show that point.

That's the closest point of the building to the residential lot.

That Kathy just referenced there. Once that shows it as well as the other, this one probably shows— this probably shows it best. So the point at which it's closest is the Olson's house right here. So they— the Olson's house is 10 feet from the property line. The property line is where the 12-foot wall would go. Then there's the 8 feet of landscape buffer. Then there's the setback to the building. Which is that? Is that another 30-something feet?

I increased the text or the font size so that you could see.

Oh, here you go.

So the garden center is 85 feet away from the property line. The landscape buffer at Nielsen's is— oh, sorry, is not quite 10 feet. The building is 43 feet away. And then when it jogs back out again, the building is 77 feet away with a 24-foot buffer.

So, Kathy, is the That 43 feet, is that 43 feet from the building to the property line?

To the property line.

So then it'd be 53 feet from the house with a 12-foot fence in between. And then what is the height of the building right there?

30— 24 feet.

24 feet. So technically, according to the PD-34 setback, they could put the building as close as 24 feet.

Feet from the property line. That's correct. Has to be a 1 to 1 ratio. Uh, yeah, I'm not sure. Not sure about that. It might only be the 20, the 1 to 1 ratios in our C-2 zoning and stuff, but it might override them. I'd have to be careful about that, but at least 20, maybe 24.

It's not 1 to 1 because we've got on the south side where we've got the big residential stuff. There's a 20-foot and that's it, right?

Again, like we were talking about earlier with other projects tonight, the PD zones are their own animal. And then if it's not, if it's not specifically called out, then it'll revert to some other zoning that's referenced. But if it's specifically called out, it's usually just that requirement. So it would probably be the 20 if I were guessing tonight without checking.

So, just to verify it, the setbacks in the PD34 zone are specified in Appendix BB to our city code. And in that area, that this area that we're talking about, it does specifically call out a 20-foot building setback and a 35-foot maximum height.

So it's not a 1-to-1 there. They could put a 35-foot building potentially with a 20-foot setback there in that area. So, even though there's not that requirement, though, we're talking about a 24-foot tall building, 43 feet away from the edge of the That's right. Okay, that's what they're proposing.

I just have 2 follow-up questions. Can you put the, the slide back up with the key?

Yeah, the key. Yeah, the one that we had just a moment ago.

It shows the layout of the full building with input.

See, just that, that one.

Okay, so if you'll see on The southwest side of the building, it says there's a lumber pad that covers the full extent of the parking spaces plus the drive. This— where is—

am I—

if I'm understanding correctly, semi-truck deliveries will be heading west and then turning north along that way. How does that work with a lumber pad there? And also, What are timeframes for groundbreaking and building to completion? Yeah, so the lumber pad, I mean, it's not actually a pad. It's just kind of the area where we would expect the—

Yeah, so the truck route is correct. We would head north. The lumber truck, that is the lumber area, it lines up with the cross The way that's where all Home Depot stores all their lumber on that side of the building. The lumber truck would stop there.

There is no backing up of the lumber truck like the other one.

There is forklifts, so you would have the beeping, but that is set back further than the beeping of the— and the braking associated with the other dock.

And so the noise impact is, the most at the northern end of the property.

The lumber pad, there is some impact, but it's quite significantly less, uh, in that area because there is no backing up of the truck. Or like a flatbed truck will sit there, and, and that's the difference between No, no, there's a double door that they actually bring the lumber in that door. It's a wider door. And so that's done during— So they just pull up there, drop off their lumber into the store.

Correct.

And then continue north. Correct.

North.

So there's no backing up. And like the other dock, there's a physical backup of the delivery truck. that has the braking and, and the, and the beeping. This truck is a flatbed truck, pulls up, stops, gets unloaded, and goes. Also, the timing, permitting and everything else, you know, dependent, uh, we would like to start construction, uh, as soon as weather Breaks, April.

We do anticipate a little bit longer construction period associated with this project.

There is numerous utilities that need to get relocated, and so we're anticipating, you know, 3 or 4 months just for utility relocations associated with the project.

We would open in late 27.

It'd be—

it'd probably be 12 to 15 months of construction, with the first part just being some utility relocations.

Buy your materials from the whole people.

I'm sorry to keep interrupting this.

This is not making sense to me.

So the gentleman from the mall indicated they've been working in 2 years on the best plan. This is what they've come up with. I want to tell you right now on record, they have been working in isolation. They have not worked with the residents.

We had a meeting. I thought it was just several months ago.

I've been here actually 3 years, and it's probably a couple of years ago when they actually We had our first meeting, we talked about the possibility of flipping that loading dock on the south end, and then we heard nothing else. So they have been working for 2 years. I appreciate that, but they have been working in isolation without any input from the, from the neighborhood. The other word I've heard a couple of times from the mall representative is efficiency.

It's the most efficient.

And, and I would suggest that that's the most efficient for them.

It's not efficient.

It doesn't have efficient— I don't care about efficiency. I care about my neighborhood and my neighbors. And the privacy and noise abatement and that type of thing.

So efficient doesn't mean, you know, he can use that word all he wants, but it doesn't mean anything to me.

Um, what we're talking about is, is actually working with the neighbors to try and have a solution.

