City Council · 2026-01-27

Where would you like to go with this topic of short-term rentals? This is a nuanced, multifaceted issue. I'm going to try to get through a pretty dense presentation as quickly as I can. If there are questions, glad to answer your questions, but I have got quite a bit of material to get through, and I want to make sure that I can get through that. And we have 2 members of the Neighborhood Advisory Commission that will be joining us around the 3:30 hour to give some feedback presentation and the comments and conversations that occurred at the most recent advisory. In a previous presentation, I kind of gave this mixed metaphor. Hopefully, it's not much of a mixed metaphor now. But ultimately, the way I view staff in this discussion is more of a trail guide. Council has said we'd like to go see Timb. Trying to decide, is this— we're going to Timb Cave? Are we going to summit Mount Timpanogos? Or are we just going to do a drive-by of Timb? So really, kind of the course is yours. We're here to guide. We're here to facilitate it. As we do that, there are at certain points we're going to have to make a decision, and the council will be the ones making the decision of what is it that you want to see on your hike. If we're going to go to Summit Tiv, if you want to see waterfalls, we're probably going to go to the Aspen Grove side. If you want to go to Scout Falls, we're probably going to the Timpanoqui side. So what is our course? And then as staff, we're also here to help. Size of any hazards. Probably not a good time to go hike Temp right now because of snow. Give advice about wildlife, other hazards along the course, other pitfalls that might be there. So historical-wise, this is kind of where we've been. Orem City Code 2219.1 indicates what land uses are permitted. Throughout the city, indicating that if a use is permitted, it will be listed on our land use table, which is in Appendix A. If a land use is not listed in Appendix A, then it is a not— it's not a permitted use. So, specifically, as we talk about short-term rentals, short-term rentals are traditionally also known as transient lodging. So, if we were to look at our appendix, transient lodging, as you look across it, it is not allowed in any R-5, R-6, R-6.5, R-8, R-12, R-20 zones. So, the status of the law at this time is that they're not an allowed use. As we've had conversations, I know that some individuals and groups have been concerned that we're categorizing them as engaging in unlawful activity or criminals. I'm not trying to villainize anybody by having this conversation. Rather, this is an educational understanding of where are we currently with the status of the law. These currently are not an allowable use under our city code. And historically, with the state— with the state code, the Utah State Legislature had really inhibited or prevented the city from Engaging in a lot of regulation or enforcement on short-term rentals, specifically Utah Code 10-885.4, previous to 2025, really restricted the ability of cities to, to go in and enforce short-term rentals. Based on that, the city had adopted kind of a more relaxed approach to short-term rentals and enforced based on Complaints if there was a loud party, nuisance properties, i.e., the goat house that happened in 2023. Remember that? However, last legislative session, House Bill 256 really kind of changed the landscape from a state code perspective, indicating that cities really do have the authority to come in and regulate this space. And if they were to do so, then it allows us to look at website listings on various platforms to ensure that STRs are being operated within our licensing system. Based on that bill, that is really what kind of kicked off a lot of the conversation of where does the city want to go with short-term rentals? Do we want to maintain the status quo of maintaining a prohibition? Do we want to sort of create some sort of a licensing program? And if so, how do we balance the interests between neighborhoods and STR operators? Or do you go completely the opposite side and give a complete grant of use and have it be much more unfettered use of residents to residential homes to be used as STRs?

Where do—

where does the city council want to go on this spectrum? And that was where the discussion started. Based on an initial kind of introduction to that, um, at the time the city council had indicated, want to have this conversation. If we were to adopt something like this, we want to start off conservative. So, based on that, we started looking around and saying, what does the terrain look like? What do other cities do?

How—

what does the current landscape look like here? So these are other cities that are within the Utah County area. And what would they do with STRs? These are cities that either have a clear prohibition in their ordinance, or they're prohibited by the land use table, very similar to what Orem currently has. And as you can see, there's a number here throughout Utah County. And then if they were allowed, these are neighboring cities that have addressed occupancy either through an ordinance, or they've, they've done it through a short-term rental application. Cedar Hills and Lindon are those that have adopted it through an application process. The one thing I would point out here is the code is not very clear as to how that occupancy limit is calculated, or how it is assessed. As opposed to other cities that have given a much more bright line as to how many people can be in an STR at any given time. As you can see, the average is somewhere in that 12 to 10, if you were just to look at Specifically neighboring cities. Beyond that, we also wanted to look and see where are other similarly sized cities? What are they doing? Is there a common practice for short-term rental regulation? As you can see, Provo, Sandy, Lehi, Ogden, and Logan all have adopted some version of a short-term rental regulation. Where they all define short-term rentals as being any, any leasing or rental of the dwelling for less than 30 days. And that's the standard definition that's adopted both in state code through legal understanding, as well as even in our own city code, the difference between a long-term residential rental as opposed to a short-term rental. And then, if you look at West Jordan, West Jordan has just outright prohibited short-term rentals within their city.

All—

so at this point, I'm just going to focus now on the 5 that have a regulation. All 5 do require an application. That application requires a fee. Those fees vary depending on, on the city. They also vary depending on if they're owner-occupied or if they're non-owner-occupied. That is something that Sandy and Lehigh both require. They only allow short-term rentals if they are owner-occupied, whereas Ogden and Logan have a more hybrid or tiered system where they treat owner-occupied and non-owner-occupied differently. Sandy is the sole city that has a nightly rental cap. They do not allow short-term rentals to be rented more than 183 days of the year. So that is a unique thing that Sandy has done.

Interesting.

Um, all of them have adopted both a parking plan requirement where, upon application, the short-term rental operator must show how parking is going to be facilitated on this property. And the point of those are to remove the on-street parking to the— to an off-street location. They have various different ways they calculate the requirements of how that parking is done, and we can dive a little bit deeper into that at another discussion. But there are various different calculations to say how many parking spaces should be required. For a short-term rental. All of them do require 24/7 response, meaning that within 30 minutes to 1 hour, somebody can respond to the STR to help mitigate— respond to noise complaint, an occupancy issue, or some other potential violation at the property. All of them have various geographic spacing requirements. For example, Provo is unique in that they do not allow any STR in any residential zone. They allow them in other zones, but not in residential or agricultural. So that really puts a limit on how many STRs can be operated within Provo City.

Mm-hmm.

Um, Lehigh has adopted a geographic spacing that does not allow any STR within a certain number of feet from an elementary school or a junior high school. And they've done that for pedestrian safety, for the safe walking paths for elementary and junior high students, as well as other safety concerns that might be present with, you know, potential sex offender registry or registration issues and whatnot. Sandy, they cap— their geography spacing requirement is they've said we're only going to allow a certain number in a neighborhood. So they've actually geofenced different neighborhoods and they allow X in a certain neighborhood. So that would be another option to look at is how you would space those out rather than a 1,000-foot or 500 from the way the crow flies. But that is how Logan and Ogden have tackled this, is they've done it as a spacing requirement from one STR to another STR. Sandy and Logan both have put a max cap of the number of licenses where other cities haven't put a max numerical cap on STRs. The next slide is where you're going to see that there's— again, yes.

What were the asterisks back there?

So the asterisks indicate that there was a tiered system for Ogden and Logan, as opposed to an absolute owner-occupied requirement. Any other questions on this slide? Sorry, I know that I'm giving you a lot of information as fast as I can. So any point, please stop me. On this slide, you're going to see that there— this becomes a little bit more of your pick-your-own-adventure. Um, approach to STR regulation, where there's— that first slide had a lot more uniformity and common themes of how STRs were regulated. Sandy has adopted a general maintenance requirement, and that is that landscaping has to be upkept, snow removal has to be kept up, basically like the same requirements that we would expect any other rental or any other residential home in the city. Uh, that would be subject to any of our landscaping rules, any of our snow removal rules, that they abide by all of those same regulations and can subject to administrative citations the same as any other homeowner. Sandy, Lehigh, and Logan have also adopted specific noise and nuisance control programs, um, some requiring Active monitoring, where there would be a decibel monitoring system installed in the home itself. All that does is it listens for decibel level. It doesn't pick up conversations. It's just looking surely at decibel level. If that alarm goes off, then the homeowner STR operator is notified of that, and then they're to take corrective actions of that. However, the more common approach is adoption of quiet hours. That certain amenities are regulated or restricted from the hours of like 10:00 PM to 7:00 AM. So you don't have people in a hot tub at 1:00 in the morning partying, or have a pool party going on into the wee hours of the morning. Or you have a youth basketball team playing, you know, 2:00 in the morning on a sports court.

So surprised that there are only 2 of those cities that have that.

Yeah, it's a pretty— that was kind of shocking to me as I've done the research on this, that they have not been more uniform in that adoption.

Does the noise and nuisance control lighting?

Yes. Shielding, or the requirement that lighting be put on timers, that outside landscape lighting be turned off at certain times, and that security lighting be shielded. Because again, one of the other A common complaint of these is if you'll have security lighting, somebody checks into your STR at 1 o'clock in the morning, or their common use here for some STRs is it is a stay for hunters. So they're leaving early to go out. And so they're packing up their truck at 3 o'clock in the morning, security lighting comes on, and if it's not shielded, oftentimes it's encroaching on neighbors going into bedrooms. And when Um, one of the regulations that we've contemplated in our working draft is indicating that STR licenses are nontransferable.

They are—

they're licenses to that particular operator, and if the home is sold, then it's not automatically transferred to whoever buys the home. Again, That is something that none of these cities have adopted in any of their ordinances, but has been used in other cities outside of the Wasatch Front. Pretty common is a requirement that the STR be inspected as a fire and building inspection to ensure safety. Again, this would be something that we would, I would hope, want to ensure that those renting within Orem Are renting a habitable, safe place to be staying when they're visiting.

Or—

And then again, Sandy and Logan have probably the most mature or most complex STR regulations that I've seen on the Wasatch Front. Both of them have specific provisions for denying a license upon renewal if there have been violations. Usually there's an escalator of— there's fines with escalating fees, and then at some point there's a cutoff. If there's been 3 within a rolling 12-month period or another time period, then they're not eligible to have their license reapproved or granted. And there are very specific grounds to also deny, suspend, or revoke an active STR license for the same reasons. During this process, as we've been coming to work session and having these conversations, there has been quite a bit of public input, both at City Council meetings, through personal appearances. As though— as individuals have come and made personal appearances, I've tried to make myself available as best I can and scheduling meetings outside of the personal is to sit down with interested parties, hear what their concerns are, hear their feedback, and try to get that feedback back to the Council in, in ways that is meaningful and would help the conversation move forward if with any sort of regulation. The most common areas of concern, so I'm going to break this up Primarily between concerned residents, and that's being neighborhoods and STR operators. And one thing to consider here for both situations is, for the average person, their home is typically the largest single investment in any, any person's life, purchase of a home. And so, as, as neighbors have come in, They have been very vocal about why are we wanting to change the regulation if they're banned? Why can't we simply enforce the law? That has been a pretty common theme. And again, the conversation has been with them is that legislation has changed. It's opened up an opportunity to have a conversation. And that's what this is, is a conversation to see What, if anything, the council would like to do differently with STRs. Their concerns are, as STRs have come into neighborhoods, that some neighbors have felt like they've become strangers in their own neighborhood. They don't know who their neighbors are. They have a consistent revolving door of people coming and going. And if there are issues, they don't necessarily want to call the police on a, on a kid jumping the fence to get a ball. But at the same time, when it's happening over and over again, and they don't have anybody necessarily to talk to, then how do we escalate it and not necessarily become bad neighbors? Concerns about loss of privacy. This has been a pretty common theme also, is, as with anybody who's trying to protect an investment, people have put security lighting, security cameras on the home to monitor the comings and goings of their property. Some of these cameras have been placed at angles where neighbors feel like they're videotaping right into a bedroom or into a bathroom or into their backyard. And as such, they feel like there's just been a general loss of privacy in their neighborhood. As well as a concern that what does this do for the future, future property value of my home, my investment, and that now You know, I bought into a neighborhood and now I feel like I've got a hotel operating next door to me. Who would want to buy this home? Another common theme as you go back and listen to any of these public comments is increased traffic, increased vehicle on-street parking. Some of these properties have been used to hold events. We have seen corporate events, sorority parties. Wedding events, any of these that are larger events, what that has ultimately reduced some of the neighborhoods to is parking lots. I'm thinking of one gentleman that lived on High Country Road. He came in and spoke, and, and there he talked to that, you know, when there's a wedding at the STR in his neighborhood, there can be an average of about 100 to 120 cars parked up and down their street. And becomes almost inaccessible to access his own home. Increased disturbances. Our police agency, as well as our NIT, have received complaints about potential drug use, noise disturbances, and just a general increase in nuisance-type issues. And then ultimately, they don't want to police their neighbors. As it comes to enforcement issues, they don't want to have to call the police to enforce on their neighbors. They— the idea is they want to be good neighbors. They would like to know who their neighbor is, and if they have an issue, they would rather knock on the door and talk to them than call the police. That way. On the other side, STR operators, they have reported that they've made a significant investment in owning a home. In Orem, whether that be that they're renting out an ADU unit and they're using it to help facilitate paying the mortgage and staying in their home, or that they've bought an investment property and they've made a significant investment in Orem. And they feel that taking action to take this avenue away from them would be unfair or unjust. So there's been a general sense of How is this fair and a fairness issue? However, as I've met with many of the STR operators, they have been willing to come negotiate and compromise and talk about ways that they felt like there could be reasonable changes and reasonable regulations in their minds, that these could be allowable uses within a neighborhood. that wouldn't necessarily harm a neighborhood. Where their concerns have been is occupancy. We limit occupancy to a level that they can't feasibly operate. And that has been an ongoing conversation with many STR operators of what does that reasonable amount look like? How do we reach a compromise that you don't end up with too many cars? But you're also protecting the integrity. Um, you know, these regulations, um, and many of them have come willing to adopt quiet hours to try to facilitate some way to have these be less disturbances within neighborhoods. Um, again, off-street parking licensing limits and density limits have all been, how do we, how do we calculate this? What is a, what is an expectation that we can then know would be somehow manageable for us in the future if we're making an investment decision? How do we know that the city is not just trying to put us out of business? They've also come with ideas that they would like to see implemented is an educational requirement that they would like to see the city adopt some sort of education requirements as part of the licensing. In their eyes, Having STR operators go through some sort of course where they learn how to be good hosts would not only just make them better hosts and better successful as, as a business, but would make them better neighbors. And they have requested to have some sort of STR committee be involved in the crafting of any regulations. The last area of input, and I'm gonna Get to this in a minute. We've got with us now Amy Green and Reed Farnsworth from the Neighborhood Advisory Commission, and I'm going to yield some time to them in a few slides to kind of give their input from the conversations that have been had at 2 recent Neighborhood Advisory Commission meetings.

Thank you.

Let me, let me just give— go through a couple more slides, and I'll get Reed and Amy here in just a moment. Thank you, Mayor. So, as I said, we've, we've sat down with these groups. We've tried to be as collaborative as we feel like we can be. We want to listen to the interested parties. We want to give the feedback. We want to make whatever version of a regulation be workable, both for the city, its residents, and operators, if that's the direction council chooses. So, I want to give you, um, a high-level overview of where the working draft is at. Obviously, this would govern the rental of any residential dwelling for 30 days or less. It would require the application for a license. They would have to pay a fee. They would have to provide documentation of a parking plan. A noise plan. They'd have to have the residence be inspected. It would limit the use of any STR property to overnight stays only. This would not be allowed for weddings, corporate events, or any other sort of social gatherings beyond an overnight stay. In general, the occupancy would be limited to a single-family use. It would be governed by the STR square footage or bedrooms. Meaning that if you have a family of 12 and you're renting a 2-bedroom condo, that 2-bedroom condo probably won't accommodate a family of 12. Maybe it would, but most likely it wouldn't. And so the square footage would make— would disallow that use. But in a larger home, a 3,000-square-foot home, a single family of 12 could rent. And then there would be an unrelated individual's occupancy limit of 8. Um, it requires STR operators to maintain property in compliance with our already existing code as far as it deals with landscaping, snow removal, noise and nuisance ordinances. It would establish quiet hours for outdoor amenities and lighting. Um, it would adopt a 2-tiered system for owner-occupied and non-owner-occupied as it relates to density requirements and spacing requirements. Meaning that an owner-occupied STR license would not be subject to a numerical cap nor a spacing cap. And the reasoning for that is typically, if you have an owner-occupied STR, The owner's living there and is answerable and available to its neighbors. So if there are any issues, the neighbors have a reliable source to go and speak with and try to manage minor nuisances.

Can I just clarify, when you say not subject to numerical cap, can I just clarify? That's not talking about the number of occupants.

That's talking about licenses.

Licenses.

Yeah, absolutely.

Okay. Thank you. Because I was thinking you were talking about the number of people.

That—

thank you, Steve. Um, and owner occupied would not be subject to distancing spacing as a non-owner occupied.

Sorry.

No geofencing, no distances, correct?

Um, and then all licenses, regardless of if they're owner occupied or non-owner occupied, would be subject to revocation and denial based on violations. On a graduated escalation.

Is there a timeline for reapplication, or—

It would be annual licenses. So they— each STR operator would have to annually apply the renewal of their license. Is that—

Well, you know, you violated on November, do you get to reapply in January?

Okay, so it would be a rolling 12 months. To answer that question, it's a rolling 12 months.

Okay.

Okay, with that, Reed and Amy, I'm going to cede some time to you. You can kind of give your feedback from the last 2 meetings that we had where we presented this issue. I'm glad to give up the chair here. Amy, if you would like to come up first.

Sure.

See, can I just add a little commentary here?

For sure.

Maybe everybody knows this, but at a previous council meeting, uh, the council gave us direction to, uh, take the draft ordinance to the Neighborhood Advisory Commission, get their feedback and input on this. So that's why they've been invited to come and report back on it.

Can I say one thing about that, since I was on that commission, and we gave them the, the commission members the directive to talk with their neighbors, to, you know, the area in which they live, to get feedback. Several of them at that meeting, this last meeting, comment that they had asked people in their area to try to get that citywide feedback.

Thank you.

Thank you, Amy and Reed, for coming and giving the input from the Neighborhood Advisory Commission. Appreciate your service.

We're happy to be here.

We haven't rehearsed this.

Not at all. I haven't spoken since our last meeting, and I said, send me an email.

So, a little background.

We've had 2 commission meetings where people talk to us, and we voted in the last one. It was slightly in favor of complete restrictions, and Amy was with that side. I was more on the side of we should be able to allow them with The types of policies that are in place here, and I was in the minority. So our group was divided. Um, it was, I think, close, but more in favor of just complete restricting them. Do you want to talk first, or do you want me to? Okay. When I first heard that we were going to be talking about short-term rentals, my initial thought was, we don't want them. Just don't allow them. Then, as I learned more about them, I realized there's a place for them. When I talked to my wife about it, her first response was, we don't want them. Keep them out. They don't belong in Orem. And then I reminded her of a rental that we use. We've been using it for 35 years. Um, about every other summer in Ventura, California. Love it. Go there for a week each summer. And a couple of years ago, They notified us that this may not be able to continue because the city of Ventura was going through what we're going through now. It was concerned that they may be completely disallowed. Instead, at that time, we thought, well, that's absolutely crazy. Why would the city want to not allow it? I mean, last summer when we went, our family dropped probably $2,000. Let me rephrase that, $20,000. In Ventura for the rental guests that we purchased there, food that we purchased there, entertainment that we took part in there. We invested in the city of Ventura for that week. And we thought, why would they not allow it? We've been good neighbors. We haven't disturbed anybody. The police have never been called. And as I mentioned that to our neighborhood commission, someone said, yeah, but not all rentals are like that. And I think that's important to remember, because when we talk about this, each time it comes up, it seems like the first thing we hear are the horror stories, the bad apples, the ones that have caused problems. And we've been having them in Orem. They just weren't allowed. We didn't realize that. They just kind of happened, and it's kind of a grassroots thing, as you've been talking about. I, I I joined your stream a little earlier, and I had to tear myself away to come here in person. I hated doing that because it was fascinating to hear the presentation. But I would say, if I got the numbers right, it seems like I heard that there are probably about 250 of them that are in operation right now. And I would guess that 80-90% of those have been trouble-free.

Correct?

I don't know that I can give you a percentage. We've been operating based on complaints. We have responded to probably 10 to 15 complaints over the past 2 years.

