City Council · 2026-10-13

All right, the voice has spoken. It said the recording is in progress, so we'll go ahead and get started. Welcome to the October 13th, 2026, Orange City Council work session. It's like all of the council members, everybody's here and ready to, ready to go. So, Go ahead and get started. Our first presentation is an employee survey results presentation, 20 minutes, and then 10 minutes Q&A. And our presenters are Carrie Rugg, our Deputy City Manager, and Whitney Hinselver, Management Analyst. So I'll turn the time over to you 2.

Whitney's going to go into the meat of our employee survey results that we put out to employees in May. And I will answer any questions that you have as we go through. So if we get to a slide and you have any questions or concerns, we, we can discuss that. And then we also have the platform that the survey came through. So if we need to dive in anything else, we have all that.

Okay, thank you.

So with that, Whitney.

Awesome.

Good afternoon, everyone. Thanks for having me. Like Carrie said, we've— for those of you that were at the BABO last week, we did a quick preview of the employee survey results, but we want to dive into it a little bit more today. So, um, you saw these slides last week, but we're just gonna go into more detail. So, uh, just an overview, we had a really good response rate. 87% of all full-time employees responded, which is huge. The previous year we only had 54%, so we're super happy about that increase. Um, a total of 503 full-time employees were invited to take the survey, and we got 437 responses. Um, just for information for the rest of the The presentation, we have 3 different benchmarks that we compare to different scores. The first is groups of local governments about our size across the entire nation that took this same survey. Our second benchmark is the survey over survey results. So we took this same survey last year, and so just comparing how it changed over the year. And then when you look at departments, we can see the the company average or the organization as a whole and compare the results for the departments. So those are our 3 benchmarks. And if you ever have a question about which benchmark we're comparing to on which slide, I'm happy to answer that. It should say it, but just in case. So this survey was presented to employees through a series of statements. So something like, at City of Orem, we do things efficiently and well, or something like that. And then employees were given the chance to grade it on a Scale like this. So 0 is strongly negative, 6 is strongly positive, and then the score in between. Some of the questions were phrased kind of opposite. So like, you know, maybe you want the answer to be strongly negative. And so the platform switches it so that everything is normalized along this scale. So Our workplace experience score is the average of all of the statement— the results of the statements. So our average score is 4.36. That's a really good score. So that means that on average, we were above slightly positive on the number scale. So we're really happy about that. We were also up 3% from the May 2025 survey and 8% above the benchmark of other local governments. And then over here, that's kind of small, so I don't know if you can see that, but we'll go into more detail. There are 6 themes that the statements are grouped into, and it breaks the scores up for the themes and then also for the statements. So we can go a little bit more. On the far— let's see, for you, the far right side. Those percentages are the trends. So comparing to the survey last year, The kind of middle percentages connected to the blue line, that is compared to our local government benchmark. So for example, on the first one for engaged, we were 9% above the benchmark of local government. For engaged, the statements are: City of— the City of Orem motivates me to give my very best at work. I rarely consider searching for a job at another organization. I would highly recommend working at City of Orem to others. And overall, I am very satisfied with my job. All of these, we were really happy with the scores. Oh, by the way, for the trends, it's not statistically significant until it's above 5%, but it's not a huge change until it's about 15 to 20%. So all of these, obviously, they're all going up from the previous year. So we're happy about that. The first 2, the 5% and 6%, are green because that's when it becomes significant. But All of these are pretty normal ebbs and flows over the years. And yeah, with these scores all above 4, so we're super happy with overall, I am very satisfied with my job. The fact that it's almost at agree, that's like a big win. So we're happy about that. Next, going to empowered to execute, the statements are, at City of Orem, we do things efficiently and well. There is good interdepartmental cooperation at City of Orem. Division managers and division directors understand what is really happening at City of Orem. And I feel well informed about important decisions at City of Orem. So, um, that bottom one, 3.70, that's our lowest score. We have 2 statements that have that score, um, and, uh, the trend is going down. It's not significant yet, but we definitely want our employees to feel well informed. And since that is one of our lowest scores, we are definitely looking into this. We want to improve that, um, but Again, not a bad score, nothing too concerning, but we want to take this survey and, and use it to, you know, make some changes. Moving on to respected and supported, the statements are: my immediate supervisor