And I don't understand why in the world—

and once again, Home Depot said you walk into Home Depot and everything's in its place. The garden center's here, there's the loading dock. When I walk into Home Depot, I don't care where the loading dock is.

It doesn't matter. Doesn't matter to me.

I walk in, I don't even pay attention where the loading dock is. So as far as I'm concerned, I can walk into this Home Depot and go and they can have the layout like they have, and, and it can be like every other Home Depot.

I really don't give a diddly damn about where the loading dock is.

If they want to relocate it somewhere, that's fine. In fact, I don't understand why they can't relocate it down where the little notch is or something else. There's got to be some creativity here, and the mall is not telling us everything about their plans. They They talk about, oh, it's the most efficient. Bottom line is it's efficient for them because it has to do with their future plans. We have no idea what those plans are, but I'm not convinced as one of the neighbors and the residents that this is the most efficient for us. It's not, it's not the best solution for us. I don't understand why they don't have to have any traffic at all going on that along that wall, why they can't do everything down on the south end or on the front end. And it's got to do with some plans the mall's Being very secretive about. They're not talking about. I'd like to see those plans because I don't believe that this is the best solution, particularly for the neighbors.

It might be the most efficient for them, but if they're going to allow Home Depot to come in here, let's have some creative solutions.

They've got to spend a little more money.

So what?

Let's, uh, let's have a solution that works for the neighbors. I would like to take just a moment to remind you what a P34 Zone is they can build basically anything they want on that piece of land. There's no guarantee that there will even be a Home Depot go in, but if there isn't, they could build Anything they want on that lot. I think it's inappropriate to zone it before we know what they're going to do.

And I'd like to remind you, or ask you, I guess, As you determine how you're going to vote, are you looking out for the citizens of Orem, or are you looking out for the mall? I'm looking out for the citizens.

We have any, any other comments, questions?

Well, this isn't really my business because I don't live over there, but anytime I hear about, um, a house being torn down, for something like this, like, or street expansion or whatever. It kind of makes me wince from paying for those owners. Um, so I was just kind of curious, there's that one guy who was talking about rezoning it, and he's like, I want to rezone this block that includes that house.

Sounds like you're gonna have to eminent domain it.

But then is this lady talking about that that house was already bought by Woodbury, and the guy over here is talking about all this efficiency. I'm not sure why they can't survive without that house, but if there's any way to reverse that, it might be nice. You know, if there's any way to not zone that there and not eminent domain it, not tear it down or whatever, it might be nice. So, you know, just my 2 cents on that.

Okay.

Um, yeah, let's, let's go ahead and close the public hearing and bring it back to the council. As far as this, you guys can go wherever you want, but, um, so just to clarify, can you go to that? Well, maybe you can see it on this map. Anyway, Brian, you were saying there's a 24-foot setback and there's 43 feet between, between the building and the nearest property. Oh, you got it right here.

You see, 24-foot height of the building.

Okay.

43-foot, 0.3 setback from the edge of the property.

Is that—

that's the nearest one? So, 40?

Yes, that's the nearest one.

And then where on that map is that house that's 10 feet away?

Right here. This is the Olsons' home.

So that house sits in there and it's 10 feet from that wall? Yes, because it's a side yard. And then that purple is where that 12-foot wall would be.

Okay.

From— and I'd like to hear from the property owners— from The ones with the 10-foot— that are 10-foot away. From your perspective, I mean, you said you'd be very glad for a 12-foot fence. Is there anything else that would make you okay with this situation?

If you think about it, would you like a 12-foot wall 10 feet away from your house?

It's not the most ideal, and this also pertains to the other neighbor.

And so—

So I'm sorry, so that, that's kind of my question. You 2 are the closest ones to that, right? What would be a solution that would work for—

It would be helpful to the neighbors if The pink line went straight north instead of jogging over against their property line.

Can you see what I'm saying?

I do.

They can't do that for us, but it would— well, they could do it for us if they would, but—

And the Millers are in the same situation we are in the fact that the way it's currently drawn And the wall goes 10 feet from their bedroom window as well, just like ours. So you're kind of advocating more for the Millers? Yes, they wanted to be here tonight. I got a text message from Brother Miller tonight, but, uh, they're not able to be here. So, so if that wall went straight, would that— That would be such a generous gesture from the mall and from the city, from everybody From Home Depot, everybody. That would just be wonderful to give them just those few feet to make the straight wall.

Yeah.

There was one proposal at a time when we thought maybe there was a proposal for a small city park there, and we voted against that.

Well, and we thought at one time there would be a turnaround that went into that property, a traffic—

because right now there is a turnaround at the end of the street.

that goes to the south of our property. And so we thought when they went— when it was all said and done and they bought this house, that there would be a traffic turnaround there. Um, instead of the, the wall being right there so close, which would be nice because it would leave us a little more openness.

Across the street from our place as well.

So, so you— because if they move that wall, that would give you more of a turnaround spot on your side, is what you're saying, if I'm understanding this right? We don't need to turn around.

But they're, they're trying to straighten out the property line, and we're in the way.