So not a lot of complaints for 250 rules. Personally, philosophically, morally, religiously, I believe that people should be punished for their own sins, not for other people's transgressions. To completely outlaw them for the 240, 220 that are doing it without causing a problem would be unfair, immoral in my mind. As a resident of Utah, our motto is one word. It's on our historic flag: industry. Taking the resources available to you, making them, improving them, So that it's a benefit for yourself and others. And to me, not allowing homeowners to rent out their homes in a way that doesn't bother other people is going against the motto of industry. As an American, I believe in property rights, property ownership. If I own property, And I use it in a way that doesn't infringe on others. That's my right. Of course, my right to swing my arm ends where your nose begins, so I can't harm you. But as long as I'm not, I should be able to do that. So, to me, a complete ban, a complete restriction is un-American. It's against Utah values, and I think morally wrong. I have followed the presentation here and Learn from the plans you have in place to help alleviate the problems through licensing restrictions, regulation. They seem fair to me. I think they're a good start. I think that as we use them, we can hone them, refine them, improve them. I think that by experience, we don't come out of the gate the first year with a perfect plan, but we develop it over the years.

Thank you.

Some of the recommendations that I would add would be possibly adding a security bond as a requirement, so that those who license their home as a short-term rental would have a bond in place so that if damages do happen to neighbors, they're covered. Um, I think maybe a grandfather clause would be appropriate. So that if someone has been doing this for years and they don't comply with the new regulations, for example, they're too close to a school. They can't just move their home 200 yards to be outside that. But if they haven't received complaints, they should perhaps be allowed to continue with the understanding that they're going to be under scrutiny. Because of the variance they've been given. So I think grandfather funds would be appropriate. Bonding might be something to consider. And those, I think, are pretty much my thoughts.

That's great. I appreciate you sharing those thoughts. One of the things I was thinking when you were speaking was that I do believe that we have property rights and people should be able to use their properties. I think that is for all of us. I do, however, believe that we have city ordinances and laws in place for a reason, to protect our community at large and our citizens. And so the people who are— who do have short-term rentals right now are operating illegally. There is a law against that right now. So that, that is a little bit something to consider. Anyway, I have— you did really great off the cuff. I have a formal, uh, I wrote everything for you, so if you'll bear with me.

I typed and I left it back.

I probably should have—

I saw your presentation, you covered much of I was talking about.

I'll just try to cover what we, um, what we discussed in our neighborhood commission meeting and kind of the feelings of what the people in commission had. And he's correct, there was a majority, I believe, that were not in favor of changing the law. Um, I appreciate you letting us come and talk. I, I think it's important to talk through this and to have all, all different views represented here. Um, As you know, I'm here on behalf of the neighborhood— excuse me, the Neighborhood Commission, and our perspective regarding the potential legalization of short-term rentals in Orem. After careful discussion, listening to residents, and reviewing available information, the majority of the Neighborhood Commission does not support making short-term rentals legal. This position is grounded in real experience within our city, as well as lessons learned from other communities. To begin, already has multiple documented instances of illegal short-term rentals, and those have consistently created challenges in the neighborhoods where they operate. And I appreciate Reed's point that not all of them have created those challenges, but the ones that have have created some significant challenges in many ways. Um, these are not all isolated or theoretical concerns. Common issues we've seen include guests far exceeding the normal occupancy of residents, parking congestion that blocks streets and driveways, trash accumulation and improper disposal, noise disturbances often late at night, and situations where the property owner is out of state and difficult or impossible to reach the problem. These impacts directly affect the quality of life for the nearby residents, and they place a strain on neighborhoods. And their cohesiveness. Second, the commission, the commission could find no perceived or demonstrated financial or community-wide benefits to the majority of Orem citizens by legalizing short-term rentals. While individual property owners may benefit, the surrounding neighborhoods and the city as a whole bear the cost. Those costs include increased demands on city personnel and resources, such as code enforcement, Police response, administrative oversight. Based on existing experience, legalization would not eliminate complaints or enforcement needs. It would likely increase them. We also considered experiences from other cities that previously allowed short-term rentals, and they are now rolling them back entirely after seeing unintended consequences such as neighborhood disruption, safety concerns, housing availability, which is huge here in Orem. And rising enforcement costs. These examples suggest that once short-term rentals are allowed, the negative impacts can be difficult and expensive to control. Another important concern is neighborhood preservation and safety. Residential neighborhoods are intended to provide stability, predictability, and a sense of community. Frequently, or frequent turnover of short-term Yes. Changes the dynamic and can make long-term residents feel less secure in their own neighborhoods. Additionally, legalizing short-term rentals would divert revenue away from our local hotels, which already comply with zoning, safety, and regulatory requirements. This creates an uneven playing field for businesses that have long operated within the city's established framework. I'd also like to briefly address the survey presented to the commission. Many members felt the survey structure was problematic. Rather than asking whether the law should be changed and why, it largely assumed legalization and asked respondents how it should be implemented. Because of that framing, the commission believes the results are inherently a little skewed and should be interpreted with caution. Um, in closing, the Neighborhood Commission sees no clear benefit to the broader community, very real cost to city resources, documented negative impacts on neighborhoods.

Mm-hmm.

safety and quality of life concerns, and significant resident opposition. For those reasons, the majority of the Neighborhood Commission does not recommend changing the current law. We believe that maintaining existing regulations best protects Orem's neighborhoods, residents, and long-term interests. Thank you for your time, for considering our suggestions. Do you have any questions?

Questions for Amy or Reed?

Comment.

I'm just so impressed with both of you. You both presented such balanced feedback and respect for the other person, and we need more of that. So thank you.

Yep.

Yes, we're happy to be involved in any other things that you haven't related to this in the future. It's something that we care about.

We do, both of us. Thank you.

That's right. So, as Amy Green indicated, I presented a survey to the Neighborhood Advisory Commission to try to quantify or get some real good feedback for this group. So, issue 1 that I presented in the survey was what As the Neighborhood Advisory Commission, did they feel were the number 1 most pressing issues concerning short-term rentals? And using a word cloud, the number 1 responses were noise, parking, occupancy, traffic, safety, and enforcement. The 2nd issue was on a scale of 1 to 10— sorry, 1 to 5, 1 being low. 5 being strongly agrees with. How, how, how strongly do they agree that we should allow short-term rentals within the city? 71% of the group responded with a 1. So, my opinion strongly opposes STRs, with about 7% who were strongly in favor of STRs. Uh, issue 3, um, presented, um, with the differing options. Um, we had talked about maintaining the prohibition. We had introduced the, the working ordinance. Um, so giving them a spectrum of options, 64% of the group indicated they wanted to maintain the prohibition on STRs. With 7% indicating that they'd like to limit STRs to owner occupied. And with 29% indicating allow but heavily regulate STRs. Issue 4 kind of presented the idea of how do we address density? And so the neighborhood commission appeared that if we were to allow STRs, They appear to favor including proximity limitations between STRs so that you don't end up with 5 or 6 STRs in 1 cul-de-sac with 1 neighbor stuck in between all of the STRs. They also generally favored a 2-tier approach with the owner-occupied and the non-owner-occupied, with the owner-occupied Not being subject to those, the licensing cap, the number of licenses issued, and the density requirement. Then how comfortable were they with that 5,000-foot overview of the ordinance? 1 being low, 5 being high. 38% felt strongly uncomfortable with the regulations as I outlined them? 31% responded to 2, so still uncomfortable about them. 15% neutral, and 15% in favor, with none feeling that they strongly favored the regulations as proposed.

Okay.

And then number 6 was, are there any other concerns that haven't really been addressed in these presentations? And the number one overarching concern was, how, how are these enforced? What is the practical enforcement mechanism? It was the, the how, the when, the what. How do we get away from neighborhoods policing neighborhoods? How do we not escalate it to the police being involved? That was kind of the last concern that they had. So ultimately, To conclude, because I just have a few minutes here, is hopefully as staff, we're going to be seeking direction on how do we move forward from here? Strategy 1, maintain— maintaining a prohibition on STRs. Is that the direction council wants to go?

Yes.

If so, what does that look like? How do we clarify that prohibition so that there's a more readily understanding of that prohibition and how it's And how it's in play. How is it enforced? Are we more proactive in that enforcement? Are we going to stay on a complaint basis approach to the prohibition? Strategy number 2 is, do we continue trying to work towards a licensing program that tries to balance neighborhood issues and STR operators' concerns? And how do we balance those? What does that look like? The strategy 3 is, do we just chart a new course? Do we say, okay, there obviously needs to be more research done. There needs to be a new direction investigated. Does that look like only adopting an owner-occupied STR regulation? Does that look like looking at an overlay zone for prospective STRs that neighbors buying into that neighborhood then know that that's what they're buying into, as opposed to already having STRs in preexisting residential communities. So that's kind of the reverb at this point, is looking for feedback at this point.

Thank you. This has been very, very helpful. Question I have is, do we know how many of the 250-ish that we Think are out there. Do we know how— what percentage are owner-occupied versus not owner-occupied?

I do not have that numeric readily available. The way that we've reached the 250 is we've engaged in a number of conversations with prospective software groups that would help us enforce these. So they've gone out to the platforms to scrape the data, but they've not segregated it between owner-occupied and non-owner-occupied.

Thank you.

Council, any questions?

Thank you.

And we've heard from our residents, which I really appreciated hearing both perspectives.

Are we trying to hear from owner—

STR owners who are also residents? Are they okay with reading their feedback at all in this group?

Um, I've met with, uh, both, uh, the Orem Short-Term Rental Association a number of times. I've met with individual owners a number of times. So, yes, we're getting feedback. I've worked with a number of them one-on-one in meetings. As we've talked about regulations and what's palatable and what is not palatable to them. If this group would like, we could have them present or have them be part of a presentation in the future if you'd like.

And I don't know, to your point, but I mean, I've seen several of your presentations that you've given to the council, and I feel like you have included your discussions. as in those presentations. I mean, that's the vibe I've gotten from you, is that you're taking the feedback from them of the things that they would like to have in the regulation discussion. Is that right? I feel like you've implemented a lot of—

That is correct. As I've worked with the Orem Short-Term Rental Association and specific owners, we have changed what our working draft is. If you remember, when we first presented this, there was a nightly rental cap following what Sandy's provision was. Um, short-term rental owners and operators came out, they spoke at the, at the personal appearances, and I met with them individually. Based on that feedback, we removed that provision of there. Also, a number of individuals have come in and spoken with us about Creating a separate class or a tier for owner-occupied, and that was presented to this group, and that's how that has evolved. So we are trying to take input. We are trying to be collaborative. There are some issues where there might be more of a sticking point, but on others where, where we can reach compromise, we're trying to do so.

Question.

Do we—

do you have any numbers on what enforcement of poorly managed short-term rentals has cost the city? Like, for the time that it's taken, or anything like that?

We don't have a manpower hour of how many hours NIT has spent, or hours in consultation with us, or hours that we've done preparing cases. for prosecution and the time in the ALJ. I don't have that number.

I would actually like to see, um, since we have almost half of our council that's new, we have 3 new members, um, I would like to see if there's a way we can gather the data, the, the emails that we've received over the last year as a council from residents, from short-term rental owners. I mean, I think the— to Jen's point, I think the perspectives have been represented very well in emails to the council over the last years as we've been discussing this. I don't know, is there a way to— not only emails, but presentations to the council and the public comment? How could we easily gather that?

Yes, I have dates and times of different personal appearances that I've collected for other presentations. I can email that out to the group. I've collected emails and emails have been forwarded from previous council members. Um, I've got notes from my meetings with, um, different individuals and groups. Uh, happy to forward those. That's the whole reason that I was the point person, was to be the central point for this information so I could share it with the group if, if you'd like.

I have 2 questions. First, uh, how long has this been an item of discussion with the council?

Since roughly, uh, the fall of 2023.

So, 2, almost 2 and a half years, correct? Okay, and I'm gonna— sorry to put you veterans on the spot because I don't know the answer to this. I'm gonna ask, what was the disposition as you move through this, these discussions in 2024, 2025? What were you— what were the point of the focuses of the conversations within the council about this?

So my, my initial reaction was, why are we doing this? Let's just ban them all. I don't want a short-term rental in my neighborhood. And that was kind of my position, or my, at least my knee-jerk reaction. But then, after having received dozens of emails from short-term rental owners, I feel similar to Reed. I feel like there's a place and a way to do it so that it doesn't harm the neighbors. That's, that's got to be the first consideration is that we're not making someone's neighborhood or their home feel unsafe. We're not inflicting on them in any negative way. whatsoever. And so that, that for me is guardrail number one. Um, the, the other part of that is that, you know, after visiting with these people, um, I mean, we have a wide variety of— you have someone that is renting one room at home, and you have, you know, the, the other person that has a gated home, gated property. That has large groups, but everything's kind of self-contained on that property. So I guess as we've kind of moved along this path, I've— I'm not quite as, you know, I don't want these in my neighborhood and you don't want them in your neighborhood.

But I'm—

I've been willing to listen to the people that are on the other side of that fence. So, um, I do have a couple of questions, if I may.

Yes.

Um, do we know what the tax implication is? Do we know how many tax dollars we receive? Um, Amy brought up a great point, and that is we need to support our local hotels, motels. I don't know if we have enough to do that when we start inviting Ironman down.

And other—

these other major events are kind of part of our, our plan moving forward. So, so I have a question there. Do we know how many tax dollars we are collecting from short-term rental owners?

Number one.

And then the second question is, have we heard anything from the legislation about what they are looking at doing?

Right.

To answer question one, and Brandon, feel free to correct me, I believe in the last Last budget, when I looked at the budget, we received $220,000 in TRT funds.

Transient room.

So we received $220,000 in transient room tax. Now, that is not— that's everybody. I was gonna say, that's not just short-term rental. It's hotels, hotel, short-term rental. It doesn't divide it out in that payment.

Airbnb. So I, I do have the detail of who that comes from.

So Airbnb is approximately $65,000, $70,000. And I say Airbnb, that also includes Turbo, uh, others, uh, that are specific. Approximately $70,000. That $220,000 specifically related—

I would say it was specifically related to the—

Is that what—

is that okay? Is that what they're paying per Our zip code, then what they're registering, but we don't know if we're actually getting that for the percentage of TRT that we pay. It goes to the county, and then the county decides how much we get, right? Or do we get that automatically?

We get that from the Tax Commission. So transient room tax and restaurant tax goes to— some does come directly to the city, some does go to the county's transient room tax advisory But ours is specific, but that's documented that anything from rentals is paying is coming to us.

The county's not holding that.

Okay, that's been misconstrued. Did you have any other questions?

I'm curious about the legislation, what if there's any—

if there's anything currently in the legislature changes, or—

I haven't seen any open files yet.

There's one right now where they're trying to take away the residential exemption from Airbnb. Is that kind of what you're talking about? So the 45% property tax reduction for residential dwellings. I read that one right, Brandon.

As far as regulation goes, there hasn't been any bill file opens that would change potential regulations. Does everyone understand what was just said?

45%.

So every time when you receive your property taxes, if it's a residential home and you own it, They reduce your property tax by that 45%. If it's a commercial entity, they don't get that break and they pay the full property tax, the full valuation. Does that help you understand?

Yeah, I mean, and it can be a rental property that receives that. It just has to be somebody's residential property. Apartments get, you know, invest— people like Woodbury, all those apartments get the 45% reduction that goes to Woodbury. And the idea is hopefully using that to reduce the rent. that they're charging their tenants. It's not owner-occupied.

Since you brought it up, if I can just clarify, that bill is supposed to be revenue neutral, meaning that it shifts the tax burden away from residences to non-residential properties.

I think that's a different bill. Is that the same bill? The bill is the same as the Airbnb bill?

It's the same, is my understanding.

Is it? Okay. Yeah, but I mean, we all know— hello, shift it to the businesses, and what does that mean? That means You know, the jobs could be— there could be fewer people hired. There could be more bonuses given to the employees. You know, the businesses have to deal with that lack of revenue also.

My McDonald's burger costs 5 cents more.

Right.

Yeah, that would hurt me a lot.

Thank you so much. It was so helpful. And again, I think for most of us to get the high-level overview, how would you like us to provide feedback? There's a lot we could be providing feedback on, including some of these details, and I'm just wondering, how would you like us to convey that feedback?

I could meet with you individually, one-on-one. You could call me, or you can email me. Happy to meet however or wherever you would like.

Can I—

I'd like to answer your question.

Okay.

Okay. You're like, why has this been a 2-year process, basically? So I think what happened, and maybe I'll go to— I went to the first time I went to the Neighborhood Commission meeting when you presented in November. I sat down at that table, and it was really interesting. The people around the table saying, yeah, I stay at these. I don't have a problem. These are— I like Airbnbs or VRBOs, whatever. And then Jake made his presentation that showed the impact that had happened to homes and residents and, you know, citizens of Orem. And, um, we started seeing that just because I haven't had an experience doesn't mean there's not negative things happening.

Okay.

Um, and I think what kind of happened, what I'm remembering from the history, is it started with the goat house. And I remember just going, wow, I mean, this is bad stuff happening here to these— this poor neighborhood. Go back and watch those videos, those public comments. There was a lot of impact from that one Airbnb.

Okay.

So we started having those discussions, and we started— I really feel as the public discovered that they could Come to the city council to get a resolution, we started having more and more being reported.

So it was an education process, and just as people were learning more, they're feeling comfortable coming in.

Yeah, because, you know, you— and I think to one of the topics on your slide, I don't know how many times I heard, I just don't want to rat out my neighbor. I like my neighbor, but this is just untenable here, you know. So I think that was it. We realized we needed to take this very slowly. We needed to make sure that any legislation we put in place, we were counseled by our legal team to really be very deliberate in gathering information, surveying other cities, um, and really making sure that this was a very careful decision. So that would be my response. I don't know if other people agree with—

Yeah, it came about in a similar way, probably both comments that have been made. It was ongoing educational, more public involvement because it became more of an awareness.

Okay, and even to the rental operators, I'm going to represent their voice too here. You know, there were a lot that came in and said, but look, look, look at what we can do here. Look how we can work on it here and how we—

how—

what we provide here and how it helps us support our home. And all of those conversations, they trickled in, quite frankly. So that's probably—

yeah, there were lots of those conversations. And I think where I think I probably started more like Jeff, maybe we all started more like Jeff. We've had one of those in our neighborhoods. We really don't want to do that. And then we kept getting input from residents saying, look, this is how I afford my home. This is how, you know, I live next door. This is retirement. This is all the things. And we thought, okay, there's got to be a place where we can balance these 2 things. So the neighborhood safety has to be first, but also if these owners want to be able to do this for their livelihoods and their families, there's got to be a way to reconcile those. And I think the fact that there wasn't code really made it challenging when situations like the goat house came up. I think with code, we can point to the code. So that's what the code says, and it protects both the STR owners as well as the neighborhoods.

So, well, there wasn't specific code, specific code. So, I've been—

I mean, STRs weren't a thing when that code was drawn.

And I don't know that I'm in that camp because I was like, these are great. And now is— and maybe because I've been in the neighborhood commission arena a little bit more, the resident feedback arena a little bit more. I'm really nervous about how we implement this because I really do see how some of the comments that have been made is you're not charging a high enough— like your presentation, these are the fees, the first offense, you know, the second violation, the third. One of the comments was $500 for a violation. They don't care. They make that in one night. You know, they'll just keep violating. So that's why some of this really has to be careful, because the neighbors in these areas that have been impacted are done. They're fed up, you know. And then maybe there are some that we don't even know about. But at the same time, I just met last week with a gentleman who has one as an ADU and walked through it with him and you know, seemed like a nice, um, way for him to get some income.

So, well, thank you.

This—

can I ask one more question? Sorry.

Okay. And then, and then Crystal.

Crystal, go ahead.

Go first.

You're good.

Just gonna say, one of the things that we talked about at our January retreat was more input from citizens. Would it make sense to— I mean, we provided this survey for the Neighborhood Commission. Would it make sense to go Broader, cast that net wider to the city? Um, or is that going to cause all kinds of problems and we're not going to make any progress?

As I've seen other cities adopt, um, STR regulations, there has been a— because this is a big decision for a community, the idea to get the public involved is important. Because there needs to be feedback. Public needs to understand what the changes are. And so I've seen where there have been surveys used, and that is also used to help create the legislative history or record that helps support the ordinance. Um, can it go awry? Potentially. Um, ultimately, that's going to be a policy call, and I will defer to the council on that. But I think there could— there's pros and cons to it.

Generally speaking, we could at least look into it and reach out to, um, Ron Gailey with OnPoint for online surveys. In the past, I think one of the biggest difficulties is that I think Jake has, has approached this with the spirit of an educator and really professionally and objectively, and he's taken the time to be— to both listen and, you know, share some of the wants and some of the pros and cons. And then there's been a survey done, and after that, that back and forth. And so that'll be— that would be what we would lose or would be harder to achieve in a follow-up broader survey.