One day, Mr. Callis told me, he says, we just need half of your house. So, so to summarize, so if that— and I don't know if it's even possible, but I'm just saying from your perspective, that would make this a more positive situation.

It would be helpful. Yes, it wouldn't help our bedroom window being 10 feet from the loading dock, but it would help us not feeling so boxed in. And it would definitely help the neighbors.

Yeah, that would— it would help them more than it helps us. And it would be such a great gesture, just a totally great gesture to see that, uh, go straight up.

Straight up.

Yeah, I don't know how many feet that is, 20 feet or 30 feet. I don't know what it is, but it would be a wonderful gesture because, uh, the Millers are just crammed right up against that, uh, proposed wall. Okay, thank you.

Thank you.

And that's kind of my perspective is if— I mean, I personally think that Home Depot would be a great addition there at the mall. I asked the same question of, you know, there's Lowe's already, there's other Home Depots already. Why would they put it here? But I know a company like Home Depot does extensive market research to figure out where they're going to have the best chance to succeed. They're not going to spend You know, I don't know how many millions of dollars to do this unless they do a ton of research to see if it's going to work. So I'm, I'm not really doubting the project. I think it would be a benefit to Orem if they figured out that it will work. But I would like to infringe on the neighborhood as little as possible. Um, and, and that's a permanent— been a permanent problem as far as, you know, the mall wants to expand, the neighborhood wants to be protected. So, Well, that's why I asked that question. Is, is that something that would be something the mall could do?

Would you go to that other map, Jared, with the houses on there? Yeah, Artie, come on up.

Um, so, uh, you know what I might suggest? I think the difficulty is just you know, how do we maintain the land on the west side of the wall? So if I guess the ownership of the land might be, you know, what we would need to figure out if we were to entertain something like that. You know, once we put the wall up, it's obviously very— we won't have access to that land. And so I think that that could, that could be a potential issue. I mean, one thing I could suggest is it is a 20-foot landscape buffer that we're showing there in that area. I mean, we could potentially Um, you know, move the wall further to the east, um, you know, so that it's maybe a 10-foot, uh, you know, landscape buffer on our side of the wall. Still leaves the issue of what do we do with that additional 10 feet that we no longer can— we have— we no longer have access to and can maintain. Um, we can do something like that. I mean, you know, um, so, um, perhaps that's something we could explore. And if the concern is, you know, the wall is too close to the, to the house, I mean, I guess the question is, how much further does it need to go? I believe that that area there is approximately 40 feet. If you take the 20-foot landscape buffer and then the parking stall is approximately 20 feet. So that's, that's what we're talking about is 40 feet of buffer. And, and so perhaps a workable solution would be to move that section of the wall further east into that landscape buffer to provide more room. Between the house and still provide the—

Yeah, I'd like to see the landscape buffer be on the side of the residence and move the wall to the other, to the front of the parking stalls. Of course, I understand your maintenance issues. But yeah, we see that with Target, the backside of Target over here on Center Street. That's a beautiful landscape buffer that's on the neighborhood side. Um, and we don't hear any complaints about that. So I understand the, the, um, you know, what you would have to change and things you would have to do to maintain those landscape buffers. But I just feel like that would give a little more breathing room. How wide is that green next to the Olsons, Jared? The landscape?

It's 8 next to the green space next to Olsons is 8.

Then if you moved it to the other And, and, and you're saying, and we, so we don't landscape, you can still maintain ownership of the property, you know. But I'm— that's just a solution I'm putting forward here.

Mayor, can I jump on board with what they're discussing? Steve and I were over here conversing. Yeah, along with that, next to the home to the south. Right now, there's a landscape strip. If that wall were to move behind the curb, that would give another 9 feet to that home, giving them 19 feet from the house to the wall. And one way so that Woodbury maintains that— and we've done this in Orem on some of our properties— we've granted a landscape easement to people to landscape city property. And so Woodbury could possibly do a landscape easement with the neighbors. So they retain ownership of it, but then the neighbor could landscape it, enjoy that benefit for the time being until who knows what happens down the road in the future. Um, one moment. Sorry, just Okay, we're gonna let— there's different conversations going on here. We're just going to take a 5-minute bio break and we'll come right back.

No, it's down here.

That's the roadway easement.

The notch is—

it literally goes like this and it notches down.

That little— yeah, that's the roadway easement.

Yes, how are you?

It's not the building itself, right? No, the building is the dashed line. So up here, here's the The cars are going to come along the west south side from State Street.

They built—

their only access to one vehicle parking lot here was a stop. They built a million dollars. So I guess my point is, mall talked about efficiency and it's very efficient. It's got little to do with Trying to figure out where it's landing.

It's not my job to create—

they need to figure out.

Not my problem. There's a lot of landowners that should have much structure, but that's almost going to be—

and this is 10-foot houses. There's 4 houses. What about the south side? What about the south?

I don't care what they do.

I don't know.

I don't have solutions in terms of configuration.

I already took care of building the layout.

Yeah.

It could turn into a lot worse.

I agree with you, but I think too, traffic patterns—

it's got other plans. So basically what they're going to do is they actually have their plans in terms of traffic flow.

I understand that. So what they've done is if you're going to— doesn't work for gamers. So obvious.