I think the other reality too is we've been talking about this for 2 years. And so I think the public has come to the meetings and they have come talked to us and they have sent the emails and they have participated, those who have strong feelings about it.

So bottom line is no one's going to be happy.

That's true.

That's the thing. Everybody unhappy, then you've done it right.

So one of the concerns that I have in following the legislature and a lot of the policy that they are trying to put on cities, it has to do with affordability of housing. Does short-term rentals reduce the amount of affordable housing we have in our, in our city? And does that drive up the cost of housing? Because now homebuyers are competing with investors for properties like this, and do we have data on what that looks like and how that's affecting the housing market?

I think it— I don't have the answer, but my own thought with this, but good question, is what I— as I hear anecdotally, owner-occupied STRs keep people in their homes where they otherwise could not afford it, whereas non-owner-occupied ones, I have had people complain saying that this is a neighbor That people used to be able to afford. So I don't know if we do have any.

So there is—

I can send to the council, uh, the Kem Gardner Institute has done this evaluation. Um, there are homes in certain areas— not homes, but certain cities, for example, Park City, Moab— they are hit particularly hard with short-term rentals where that is actively affecting housing stock. The Kemp Gardner's ultimate answer is, and it deals with other cities along the Wasatch Front, does it take housing stock? Yes, but is it significant? Their answer is no. But again, I can send that, that policy memo out.

I just asked for one clarification on a slide you did at the beginning. So you talked about there were some, um, um, cities that didn't allow short-term rentals in ADUs.

Correct.

So, was that a housing availability, a supply issue they were trying to control? So they had that housing availability.

I believe Draper instituted it where they are allowing ADUs as a resident use. They didn't want that housing stock to be taken away. As to other cities, I can't— I just remember Draper's.

So, did they allow whole houses then? They did, but not owner-occupied.

Okay, interesting.

Did they have any data on that? Why, or was that just—

I don't have anything further on that. Sorry.

Just a clarifying question to educate me. Um, obviously we are taking in transient tax from these properties, so, um, given that they're paying to the city, I assume that they believe that they are legally Recognized. I know that a lot of these short-term rentals also have obtained rental licenses, right? And they've come into the city and received licenses to do what they're doing. And so the perception then, I think, is that they have the city's blessing. Can you just clarify how we got there?

So, again, as we look at the state code, it really inhibited the city's ability to enforce some of these, which created some confusion amongst I think the general public at large, as well as, as departments here within the city. And the individuals came in and obtained a rental dwelling license. Now, if you were to read our code, our rental dwelling license is for long-term rentals, 30 days or more. And individuals came in and obtained those licenses. Believe that they were operating in good faith by getting a landlord license or a rental dwelling license. A rental dwelling license does not provide authority to operate a short-term rental within the city. We have since— when those licenses came up for renewal, we sent out notices indicating that a short-term rental cannot be operated under a rental dwelling license, because again, we've been trying to educate the public at large on this issue. So, yes, there is a perception out there that our operator was in good faith. We have a differing opinion than they do on the issue. We don't believe that they're actively acting under the city's authority to operate a short-term license, a short-term rental.

I appreciate Quinn bringing that up because I can see both sides of that. But if you are a resident who came and got a license to operate your short-term rental, and there are no specific short-term rental No rules on the books. I can see how you would think that you were operating legally, and I think that's a fair perspective for them to have.

Again, I, I don't— I'm not trying to invalidate their perspective. Um, I would maybe quibble a little bit with you on some of the wording. There was a land use prohibition on the books, and our ordinance does say that permitted uses have to follow that land use table. It's hard to find. Is it hard to see where that is?

Yes.

And that's why if we were to maintain a ban under that Strategy 1, we'd want to clarify that, make it more readily available and understandable that there's a ban.

So you're saying we don't have legal exposure?

I'm saying I believe that if somebody— if we were to maintain a prohibition, We would have a good faith argument in the court for that standing.

Right.

We've gone way over. Appreciate the discussion, though. And so what— you as a council, what do you want the next step to be? This has been really good because I don't know if we've all— I haven't had this presentation yet before. And so I think now we all— and some of you have a whole lot more Presentate. You've seen this probably numerous times, but I think we all now have this foundational knowledge together. And so, what do you want to do as a next step? We've heard some different, different things. I've heard a survey. We've heard let's gather more information. What, what is— what would we— what's— what should we do next? I know that you probably want to get like Get it done. Your retirement party will pass. I'm just joking. I'm just joking. I appreciate this.

Who started all this?

He had long bushy hair.

I had hair and I laid legs.

Yes. Well, I understand now. I have a much better understanding of how we got to where we are now. And I also understand those who have the, have the short-term rentals. I know that they would like a resolution soon of some sort, but I also know that, and that some of us are new. And, and so hopefully we can get up to speed quickly. So, Council, what, what would you, what would you like to do next?

I'm not in favor of a poll. We've been doing this for 2 years. And I, as I thought about that, that's just I kind of do like filling you all in on what we've experienced the past 2 years. I feel like you want to know that.

Yeah, I, I, I know what you—

I want to—

You know what I mean? Because you're going to get it again.

Yeah, I've been getting— yes, I've been getting some feedback on it. And so I just—

Did we not at one point, Jake, forward all of our emails to you?

Yes.

So we have that. Okay, so that's off the table.

So can I can send to all council members and the mayor the emails, notes. If you would like an informational packet, I can put that together.

Would that be helpful, council, to have that?

I'm sorry to ask this. I know this is huge, but, um, you know, the videos of the public comment too. There's a lot of pro and con there in those videos.

I know of several dates. Because I've already presented them, so I can, I can give you links to YouTube where those videos or personal appearances are, if you'd like.

Would they be in the minutes?

Would they be in the minutes? But I can also just— I also will just short circuit that a little bit.

Okay, okay, that's—

yeah, okay.

So what I've written down, and I really like Jake's analogy of, of that we're You know, staff are tour guides. I don't want us to be cruise directors, cruise captains. So we'll circle back with you to summarize and aggregate all the emails on essentially all sides of the issue. I think it would also be good for us, because part of the questions that I'm hearing is getting a better idea of the legal history and, and what's happened with our own legal analysis over time within the city, but also what we've seen from the state over, uh, the years.

Okay.

And then, um, yeah, we can, we can put together— probably more easily have one of our interns put together the, uh, links, personal appearances that again shows, you know, all sides of the issue, and then arming you with that information, then we'll follow up with you and, and, uh, start to see ultimately what's the goal.

Yeah, because these are different strategies.

Strategies.

So here's the next thing though that I think we need to do. So, and this was Amy talked a little about this, to this is you presented, um, actual ordinance, uh, Framework. So would you like us to then review a what-if, or do we want to— I'm not quite sure if we should talk about that, or do we get to where the vote is yes on this, no on this, yes on everything? You know, your, your strategy here. Do you want a choice here? And then if we say go craft this ordinance, then we start getting into the down and dirty with what it says. What would be most helpful?

For me, I think most helpful is, is knowing again, just the general target. So, are we looking at maintaining a prohibition and clarifying that? Working towards some sort of framework, and I can then clean up our working draft and have, have it be able to be distributed out to each council member and the mayor and start getting feedback that way. Or again, if there's, hey, let's go climb this other mountain. Heck with Timb, let's do Nebo. You can start those plans.

One comment.

I am feeling a sense of urgency on this because I think people have been in limbo.

So I think we've got months to solve this. And it would be really helpful, I think, for you, Jake, as well as for the rest of us, to understand how close we are to each other as a Council already. And so maybe some early feedback to you after we receive this public feedback might allow you to assess what the right process going forward is, because if we are quite close to each other already, then I think we can— move relatively quickly in one direction. But if we have significant differences, then I think we need a different kind of process to ease that out. I agree with that. Thank you.

Well, again, thank you for coming, and you convey our appreciation to the Neighborhood Commission for taking the time to wrestle with this. Appreciate them, value their feedback.

Appreciate the involvement.

Thank you.

Great.

Thanks, Amy.

You mean, it sounds so good. If I can just thank Jake and even our late staff for being excellent tour guides.

If they were taking me on a tour, at the end of it, you know how they ask for tips?

I would give the best tip.

Give that guy a tip.

Thank you, Jake.

About a recommendation on yield.

The next babble will— that legal.

I'm happy to move if you need it.

Thank you for being so patient as we, as we work through the short-term rental. And now we have our— I, I cannot— I apologize.

No worries.

About like 300 people, I People I've met in the last couple of weeks. So, introducing yourself and welcome. Like, you came in from— what state did you come from?

We're from Ohio. So we got here. I thought our flight was going to be canceled, but we were good. We couldn't make it.

So very happy to be here.

Welcome to no-snow Orem.

Yeah, well, we'll jump right in and thanks for having us today. We're going to give an overview of the Heart of Downtown Master Plan that we've been working on. We've got about 30 slides or so, so we'll try to go quickly, but feel free to interrupt if you have questions as we go. So I'm Matt Lazor. I'm our principal landscape architect at Designing Local.

I'm Jessamyn Metcalf. I'm a senior urban planner with Designing Local.

And we have copies of the plan. This is a draft, so we'll pass those around for you all to take a look at. And what we have today is an abbreviated version of the document just for presentation.

Format.

So we're going to walk through various elements of the plan and then have some discussion.

So, and you can go past 5. So if you—

Perfect.

Just so you guys are aware, we've been having several sample conversations the last 2 and a half weeks, I would say. So there's some content that we might— questions on recently that we know we're going to go into that draft document and kind of refine. And so we'll just kind of talk those things through as best we can. So the document in front of you has 5 main chapters. It has an introduction to the downtown that has our existing inventory of amenities, spaces, community demographics, data on how people visit spaces and what those kind of behaviors and activities look like, as well as the existing kind of connectivity network and spaces in the community. Chapter 2 is an art strategy. So that includes specific public art opportunities and community experience opportunities, as well as a set of public art guidelines for procurement, just to provide you guys with a process for anything that you might do in the district, just from our public art planning lens. Also, one of the recommendations that is made inside of that art strategy chapter is, as we think about CIP projects, in the district, perhaps dedicating 1% of that valuation to public art so that community identity is being folded into those new spaces.

What's CIP?

Capital Improvement Funds. So really looking at the public part of that investment, there's some private opportunities too. Sometimes we have private developers in public art planning that are also interested in including public art in their buildings because they know community members really respond to it. So I think that's another opportunity on the table. for you guys. Chapter 3 is our urban design guidelines, which we'll give a little overview of today. And then Chapter 4 is the conceptual design experience, followed by the implementation strategies to help advance that experience. Everything in this plan is really rooted in the vision that's come forward from our stakeholder meetings, from our conversations with city leadership, and that's that this downtown will be a dynamic, family-friendly, an economically vibrant urban core seamlessly integrating the arts, recreation, education, entertainment, and retail to forge a distinct sense of identity for residents and visitors alike. It's grounded in 6 main goals, which is to establish the downtown as the heart of the community, heart of community activity and identity, to create a dynamic and family-friendly environment that goes beyond just one destination in one day, but more of like an 18-hour, 7-day Kind of place for the community. Enhancing community identity and sense of place, not just through great civic spaces and great public realm enhancements, but also through arts and culture. Improving the multimodal experience. So really looking at walkability, connectivity, cycling, transit opportunities, those types of things. And then 5 is driving economic development investment. So we know that this is the economic core of the community, and what we're recommending here, we hope, really supports supports that. And then guiding future development. So just some suggestions for how future private development or streetscape projects can support the experience.

So this is the overall plan, and we have a very detailed list of elements on the left, which we'll get into more detail as we go through the presentation. But we really want to develop a full program, design program, for all of the various things that we've heard through this process and how those start to shape out on the site. So the site plan on the left, again, we'll go into that in more detail, but there's really 2 elements that are kind of the key parts of the plan. One is an arts ice ribbon, which is just outside the pool, and that's framed by some community amenities. And then the other part is an arts village, which is basically a loop just south of the pool and that ice ribbon. So we're going to go into a lot of detail about all of those various things. We also have some improvements to the park itself. And then we're proposing a boutique hotel on privately owned parcel on the corner of State Street and 720, which we think is a use that really complements the Arts Village and some of the other programming happening at the Arts Center. So we'll go into detail on this as we go here. But first, we understand site plans are hard to understand what's going on on the ground, so we wanted to provide some renderings. So this is a view of the ice ribbon during the summer. So the ice ribbon is basically a concrete piece of pavement that then can be frozen and has mechanical equipment built into it so it can become an ice surface in the winter. So during the summer, it can still function for rollerblading, roller skating, those types of uses to activate the park. What we're showing on the left side of this image over here is a new concession building that would serve both the pool and the ice ribbon. So that really activates that edge of the pool and that space in the park. And then we've got a number of amenities— seating, planting, lighting, various features that make this a really nice space to be in. In the winter, the ice ribbon is great for skating, obviously. We have kind of the ribbon itself, which is a linear pathway. And then off to the side, we're showing kind of a lower traffic area where folks can get out. And if you're just learning to skate, you can do that off to the side. We're showing a number of small shelters, which were referring to as cabanas. So those can be rented for small groups or families, and you can have a place to kind of hang out throughout the day. So as you're experiencing this, you can get out of the elements and have a place to sit and relax. This zooms back a little bit from the ice ribbon. So this is a second-floor view of what we're calling the civic anchor of the project. So this is a building that would have various community uses on the 1st floor, like some space to hang out, almost like a lodge-type environment.

Mm-hmm.

They'll have some concessions. It would have skate rental, all those types of uses. And then on the 2nd floor would be the— an event rental space. So you can have an event of up to 250 people. So that would be like a holiday party, a wedding, even a small conference to activate the space throughout the week. So this is a view showing that event center here on the 2nd floor. So we're showing just kind of an idea of what a building could look like. But this starts to show the scale and the kind of type of architecture. So it would be a 2-story building, might have some unique architectural features. And then we, along that pathway of the Arts Village, have additional seating, maybe a space for a small performance. And just various places to sit and people watch and enjoy the experience. One of the core things we heard a lot about was connecting the Arts Center to Sierra Park in a more direct way. So our strategy for that was to improve 720 into a festival street. So throughout the week, this could be open to traffic, but it would have a lot of amenities that would slow down traffic And really make it a much better environment. And then parts of that street could be closed for farmers markets or other events, still allow access to key parts of the, of the, of the whole district, but really making sure that we're creating a great pedestrian environment. So, we've got brick pavement, lighting, street trees, all kinds of amenities that make that a much better pedestrian space. And then one of the things that we talked a lot about was better supporting festivals and large community events. So in this view, you're seeing some vendor tents, food trucks. We widened some of the pathways so that you could support some of those types of uses. And then in the foreground here, we're showing basically what would be a stage that could support smaller bands. So these types of bands wouldn't compete necessarily with events at the Shell, but you could have kind of day-to-day uses or event usage with that. And that stage would also be a multi-use pavilion. So during the week, you could sit at a picnic table and hang out. You could still rent that out for kind of personal use as well.

So we mentioned that one of the main goals of this plan is also to help guide Additional areas outside of these conceptual projects in terms of the character and identity and kind of amenities and public realm quality that community members want to see. And so we looked at 3 main street types throughout the area, one being like a main street, like State Street type street typology, a neighborhood corridor. So thinking about Orem Boulevard and Tiger Way as those transitional streets between the retail commercial core and into the residential areas, and then a destination street being 720 South. So an area that's really community activity events, kind of recurrent programming, those types of things. The 4 kind of street concepts that we propose that would be, you know, encouraging future development and streetscapes to kind of fall along these types of standards include State Street here at the top left. We're not actually adjusting anything between the curbs where the driving and parking lanes are right now. We're leaving that kind of flexible to respond to, you know, future transportation planning or community needs. What we found were the biggest concerns of stakeholders is what the pedestrian experience is like. So what happens from the curb to the door of retail spaces? And so we're looking at taking your existing setback that is. 15 feet beyond the right-of-way, and not just encouraging buildings to be set back that far to allow for great sidewalk and pedestrian space and amenities and placemaking, but also encouraging architecture in the future to pull forward and keep a consistent build-to line so that we have architecture consistently at that 15-foot setback so that that public experience is really consistent and rewarding for people walking down State Street. When it comes to Tiger Way, one of the things that we heard a lot about was the love of cycling in the community, but also that bike lanes may not serve everyone. So a shared use path that follows the western edge of Sierra Park could be really beneficial for the community. What we've done is, again, maintain the exact same right-of-way in lieu of one lane of parking along the park's edge. provided a larger green buffer and then brought that shared use path to the inside of that. So it's completely protected, and it starts to feel more like a park-like experience as compared to, you know, your typical cycling lane. On Orem Boulevard, again, not much is changing within the right-of-way besides consolidating the 2 directions of bike lanes together so that they can be pulled inside of the parking lane and maybe have a higher visibility. paving treatment so that it feels a little bit safer and friendlier for cyclists. And then with 720 South, we know there's some existing residential on the northern edge of the park that has a certain setback that's a little bit wider, as you might anticipate in a residential area. And so what we're looking at to again keep that experience consistent for people is providing a high level of curbside uses in that 25-ish foot setback. So that could be future restaurants and retail having outdoor dining, circulation space, plaza space, those types of things that are complementing that festival street. So this experience really feels like the pedestrian kind of takeover of that street can spill into these spaces and then transition up into the arts village and the park. And then other improvements just include additional overhead lighting, a little bit more organization to the parking and mid-block. Block crossings to support the festival street. And then this is a rendering to show the existing condition along Tiger Way and what it might look like with the shared-use path following one edge. In addition to the multimodal enhancements across the various streets, we also know that the park is a really important piece of connectivity in the area. And so Matt's going to talk a little bit about how the widened circulation patterns are going to support events, but they also support multimodal use of the park. And so there's the opportunity to bring in more bike racks and water fountains and those types of things that support cyclists coming into the park to spend some time. In addition, we're also showing that shared use path. Far eastern edge of this site plan. And A, although it's a short street, we would want to encourage cyclists to use the full lane there because we see it as a slow-moving street and we want people to feel like they can be really comfortable being in the street. In addition to streets, we were also looking at architecture. And while we know a lot of the larger-scale architecture would probably be privately developed, what we're really looking at is how we can encourage the types of character that you guys want to see. That's going to complement existing architecture in the community. One of the things that we heard from community stakeholders is that there wasn't a really clear architectural identity in the area, not a clear kind of era or idea, but that there were some landmarks like the Shell, like the Arts Center, like the mission-style building that currently houses the Historic Oval Preservation Society. And then we also know that the building that we're in today is a newer building. That all kind of show a similar architectural rhythm. So a lot of verticality, opacity, grand entryways. And so that's something that we think architecture in the future in the area could mimic. So when it comes to form, massing, and composition, nice vertical straight lines, big entryways, tall windows, those types of things. And as buildings get taller, as a lot of our deco architecture tends to do, you could step back the upper stories so they have terrace space. Or that backspace, so that presence on the street doesn't feel quite so monolithic. When it comes to materials and color palette, we wanted something that would complement the natural setting of the park and the mountain backdrop, but also allow for contemporary architecture to be, you know, interesting. And so we're showing some things with color, but that do play well with some earth tones. And then when it comes to architectural detailing and ornamentation, Ornamentation. We know that not every new building in the area would have a high level of ornamentation, but key architecture like the Civic Anchor or like the Boutique Hotel might play off of some of these material choices or detailing.

All right, so we're going to talk a little bit about a potential way to implement all of this. So we're going to get into a little bit of Costs, but in a little bit more detail of those various planning areas here. But before we do that, we just want to talk about some benchmark projects that we've looked at. So when we develop cost estimates, we try to look at recent projects that have a similar scope and scale to what we're proposing, and those help us inform some of our cost estimating. So just a couple here. The top project is an ice ribbon that was built Spokane. This was a 2014 project, so it's now about 12 years old. This included some architecture, and all in, this was about a $9.4 million project.

This—

the middle one is a little bit more local project here. This was a much broader site development project, but it had similar types of program as well as a building. That was about a $36 million project. And then The bottom example is a project that's more local to us in Ohio that was recently built, and it's had a great opening, and it's been very successful so far. It's got a nice ribbon, a couple of pieces of architecture, and that was about a $38 million project. So just to give a sense of some relatively recent projects and their costs. So we're going to go into detail about each of these phases. But generally, in terms of phasing strategy, The red circles are the first phase. So that would be the Ice Ribbon, that civic anchor building, and the concession building. From there, the second phase would be the first part of the Arts Village. The third phase would be the second half of the Arts Village. Then the fourth phase would be a lot of park improvements to support festivals and events. Fifth phase is kind of building out a potential tertiary space in the park for additional Event support. And then the 6th phase is Tiger Way, which really is independent of phasing strategy. It could kind of be built at any time, but we're saying that's the 6th phase. Altogether, this is a long-term project. We're saying it's 15 to 20 years to implement all of this. If all the money was available tomorrow, it certainly could go faster, but we know that's not realistic. And so we're looking at development horizon of 15 to 20, something like that. And we also know that not all of this is going to be built by the public sector. So we wanted to think about potential public-private partnerships and/or privately funded projects as part of the strategies. So what you're seeing here in blue are all the publicly funded projects. Those are mostly public realm type of projects or park projects. And then what are— what we're showing in red are mostly those various kind of retail-oriented, like the boutique hotel, some parking, and some of those retail and residential uses. And we'll talk about that in a second as well. Okay, so we'll break down each phase a little further. So Phase 1, as I mentioned, includes the Ice Ribbon. That civic anchor building, and then the concessions building. It also includes relocation of one of the play areas to the north. So we'd really be consolidating the 2 areas into one location, which we heard was something that folks really wanted anyway, because the visibility and kind of connection of those 2 uses. So all in, that's about a $23 to $35 million project, something like that. So. comparable to what we were just showing on some of those previous slides. The second phase includes the first part of the Arts Village. So you see these buildings here, those would be retail on the ground floor and then a couple floors of residential above that. So about 2- to 3-story buildings framing that pedestrian space. We're also showing that boutique hotel as part of this phase. That's on a privately owned parcel, so we're kind of encouraging that to be the use that would be proposed and developed there. And then this phase also includes a new parking garage. So we know parking is going to be something that we're really paying attention to. We're adding some uses that will create additional parking demand. Talk a little bit more about that in a second. But we understand that a garage probably is going to be part of this project. With the garage itself, we don't just want the garage facade up against 720, which is our Mary Street. We want to line that facade with architecture. So in front of the garage, we have a first floor of retail and then a couple floors of residential above that. So when you're walking down 720, and we just built this new Festival Street, you're being— you're seeing architecture on that facade and not the parking structure. So the third phase gets into the construction of 720. So you see that illustrated here, and then the remainder of the Arts Village. So one thing to note, we are proposing some townhouses on the side here. So those townhouses would have like a retail space on the ground floor, as well as garage parking for the individual townhouses, and then living space on the 2nd and 3rd floor. And we feel like those could be focused on arts type of residents. So it really supports the uses in the village. We'll keep going into Phase 4, which is really the kind of infrastructure to support events and festivals. We do think a potential need for another garage on State Street would be part of this. So this would really create the remainder of the parking that's needed for the project. And then we'd be creating a 16-foot-wide pathway to frame that central green space. And that 16 feet wide is a purposeful choice so 2 vehicles can pass each other and set up farmers markets and other events and have some logistics that are all already kind of built into the park. So that was something that we talked about and we really felt was important. We also have some proposed improvements to access to the Shell. So we know that there's a need for better ADA accessibility to the Shell. And then some better just logistical access for vehicle loading, so on and so forth. So we felt that that was really important in this phase as well.

Also, we wanted to highlight, so the entryway into the Shell, we're also looking at like shaded queuing areas and that type of thing. So the experience coming in the Shell is a little bit better. And then on the western edge on Tiger Way, that kind of feels like right now it should be the gateway into the park, but there isn't really a plaza space or a feature there that kind of points towards the Shell that creates that sense. And so that's something that's also being considered as part of the Shell improvements.

Phase 5 is really kind of a, like, an additional support space for events. So if we have a really big event going and we need another kind of pavilion area, that's what that northern lawn area can do. So that's another kind Kind of day-to-day picnic area. But if we have a really big event, then we can support another small performance in that northern space. And we've talked a lot about Tiger Way already, so we just wanted to show what that could look like from a cost standpoint. In the plan, we've got a summary of all of these phases. The estimates that we're providing are the public cost of those. So we're not really factoring in private development costs into this, like the boutique hotel, for example. We're not providing a cost estimate to build that. We're just kind of looking at the public share of that. And we've heard a lot about parking. So we wanted to do an existing parking inventory, which includes all the existing parking lots as well as Tiger Way. One of the key strategies of the plan is to relocate this existing parking area to— it's kind of located in the middle of the park right now. We want to push the parking to the edges of the park to the extent possible. And then we are omitting some parking areas as part of the plan and then replacing them with some of those garages that we talked about. So, all in, we're adding about 547 spaces total. We're looking at your zoning code, and we're coming up with a need of about an additional 640 spaces. That's just the straight zoning code, not a shared use strategy. So we're about a wash in terms of the total number of spaces that we're adding versus what are required. So day to day, we're gonna be pretty good with parking. If there's a big event at the Shell and there's a Really busy Friday night going on, we're not going to provide all that parking on site, which is kind of the existing condition currently. So, so that was our general strategy at the moment.

So also, as this is kind of like an economic core of the community, we wanted to take a look at how some of the uses that we were recommending in the area would help support bringing in some revenue to help support project implementation. And so in the recent financial model been run, that's considering property tax, sales tax, population, ticketing and concessions for the ice ribbon, skate rentals, all those things, RAP tax to the county, municipal energy tax revenues for commercial and residential ticketing, sales, concessions, cabana rentals, retail space rentals, civic anchor event space income, and creative incubation space income. We're looking at like $38 million based on those projections over the course of 20 years coming in as That doesn't include ground leases. So we are showing some private developments on existing public land, or maybe there's future public land that's acquired that then has a private use on it. So that could yield another 5% of that land value back to the city annually. So that's not included in here, but might be part of the, the land use strategy as well. And then this funding breakdown isn't one approach that you guys can take. Funding might come from a variety of sources, but just to take a look at some of the things that are being examined, like the property tax, the potential for ground lease, if there were to be a TIF or a special assessment area to help support project implementation, the various revenue streams mentioned, and then the potential for state, county, federal grants, which are a part of projects like these pretty commonly, municipal capital improvement funds that might be dedicated to this project. And then also knowing that we have some great public uses coming in, the potential for philanthropic support, sponsorships, naming rights of things like the Civic Center, the ice rink, and the bandshells, those types of things kind of make up what a potential capital stack might look like for project implementation. And then so everything that we're really presenting to you guys with the additional content that was included in the book that we can't go over for time, really is trying to reinforce this vision for the heart. And so I guess we should open it up for questions.

Yeah. And we're happy to backtrack to any slides if you want to talk about those specifically. But thank you.

Thank you. Council, do you have—

Well, I have a list here of things that I'd like to chat with you about. I don't know if this is the appropriate time or just some—

Yeah, I should say, so we wanted to provide you guys with a hard copy of that book. We're not expecting you guys to turn around feedback immediately. We want to give you guys a healthy feedback window, and we can do additional one-on-one Zoom calls or take email comments too. So if there's anything that you feel like can't be conveyed during this meeting because of time, I, I want to continue to have like open-door conversation with you guys to refine it.

Because I got some— I was on the Arts Commission previously, got some feedback from some of those folks. Love your ground leases idea where we maintain The control of the property, but we lease on a long-term basis for revenue purposes. Yeah, so maybe it's best if I just email.

Yeah, that would be great. I'd love to see the feedback from the Arts Commission.

I would— when was it, 2 weeks ago we had a Zoom meeting? That was very helpful. They presented a lot of this to me, so I would encourage that if you have time to spend.

Is the Zamboni shed next to the ice rink?

It's the—

it's within the concessions building.

So yes, that was the one thing we found at Harriman that was a—

it was strange.

They wish they would have put it closer.

Yeah, we walked around on Google Earth and they were like, they've got a distance to cover and those things do not move that fast.

You guys did. I couldn't tell from the picture, but you did.

Mayor, they've done a fantastic job and it's been a pleasure to work with them. Things like this move quickly. I remember in Provo, if we had started working on the rec center a year or 2 later, there'd be a lot more pickleball courts in it than there are because we were so far down the road and pickleball blew up. And I think, Bryce, if I— You know, kind of punt over to you. Ideas are coming up all the time that they haven't focused on, and one being a carousel. out in the area, and that's something they haven't had time to really look in. There's some, uh, I think, Bryce, was it St. George?

Yeah, and not Carousel, it's the Miro Go-Round.

Oh, Miro Go-Round.

I apologize.

Thanksgiving Point has one.

Yeah, Thanksgiving Point has one. And, and I don't think we gave that feedback until, you know, yesterday, basically.

I just think that's a great activation use as well. So we can incorporate that into the final plan.

And I bring that up because if there are some ideas or things that you think of, it's like, oh, I haven't thought about that. They would love to hear that kind of feedback from you.

Yeah. So, when you've been in town, have you been able to talk to others about or present information besides us?

Just as—

Yeah, we had a session just before this, and we probably had 25 other city staff members in the room. We also have—

Planning Commission members.

Yeah, Planning Commission members. And we had a few questions come out of that too. I think their biggest questions they wanted to see kind of refined as part of this is how we're enhancing some of the existing community gathering spaces like the Sierra Shell and that band shell, which is taking the place of the pavilion, providing that same use, but then also allowing bands. So just making sure that's really clearly laid out in the plan that that's just improving upon what you guys have and reimagining it. Other things that we heard?

We talked to Adam last week as well.

Yeah, at the Sierra Arts Center. He's really excited for opportunities to potentially partner in the future and what that kind of southern portion of the area could look like as an arts campus, what other complementary uses could come into that space, especially things that could act as a gateway into 720 South. or coming up Tiger Way. And so he's really interested in talking through in the future how those things might go. And we really wanted to emphasize too that the types of experience opportunities that we're recommending are really to complement the programming that they're doing. It's not to be competitive with the Sierra Shell or with what's going on inside the center itself, but just to make this feel like a complete activated space 7 days a week. And so to lean into the assets that you guys already Thank you.

Any other thoughts?

I think it's beautiful. I know when we first showed it to the arts people, they wanted to do a— what did they call it, Pete? Like a roving musician.

Oh yeah, troubadours or—

yeah, yeah.

I think we have a troubadour in the arts building.

Yes, so fun.

Beautiful renditions here too.

There he is.

There's your true partner.

What feedback have you had on pavilions?

You know, because there's a lot of pavilions there now, but this plan looks like it's taking most of them out.

So the cabanas are going to serve some of the similar functions as the existing pavilion spaces. I think there are some areas where maybe the existing pavilions aren't shown on the site plan, but they could stay. They're not in conflict with some of them.

Yeah, especially on the northern side of the park. But yeah, the pavilion that we're showing that would replace the existing large pavilion that's there, we really see that as recreating that, but it can also function as a— to support a band or an event. So it's just kind of rethinking that, but providing the same functionality that's already there.

Yeah.

Well, we had a similar question in the last meeting too about just generally like picnicking areas, outdoor dining. So we're looking at At least having the same amount of picnic areas and outdoor dining. But in addition to this kind of plaza area, the civic anchor that could have tables and things like that, you could go inside of one of those small kiosk vendors and get something to eat, or you could pack your own and use this space as well, because we're really envisioning it's like a great public plaza.

Is there a possibility of moving like 4B up north? Because I know there was a concern that if something was happening at this shell, you couldn't double schedule. You couldn't schedule at the same time that the mini shell or mini shelter was—

Yeah, there's another one up north. Is it the same size? 5B, you are going to be a smaller one.

But yeah, this is a good—

I almost wonder if that 4B is problematic based on when we saw the one out by the Bee Stadium. That looked way cool. But if you have a band there, you're not going to be able to have anything in the shell. They'll conflict.

Yeah, that's a good comment. And we'll think through that. We may end up moving that to your point. And I think we need to clarify too, like how you would schedule something. So if there's something going on at the Shell, there probably wouldn't also be a performance in the park. I think we would, we just probably need to clarify that.

And/or that could be where the Miro go-round.

Right.

The only other thing, and this is feedback from the community, I don't know if there's a way. So parking is on the outside.

Right.

I wish kind of we could figure out, and I get that because it kind of adds to the ambiance and doesn't interfere when you put it on the outside. But we do have residents that have significant disability needs. And so some, just a little mini ADA parking lot in the middle. I, you know, I don't know if that ruins the look, but can we figure out a way to actually be space above?

Because like what Matt's kind of pointing out is we created that drop-off court kind of for that reason. So this drop-off court and then that area where 1D is are meant to provide additional ADA pathways and bring that parking up north. So it's a little bit closer to the shell. But I think some additional ADA spaces in conjunction with the drop-off court could be possible. But that was one of the things we're trying to think through is so you could drop grandma off right at the event.

Right. Yeah.

Or walk down the parking garage steps.

Is there anything else, Gary? Anything else? Thank you.

Thank you.

Again, I apologize for the late start. Yeah, yeah, glad you're able to meet with others. And yeah, thank you all.

This has been a wonderful project to work on.

I'm really excited.

Thank you.

Right, you've been doing a really good job of taking a ton of feedback and listening and being open and so solutions-oriented with this.

Appreciate it.

Yeah, I don't know if I can close. Take a break for dinner, but before we do, I'd ask Council Member Gale if she could offer a blessing on the food.

Thank you so much.

All right, thank you.

Well done.

Now help us find the money.

Thank you.

Our dear Father in Heaven, we thank thee this day for the opportunity to gather together as council and staff to help our city become the best it can be. We're grateful for the resources thou has blessed us with and for the skills and talents and abilities we have to serve. We thank thee for this food, and we ask that you please bless it, and please bless thy spirit to continue with us throughout this day. And we say this in the name of Jesus Christ, amen.

These are your places of sports ability? Okay, sure. Let me add some light. Um, like, really, they just— my aunt died, my uncle just turned 91, and so he sold it to It's so much fun.

Yeah, I knew it. I can't think of it.

Tomorrow, right? Oh, yeah. It just says you've got a request from— Isn't that exciting?

To hit into.

Suspended from God.

Talk to Ryan, he can make it way more enjoyable.

Right, you make that happen. I get shocked. Just, you know, then selling your soul to him to happen. All right, like, sure.

Sorry to interrupt your dinner, but I wanted to cover this, and then hopefully we'll be done with council meeting before we all fall into a coma after that. Burrito was huge.

It was good.

Thank you.

We still have one item that I wanted to bring up during our work session. I, I see it as a continuation of, of our discussion at the retreat about communications. Um, one of the things— first of all, I want to express my appreciation to all of you as, uh, council's You're navigating new— almost all of you are navigating new assignments. And that can just— that can take some time and some adjustment. And I appreciate you doing that and representing us well with the different boards and commissions as their liaisons. I had an issue come up that I need some advice on because as I understand it and as I read the code with boards and commissions, That I— the, the law says that I make the appointment with the advice and consent of the city staff. That's the part of the law.

And that—

Before that, there's been a policy or a tradition. I don't know what— I don't know what its actual form is, where The city council representative to a particular board or commission makes recommendations for replacement, reappointments and replacements to me, and then we go through the process outlined by, by the law. What we had happen this year is with one of the commissions, there was some confusion as to when certain members started and when other members— when they— when their terms were starting and when were they appointed and when were they reappointed. And so that was going— that was happening through the fall and in through December, and it was not resolved before the end of the year and the change with, uh, the members of the new members of the council and the new committee assignments. So there was that piece that happened. And then also at our retreat, we discussed the opportunity for more residents to become involved. involved in our boards and commissions and felt that 2 terms was great, and that would provide someone ample opportunity to provide service on a particular board or commission and would not be appointing people to a 3rd term. That's my— that was my takeaway. So what happened was with this commission, we kind of had this Some people in limbo. And then as we went into the new year with new council assignments, and you'll see on the agenda this evening that we have a combination of, uh, it's our Transportation Advisory Commission. You'll see on there that we have some reappointments to it, and then we also have some new appointments to it. The reappointments were from the past year in 2025. And so what I would ask for your advice or counsel as, as I make— work on making decisions on who serves on what commission, is if there's a reappointment process already happening, if somebody's term ends— is ending in December, let's say.

Mm-hmm.

Do, do we have the prior— in this particular case, it was Jeff. Do we have the prior council members make those, make those recommendations because it's, oh, it's been going on through the year? Or do we have the new council member if, if the— if it changes? In this case, it was Lynette, where she is now the new city council rep for the Transportation Commission. I just need some guidance from you as far as what you think we ought to do with that. I don't think it's going to happen a lot, but when it does, it can create some confusion. And so, and I'm easily confused sometimes. So that's, I just was wondering what your thoughts were and what you would like to do with that.

Mayor, I, I should also say that there were some, uh, mess-ups in regards to what was on our boards and commission website that we were trying to clear up as well. So we've also got McKay here if there's, if there's improvements that we can continue to make. the software. And, and if you, you as mayor and council have noticed any other mistakes or potential mistakes that we need to look into, just want to proactively offer that we want to keep improving and make it more accurate.

So what should we do? What do you think?

And I'll speak to that specifically, kind of to fill in what happened. Um, because of this confusion with appointments, reappointments, When I was given that assignment at our retreat, I was approached by a staff member that said, hey, we have a meeting scheduled for February. We want to have our full commission then because we have a special guest coming.

These are the people we need replaced.

So then I started interviewing, calling, and then was surprised to see an email that said I'm appointing these people. For that commission.

They were—

that was already— then I found out that had, you know, started before. My suggestion would be, um, in that particular case, I actually feel like, um, once the assignment has been made to the commission, then the other council member who had something in process should call the newest— newly assigned council member and explain what was happening. and say, this is now your decision to continue with that or go your own way now that it's your commission. Because we had 2 problems here. We evidently— and this, I don't think this will happen again.

It's very— I think it's gonna happen very often.

We had people who were told they were, I guess, I don't know, that they were possibly to be reappointed. And then I had committed to people that they were on the— going to— on the agenda. Um, so that was just very awkward on all sides.

Yeah, I can just describe the other side of that coin. So we've been— we knew that there were some clerical issues back in the fall, and so we had started trying to work our way through that. Yeah, in fact, I was trying to get them on the agenda before I knew that we were going to be— last year I was trying to get them sent. Jake's recommendation was that we— because there were still some questions about when their first term ended, and so that got pushed back. And through that process, they had applied. It was very good to help the application process. So they were all, you know, thinking that those things would happen in December. And then the thought was, well, we'll catch the first one in January. And then we find out that we have a change in assignments. And so it was just— it was kind of a perfect storm of a lot of weird things.

I was just going to say it was a perfect storm of weird happening just because there was confusion on when terms ended. So I appreciate—

Which I think turned out okay.

It turned out okay.

What we have is we have people who, on the commission anyway, who have finished their first terms but— and want— needed to be reappointed to the second, which they're on here. We had people who had inadvertently, because of errors, appointed to a third term. Probably should not have been because our historical precedent is 2 terms. So I believe it was well received here.

Yeah, it's—

I actually talked to one of the individuals today. So I think it turned out okay. But I think to your point, you know, the question is, When does the transition occur?

I'm not trying to look for problems because in my life, problems, they all come to me.

I need to go look at them.

Another point, had we been on top of it, and I say we, I'm pointing at me. So 2 of the terms ended in April. So if they would've been reappointed, it would've been reappointed in April of 2025. The other one was in February 2025. So this would— it would point— it would happen just because we didn't know what those dates actually were. Just kind of—

And I think these are actually going to line up with those should-have-been dates. Yeah, right.

Yeah.

And so, yeah, I think it's— I think it's great how it is, and I think I do have one question about Marlon Coe. The last I heard, that was still up in the air where his term was at.

I talked with Marlon today, actually not too long ago, and he—

We didn't know if he had done 2 or— well, okay, you go ahead.

Anyways, he knows he's not going to be appointed He's okay with that. Uh, he's actually interested, and I talked to him about Planning Commission because we're always looking for possible candidates for Planning Commission. And he'd had some trouble getting on the website, and I got an email that came in. I was going to dig into it, talk to McKay, but before I could talk to you, McKay, uh, I got an email that said his application came through. And then I called him him back, and he had actually applied for Planning Commission. He's in that pool now, looked at for Planning Commission.

Well, that's a little bug in the system that you got the email that he was approved for traffic.

No, no, an email that he had applied for Planning Commission.

Okay.

And that's how the system's supposed to work.

System with the traffic. Anyway, Teresa is going to take care of that. We chatted about that because it sends an email when you try to pull someone's application. Like, one of the people I interviewed had moved out of state. When I called her, she's like, I don't live in Utah anymore, go ahead and take— remove my application. So when we tried to do that, um, it then sent an email to, to y'all, um, and John that said they've been accepted on the traffic system, and then they were pulled off. So there's just some glitches. I think this is a great portal, I love it, but there's just some little— the same sign-on problems. McKay, Someone else with that? Then we just— I think, you know, it's doable.

There's a handful of things. One thing I think might be helpful for council members, and I know staff, is if I go to, say, the Transportation Advisory Committee, that there's a button I can press and it'll export things to a spreadsheet for me or something so I can see everybody, their names, and when they're—

Maybe we should have that as a work Session agenda item.