Need to just figure out where—

similar rails. Not seeing this truck sitting in that wall. This is silver. And you might have spent a little more money.

Put it in the ground.

Dig a hole.

I mean, see, spinning the— Okay, let's reconvene this meeting, please. Right. Yeah, for sure.

Well, that's the thing.

Yeah, it is.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Okay, we ready to go back?

Okay.

Go ahead. Thanks, Mario. So, the, the solution that we had discussed would, would potentially be— so right now, the landscape median, or I should say the distance between the property line of the home And the curb is 9.3 feet there.

And I'm so sorry, Mr. Wilson.

I'm so sorry.

Okay, Mr. Olson's property there. So we have 9.3 feet. And what we had suggested is, is that, you know, if the landscape requirement on our side of the property, rather than all of that be on our side of the property, instead, some of that could be on the other side of the wall. We could move the wall 7.3 feet, so we'd still have 2 feet of margin between our drive aisle and the wall, but it would move the wall 7 feet further away from the Olson's home. And we do the same thing further north. We'd move it 7.3 feet. And, you know, reduce the landscape buffer on, on the east side. of the wall, but increase the distance away from the home equally with what, what the Olsons would receive. And, and the thing where this gets a little bit complicated, and I don't know that we need to get into all of this detail, but, um, we couldn't continue to retain ownership and lease that, that land to Home Depot. That wouldn't work from an insurance perspective, the maintenance issues that we discussed. And so likely what we'd need to do in order to be able to accomplish That would be a conveyance of the land to those property owners, but with deed restrictions that would only allow for landscaping, and with an option to repurchase the property in the future to the extent that it were needed. But otherwise, we'd have to legally subdivide the— or, you know, move that parcel line, I should say, and create the conveyance. In order to avoid those insurance issues, in particular for Home Depot. Why would you already— why would you need an option to repurchase it? Well, we paid for it. I suppose that was the— since we own it now, the thought was, is that, you know, we could buy it back later if we needed it. I don't know that we ever would. I think it would just be, you know— I just don't see a scenario where, unless you're building little teeny huts, I don't see— no, and I agree. I don't see a scenario either. I suppose it's hard to imagine what it would be, but I think it's really just a question of ensuring that, you know, that— So, Artie, you're going to convey that for free to the neighbors, right?

And then if you wanted, then you'd buy it back.

Right.

Okay.

And I think it would be buy it back for $10, you know, or something like that.

Okay.

So that would be in your— But the idea is we give it for free. First right of refusal and you'd buy it back for $10.

You gave it to them for free. Right, right. That would be the idea.

Can I ask a question on that, assuming that they would be willing to sell? So, so in other words, so, okay, Jeff, so they, so they would have the opportunity, you would have the opportunity to buy that back, but only if they were willing to sell it. So in other words, you wouldn't just go and take it over. You would, it would be a kind of a friendly agreement that if at some point they decided they wanted to sell it, or if you felt like you needed it, then you would approach them and say, hey, we're thinking about this, is this something you would be interested in? Is that kind of the flavor, the direction that you're thinking? Um, um, right. I mean, I, I think the, the, the thought process was, um, if we were, if we were giving it away for free, um, if for some reason 100 years from now, I, you know, I don't know what it would be, you know, that we needed the 6 feet of land there for whatever reason it was, we would have an ability to— You would have first right of refusal.

Right.

To buy it.

To buy it back. But I think it would be— it should be an option to buy back, but they have to be willing to sell.

Okay.

Because you were giving it to them.

That's first right of refusal.

Right. That's—

and that's different. Yeah, that— and that's different. So anyway, to me, that would just be a good faith thing. I mean, who cares what happens 100 years? I know you guys do because University Mall will still be there. But anyway, to me, it would be an act of good faith just to— here's the land. I mean, I just can't imagine what you would do right in that spot behind Home Depot. You boxed yourself out with Home Depot.

You're exactly right.

I really think, again, it would really just be a scenario that we couldn't contemplate now. I think the most important thing is that it would remain landscaping, you know, to kind of honor the idea that it would be landscaping, um, that there would be restrictions there.

Yeah.

Um, and, um, you know, I think we would be amenable to whatever the option was, you know, to, to be able to, to acquire back. You know, I think we could figure that out. Yeah, I just think in terms of, like, um, you know, just them being able to landscape up to a wall, and a 12-foot wall is all the better, uh, because that's essentially what we have over on Target on that side. That's what they have over on Tempview Hospital. On that side, they've got land, you know, kind of that's open like that, and it, it works. You can kind of put a commercial something pretty darn close to neighborhood by— that's a pretty solid buffer. So anyway, that's my thought. Okay, so any other thoughts? You're, you're fine with that, with, with moving the wall, or— sorry, yeah, giving them 7.3 feet.

Right, moving your wall to make everybody happy.

Yes, and, and like I said, maybe if you just want to speak operationally, confirm that, you know, that should work for Home Depot. Yeah, operationally, it pretty much stays the same. You know, the landscape buffer is just shifting from one side to the other. I still can operationally bring the trucks in the same way. The fire truck, I think, is The critical thing on the 26 feet, that still stays the same. And so there's no operational issues associated with moving the landscape buffer from one side of the wall to the other. Go ahead and let the gentleman speak.