Some training.

Some training on that.

Training on how to navigate the portal.

Okay with that.

Council.

Okay.

Having asked on the same page, some of these things that sound wonderful are pretty hard to do. So I think we've— Carrie and I have talked about that a lot. If you don't mind, Mayor, I just wanted to mention too, McKay's team has done a great job on this, and it's expected when we have a new software that there'll be a little But I think we come up with— you come up with the great ideas, then McKay can scope out how much it would take to make these in action, and then you can decide whether or not it's worth that time. And give us the training.

Yeah, I mean, I think because I've had calls from people, other people not part of this situation, that were like, hey, I would really like to apply, but how do I do that? And you send them to the website and say it's really easy. But sometimes when they're older, really easy translates differently. So yeah, I think if we could be— if it were really easy for us, then we could help them through that process as well. So my case is not getting buried.

And we talked about maybe not doing a social— I don't know if Pete, have you done a social media post asking for—

Okay, last week.

Okay, I don't know how many we got because I saw a few arts ones come in.

You got hurt. I don't know if people have—

Not that I've heard.

No one was like—

Some had the resume thing. We already asked about that, Kurt.

So I had that.

All right. Well, I'm glad we got that. I'm going to go back to the original question. So I'm going to throw out an idea. If somebody isn't reappointed, for my sanity, if somebody isn't reappointed by that first council meeting in December, if we— how do you feel about just saying, let's let the next person handle it? Let that next one handle it. Is that something that would be okay with, with all of you. Again, I'm not trying to make a— have a solution for— trying to come up with a— what is it, a solu— problem? You have a problem? Yes, because, um, but I, I just— there was some confusion and then there were some extenuating circumstances on that. So if there's nothing else on that, I'm going to move on to our council agenda. Looks like we've got— thank you. I don't know which council member got our invocation, inspirational thought, and pledge, but thank you And then the mayor's report. Um, I'm going to— at that time, I'm going to turn over to Brad just because, uh, Senator Stratton needed to cancel, and he has a message that he wanted to share with those who may have come to get an update and then for us as well. And then we have our consent items, approval of the meeting minutes, and then a reappointment, appointment, reappointment, appointment. And got some good people. Appreciate their service and being willing to serve on these commissions. Then our scheduled items, we have a public hearing. It's the rezone for 1750 South Geneva Road from OS-5 to C-2. This came before the council in December. And was continued in order to have a development agreement put in place, just specifying which uses. would be allowed. Actually, the ordinance, the development agreement says all uses except these uses. So, if you look at the development agreement and you see those uses, those are not the uses that are allowed in the zone. Um, it's the ones that— those are the ones that are not allowed.

I noticed there were 2. There was a list that included, uh, along the same items on the list, but then it also had Um, construction companies.

And also, there was one list that had 11, and there was one list that had 17, and I called Steve Earl about that, and it seems like it was an old development agreement.

Yeah, it's the longer list is the one.

I assumed that was the case, but I just want to make sure that we make it.

Yeah, I think we all had the same question. I think that was my understanding. The one that That is not— it looks more like with the— I'm going to say the one that's sans serif is not the one to use. It's the other one. The one that's typed.

I went and double-checked, and the one that's been signed by everybody is the one with the 17 exceptions.

Perfect.

So that's—

we uploaded the wrong one. Yes, but the resolution and the report of action have the correct in it, and the signed development agreement has the correct.

Thank you.

Thank you. And then we have our financial summary, um, city manager items, and then we're going to go to adjourn to a closed session. And so that's our agenda for this evening. Let me go back to, um, item number 2, city council reports. Do any of you have anything you would like to raise for information or discussion in this, in this meeting?

I have something. Crystal and I got to attend kind of a pre-meeting with the events and some things that they had talked about that we could be talking about, one of which— which is, this is a big deal, it's like the parade— we want to do something separate, get our own cars? Do we want staff to get cars, the community to get cars, or do we want to write in something altogether as a council?

Oh, do we have to decide that now?

No, no, that's why I'm saying putting it out there because it causes a lot of stress.

They also would like a, a decision sooner rather than later because they are planning for—

or just in here, Chief Sanderson would like— it's my first year on the council. We all sat on top of a ladder truck.

Pretty cool.

I think about 500 degrees up there.

And those of you who knew—

I don't know how many of you knew Judy Bell. Judy, she, she was up there. She got up there.

A little water mist everybody off.

So we've done that.

We've done horse, horse and wagon, and the horses got spooked, and that was adventurous.

Um, we will only accept safe ideas.

Bryce is having a heart attack as we speak.

Horses on top of the ladder truck.

I love it.

That's too creative.

I want to ride my own horse.

That's what I want.

So we need to come up with—

do we—

when do they need that information? Soon, it sounds like.

Sooner the better, because yeah, they have to—

if—

yeah, they just need to know what direction. So I, you know, I think if we knew by March, You skipped impact fees on the agenda.

I did what?

Oh, yes.

Oh, I'm so sorry. Thank you. It was not some subliminal— it was not something my brain— I don't need to go talk to a therapist about missing that. I'm just saying, I just totally spaced out. Public hearing impact fee discussion. And so we're going to be— oh, I needed to ask a question about that. Uh, Ryan, when we talked, you said that we're going to need to have another— tonight we're going to be deciding which number, and then so we'll hold the public hearing in relation to that number as we, as we discuss this presentation, and then it gets drafted, and then does it need another— it needs another public hearing?

Come back.

and hold a second public hearing just to cover our bases.

Okay, wait, wait, wait.

I asked Steve if we had to decide tonight.

He said no, you don't have to decide tonight.

You—

we're just— so we're not asking you to make a final decision. We're asking and hoping for some direction, um, as to what level of impact fees you would like to adopt, and then we can take that and bring it back.

Bring it back.

But if you—

if you're not ready to give that direction tonight, you can take additional time.

Okay, so, well, I'm okay if we get—

because I'm just anticipating we might get some additional feedback after this is in our meeting.

Sure, sure.

You know what I mean?

And you can give direction tonight and then change your minds later on too. That's not set in stone.

Okay, okay. So what I was wondering, is there a sweet spot? The— with the public hearing, if I am to open the public hearing, what kind of discussion— I mean, can we continue the Public hearing, or do I have— or do we have 2 separate public hearings, or can I just make it one public hearing?

If you're not ready to give direction tonight and you want to continue it to another meeting for further discussion on that, then you can just continue it. But when we actually bring back the ordinance to you to adopt, we will need to have a separate—

A separate— so I can't continue this public hearing to include that public hearing?

Correct.

Okay, thank you.

All right, there. You feeling better, Ryan?

No, thank you.

It was not personal.

Councilman Lamson asked if there's a sweet spot. I am going to refer to our city manager on that question.

In my opinion, um, uh, last time when we went through this, we came off of the maximum because it was the first time the city had it, and then it's been several years since we've done an update. Because it's been several years, the amount we could increase it has gone up a lot. So I guess, in my opinion, if we're around what our sister cities are doing in terms of average or in the ballpark of them, that's a— that tends to be a safe place to be. But also, I would suggest that you consider That we set kind of a phased approach in the subsequent years so that we don't face this problem again in 5, 6 years later.

Like, legally?

Yeah, can you put that in?

A lot of work.

Can you put it in statute that the city council has to address it every 2 years?

Do we put that in our ordinance?

You could.

Or just say that each year or every 2 years it goes up. First, can we automatically do that?

I think you can do that as long as the amount that it's increasing to are still below limits of what—

Maximum, up to the maximum of—

You can start with that 58% and then gradually step up until you get to within that, within the up to 5 years, and then you have to reevaluate again.

Yeah. Yes.

I think that's a good tiered approach. Do you recommend that, or do you think Because inflation varies from where you are. You can have a non-inflationary year, and yet you're— we're stuck to a 5%, 10%.

If we had full control of the fee and full control of noticing, and we could treat it like all of our other fees, I'd say let's deal with it more on a year-to-year basis. Impact fees is just so heavily regulated, and we have to do these in-depth studies by an independent, you know, consultant. That's why, that's why with impact fees specifically, the suggestion is— Because we could even do it something more set in—

Is that—

can you hear me?

Or—

so we could even do 10%, a 10% a year until we hit that, that maximum amount that was in the report. Because that's the maximum, as I understand, that's the maximum we can have for the 5 years from now. For the next 5 years. So just bring it up by 5 or 7 or whatever percent till we hit that ceiling.

Exactly what that percentage or timing is, it's ultimately up to us. We would just have to define it for the actual amount.

Have you seen them done by COLA, using COLA, cost of living indexes?

I think that would be problematic because then it's not fixed and definite. I think when you're adopting impact fees, you probably need a definite amount. Otherwise, you're going to need to do a public hearing and go through that whole process when you want to change that amount. But if you, if you're setting it, it's in stone, even though you're increasing from year to year, I think you're okay doing that.

So, in other words, it can't just be a percentage.

It has to be a dollar amount.

Okay, that's helpful.

Thank you.

Any other questions on that? Any other— whose birthday is it? It was yours on the 22nd, and who—

21st.

21st. Happy birthday to Ben. You want us to sing to you?

No, you can't sing to me.

Well, happy birthday, Wes.

All right.

And it's like 22 feet around. And is that circumference?

And it—

our home was built originally in 1930.

So the tree's over 100—

the tree is over 100 years, and that's right where the new— if they widen 100 East, or when they do any future road widening, the sidewalk will go right through the middle.

So we're fighting the—

we're fighting the willow tree. Roger did a—

he did a survey showing the—

that—

hey, sorry to press you.

Wow.

I know.

Look how sharp you look. Oh, I always wear Charlie Brown orange. Really? All the time.

And Mary, Mary just says she can't go out in public with me.

Where are you pointing right now? Where are you looking at me? I don't. He's retired.

He's just here for the—

he's doing fun stuff. He's retired. Yeah, this is on property. I have it under contract, so I'm going to develop it.

I know your house. Yeah, I'm doing the smaller piece out toward the road.

It's a triangle, it's got 3 sides.

Yeah, good spot.

Yeah.

But next week I'm a fair way to go. I'll be in St. John's next week.

Yeah, you got that too.

Fortunately, it's happening.

I see. Oh, thanks for us starting here.

You're after like public— yeah, okay, that looks like a Yeah, this is my, uh, 69th date.

That's Tess.

Good to see you. Glad you're doing well. I keep an eye on you.

You had a great morning.

Are you on this?

No.

Well, yeah, I am, but I—

right, 20 years ago.

Hey, so Chris, when are you going to start doing those roads?

All right. Oh, there we are. Hello, everyone. Welcome. Glad to have you here this evening and appreciate your being interested in and being part of, of city work and city service. We'll go ahead and have our invocation, inspirational thought by Scott Wiscombe, and after, after Mr. Wiscombe, we have the Pledge of Allegiance by Brittany Wiscombe. Thank you, Mr. So I'll turn the time over to you. Thank you.

Our Father in heaven, we are grateful for the opportunity to live in Orem, for this great city, and grateful for, uh, the mayor and city council and all the, the workers and volunteers that help keep our city moving and growing and progressing in the right directions.

We pray Thou might bless us that we might be able to, and all those working here, that we might be able to have good decisions and to help and continue to protect our city and to continue to make it a great place to live.

And this we pray in the name of Jesus Christ, amen.

Amen.

Please stand and join me in the Pledge of Allegiance.

I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Thank you. Appreciate you. All right, next item on the agenda, I'm going to turn it over to our city manager, Brandt Bybee, for an update.

Uh, yes, Mayor and Council, uh, Senator Kevin Stratton wanted me to apologize that he wasn't able to come to this particular council meeting. Um, he, he obviously is at the beginning of the state legislative session and had, uh, a lot of demands accumulating on his time, but he wanted to make sure that I pass along that coming and meeting with you all in a council meeting is, quote unquote, of, uh, the highest priority for him. And so we're already in the works of working with him to reschedule for him to come to the next available council meeting.

So, all right. Thank you. I appreciate the update. I know that, that Senator Stratton strives hard to represent our good community, and I know he's hard at work up at the legislature. Thank you. Right, we're on item number 8, personal appearances. So I'm going to read this. Time has been set aside for the public to express their ideas, concerns, and comments not scheduled as public hearings on the agenda. Those wishing to speak are encouraged to show respect for those who serve the city. Comments should focus on issues concerning the city. Those wishing to speak should have signed in before the beginning of the meeting, and to please leave you— limit your comments to 3 minutes or less. So first we have Chip Anderson. Good evening.

Good evening, Mayor. Thank you. All right, as the mayor stated, my name is Chip Anderson. I am an officer in the College Republicans at Utah Valley University and an Orem resident. Before I address the contents of why I am here, I would like to include the memory of my late grandfather, Lieutenant General Edgar Ratcliffe Anderson Jr., who served as the 15th Surgeon General of the United States Air Force, who returned to his Heavenly Father last Saturday. My papa understood the values of history and the constitutional principles that make this quilt made up of people from all corners of the world work, being held together by a firm thread, our Constitution. He is why I am here, and to ensure— he ensures that the foundational principles of this nation endure for many generations to come. On January 14th, outgoing UVU President Astrid Tuminez assured the public, including many of us Orem residents, that the state of our city's public university was strong. However, I beg to differ. Since that fateful September afternoon, clubs such as Turning Point USA and the College Republicans have faced censorship and institutional bureaucratic resistance from the administration by using tactics such as barring on-campus tabling and events, to asking college students to pay tens of thousands of dollars for private security security, even when UVU employs 23 uniformed law enforcement officers. My club has seen our engagement shudder to near zero. However, throughout our forced exile, organizations such as Decline to Sign and affiliates of the Democratic Socialists of America and Liberate— and the Party for Socialism and Liberation have been freely allowed, spotted, and caught vandalizing Our city's campus. Before I move forward, I extend my thanks to the Sierra Theater for their hospitality in hosting our December chapter event. This is not about partisanship. This is not about left or right. This is about the largest public university in the state of Utah, where over 80% of our graduates stay right here, directly influencing our state economy through their connection to our workforce and may even serve as our state leaders, such as House Majority Whip Candace Perucci, former president of my chapter. I am aware that a UVU community outreach coordinator sits on this council. We as a community must protect this egregious violation of the First Amendment, and we must remember that Charles James Kirk— husband, father, son, patriot— was taken from this earth while exercising a right that was understood to be inalienable. unalienable by our Constitution's framers. Future leaders such as myself need the opportunity to engage in issues affecting Orem, Utah County, in our beautiful state. I'm excited to work with you as a council to propel UVU into an even better place, to truly become Orem's Mecca for education. Thank you.

Thank you. Please accept our condolences With the passing of your grandfather. Thank you, Mayor, and look forward to having you participating with us as we make Orem awesome.

Absolutely. Thank you so much.

All right, thank you. Next we have Aubrey Wilde.

Hello. Okay, I'm Aubrey Wilde, and this is Charlie Largie, and we are community advocates for the Ruth Theater. In an effort to elevate the arts, the Ruth is spotlighting our great city of Orem the week—the first week of March, second through seventh. So what does that mean? This is for the city of Orem, Charlie. Would you mind? Theresa, here you go. We have some VIP tickets to be enjoyed by the mayor, city council, or any city employees that you choose during that week. So you can book your tickets online via the code on the back. We would also love to include a tour for all of these members who attend. If we can go on the same night, wonderful. Charlie and I can lead the tour. We may have the Hales or someone Wensens or Woensens there as well to answer any and all questions that you may have. So we also sent out an ad to include in the newsletter for other city communications that all Orem residents get $5 off of their tickets using the code OREM5. So that is live for everyone in Orem, and you get to use that for 6 tickets per order. And the shows that you to choose from that first week of March is Forever Plaid, Fiddler on the Roof, and even a junior production of Finding Nemo from the Academy students. So let's get our plaid blazers on, let's just keep swimming, and enjoy new traditions with the Ruth Theatre. Thank you for your time, and we are excited to see you soon.

All right, thank you.

Thank you.

Appreciate you coming this evening, and thank you Thank you for the tickets. I just have to say that I— if you haven't been to the, to the Ruth and in their new theater, it's beautiful. And I have, and I've loved the plays that I've seen there, but I have a soft spot for the youth ones.

Yes.

They're fantastic. It's— I did not, but I see Finding Nemo with my granddaughter in the future. So thank you. All right, next we have Sherry Solberg.

Thank you, Mayor and council members. Um, I'm here because I'm deeply troubled by being told that my short-term rental has been illegal from the beginning. That statement has caused me significant distress, not just financially but personally and to my reputation. Before opening my Airbnb, I did exactly what a responsible resident would do. I came to the City of Orem and asked what was required to operate legally. Based on the guidance I received from city employees, I made substantial investments to comply, including widening my driveway and renovating my home. At no point was I told that operating an Airbnb in Orem was illegal or prohibited. I acted in good faith, with integrity, and in reliance on the information provided by city employees. To now be told that I have always been acting illegally is deeply upsetting. That message implies intentional wrongdoing, which is simply not true. I take pride in being an honest, respectful member of the community And I strongly object to being characterized otherwise. This issue has real human consequences. After my husband left very late in our life, I was left trying to figure out how to stay in my home, and my Airbnb income— it's what has allowed me to remain there and maintain financial stability. Having that suddenly threatened, especially under the implication that I knowingly broke the law, has a profound impact. I want to be very clear: I want to comply. The other hosts that I know also want to comply. We're not asking to operate outside the law. We are asking for fair regulations and due process. Regulations that are clear, transparent, and applied in a way that does not punish residents who acted in good faith based on the city's own guidance. Fairness and due process matter. Retroactively labeling residents as illegal when they relied on city direction undermines trust and places an unreasonable burden on people. People who are trying to do the right thing. If residents cannot rely on what city employees tell them in order to comply with the law, then it becomes impossible to operate in good faith at all. I respectfully ask the council to acknowledge good faith reliance and to consider the real human impact of this situation and To work collaboratively with current hosts toward a fair and lawful path forward. Thank you for your time and consideration.

Thank you. I'm going to look over to our city manager and our city attorney. Oh, there he is.

Hello.

We thank you, Ms. Solberg. We had had a discussion, quite a long discussion, about about short-term rentals and understand your frustration. And I don't know if you want to give an update of where we are right now in the process.

And I mean, we, we absolutely, uh, appreciate the ongoing feedback and input, and, and we have been encouraging the public to, to come and make sure that their voices are heard as we continue to look at this. And of course, we've wanted to be very— take things one step at a time, eyes wide open, and bring back all feedback and input to you as a council as you grapple with what is sure to be a difficult situation, and that we've seen many cities across the state trying to grapple with in recent years. So anything else you'd add, Steve?

All right, thank you.

The conversations will continue.

Conversations will continue. And I, and I understand your frustration and feeling that you've, you've done what you followed, your good faith effort, and, and then this. I do see that there are a number of other individuals who are going to be talking about the same topic, so hopefully we've, um, helped address that a bit. But next we have Cherie Sherry. Sherry. Okay, I apologize.

Oh, where'd he go?

I will also be speaking— is this working? I will also be speaking about short-term rentals. I'm going to read this so that I make sure I stick to my time. According to my research, Orem prohibited new accessory apartments in February of 2003. In In 2012, the city began moving to reauthorize accessory apartments by amending its zoning code and general plan to allow them again, undoing much of the earlier prohibition. The Orem City Code was updated in 2012, Ordinance 0-2012-0034, to reestablish permitting for accessory apartments. According to the Orem City Code of Ordinances, Under the section titled Accessory Apartments, which being defined as being internal, attached, or detached, it states that accessory apartments shall be allowed under the following circumstances: 1, allowed in the original construction; 2, owner-occupied; 3, must provide off-street parking; 4, must be in compliance with building code; 5, must have a separate heating and cooling unit. 6, must obtain an accessory apartment permit from the Development Services Department and comply with requirements. This is not all of them. These are just the ones that I wanted to emphasize. There are more. When we decided to finish and rent our basement as a short-term rental 8 years ago, we went to the Development Services Department for information and were given those above requirements, which we met. Short-term rentals were a relatively new thing back then, and no concerns were raised. We had an understanding from the city that we were completely compliant with the law. We have paid all taxes and fees associated with this agreement on a yearly basis. We live in a cul-de-sac, and we've never had any complaints from neighbors or anyone else. It was not until 2 days ago that I heard through a third party that apparently there was some law in place since the '70s banning short-term rentals. I don't think there even were short-term rentals according to today's definition back then. I submit that we, along with hundreds of others, as well as the people working at the city, were acting under the impression that we were completely in compliance with the law. For the last many years, owners like us have acted fully in good faith, going directly to to Orem City, disclosing our use, asking what was required, and then complying with every requirement we were given while filling a real need in the community. In multiple cases, the city has confirmed by email or direct communication that our operations were compliant and legal. We ask that you take all the information being submitted tonight on this topic into consideration as you make decisions going forward.