Thank you.

I appreciate the concession. I think that's very generous, and I think that's workable, and just that That extra 7 feet, it would just make things feel a little more open. It may not seem like very much, but I think it's a very fine gesture, and we'd be willing to and be grateful to have that little extra buffer. Because I figure that the project's going to go through sooner or later, and we're just trying to negotiate for kind of the best terms possible. And I think that's a really fine gesture. Thank you very much.

Thank you.

So, Artie, you're still planning on doing the 12-foot jog behind their house?

12-foot fence?

Yeah.

So, I think 12 feet.

That's right. So, it's mislabeled here. The orange section that's running east-west at the right— that's 12— that's going to be 12 foot instead of 8 feet.

That's right.

And then all the purple is going to be 12 feet. That's right.

Okay.

Yeah, and then you're— and then you're just moving the landscaping on the other side to open it up more.

That's right.

Nicer.

That's right.

Yeah, and like I say, my position on this whole thing is I personally like the idea of Home Depot. I think it would be a real asset to Orem and to Woodbury. I think it'd be an asset to Orem because I think the sales tax revenue would be significant. Um, and so that's, that's positive for running our city and keeping our taxes low. Uh, but at the same time, I'm sensitive to— I, I've sworn an oath to protect the neighborhoods, and I'll do everything I can to protect our neighborhoods and, and do what's best for them. So anyway, that's my position. Yeah, I think too, on the Home Depot, all the people in Provo, northern Provo, are going to come, and that's probably what you're banking on because Because the other Home Depot is way south.

It's just like their freeway exits, which they're whacked, but that's another story. I have a question, if I could ask.

Yeah, go ahead, Jen.

Um, at first, I agree with everything Dave Young said, so I appreciate those comments. Um, second, maybe this is a question for Steve. I'm not even entirely sure what my question is, but I guess at this point, what exactly are we voting on? Are we still voting on just changing the zoning for that PD-35? Are we, are we waiting until we get something more solid nailed down in writing? Like, what happens now?

Yeah, I think right now, uh, you're just voting on whether to rezone this 1 parcel of property. And then, you know, I'm kind of thinking this through as well. I think what we'll probably do is when we get to the item, uh, in the RDA for amending the participation agreement, then probably Probably that's where we'll try and work these things into the amendment to the participation agreement.

Yep.

Thank you. Okay, so this is just a comment, um, and it's kind of to you, Artie, because I remember the first time I met you, probably about 4 years ago, we toured your office building while it was under construction. And I remember standing on the edge there.

You—

we'd done the tour. People were, you know, mingling, and we were standing on the edge there, and you were new, taking over here in Orem, and we talked about this neighborhood, and we talked about R-8 zoning and things that were zoned R-8 and maintaining that, um, situation to where we're not constantly gobbling up the neighborhood. And I remember your specifically saying to me, well, we need to be cognizant of that. We need to respect that. I don't remember your exact words, but that's the feeling that I came away with. And I have appreciated seeing that this last 4 years. Um, I'm a little familiar. I spoke with the people who lived in that house that you recently purchased. This area this one lot that we're looking at zoning to R-8. Um, my— and I understand they were very willing sellers compared to some actions that had been taken in the past to areas in that area and homes in that area. Um, so I'm just kind of wanting to reconfirm that conversation that we had, that Woodbury is still I understand this, you know, to me, possibly an exception here. We're not— there's a specific purpose. But I feel that I would like to maybe have that piece be given to this neighborhood to where that understanding and that commitment is still there, that there will no longer be this Um, active solicitation for home sales towards widows and, you know, older residents. Um, so I don't know, will you speak to that for me, Artie?

Yes. Uh, thank you, uh, Councilwoman.

Uh, we—

so what I would say is, I think that this project, uh, shows that, you know, we're trying to create that boundary. Um, you know, Like, like you had suggested, Mayor Young, that, you know, we're, we're turning our back here to that property line. I don't know what this scenario is wherever, you know, this, this 6 feet could come into play in the future. We believe that what we need to do is be good neighbors to this neighborhood. We've, we've tried to do that, and we're trying to do that, you know, with this project. We're trying to create a built environment next door. that hopefully will increase property values, will make this neighborhood more desirable to live in, that will provide an amenity to this neighborhood and the rest of the city. And, and so we're very focused on that. So, really, all of this property line from Costco all the way down to where now where Home Depot will be, it's very established. There will be long-term leases in place that will not allow for any further development, you know, west of there. Um, you know, what's remaining, uh, being totally candid, uh, are the— is our property line further to the west, um, you know, looking north. Uh, there as well, we're very cognizant, um, of the neighborhood, and, um, to the extent that we would be proposing anything there, uh, it would be to, again, hopefully improve the condition of what, uh, the University Place development objectives have been. Um, we do not at this time anticipate any further home acquisitions in that area, um, um, beyond, uh, you know, the, the contracts that are in place or the homes that have been acquired. Um, and, um, again, we're, we're trying to be good neighbors. We're trying to honor the setbacks. You know, in this case, like was discussed, you know, it's a shorter building further away from the property line. Um, we are, um, We're going to be here for a long time. And so our goal is to try and be good members of the community.

Thank you.

Any other questions, comments? I think we've already—

I appreciate him trying to be a good neighbor. Once again, everything they've done the last 2 years has been in isolation.

Good neighbors talk to each other on a regular basis. We made some suggestions a couple of years ago about how they might rearrange that store and put the loading dock somewhere else.

It's not only impacting those 2 homes that are 10 feet from the wall, but also there's 5 or 6 homes along that whole thing.

And every time the trucks rumble by in the morning, it's going to be— she's going to rattle their windows.

I don't understand why in the world they haven't talked to us, number one, in the last 2 years.

And number two, why can't they reconfigure that and put the loading dock somewhere else? I'm still I appreciate the solutions that have been offered tonight. I appreciate the fact that they, you know, there's been compromises, but frankly, I don't think it's an optimal solution. And they're not being good neighbors because they're not talking to us.

And I would think that we would need at least a couple more meetings. And then we're going to have to talk about, too, the traffic flow.

People looking to get into the Home Depot like they currently are looking to get into Costco.

There's a lot of traffic.

We have to negotiate that with the city as well, because they're going to have There's going to have to be speed bumps or cameras or something put into that neighborhood because people, I guarantee you, will be trying to find the Home Depot and they're going to come in and I'll stop them. They go 35 miles an hour, I'll stop them.

They'll say, what are you looking for?

Oh, the Home Depot. You can't get in for— so, so there's some traffic mitigation that has to happen as well. So I think we need more talks.

I think we need more time.

I think we need to sit down with the, the Woodley and the mall and Home Depot needs to sit down with the neighbors in the next week or or 2 and, and talk to us about other options for that loading dock.

Thank you.

I'm Elaine Christman. We live against the wall. I'm just going to say that when they put that wall in, there's 5 feet between that wall and our fence. And they said we could take down our fence and use that land. But then they started listing all of the things I was responsible for, anything that happened on that land, anything that— if there was anything on the electricity, anything that was going down that they made it. Now they do come and clean it about twice a year, pull some weeds. We chose to keep our fence up. Some of the neighbors chose to take theirs down and just use that 5-foot bumper. So that's how— that was our response. That was our— what happened to us when we had that 5 feet. And I want to know, if, if there is too much noise behind Home Depot, do we have any recourse to say anything?

If that—

because that, that the trucks will be going right there by that loading dock behind our house.

Okay, let's go ahead and— I think we already brought it back to council, but let's go ahead and keep it at council, um, and see where you guys want to go with this. And keep in mind, what we're talking about is we're not talking about everything. We're talking about this single property and dealing with this property in this context. And then from here, there will be further conversations on some of these other issues that we're talking about as far as traffic and all the rest. Um, and that would be the time to probably engage more with the mall and the neighborhood and have some really good communication. So anyway, would you like to go? Do you want— do you guys want to say anything? Tom, Jen, Jeff?

Just that I think that it's been some good discussions tonight, and I really appreciate the compromises on all sides of this. I know it's a tricky issue, so thank you.

I say amen to what Jen said. I've appreciated the push, the push back and forth and the concessions made. And like you said, Mayor, I think it's— and ultimately it's good for the city. So, and trying to work out how we can make it still good for the neighbors is the What we're trying to do here. So no other comments than that. And I would just add, it's already been a long night, so I'm not going to go on, but I agree with the compromise. I appreciate the conversations. And yeah, I think, you know, we appreciate Woodbury and the mall and all that it brings to the city of Orem. And, and still, you know, wanting to Be cognizant of the neighbors and their concerns.

And I feel like this has been a great discussion, and I feel like we've come to a good compromise.

Thank you. Any comments from anyone up here? I just concur rather than take any more time.

Okay.

All right. Um, so that takes us to a motion. And the motion would need some work. As far as Steve, where would you go with the motion from here? Yeah, like I was saying in response to Councilmember Gale's question, I think right now the only question you probably need to decide is whether to vote for or against the proposed rezoned to PD-34. And then when we get to the item in the RDA to amend the Participation agreement, that's where we can address, you know, adding the additional wall height, conveying the, you know, the 6 or 7 feet, whatever that is, of the current landscape buffer to the adjoining properties. And we'll put those provisions in the participation agreement amendment. So, Steve, you're talking 15.1 in the RDA?

Yes.

So it's just you vote on it and then it comes to RDA and that's where you get all this Specifics. Yes. Okay, so it would be just a motion for that. So, yeah, I guess I'm a little confused how we're separating that and guaranteeing that that's going to happen on the other side of this. It's done that way.

Okay.

If we didn't have the RDA situation, then we wouldn't. We would need to do something at this stage. I think, you know, maybe some sort of a development agreement or something like that. And you can still— we can still go that route. We could do a separate development agreement to do the things we've talked about. But I think we could address that in the participation agreement amendment. So, and if you, if you remember, um, we did an amendment to our participation agreement about March of, uh, 2024.

And so they have to do certain things in order to qualify for some of the tax increment.

And so their ability to get those—

meet those milestones and get the tax increment that I think they're highly motivated to get are tied to them complying to what's in the participation agreement. So I think that's probably pretty good security for us to make sure that they do these things.