Thank you. We will.

Thank you.

Absolutely. Thank you.

And right, Mayor and Council, we do have Jake Summers here as, as well, and, and he's available to receive ongoing feedback also.

And, and, okay, okay. Those of you who have come to, to speak to this at some point in the evening, that's Jake, and he's handing out his business cards. So, um, love to have you connect with him. But we're going to go on here. Thank you, Bryn, for that. Gary Havens.

Sorry, short-term rentals again.

Uh, so I'm frankly surprised this is an issue because when we moved here, we, we built a house here 3 years ago, 2022. Went through the approval process. We've got an auxiliary apartment in the basement. Talked to everybody at the— through all the approval process. They said, you're great. And I said, we're going to rent this short-term. They said, perfect, you pay $50 and that's your annual fee to be short-term rentals. And so we did that. When I— when we chose to move here to Orem, One, one of the reasons was, is that we could rent, uh, our auxiliary apartment as short-term rentals. Uh, not being able to do that, we, we would have chosen a different city to live in, but we liked it here.

They—

the city told us we could do it, and so we did. We sold, we sold another short-term rental we had up in Eden, invested that money to the little one Yes. I've got a 1-bedroom apartment that I've got underneath my garage that we rent as a short-term rental. It's a great little place. Got 2 little off-street parkings right beside the house by the rental. And it works perfect for us. We can rent it when we want to. We don't rent it when we don't want to. And that's exactly what we want. I wouldn't rent it long-term. Wouldn't do it. Seen too many problems. I can't get people out, can't collect rent. The people are in there. I can't inspect it as much as I want to. I get to go in there every few days. I get to clean it, make sure that it's taken care of. I don't get to do that in the long term. So the short-term rental is what we've wanted, what we wanted to do, and that's what we've got. And I think You know, we live in this— we live in a community, and sometimes, you know, there's issues that come up between neighbors and, uh, you know, different, different problems. Um, but those are people problems. Uh, the same problems that people complain about with short-term are the same problems you complain about with a neighbor that has 6 cars parked out out and they block the street. They have a party and you don't particularly like it. They're the same problem. It's a people problem. It's not a property problem. If there's an accident with a car, we don't blame the car. You blame the driver. And so, I would just ask and say, government's a blunt instrument. And I would I would hope that, you know, it's just never made sense to me that the rights of law-abiding citizens are forfeit because somebody else abuses theirs. So I'm not illegal. I was told I could do exactly what I'm doing, and I'm doing exactly what I was told I was All right, thank you.

All right, next, Kim B says— oh, okay, the rest is best. Okay.

Yes.

Hello, um, good to see— I know quite a few people here, and I'm grateful to short-term rentals. Um, my wife did a wonderful job of presenting what we've done. And all right here in Orem City, passed all the permits, crossed all the T's, dotted all the I's. And, and I want to, I want to focus on, um, the, the punishment of restricting Airbnbs and, and what it hurts. There's hundreds of hosts like myself who have, have done exactly As that, like you have described, we, we, we provide short-term rentals. We've converted our basement into a beautiful space for people to come, and, and that is a great service that we provide. I don't go to hotels. I don't— I mean, when we travel, we do Airbnbs. That's our preference. And so you're not only— when you restrict You're not only hurting us who are— have been here and under the law created this beautiful space for people to stay, and, um, that you're hurting us, but you're also hurting all the tens of thousands of people who come to Orem. And you're taking away— if you, if you restrict that where they can't have a place to stay, then you're restricting it to they have to get a hotel. And that's not fair. That's just not— people choose— we choose Airbnbs 'cause we like the experience and we want a full-size kitchen. There's all sorts of things that we want and the amazing things that we provide. We have over 1,000— we've been open, we have 2 Airbnbs, over 1,000 5-star reviews.

Wow.

reviews, over 1,000, 4 or 5 4-star and nothing below that. And people rave about their stays. They rave. So we're— they go to a hotel, you got— you're boxed in. I mean, people don't rave about their stay at hotels in Orem, but people rave about our— their stays in, in, in our Airbnbs because it's a beautiful experience. And that's what we provide. We provide a service. And so by restricting, by restricting Airbnbs— okay, my message is not, um, regulate. Regulate, not restrict. Because we are regulated. We follow the rules. We don't have any neighbor complaints. Zero. We follow— you you follow the Airbnb rules and the VRBO rules, there's no parties, there's no parking where there shouldn't be. So address the issue by regulating the problem and not wiping away tens of thousands of people who come here their choice to choose. Thank you.

Right, thank you. And it looks like the last person who's going to talk, uh, would like to talk about nightly rentals is Jeff Good evening, council.

My name is Jeff Harris. I'm an owner of Casago. We are North America's largest professional property management company for nightly rentals. I have a lot to say on the subject, and I only have 3 minutes. Going to focus on one particular tract. With over 15 years as a professional operator in California, and Utah, specifically Anaheim, California, Park City, Heber City, Sundance, and Orem. I have served on several city-appointed communities and community advocacy groups in both California and Utah, assisting cities as they navigate what can be a complex and sometimes emotional challenge. I'm here again to offer my assistance and expertise to the city and the citizens of Orem to craft a solution that is amenable and enforceable to everyone. It is my experience that banning nightly rentals in a city where it is at best ambiguous If legal permission was granted to properly operate a nightly rental property is a slippery slope and will likely end in a difficult and expensive lawsuit where precedent indicates a ban will not be upheld. It is also my experience that working collaboratively with home— collaboratively with homeowners on both sides of the issue, as well as city staff, to craft a workable and enforceable solution is the highest and best use of everyone's time. I am happy to share how we have done this in Anaheim. And more recently in Heber City, just up the road, anytime. I will say that it is possible with creative approaches that take into consideration not only those with valid concerns against, but also those with valid reasons for, to craft a solution that can protect homeowners, neighbors, and the city. This is not rocket science. It is complicated, but it is a solvable problem when reasonable people work together. 3 minutes is not enough time to outline a comprehensive path forward, but it is enough time to argue that banning is not the solution, nor is creating a box that all circumstances should fit within. There should be levels of consideration, potential variances, and rules and regulations surrounding these approaches.

Such a—

such an approach is reasonable, measurable, and enforceable. Thanks very much.

Thank you. All right, just appreciate— I, I know you've got, um, we've got one more person here for personal appearances, but it's not about nightly rentals, so I want to just address this very quickly. Make sure you contact those of you who are here to talk about that. Jake Summers in the back, in our work meeting, he was tasked to gather past public comment, and I would appreciate your public comments to be compiled with that.

Thank you.

As well as we move forward. One of the, one of the things that's happened, as you can see up here on the dais, is that we have a new— we have 3 new faces here who are trying to quickly come up to speed on this issue. I know that there's been a lot of research, there's been a lot of conversation, and appreciate the work that has been done in the past. And so we're looking, looking to work as quickly as possible to come up with a solution. So it's important that you get your information to Jake so We have that. We'll have it in the minutes, but if you have any other information— Jake, can you raise your hand back there? He's back in the back. You probably have— all of you have probably seen him or met him already. I would appreciate that to make sure that we have your thoughts on that. All right, last person on here is Mike Christensen. Welcome. Thank you.

Okay, they obviously have more pressing concerns than I do, but if I may, um, when I, when I came to your mayor, when I came, well, and the, the councilors, the council, uh, council members, um, excuse me, when it came to that meeting, that the end of that, um, the inauguration that's having traffic trouble. And I said I was gonna watch that, the parts I missed later. I still need to get around to it. I'll do it. But, um, I— and, and then when I was telling you guys that it was, you know, just a few days before that, Utah celebrated 130 years of, uh, of being a state. Um, I said I was gonna come to Your first city council meeting after that, and then the gremlins got inside me and I forgot. So I mean, I'm glad you record those. And I was like, well, come to their second one.

All right.

So here we are. I'm glad you guys record those and I'll watch them. But I want to say, even though not all of my candidates won, and it's kind of funny because I thought they were going to, and then at the last minute minutes switch. But still, congratulations to you guys. Um, and Mayor, like I said, I've— we've talked this on one-on-one, but I want to make it public. I wanted, um, Magic Mayor to have at least one more term, but after that, I would have been happy to have Mayor Karen here. Anyway, I'm still happy that you're here. Um, you're gonna do, you know, a great job as the new mayor, and you two new councilmen Members, I, I'm thinking you're, uh, gonna do a good, great job as well. Now, I'm sad that, um, Magic Mayor Dave left without even finishing completing the, um, the contest, the name the new, name the new big clock contest. So I'm, you know, maybe you guys will pick that ball back up and deliver us a winner. Um, I've been kind of wondering what happened to that. I sent in the name of— some of us sent Walter Clock Orem. It's like, oh, great minds think alike. I also think came up with Miro's Watch, but the mammoth's watch, right?

Yeah.

So if we can get that back going, I would love to see who the winner is. One more thing then. Welcome back. To Orem government, Mayor, uh, Karen, and, uh, but this time as the new mayor, and welcome the other 2. Um, thanks for, thanks for being here. Have a nice night. I'll stay for some of the other stuff just for fun, and I yield my time.

Just for fun? Yes, you're gonna impact fee discussion for fun? Yes. You know, Mike, I'm glad you're here, and I'm grateful that we've had a chance to visit, and I thank you for your well wishes for me and my, and my new colleagues as well. So thank you. And I think Mr. Wolfley over there would be— I bet his eyes just lit up when you talked about Mero's watch, because he's, he is like Mr. Mero over there. So, all right, thank you. And that concludes our, our public personal appearance.

May I do one last one?

You came late, did you? You came in, did you?

I came late.

Okay, because, um, we typically just have, have you sign up here, but you know what, you came here, I saw you come in. Um, keep it, keep it really short and come on up. Just give us your name and the city you live in, please.

My name is Brian Lazo. I live in Orem, Utah right now. Next to you. I am a future husband and father in Utah County. I am also a Christian who goes to church every Sunday and Saturday. Last November, I voted for Dave Young, and I voted for him again because he represents me and the values, traditions, and goals of this city. Dave Young is a represent— representation of myself and the vast majority of Christian conservatives in this city. On January 5th, I saw you and your friends in office get sworn in. Among many things, you attempted to redefine what it means to be Family City USA, mentioned thoughtful stewardship over taxpayer dollars, and most egregiously said you don't have a mandate from the citizens of Orem due to the close election. 5 minutes minutes walking distance from where I live, Charlie Kirk was tragically assassinated at the UVU courtyard by a radical progressive that I feel represents the same dangerous ideologies you do. From there, we've seen the radical left to make more progress in this country, and Mayor Mamdani was recently sworn in as mayor of New York City. Mrs. McCandless, your mayoral seat is nothing other than a microcosm of the spread of the dangerous ideologies of the left manifesting itself in local office all over this country. While I admire the track record of Jeff Lampson— sorry— and Lenee Millett, I fear that the rest of the city council represent the exact same ideologies you do as mayor. Respectfully, I love you, but Mrs. McCandless, you don't get to redefine what family, city, or Orem means for the citizens. You don't get to consider so-called minorities and people in need first before the patriotic citizens of Orem. Last, you do, you do have a mandate as a public servant to lower our taxes, increase public safety, and make our lives better. The younger generation has not forgotten about Charlie Kirk, and we will stand for the values he represented Whether or not we have a mayor like yourself. Thank you.

All right, thank you. All right, Council, um, number— item number 9, um, we go ahead and have the consent items. We have the approval of the meeting minutes from December 9th, 2025 and January 13th, 2026. Uh, we have a reappointment, the the Library Advisory Commission, Katrina Brittner. I think I— you're—

are you here?

I was— if you're here, if you could raise your hand. Love to match a face with the name. Transportation Advisory Commission appointment, Todd Covington. Uh, and Tanya is— okay, Doucette.

Doucette.

Okay. Reappointment Transportation Advisory Committee. Okay, I'm I know, Jay, I'm gonna slaughter your name.

Priz—

say it loud.

Let me say it.

Laura Redford and CJ Meacham. And then an appointment to the Advanced Advisory Commission, Madison McArthur.

And let me make one clarification on item 9.4. This is a reappointment to a second term that is effective the day after the first term expired.

Yes, thank you. Yes.

Yes, this is—

yes, they graciously have continued to serve until we got them reappointed. And so their second term will begin back where their first term— when their first term ended. Thank you for that. So those are the items on the consent calendar.

I motion to approve consent items.

All right, we have a motion. Is there a second?

Second.

All right, thank you. A motion and a second. All those in favor, please say aye. Oh, do we do roll call? Oh, that's right. Okay, I apologize. All right, we'll start down here with Councilmember Lamson.

Aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Aye.

All right, thank you. The motion carries. All right, now we have— we're on items— item number 10. The first item is 10.1. It is a public hearing for an ordinance to rezone for 1750 South Geneva Road from OS-5 to C-2 with a development agreement. Turn the time over to Mr. Jared Hall, our planning manager.

Thank you. Uh, thanks everybody. Let's see. I'm supposed to use this clicker now.

Not used to it.

There we go. So hopefully that goes well. As you said, this is an application for rezoning, a zoning map amendment technically we call them, and along with the development agreement. This was seen by the Planning Commission and Council recently, the end of the year last year, and when the Council reviewed it, they felt like there ought to be a development agreement to mitigate impacts of the C-2 zone that was being asked for in this area that's somewhat still rural. And because of that, they've come back forward. We rescheduled 2 public hearings. The Planning Commission saw it recently and recommended approval to the council along with the development agreement. This is at 1738 South Geneva Road. You can see the area here. Part of the reason that it's up for rezoning or the rezone has been requested is because of new Roadways that are going to be put in place. The rights-of-way have been purchased and will be developed soon and will isolate this piece from the rest of the property. It's no longer very usable for the farming that was done there before. Um, it's not actually— the remainder piece is slightly less than the 5 acres that would be required for a home to be sited on it under that OS-5 zone that it currently is in. So that's the reason for, um, the rezone request. Um, this is The project's concept plan that was done by the Washburn Group to turn this into some flex retail space or develop flex retail space there. The concept plan has 6 retail buildings. There's multiple units there that could be used for lots of different things. The rezone request is from OS-5. That's low-density residential, 1 home on 5 acres, and some cultural uses, agricultural uses. As we mentioned, it's carved down to 4.43 acres by these roadways. The C-2 is a retail-focused commercial use. It's our most common— it's our most commonly assigned commercial standard use. It has a lot of different— a lot of different uses that are permitted, including some of those listed there: auto sales, restaurants, shopping centers, business and personal services. The reason for the development agreement that was proposed— that has been proposed— was to limit the number of uses that could limit be permitted those further to help sort of mitigate the impacts of that new zone being put there to further limit the uses. Um, there were, uh, there was an initial list and then a subsequent list that included a few more items. So there's a— I can't remember how many is on one. There's a 17-item list here that would be the— these would be further restricted from, um, the uses that are normally allowed in the C-2 zone. So, uh, we included those extra lists, and I was gonna bring you a 3rd list just to confuse things more, but I didn't want to do that. So, uh, the list that we uploaded, an older copy of the development agreement, so I apologize, but the one that's in the development agreement that is being executed in association with this request is this list here, the 17 that was included in the resolution from the Planning Commission. It's the one that they saw as well.

Can I ask you a quick question? Sure. Have this up. So, is 5 AM a typical, um, start time for the C-2?

Allows 24-hour operations. So, the start times are to limit that further, and this wouldn't impact— like, for example, you still can't make a lot of noise at 5 AM. The noise ordinances would still apply.

Thank you for clarifying that.

5 AM would be the earliest start time. So, we don't have— yeah, too much, too much use too early in the morning would be a problem. But C-2 normally allows, because it's our corridor, Kind of commercial, it allows 24-hour operation. So we wanted to limit that as well. So that's one of the things it would do. The development agreement would also set this concept plan so we wouldn't have to wonder what's coming or if it's going to be different in some way. This would be what they are committed to by this development agreement.

So, can I just clarify one thing just to make sure? So that the, the ordinance that stops the, like, the dumpsters in the morning, they're still— that ordinance is still in place.

That would still be in place.

This doesn't supersede that.

This wouldn't supersede that. It would just make it so you didn't open any— no activity would happen before 5:00 AM at all. Um, does that make sense?

Okay.

Um, so the development agreement, as, as we look at it, um, it limits these items further, and that makes us more comfortable as a staff, uh, and the Planning Commission more comfortable recommending it to you as a council for approval. Um, that consideration is, is what what we would— we feel like makes it possible to make this a C-2 zone without problem. So we are recommending that along with the development agreement to you. Um, do you have any questions for staff at this point? I got more maps I can put up there. I think I can probably pull them up somewhere else, but—

No, council, any questions? All right, thank you. Is the applicant here this evening?

Well, I'm, I'm not Paul Washburn, but I'll make an attempt. I'm, I'm Roger Dudley. Um, I've been, been here a few times over the years. Appreciate the opportunity to present this to you this evening. Uh, the concept that we wanted to project here was to somehow Project the farm theme. The Johnson family have had this farm in their family for generations, and of course the, the new streets have chopped it up a little bit and created a triangle here that's very difficult to develop. So we came up with this plan to, to develop it into a use that would, that would benefit the neighborhoods. We think it'll benefit the city, and the architecture will be somewhat a farm theme. As you can see, this is a rendering of more or less what those buildings will look like. We're going to call it the Johnson Farms, and in honor of the Johnson family, have some things there that will hopefully blend into the farming area. And we think it's a good use. Staff's been very cooperative and very helpful in developing this development agreement so that we can limit the uses there, and we're agreeable to that. We've had several meetings with UDOT. As you know, these 3 streets, Geneva Road and the 2 new streets that are surrounding us, will be, will be directed by UDOT. The access to the property is going to be approved We've had a recent meeting as early as yesterday working out the details of how this development will access onto Geneva Road. The only access will be onto the old Geneva Road. There will be no access onto the new corridor that's there. That's a requirement of UDOT. So we feel that we've worked through those details pretty well. That'll help. I'm happy to answer any questions. Ron Mortimer here is one of the, one of the partners in the development. He's here as well and can answer some questions if you have specifics. Thank you.

All right, thank you. Council, do you have any questions for the applicant? All right. Okay, thank you. This is a public hearing, and so I'm going to go ahead and open We'll open up the public hearing. So if there's anyone who would like to come and speak to the rezone at 1750 South Geneva Road from OS-5 to C-2 with a development agreement, I invite you to come up. If you can state your name and the city you live in, please.

Elaine Schofield, Utah County, but I am surrounded by Orem. Decided we had an interest in this for a long time. I found a 7th grade history project that had had an article cut out of the Orem-Geneva Times about rezoning the mall area to provide for the mall. So I've been involved in various times in and out. One of my concerns is we own property that— well, west of it. I'm concerned about the drain water. There seems to be a disconnect between—

Elaine, will you pull that mic down? Is it on?

Okay. Yeah, there seems to be a disconnect between what we have been told about when Geneva Road and the drain is being made and what the developer thinks. And so we're— I have a big concern about that. They also need to contact the engineer for Lake Bottom Irrigation Company because there is water that goes through there that they need to get a permit for and be involved in the planning of that. We talked to Andy Spencer, who was in charge of the Uh, who is in charge of the Geneva Road project, and he told us that they are not going that far. And so we don't understand how they think they can develop when the drain system isn't. And I talked to one of the men and he said the drain system will be developed now, and it's where it goes down into what will be the new Taylor's Drain. And we talked to Mr. Taylor and he said that those arrangements have haven't been made. And so it— some of this seems premature to me. And the other thing, I think the whole area needs to be master planned. I've heard in several Planning Commission meetings that there is limited— Orem has limited ground left, and it needs to be well planned. And it needs to include even though that property that is in Orem's annexation area that has not yet been annexed.

Thank you.

next.

And so I think instead of having all these spot zones here and there, there's a light industrial just barely south of there that we need to stand back a little bit and plan the whole area so that it's used well. Thank you.

All right, thank you, uh, Miss Schofield.

Is there anyone else who would like to The neighborhood has given up because of lack of responsiveness from the city council, and that's why there's nobody there. We're being worn out with all these meetings, and often things do not— we're not listened to. Lynnae Millett has been great to us, but she— we feel like she has been our only support for our area.

All right, thank you. Anyone else? All right, I'm going to go ahead and close the public hearing. I have a question, um, to, uh, planning staff. Um, Miss Schofield mentioned, um, a drain and drainage. At what point in the process— where does that fit in with the rezone? And now, how— or has there been work on that? Can you, can you Can you elaborate a bit more?

Yeah, I'm not the expert on the drainage issues down there, but I will tell you what I know and then kind of try to put it in context with something like this rezone request. So, to the best that I can anyway. So there's a lot of drainage issues in that area, the west and south of the city. Taylor Drain, the plans for the potential for the Taylor Drain are part of that. This area as well is, is gonna, is gonna undergo a lot of changes. and drainage will be a big issue. A lot of those things— I want to put it back in context for the process. So the rezone is the first step in this process, and this concept plan doesn't have the level of detail that would let us look at all the drainage issues right now. This would still require a Planning Commission site plan approval. It'll go through an extensive process with city staff about that. They've taken a look at it in the context of the rezone. Our general plan for the area, for Southwest Dorman includes some industrial land, and this land is slated under the land use map for commercial. So those considerations are things that we will be making or analyzing, but as more as a part of the site plan process. The bigger picture version of it is that we know that changes are coming to this area. So the general plan has it slated for commercial and industrial development. Um, the drainage issues are in the, are in the master plans, um, or master engineering plans, they could speak to that better, and they will, uh, if it's rezoned and, and site plan applications are made. But this isn't the end of the process for them, it's the beginning.

So this— so the drainage issues would come up for what you're saying is, as the property, as it goes through that site plan process with the engineering and everything like that, that Mrs. Schofield's concerns would be, would be addressed at that time.

That's when we would look at the drainage in the area more closely.

Okay.

And for the, for the, the construction of it, site plan process takes several months to get, to get things together and get development rolling. That takes a while too. Development is a long process. So I'm not sure when the drainage issues will catch up to it or, or, or what that is, but it's part of the considerations that we make. Our engineering division has looked at the concept and said, yeah, this is okay for the rezone. We expect this kind of thing and we'll be able to handle the drainage.

Okay, thank you. And you also indicated that the area has— does have a master plan, and it does— this, this piece of property in the general plan is slated or is designated as commercial.

Yeah, so the general plan has a future land use map, and that future land use map identifies this as commercial in the future and some industrial land to the south and west of it as well. Um, some of the rest of it remains an open space. further toward the lake. Um, that's the extent of the— I wouldn't call that a master plan per se. We want to take a closer look at this area going forward. Uh, the Planning Commission has talked about that.

Okay.

And we're in that process right now, updating the general plan. But the general plan as it exists today, the land use planning has been done for it. We assume that there's changes coming.

Yes.

Okay.

Thank you. Do you have any questions?

I have a question. Is there a Okay, what would, what would this scenario look like if they— first of all, the developer is responsible for the drainage. The city will not be on the hook for any of those costs. Is that correct?

They'll have to handle the drainage on their own site because this is— I'm not sure if this will fall into redevelopment or not, so I'm not going to try to get into the weeds of that. But there are state requirements when you develop property like this to handle storm drainage in certain ways. A lot of it will probably have to be retained on site and into the system. Um, so that'll all have to be calculated. Yeah. And they're responsible for their portion of it. The public portions of drainage, we, we will put in, but we pay for those with impact fees. So there'll be impact fees to be associated with this development.

Okay, so we would not have any— if it turns out they can't adequately drain that property, then we don't— they can't build on it. Okay, just want to make sure that— and then, um, so OS-5. Is a big placeholder out there. I'm guessing that's what she's referring to. Yeah, in our general plan, which we are working on. Our planning commission has been working on for a year, I think, close to a year.

Okay, that's true.

Great.

Councilmember Meekum.

Thank you, and thank you for the public comment. I'm very sympathetic, of course, to the idea that we need a very solid master plan in that area, and I appreciate you addressing that, Jared. Do you recall, uh, in addition to the light industrial to the south, uh, are there contiguous areas that are also zoned or, and we anticipate would be commercial for future use?

Very few.

Most of the acreage out there is, is shown right now as industrial. This, this particular property and a little bit around it, because it's, it's kind of a new property created by those roadways coming in. So there's a little more acreage that's slated for commercial, but most of it in the area is industrial. Uh, this is— this particular piece at the north kind of end of that area is the commercial.

Uh, do you know what the, the closest other retail to that area would be?

Not off the top of my head.

Sorry.

Okay.

I would think that the, um, that there's the property that's down on 2000 South and where this Lakeview corridor will be built. would be the next closest commercial area.

Thanks.

And then can I just clarify one thing? Because sometimes people will say, oh, but it was on your slide, right? So this slide shows C-2 retail-focused commercial uses such as auto sales. We are not allowing auto sales on this property, correct?

That's right. Specific— that's what the development agreement specifically about was the property. The Washburn Group did not have interest in auto sales there, automobile-oriented businesses. is running there that felt like that would be too disruptive for the area, and it's their family farm. Um, and that was amenable to the potential buyers, and it worked for the Planning Commission to say, well, that helps us recommend it. And—

Right.

Council, any other comments or thoughts? Right. What would you like to do? Do we close? I closed the public hearing, didn't I?

Yeah.

We ready to make a motion? Uh, Mayor, I would like to make a motion that we rezone, uh, for 1750 South Geneva Road from OS-5 to C-2 with the attached development agreement.

All right, thank you. We have a motion to approve the request to amend the zoning ordinance on this property, um, from OS-5 to community commercial, subject to the development agreement.

I second that.

All right, thanks. Councilmember Kilpatrick seconds that motion. Any other discussion on this motion? Right, we'll start with Councilmember Millett. Yep, I'm just going to work down this way.

Aye. Aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Right, the motion carries. Thank you.

Thank you.

All right, the next item on our agenda is a public hearing regarding impact fees, and I have, I think, oh, there are presenters right there. Um, and let them introduce themselves.

Good evening, Mayor and Council. As Teresa pulls our presentation up, I'd like to introduce Fred Philpott. He's with our LRB, our financial advisors, and he has been working on this impact fee process for us for quite some time. He will give a brief presentation and then We are interested in receiving your feedback tonight as to direction, as into what level of impact fees we should assess for the next 5 years or so moving forward until we complete another one of these plans down the road. So I'll turn the time over to Fred, and Fred, you can use that mic there.

Just bump that button.

Thank you. Um, as Ryan indicated, I'll go through a brief presentation and outline of the impact impact fee process and what we've completed relative to Orem City's impact fees and present some summary information. I'll also let you know that detailed information relative to all of the analysis and calculations and findings are found in the impact fee facilities plan and impact fee analysis documents that have been made available to the public. As part of this process, we do need to complete those documents. The impact fee facilities plan serves as a planning basis for capital infrastructure and necessary improvements. And the impact fee analysis is the process of calculating the fee and ensuring that it's proportionate. There's a specific process that we need to go through in order to complete and adopt impact fees, specific noticing of intent, as well as the analysis phase and then going through this public hearing process. There's also, it's important to note, a 90-day wait period for any increase to impact fees. So if you adopt a fee that is higher than what is currently assessed, then that 90-day window takes effect. For each impact fee facilities plan and impact fee analysis, there are 5 key steps that lead to the 6th 6th step, which is the proportionate share analysis. We have to look at demand. We have to inventory existing facilities. We have to look at your level of service and establish an existing and proposed level of service. We need to look at existing and new facilities to serve growth and make sure we apportion that appropriately. We also need to look at all of the revenue resources that have been used to finance the system or may be used to finance that system. And we can consider those revenue resources, or in some instances, we may need to apply a credit to account for alternative revenue resources. And then again, that all feeds into the proportionate share analysis, which is really just dividing all of that up so that it's fair and equitable in the assessment of that fee. For this project, we worked on fees related to Parks and Recreation, We've looked at transportation, culinary water, wastewater, and stormwater. A brief summary of the key elements. The service area that we've looked at is, is a citywide service area as well as the annexation area, and we've delineated those where appropriate. In some instances, we've had an additive fee applied. In others, there's specific fees to those service areas. We looked at demand variables for each service, and that can be acreage or trips for transportation or calls for service for public safety. But we evaluate the specific demand unit for each of those services. In addition, we look at level of service for each service specific to that service. So it's going to be different for parks and recreation than for public safety. We ensure ensured that in our analysis. We looked at existing levels, levels of service and perpetuated that. As it relates to existing facilities, the Impact Fee Act allows us to consider excess capacity in the system and include what's called a buy-in. Essentially, we're paying back for investment you've already made in the system if there is that capacity. We've included that for transportation, water, wastewater, and stormwater. And then the main component of this evaluation is looking at those future facilities. So for each of the services, we identified it— identified the cost attributed to growth, and that is what is pulled into the calculation, the impact fee. And then that is apportioned to new development based on the percentage that they're utilizing. So again, making sure that it's fair. Alrighty, here's a summary of the proposed fees on single-family unit, so, or on a per-equivalent residential unit basis. So here you can see those per service for Parks and Recreation, Police, Fire, Stormwater in the 2 service areas there, Wastewater for the 2 service areas, Water for the 2 service areas. Then we have a water supply fee and our transportation element.

So this— I just I just want to clarify something and make sure I understand that currently these aren't— we're not proposing these fees, but these are based on your study. These are the— this is the maximum fee ORM could assess for the next 5 years. Or it was just in your study?

Yes, we're setting the maximum.

This is the maximum?

Correct.

Okay.

And then the duration of this fee would depend on your comfort level relative to the analysis and making sure that we look at that and saying, okay, are those assumptions still accurate or do we need to make some adjustments? And so some entities, based on that annualized review, will amend studies to account for changes. For example, over the last couple of years, inflationary pressure has been much more pronounced, and so some entities have gone back and just amended impact fees to account for inflation, but really not changed anything else. Others may say, you know, we need to do a full, full-scale update. And, and so there isn't a defined time, uh, on how long you sit on these studies, your impact fees. We need to watch that and make sure we're comfortable with these assumptions.

Thank you.

But it is the maximum that we're proposing. So it's the ceiling that we're setting.

Fred, can I just ask one more? Question on that previous slide. Uh, can you just be explicit as to what you mean by single family existing here and, uh, how that, uh, the gap between existing and maximum was calculated?

I think, yes.

So the single family is what we're trying to represent for a single family residential unit or the equivalent of that. So for like wastewater and water, There's a calculation to take all of the development and calculate it based on the equivalent of a single-family residential unit. So that's what this represents here, to put it into context, really. But your actual schedule will have a lot more detail relative to the different residential land use types, as well as non-residential land uses.

I understand that. What is it? What do you mean by existing?

That's your existing fee. Sorry.

So when you add up all of these fees in this existing fee column, you get our existing impact fee?

No, because it'll depend on the service area. So depending on what service area you will fall in and whether you're one ERU or multiple ERUs, but generally, yes, you'd look here and say, okay, yeah, we're going to add these up. Again, we wouldn't duplicate if Understood. Thank you. And then the delta there is trying to make a comparison of how the fee might increase if you were to adopt the maximum within that category.

Can I ask a question about that?

Yes.

Would you say it's accurate to say that the current residents are subsidizing new builds to the extent that we don't reach the maximum allowable fee?

Yes, you could. Unless alternative funding mechanisms are identified. So there are multiple funding mechanisms within the general fund or your enterprise funds. Impact fees are one mechanism, but there are others that you could use to help bridge the gap. But existing residents could be one of those funding mechanisms to bridge the gap.

Okay, thank you.

Yes. Alrighty, so this is a comparison here we've provided in the past. It's trying to look at what other entities are assessing as it relates to impact fees and looking at an average, really showing that if you were to adopt the maximum, when we do add that up, that your proposed maximum would be fairly high relative to some of the comparable communities. And then looking at an average of around $20,000 in total on a single-family residential unit. Again, you can see some communities are higher than that average, some lower, but just looking at a straight average across these communities, you're at about 20,000. I also included populations. You see that gray bar in the background is, is a comparison of population, um, you know, trying to see if there are trends really relative to that. Typically what we see is higher communities or those communities that are focusing on new infrastructure, their fees typically tend to be higher. So that may not necessarily correlate to population. You know, for example, Eagle Mountain is on one end where they have a slightly lower population, but their fee is higher because they have high growth and a lot of infrastructure needs. The other variable here is this doesn't measure level of service, and that is a primary driver of impact fees is what level of service are you providing as a community, and what is the resulting cost of that level of service. And every community is different, even though we all— each of those communities may provide a similar basket of services. The level of service is different. I also wanted to provide here some comparisons of price indices showing that, in addition to levels of service and changes in capital needs. There is inflationary pressure. So you can see the municipal cost index since 2018 has increased by 32%. That's really a reflection of just inflation. So I just wanted to bring that up because that is an element of cost increases that is also expressed in the impact fee calculation. So that's something to think about. It was also requested that we look at some of the projects that have been funded in the past. So we provided some tables here that show some of the projects that have been spent relative to impact fees. You can see on water supply some of those projects, some storage projects, some sewer projects. So this again just gives you an idea of how impact fee dollars have been expended in the past. As we move Moving forward, impact fee dollars, it's important to remember that the dollars need to be spent on the projects identified in our plan. If you see deviation there, then that may be a reason why we update the document if we see new projects being needed. This shows the police, transportation, and parks here. Alrighty. In addition to providing the maximum, there was a request to look at some alternative options relative to impact fees. One option is to look at adopting something lower than the maximum, and each one of these look at a variation of that. If you were to adopt somewhere around the average based on our comps, that would be about 58% of the calculated maximum total.

And that—

so that could be an option. You're not required to adopt at the maximum that we've If you were to look at a more kind of surgical look at each of these fees, what we looked at is saying, okay, maybe the park impact fee is an area where we could not look at adopting the maximum. And then looking at those fees that had a buy-in component, so that's again paying back for infrastructure that you've already built, you've already paid the bill for that. that infrastructure. If we pulled that out and looked at reducing the park impact fee, we could get somewhere around $27,000, which is about 75% of the calculated maximum. So that's one strategy where you could look at those individually and make some adjustments. And then option 3 was really just saying, hey, let's adopt it 75%. You would adjust all of the fees to that level. level and not look at it surgically like I show in that table there. Again, this is really just to provide you some information. You're not required to adopt that maximum, nor are you required to make adjustments if you opted to adopt the maximum impact fee. The analysis that we've presented is giving you the ceiling, and you can adopt anything lower or at that ceiling all the way down to $0. You're not required to assess an impact fee at all. If you choose to adopt an impact fee that is lower, then there are some considerations relative to factors that, that might result from that, that decision. Your level of service could drop slightly because you're not assessing the maximum, or you might need to identify alternative funding mechanisms to make sure that you can provide that— continue to provide that level of service. Alrighty, I, I went— I feel like I went a mile, a mile a minute there. So happy to address questions, uh, go back to any slides if you'd, if you'd like me to revisit any of those concepts.

Right, thank you. Council, do you have any questions at this point on this? We've— I know we've studied it a lot. So what you're saying, I just want to make sure I understand the last part that you said, that we don't— if we don't do the maximum amount, we're not required to make up the difference. We could actually change our level of service. Is that— did I understand that correctly?

Your level of service would, would have to adopt without identity, you know, without an identified additional funding source?

Correct.

Okay. All right. Councilmember Muelstein.

In Option 2, why would it be recommended to reduce the parks and rec portion?

Yeah, so that often is the highest or one of the highest fees. It can be a higher fee, and often there are alternative considerations when it comes to parks and recreation. It can be perceived as more of a luxury item, entities will look towards long-term sustainability relative to parks and the operations of park facilities. So that was just one area that, again, we isolated as an area where the fee is going up substantially, and it could be an area where you adjust to, to, uh, consider those, those factors I just mentioned. But keep in mind, again, And if we do lower that fee, then either the level of service changes or we identify general fund monies or other dollars to help continue to fund parks and recreation. So we provided that just as an option because often entities will look to that specific fee because of those reasons.

Councilmember Gale.

I remember I read through the slides before today, and I think I saw something that said that comparison that showed the averages, that chart, that maybe it wasn't exactly an apples-to-apples comparison. Can you speak to that at all? Just depending on how they adjust their whatever.

Yes, great point. So any comparison on impact fees is not an apples-to-apples comparison because it does, again, it does not measure levels of service between communities, nor does it consider the timing of when the impact fee was updated. It also does not consider where you're at on the infrastructure curve. A community, again, that has already built infrastructure and you're now buying into that, that fee is typically cheaper because the Impact Fee Act requires that we pay back in original dollars, not in inflated or replacement dollars. So if we've already built our system and now development is benefiting from that, that usually results in a lower fee versus a community that has to build all new infrastructure with all the cost of issuance potentially, or bonding or debt associated with that. That's going to push the fee higher. So this chart does not compare any of that. It just looks at the dollar that is assessed.

So it's interesting, but maybe not super helpful in our deliberating.

Correct. It often— entities want to see this comparison But it's not a fair comparison necessarily.

If I could add to that, there's organizations out there that they— this is what they use to compare us against the other cities.

Yes, this, this data was pulled from the Utah Valley Home Builders Association based on information that they usually share with their members and communities. So it's beneficial to see, but it's good to keep in mind those limitations.

Mayor and council, perhaps I could ask a question of Fred that— and provide the opportunity for him to potentially correct what I mentioned, um, or what I opined in, in our work session. So, Fred, you briefly talked about that sometimes you'll help cities create essentially annualized fees and updated fees and, and look at On a year-by-year basis. My experience in the past has been that that potentially had to be identified all at once at the beginning. So could you maybe clarify what you've done for other cities in that regard?

And, and yeah, um, if I don't understand the question, just let me know.

But, um, we, for example, if, if the council did something less than the percent of maximum for year 1, Um, and that, but then wanted to consider increases still under the maximum in subsequent years, how would they do?

Yes.

So typically the way, and that's not as common, but if there is a desire to do that, then I would recommend that the ordinance show that, um, that evolution and say, here's what, here's the maximum. We're adopting something lower than that, and here's the escalation factor over the next couple of years, and we stay below that maximum, or we get to that maximum. But it's all spelled out relative to this study in the ordinance to show that, that schedule. So there'd be essentially more information under a multi-year kind of adoption approach to show that we're staying below the maximum and that we're continuing to use this study as the justification for that fee. So again, that could be an option where if you wanted to escalate that fee over time to get us closer to that maximum. What I'd caution is, again, making sure that we're comfortable using the original study, this study, as the justification for that fee. Because maybe in year 3 or 4 Or we might say, hey, there's some changes that have happened and we need to go back. And so we're going to essentially abandon those continued escalation factors without updating the study. We just want to be careful we don't let things just sit on the shelf without evaluating those assumptions and make sure we're comfortable with that, even with an ordinance that's already adopted that shows an escalation factor.

Thank you.

Okay, I just got another question.

Um, okay, I just want to make sure I've got the crux of the argument, and that is, what are we asking existing residents to absorb? And whether that's through, um, you know, financial means or through reduced level of service or even the general fund, I mean, they ultimately absorb that versus what do we want to do to housing affordability? I mean, is that kind of the crux of the question?

Um, I, I don't deal with that question in this study. This study is purely What is the maximum allowable impact fee based on those proportionality assumptions and all of the data that is in that study? Often affordability can be brought up relative to impact fees, and it is a cost component. I guess I'd answer your question with a question in that if impact fees are reduced or changed, does it change the price of a home? And that's something you have to grapple with. We don't address that. But, um, this, this really addresses what is the maximum allowable impact fee, and you have the unenviable position of trying to balance all of those factors, right?

Thank you.

Any other questions at this point? All right.

Yeah, I do have one. Um, on the slide that you have up right now, you mentioned that this does not tell us anything about when these impact fees were adopted. And given the previous information that you showed us about how much these expenses have inflated over the years, I'm wondering, do you know off the top of your head, are there any of these communities that have recently revised their impact fees? And are those communities that have chosen higher numbers here? Um, or is that information you don't have right now?

I know some of them have done individual fee updates because I've worked on them, you know. So Salem has done updates recently. Uh, Elkridge is, is going through the process. Their fees will likely go down. Um, Eagle Mountain goes for updates regularly due to growth. Um, Spanish Fork updates theirs annually internally. So it's, it's somewhat all over the board, but some have been recent. Others, I, I can't comment on the date that they've updated theirs.

Thank you.

May I clarify? Go ahead, Councilmember Miller.

Okay, Joe, just TSSD, that's the Timpanogos Special Services District. So to these point questions that are being asked, um, some of these, if I can call them service districts, are better prepared better servicing their communities than others. Like, our water reclamation plant doesn't really compare to TSSD, the people who were there. Um, so I guess my point is some people need more Yes.

Is that—

am I assessing that correctly there?

Yes.

So that's one of, one of the reasons why this chart isn't quite— is, is an apples-to-oranges chart.

Yes, that level of service issue is going to exist between all of these.