Otherwise, It's going to ruin the whole RDA for him. So, okay, so, so that sounds like good security.

Yeah.

Okay.

All right. Well, would somebody like to make a motion? I'm happy to make that, Mayor. Okay. I move to approve by ordinance the rezone of 575 East 1000 South from R-8 to PD-38 for the Home Depot. I'll second that. It's 34.

34.

Did I say something else? I'm sorry, 34. Thank you for the correction, Chris.

Second.

We ready to vote?

Let's go ahead and vote.

Aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Aye.

I, I think—

did we get everybody?

Okay, it passes, and we'll move forward with these compromises.

No, Dave, and I haven't voted.

I thought you did.

No, I did. I said aye.

Wow, this is a tough one because frankly, I really don't like rezoning residential. Um, in this PD zone. So just as a— I support the, um, concessions that were made, but on principle, I'm gonna have to vote nay in this particular situation with hopes that we can, um, maintain the, uh, you know, ability to not have any more of these rezones come before us for this particular neighborhood.

Thank you.

So my vote is nay.

Um, I think it's a good compromise, um, and I vote aye. Okay, so the resolution passes, or the— yeah, the ordinance passes. Okay, let's move on to the next one. We're up to item 10.5. Got a public hearing ordinance. This should be a lot quicker. Jared, I hope. Jared, general plan update, water and preservation elements.

Uh, what could I— what could I tell you that you don't already know about this element? You guys have discussed this a few times.

We know everything.

You know it better than I do at this point. Um, yeah, this is— this is a general plan amendment, so it's slightly different. Um, agenda-wise than the other, the other items, but it does require the public hearing. It adds Chapter 9, the water conservation element that we're required to have by the end of the year, which is rapidly approaching, uh, by the, uh, by Senate Bill 110. Um, it does those things that are listed on the screen, um, by ordinance, and most of those things are already part of our water plans that the city has anyway. So, we've reiterated them to be added to our general plan. Anything else I can tell you?

Any questions? Okay, no questions. We'll move this— we'll open this up for a public hearing if anyone has any comments or questions. Okay, we'll close the public hearing and we'll take this to a vote. I'll make a motion. Oh, or do you want to take—

Yeah, I'll just do it. I move to approve the General Plan Update Water and Preservation Elements. Second it.

Aye.

Go ahead.

Aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Okay, the ordinance passes. Thank you, Jared. That was record time on that one.

Thank you very much, guys.

Okay, last up, uh, we've got, uh, financial information. That's just for reference, and we'll move to item number 12, our city manager information items. I'll just add my gratitude Uh, to Mayor and Council at this time, in particular with outgoing Mayor and Council members Dave Spencer and Tom McDonald. Just want to add my thank you to— I never take for granted that, um, you, you as an elected body and the public take a risk on me as city manager and us as staff, and you have to. believe in us, that we will execute the, the vision and the, um, direction that you give us.

So just in all humility, but publicly as well, thank you so much.

That's all. Thank you, Bren. All right, let's go ahead and adjourn this meeting. Someone would like to make a motion to adjourn this meeting? We're going to adjourn it, but then we'll go to The Orem Redevelopment Agency. Mayor, I'm sure I'm ready for me. Yep. I move that we adjourn the meeting of the, uh, of our city council meeting to the Orem Redevelopment Agency.

I second.

Oh, hi.

Hi.

Hi.

Hi.

Hi.

Hi. Okay, thank you. Okay, that takes us to item 15. Hang on a second. 14 takes us to item 14.1, approval, and that's a consent item, approval of the RDA meeting minutes from June 10th, 2025. Someone like to make a motion on that? I move for approval, Mr. Mayor.

I second.

Second.

Aye.

Aye. Aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Okay, the consent items are approved. Thank you. Go to item 15, RDA scheduled items, the last item on our agenda, double agenda. We have item 15.1, a resolution approving a 3rd amendment to the participation agreement with University Shopping Center, LC.

Ryan Clark.

Thank you, Mayor, Mayor and Council. I'll try to keep this short. This is kind of a formality now due to the rezone, and what I've prepared has changed quite a bit. You're going to see, but to give a little bit of background, in April of 2015, the city entered into— actually, let me correct that. The Redevelopment Agency entered into a CDA participation agreement with the Woodbury Corporation for the University Place project. And in March of 2021, we came back and amended that agreement to extend it out for an additional 2 years due to COVID. March of 2024, we did a second amendment, which is when we established a location for a large big box retailer and the building was facing to the south. We now know that that retail store is Home Depot. So today we're here to do a third amendment, which which basically changes and corrects the Second Amendment and updates it to the new orientation of the building. So on the left is language from the Second Amendment, and on the right is language from the Third Amendment. The 2 red boxes are the 2 bullet points under Section 5.2.1.2.2.1.2. If you're lost, I understand. Attorneys Wrote this. No offense to our city attorney. So, um, the first upper box specifies what those setbacks are that are in Exhibit D, which we will view in a minute. And the lower box specifies the landscape buffer that was to be along the western border adjacent to the neighbors. To the right is the new language that was to replace that, but that language has now changed as of ours. Zoning discussion. So we will be updating some of this language, and Steve is going to help me with that tonight so we can do that. On the left is the exhibit from the Second Amendment. Apologize for the graininess of this, but it's what was scanned into the agreement program, and it's the only example I have. But you can see up above on the left The store is oriented in a different location than what you see on the right. So we would be updating Exhibit D and the bullet points to reflect the picture on the right. I do have a blowup of that that I'll switch over to now where we can see it a lot better. And as you can tell, we've kind of beat this dead horse tonight and gone over this many times. So we would need to change this exhibit to reflect the 12-foot wall, to reflect the landscaping buffer changing, to reflect the land being deeded to the 2 homes. But most of this exhibit will remain the same. And so the motion that we've prepared for you tonight will need to change to reflect the things that have been discussed in the rezoned. So this motion will. Longer is necessarily applicable. It'll have some additions to it. Well, Steve will help us with if you're in favor of moving forward. But to go back again, we are just changing 2 bullet points in the agreement there on the right versus the left. The setbacks, the landscaping, and how the building is oriented, and updating Exhibit D from the image on the left To the image on the right, and now we will be adding the additional things we've talked about tonight. Are there any other questions I can answer? So, okay, so you're going to be adding these things we talked about tonight. This is what you were talking about earlier, correct? This is how we'll memorialize what we— what was decided tonight. Do we continue it to put in all the changes you're talking about? I believe I will let Steve answer that. So, Mayor, what I would suggest, if you're, if you're okay with everything that's been discussed and you're willing to approve it on those terms, I would suggest that you make a motion to approve the Third Amendment to the participation agreement with the subject to the, um, the amendment and the exhibit being modified to reflect those points that we've discussed, namely Namely, that 12-foot wall being installed, the areas of the landscape, current landscaped area that will be conveyed to the 2 adjoining neighbors, I believe it is. And was there anything else? I think that was it. And that then authorized the chair of the RDA board, which is you, Mayor Young, Sign that agreement once those amendments have been, uh, reflected and updated in the document. So, are we also going to get the refusal? What's that? What if I'm gone by the time you get this done? When are you going to—

We're going to get it done before.

Okay.

Now, we put it—

if it's not you, then the new mayor will be the chair, and then that— the new chair will be able to sign it. But they wouldn't have agreed to it. Anyway, just get it done. Are we putting in the— that's, that's our intent is to get it. Are we putting the first right of refusal in there for them? Um, I guess maybe that's something I don't know if that's still an outstanding question. Um, one thing I did have a little bit of a concern on with the right of first refusal, I don't think we would want that to be a typical right of first refusal, because if a neighbor wants to sell property to somebody else who's going to come and live there, that wouldn't trigger your right to buy it like it normally would.

So we'll have to figure out how that works exactly.

I think that, um, I think we would probably just be okay with a deed restriction just limiting the use of that land to landscaping use only.

Okay.

They could landscape it.

So it'd be a straight conveyance with a restriction that it can only be used for landscaping, which Yeah, I think that works.

Okay, so who would like to make that motion? Hey, Steve, can you, can you repeat what you would have us say so that I could say what Steve just said? Yeah, so maybe it would be best, let's have somebody make the motion as it is, it's up there, and then we'll Modify it to reflect kind of what I just said. Okay, here we go. I move to approve by resolution a 3rd amendment to the participation agreement with University Shopping Center, LC, and— sorry, and authorizing the, uh, the chair of the governing board, I think, is the language you want to— and that's up there too. And authorize the chair of the governing board to— there we go. Now, the City of Orem, that's, that's up here.

Okay, now I see it.

Okay.

Um, no, I got it now.

Sorry.

And move to continue the request. Is that where we are now? No, no, it's just you're still on the first paragraph.

Okay.

Like that.

I move that the Redevelopment Agency of the City of Orem Um, authorizes, approves the 3rd Amendment of the Participation Agreement and authorizes the chair of the governing board of the Redevelopment Agency of the City of Orem to execute the 3rd Amendment to the Participation Agreement on behalf of the agency. Okay, now that's when I would add subject to that 3rd Amendment and the exhibit being modified to reflect that there will be The 12-foot wall, uh, constructed by University Mall and approximately—

I think we were talking, was it 7 feet of the existing landscaping, uh, being conveyed to the 2 adjoining neighbors?

This has already— has also been discussed. Is that correct, Artie? I believe that that's correct. And the only thing I'm, uh, equivocating on slightly is just We had that 9-foot-3 measurement there. I just want to approximately— yeah, I think it's approximately 7, assuming that there's a 2-foot gap between the curb and the wall. I think that's kind of just our operational constraint. As long as we can maintain that, everything else will be conveyed.

So, I think we would just say substantially conforming to those, those, uh, Provisions, those concepts, and then ultimately the chair of the board will, will get those changes made. We'll be submitting it to the chair of the board for his approval and execution.

He won't sign it unless it all looks good and kosher.

So, so said Steve, and I'll second that. Can I do that?

Yeah. Aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Aye.

The resolution passes. It's approved. All right, would somebody like to make a motion to adjourn this meeting?

I move that we adjourn this meeting. I second.

Aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Aye.

This meeting, the final one of