When we say not adopting the full amount could result in a lower level of service likely does not apply to us, to Orem, as we have some space in that level of service because of the preparations that have been made and improvements that are being made at this point. Is that a fair statement?

Um, yeah, going back to—

To compare to them, I guess. Yeah, that's what I'm saying.

Yeah, there, there could be some flexibility in your fees because of excess capacity in the system that allow you to maybe say Hey, we don't, we don't really need to adopt that maximum, and it might not compromise our level of service because we have that excess capacity. So, yes, that, that could—

So, not adopting the maximum does not necessarily mean that the existing residents are subsidizing the new construction because we have this excess capacity. We don't, we don't have to make the improvements that this— the Timpanogos—

Yeah, it's not direct. Yeah. So, That capacity has already been paid for, right?

Right.

So the impact fee is intended to pay them back, and there is a benefit to that in the fact that you could have— that goes into your enterprise fund revenue stream. So if that's not there, then, you know, that is potentially lost revenue, but it doesn't impact the infrastructure directly on that capacity component. So that's also why when we looked at scenarios, if we go back to here, we talk about on some of those removing that buy-in component as an option since there's some flexibility there for that reason.

Brad, maybe you could give an example or two of how the level of service from one service to another might be different among cities. So for example, Orem may have more, on average, parks and park amenities per capita than others.

Yeah, that's a great example. So the available land and amenities that you provide are going to be different between communities. And the value of that land is going to be different. You're a primarily built-out community. And so your land is more scarce. Scarce and more valuable, and that contributes to your level of service, that value of your infrastructure. For public safety, you could be answering, responding to more or less calls for service. And so that's going to vary between communities. When you get into water, sewer, road infrastructure, there's less variability because there are state requirements and federal requirements relative to that. Every community is different in how they're responding to those, or if they've responded and met that level of service. Some can be behind the 8-ball, whereas others have planned for it and invested and are ahead of the curve, and that's going to influence these. So those are some examples. Some communities have more strict requirements relative to infrastructure, so that can cause changes in levels of service.

All right, any other questions at this point? All right, this is a public hearing. Just to make sure that I understand what we're public— what we're— if it's a verb, public hearinging is the discussion of the presentation of the numbers of on this. Is that right? We're not— the public hearing is not for the adoption of the ordinance. That would become That's coming later. Tonight's discussion and public hearing is to discuss what numbers we want to— we're looking at. Am I understanding that correctly? Okay, I see nods, so I'm hopeful. All right, so we have a public hearing regarding the information that has been presented this evening about options and about the impact fee study. Is there anyone who would like to speak to this item in the public hearing? All right, I take that as no. So I'm going to go ahead and close the public hearing. And— but I'd be remiss if I didn't say thank you. Thank you for your presentation.

Thank you.

Um, Council, let's bring it back here and let's have a discussion. What do you want to do?

Um, I can start by just sharing a couple of ideas. Uh, I, I do think, uh, that we need some sort of mechanism to be able to anticipate future, uh, price inflation. And so I would be supportive in looking at a mechanism whereby we have annual increases is based on this report, staying substantially below the maximum, but where those increases approximate maybe a 5%, um, anticipated inflation rate. I think that would be helpful for us in being able to avoid some of the challenges that I see that we're in right now, which are that our impact fees are, are substantially out of date. Uh, compared with our comparable cities. Uh, I also, uh, am interested in starting at a place that is approximately where our comparable cities are that have recently updated their impact fees.

All right, thank you. Anyone else? Councilmember Lamson.

My, my thoughts are along the same lines. I don't think we're interested in reducing services at all. Um, and I, I would feel comfortable at, uh, raising the impact fees, uh, to be at the, the average, maybe slightly above that. And I like Quinn's point of taking into consideration those that have recently changed because of data that they're seeing or things that they're seeing that may or may not apply to us. But I think it's important to take that into consideration as well. And, and I would feel good about a 5% increase per year. Uh, is there a, is there a mechanism in place that would trigger updating this information? Is this something that we would just do on an annual basis?

Yeah, I think your ordinance would spell that out because again, we're not increasing the impact fee based on inflation. We're increasing the fee to get to our maximum. So we'd want to make sure we're clear on that. It's, it's not just an annual increase. It's getting us to our It's closer to our maximum.

Um, can I just interrupt briefly? But we don't have to get to that maximum.

No.

Yeah, so it could be if we said we want to start at the 50%, somewhere around the average, and get to 75%, then again, we're staying below that maximum allowable fee. Under option 2 here, we would want to be careful if we adopt some of them at the maximum and we reduce some of those fees, we can't then just go and turn around and update all of those fees because then some of them will exceed the maximum calculated fees. So if we— we're just gonna have to be careful of that. But the concept that you're describing makes sense, saying we're going to start below and then work upwards to a higher number, but we'll stay below our maximum fees that we've calculated.

Right. Um, Councilmember Millett.

So, um, and I guess my point would be, I'm probably comfortable with option 1 with that, where especially in our situation of affordability of housing, um, to your point, I don't think it would be a 1-to-1 direct pass-along, you know, that a contractor would do. I just don't think that that price level is available in the market. But at the same time, we do need to bring our city to the point where we're, um, charging the adequate amount of the fees. Um, and to, to the 75% maximum, I, I would really definitely not want to go higher than that. I would not want to go to the maximum at that 5% increase. Um, I think that's a good balance between what we need to do at this time and also protecting, um, affordability.

All right, thank you. Councilmember Kilpatrick.

I concur with those things that we've heard about that process. I agree that 75% would probably be the most that I would feel comfortable having that be opposed. So, Councilman, no, thank you very much for your thoughts, and I agree so far and concur with all those comments that have been made thus far. That's my feeling as well.

Right, thank you. Okay, Councilmember Muelstein.

So if we talk about doing a percentage increase It would make more sense to do something like option 1 because in option 2 we would max out what we could do. Am I understanding that correctly?

Yes. Yeah, option 1 would be the easiest approach. So doing a flat, you would have to— it wouldn't be a 5%. We'd take those other, other fees that we've reduced and increase those to get to the 75%. So it, it would require a little bit of math.

So if we're wanting to do something that's going to increase fees over time, option 2 would not be a wise choice.

I wouldn't say it's unwise. It just would be a little more complicated.

Okay.

If I could add, what we would basically do is build a year 1 fee schedule for every single fee. Then we'd build a year 2 schedule with a 5% increase, a year 3 schedule. So your ordinance is going to be like 50 pages long, probably. Which is totally fine, but we'll— we will spell everything out, um, with that 5% escalation for 5 years, and that's what you would see before you in a future meeting.

And just to clarify, if we wanted to amend that at any time over that 5-year period, we're perfectly within our rights to do that, correct?

As long as we are Uh, comfortable with the analysis that it is based on. So the impact fees are governed by the impact fee facilities plan and impact fee analysis. So we'd have to be comfortable with that.

Um, so what you're saying is we'd have to be comfortable with the 2025 analysis going forward.

So if we were to adjust, if we were in 2029 and we said, hey, let's just— we want a 10% and not a 5%, it stays below that maximum as long as we're comfortable with those assumptions.

Assumptions for 2025.

Yes, exactly.

Thank you. Councilmember Gale.

So this may be an impossible question, but if we start with option 1 and say we're going to increase them to 58%, can you kind of give us any ideas what that means in terms of service levels by not increasing it to the max and going at 60%? What does that do to our service levels and impact to our current residents who've been here?

Yeah, for Orem, I think this is less impactful because you have a small amount of future development. And your system is primarily developed, right? There's still a lot of infrastructure needs and improvements that need to happen, but it's not driven by growth like other communities. So I think we just want to be careful that we don't put too much weight on that level of service issue because you're not generating a lot of impact fee dollars here. So the ability to make make that up is going to be easier for Orem, even though that concept still is accurate, that there is proportionality here. It's, it's just, it's not as impactful for a community that has robust growth and it's driven by growth.

It's—

that's going to be much harder for them if they adopt a lower fee than for Orem.

Okay, thank you. And then based on that and other things, I think that, that Option 1 strikes a nice balance between helping new, new move-ins help with the cost and balancing home affordability.

Right.

Thank you. Any other comments?

Councilmember Meekum, just— this is a question rather than a comment. Uh, Option 1, as it's presented, is a flat rate, right? Flat percentage of the total fee. Uh, Option 2, as it's presented, Has different percentage levels assigned to different types of utilities and amenities. Uh, when that impact fee arrives in Orem, uh, does the breakdown, all right, for how much of that impact fee goes to sewer, how much of it goes to stormwater, et cetera, does that accrue to the departments that are in charge of those services? charge of providing that utility. And so in my mind then, it might be worth taking a little bit of time to think about Orem's needs and the way that our needs with respect to any future development might differ across these different utilities and amenities. And we may, may not see that 58% needs to be the flat rate across each of those, but maybe As option 2 suggests, that some, some of those needs are greater, uh, on some of these utilities than others, but we would still end up at that 58% average, something like that. Did I understand that correctly?

Yes. Yeah, and it's accurately stated that 58% is essentially across the board, but every fee collected has to remain within the service that is, it is Uh, collected for.

So in that case, I think to our city staff, I, I would like some additional guidance in advance of our next meeting just to understand, do we have needs that are, are much more specific to sewer stormwater and other things that Option 2 addresses that Option 1 wouldn't, even if we keep our starting target close to $20K? And we increase.

Yeah, I think we— and we can definitely talk about that, uh, and I can assist with, with that, uh, item with staff. Um, you know, I think, uh, the size of the fees help also identify magnitude, right? Um, the, the larger need, larger infrastructure, you're going to have higher costs. Um, Um, so that may be a guide. Um, we just will want to be careful, right, uh, as we look at that, um, making that determination of need under the impact fees versus, uh, you know, other sort of policy considerations. Um, so that creates some challenges is all I'm highlighting.

Yeah, that was going to kind of along with Quinn's, one of my questions. Through your report, your analysis, did we have capital— planned capital projects that we are assessing these to these accounts?

Yes.

Already dictated in the future?

Yes.

And then the next one is on the roads in particular. I remember hearing a comment once about, you know, we have specialized because of our budget Because we're trying to stay in budget in doing the slurry, you know, maintaining our roads with that type of product. But we may be to the point where we do need to dig up and create new road base and rebuild some of our roads. Chris, is that— I mean, that was presented to us. So is this in this study then?

This would not It does not address any repair and replacement. So any deficiencies or repair and replacement of existing infrastructure is not impact fee eligible unless there is an expansion to that, an expansionary component to that infrastructure. But repair and replacement and deficiency issues are addressed in the general fund in the case of transportation or through existing mechanisms. That new development Development will contribute as part of their tax base and, and other revenue resources, not impact fees. Impact fees are specific.

The rebuilds are repair?

In most cases, I'd have to look at specific projects. But yes, a rebuild where we're saying, hey, let's take the existing road and we're going to redo it and we're going to have the same road, it's just going to be newer. That would likely be non-impact fee eligible.

Okay, thank you for clarifying that.

So some examples. So a new neighborhood street or a, or a widened street that's going from a neighborhood to like a collector street, or if we were to add or identify like a new streetlight because of increasing traffic in the, in, in the city, those would be the type of eligible road projects.

Well, can I ask for one other thing? So I think we've recently become aware It does do the safety crosswalks fall under transportation, the ones that we're going to have to do because we're losing our junior high buses, but not under the— is that not new?

If there's a deficiency, it may— it might be a new piece of Infrastructure, but if it's addressing a deficiency, we, we don't include that.

We don't include that. Okay.

Yeah.

Okay. Any other comments?

Right.

I've got a question on process. Do you need a motion of any type, or do you need guidance? Because I'm, I'm just going to weigh in at the end here that I agree with, with what's, what's, um, what's been proposed here. And so I'm not going to belabor it, but I, I do, I do agree with that. I think that'd be a good direction to go. Do you need any more information from us before you go forward? I know Quinn or Councilmember Meekum has asked for some information. Is that something that you could work on in the interim as, as you're putting together? Are you still able to put together the ordinance while working that?

We would not be able to, but we can give back the information that Councilman Meekum has requested, and then If the 7 of you could provide us some feedback, um, maybe separately through phone calls with me or whatnot, and then we could draft the ordinance based on— I can do some legwork on the back end.

Okay.

To get that.

So, perhaps we could summarize what we think we're hearing from you.

Okay.

That he's wanting to see the numbers of option 1 for year 1, and then, uh, Escalation— escalating up to, um, option 3 after a handful of years.

That's my understanding. Is that your understanding, everyone? Okay.

So can I clarify that? Was it, was it escalating up to 75% or was it increasing 5% a year? Because I kind of heard both there.

I think it was going up to 75%. I mean, we talked about both.

Okay, it's gonna make the math a little more difficult. I'm just saying.

So I think it's up to 75% of maximum, and we split it up over a handful of years.

Well, that's the question. What's your anticipated timeline if we do the 5%? Because we're going to need to redo the study. How often do you think you need to redo the study?

That depends, but entities try to update them every 3 to 5 years. So 5 may be on the longer end of that. If you said we want to get up to 75% in the 3 to 4 years, I mean, that would—

So, there's also a difference between the percent amount that the fee would go up each year versus the percent of the maximum we're talking about here. So that's why I say we use, uh, option 1 and option 3 as floor and ceiling, and then divide it by 3 to 5 years and bring those numbers back to you and see.

I would be comfortable with that if we do it 5 years.

Yeah, and the reality again is you're not locked into— you can always go back and update or amend and revise studies. We're not locked into a 5-year window. It's just your ordinance will be in place. And you have a course of action, and you can step in at any time to modify and to update based on additional analysis.

Yeah, I think 3 years goes pretty quick, so the 5 years would probably be a— I'd be more comfortable with.

I think just a few more things and we could have a really good story problem. Yes, the train left the station.

Just to clarify, our city manager said option 3, but what I'm understanding from Councilman Meekham, is it's actually option 2 where we are looking to change each category based on where we feel the importance.

To clarify what I'm, I'm looking for here, uh, I don't feel like I need a bunch of new information from you to go back and, and reevaluate. What I would like is from the city staff, the executive staff, to think a little bit about where these impact fees need to go. Uh, and if it makes sense, um, for those fees to be at different levels, um, uh, in each of these categories, um, because of the needs of the city and what we anticipate the needs of the new development might be. Um, and, uh, I am comfortable with your assessment of that. Thank you.

Thank you. I think we're on the same page.

I have a question to that point. I think what you said was, you know, the amount of the fee kind of reflects that a little bit.

The fee does reflect the magnitude of need. And so another way to state it is maybe, are all the services comfortable making an adjustment, or are there some that say, no, we'd rather someone else make the adjustment? You know, that's kind of the concept there. But again, I think when you look at Orem's position, that is less pronounced than in a high-growth community because you're not generating a lot of impact fee dollars in any of these buckets, relatively speaking. You know, for my bank account, it's— yeah, it would be a lot of dollars, but for your budgets and things like that, it's, it's, um, it's not the primary funding source as we look forward.

So, so I thought we had said option 1 with option 3 being the ceiling.

Again, that's my understanding with some additional input if We think there's a need to adopt something else.

We would address that need or that weight based off of a more detailed review of the projects we actually have identified to be accomplished over the next 5 years.

Yes, but that on average we go from 58 to 75 over a period of 5 years with that step increases.

Yep.

Just to be clear, and, and doing some attorney math here, that would probably require about a 7% annual increase to get to 75% by year 5. So does that sound consistent with what you're looking at?

No, I want to stay at 5. I mean, that's my opinion. I don't know why we're jumping.

I mean, I've already answered—

Going up 5 will not get you to 75%.

Um, then let's amortize it over the 5 years at 4.2 or whatever we're going to That's kind of my—

so 58 to 75, right, is 17%, uh, total growth over 5 years.

But you're taking 5— say, for example, you're taking 5% of the 58%. So that's—

yeah, yeah.

I, I am comfortable getting up to 75.

But maybe I can have Brandon— am I right in those numbers? I think it takes about 7%.

Well, compounding, it's going to change the percentage.

Yeah.

Yeah, I think going back to what Bren said, it's determining our starting point and our end point, and we can, we can show you the process to get there. If 75% of the maximum is our ceiling, then we'll, we'll get the math to get us to 75% of this as our ceiling.

Is that what we want? Is that what we're directionally want to give this? Okay, we— Councilor Maelstein has a question.

So this is kind of going back to what Quinn was asking about, um, this buy-in portion that they talk— you talk about in Option 2. So he's talking about if there are certain services that need that funding more robustly at, at that moment, right?

If that—

if there's a buy-in portion that's being paid back, does that just go back to the general fund that then makes it accessible for the city to spend?

It goes back to the general fund of that. If it's an enterprise fund, right, it's not in the general fund.

So it may reduce some of that pressure on different—

It could, but it's, again, we're— the dollar amounts that we're talking about are A drop in the bucket.

Yeah, they're not at all because—

yes, that's not such little growth. These are not needle movers.

So for—

I guess, I guess what I'm trying to get at is looking at exactly what each department's needs are, that kind of makes up for that a little bit.

Yes, but again, this, this looks at what the department needs are, so you're We just want to be careful not, um, trying to have our cake and eat it too, right?

Yeah.

I mean, an adjustment is, is an adjustment, and this does reflect that. But I understand the comment of, are there areas where we could make an adjustment, more of an adjustment than others? Um, and, and that's what Option 2 is trying to get at, is it's, it's a little easier to make an adjustment by taking out the buy-in because that's already cost invested. But again, it's not— it could be challenging to make that determination. But I'll work with staff to look at that. You know, we can discuss that and determine what— if there is a recommendation to not do a 58% across the board, what that might look like. Again, I think I don't want to put words into staff's mouth, but it's really important to understand what is our starting point and end point, and then we can look at that in-between information and provide some response to your comments and give that schedule for the ordinance to get us there. So 58% is our starting point, 75% is our ceiling. That's clear, you know, to me. But if you're saying, no, we just want 5% every year, that may exceed the 75%, you know. So I think my understanding was 58% is our starting point. We are capping at 75% of the maximum as our endpoint within 5 years.

And that would be even if we got there before 5 years, I mean, if we got there in year 4.

But my understanding was it was a 5-year period. The ordinance is for a 5-year period, right?

But that, but that cap is capped no matter when we get there.

Your ordinance will ensure that you get there within 5 years. It's, it's not a— it's not an inflationary objective. It is— we will calculate the fee each year, and so it will get to 75% of the max at year 5.

It's—

so it'll be guaranteed.

And then can I just add, just to clarify, so, This, this is not the only funding mechanism for these funds. So, to, to your point of this is really just a drop in the bucket, we're— this— we're not making decisions about our parks right here because our parks are funded in our budgeting process through other mechanisms, through our general fund, right? So this is one of them, but that's kind of just to clarify for anybody who—

Yeah, sorry. And I, I will also just say that if, if the staff Uh, chooses to talk about this and says, uh, this is too much of a headache to try to allocate this, uh, and we are comfortable with a standard percentage across the board. I am comfortable.

Great, thank you.

All right, are we all understanding? Are we all in agreement on— I know we're not taking a vote, but is this the direction that Okay, does your brain hurt thinking about how to do this?

No.

Okay, that's why we hire this guy.

It makes sense.

Yep, it makes sense.

All right, well then we'll wrap up this discussion. Um, council members, item 11, financial information that was in your packet. Um, item 12, uh, Bryn.

Uh, just a few quick things. Uh, thank you once again for Thank you for all of your help and participation in the volunteer appreciation dinner we had last Friday. Went over really well. I received a ton of compliments from, from those who joined us. Um, you have also seen multiple emails from the Utah League of Cities and Towns as the legislative session has started. Pay particular focus to at the beginning of those emails, they have a link to their bill tracker, and that's That's where you get kind of the latest, greatest sort of status of what the ULCT body thinks about those bills that are city-related. And then finally, I think just this week, over the next days coming up, our popular annual citizen report that has a lot of neat statistics about About the city, how many tons of recycling waste has been processed during the year, or miles of streets that have been swept, and numbers of members at the fitness center. It's all in here. It also gives a very brief look at what we're going to be working on this coming year. We get a lot of positive feedback about this, so just be aware that that's getting out to residents.

Thank you.

That's all I have.

Right. Thank you, Brian. All right, our final item is to adjourn to a closed session in the Summit Conference Room to discuss pending or reasonably imminent litigation, the character or professional competence of an individual, or the purchase or lease of real property. And so I'll need a motion, a second, and then was it a 2/3? It's a bigger vote.

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

Thank you, sir. Second?

I second.

All right, thank you. Um, if you do a roll call though, um, do we have to?

Sure.

All right, um, Councilmember Meekum?

Aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Aye.

All right, thank you. So we'll adjourn this and reconvene in a