cares about my concerns, new ideas are encouraged at City of Orem, I feel genuinely appreciated at City of Orem, I feel included at City of Orem, and City of Orem encourages different points of view. Kind of the same story on this one. No crazy trends. We're above the benchmark and everything and above 4.0. So overall good news. Next, for enabled to grow, um, the statements are: my immediate supervisor helps me learn and grow, I have frequent opportunities to learn and grow at City of Orem, City of Orem enables me to work at my full potential, I regularly— and I regularly receive helpful feedback about my performance. Kind of the same, same story. Um, Nothing too crazy in the trends, and we're high on the scores. One thing to point out with the 4.91 on my immediate supervisor helps me learn and grow, we're really happy about that. We want the city to be a place of mentorship, and so we're happy to see that that is going well, that we do have— see those relationships forming between employees and their immediate supervisor working together to become better. So we're Especially happy to see that. Next, in fairly valued, the statements are, my pay is fair for the work I do. City of Orem does a great job at prioritizing employee well-being. I'm very satisfied with my benefits package. I have the flexibility I need to balance my work and personal life, and my work stress is at a manageable level at City of Orem. So first of all, this, the top statement, my pay is fair for the work I do, that's the other score, that's 3.7. The lowest score. On one hand, that's kind of expected. Apparently, that's the lowest score for pretty much any organization that takes this survey. We all feel that we can be paid better, and, you know, that's probably not going to change anytime soon. But at the same time, we want to make sure that we are paying competitively. Yeah, for certain jobs, it came up in the comments a lot that we don't pay as competitively as the private sector. Yeah, I'm like, it's true. I'm sorry. Like, we can't do a lot to change that, but we do want to pay well enough that we recruit good, competent, experienced employees. So we're looking into that a little bit. We do a market compensation study. I mean, this year we're doing it twice a year. So we definitely pay attention to the pay for employees and make sure that they're We're competitive with other local governments in the area, but we'll continue doing that. And then the other thing I want to note on this page is the bottom score for my work stress is at a manageable level in Orem. It's not a bad score. 4.02 is not bad, but it is the only one, the only statement that we are below the benchmark. Only 1% below, yes, but you know, we want to make sure that we're at least meeting the benchmark. So we're going to look into this a little bit as well. This one is also kind of connected to pay. That came up a lot in comments, in like, my workload is increasing, but I'm not getting a pay bump. So kind of analyzing job responsibilities connected to pay for these statements. Okay, next, closely aligned. The statements are, my job makes me feel like I am part of something meaningful. I believe City of Orem is going in the right direction. City of Orem operates by strong values, and I have confidence in the department executive directors of the City of Orem. We're really happy to see the 4.90 for my job makes me feel like I'm part of something meaningful. That's something that came up in the comments a lot, is that people like their job because they feel that they make a difference in the community, and that's what we like to see. Speaking of, with the comments, we got a total of 1,156 comments, which is— and comes out to about an average of 2.6 comments per responder. That doesn't necessarily mean that every responder did about that, because some people responded to every single comment. Some— or every question. Some people didn't say anything, but on average about 2.6 per responder. I went through and I read every single comment. So we wanted to make sure that the employees knew we weren't just ignoring it or looking like at an AI summary or something. I read every single comment, so I know the employees' concerns. And I made an Excel sheet to track the trends. And this is the results of that. For positive, overwhelmingly people like working here because they get to work with good people. Now, with this positive count, that doesn't necessarily mean people said the words good people 85 times, but from the comments, I kind of generated themes and counted throughout those themes. So I totally agree. I think that our coworkers and colleagues are amazing. I I agree with the responders that we do get to work with good people. The other top positive themes were community impact. So like I mentioned earlier, people like that they feel they make an impact in the community with their job. People also like growth opportunities. They feel that leadership listens. There's good communication, a good culture, good leadership, good trust in staff, intelligent and experienced leadership, and good opportunities for training. Another thing with this, sometimes one comment had multiple of these themes. So just by the way, for the negative, the most cited theme was that people felt overworked. We are going to look into this. We don't want employees to feel like they're drowning all the time. And so we are looking into doing an efficiency study next year to try and address some of these things and look into that more. Next up on the negative summary is pay. Again, kind of expected. We all want to be paid more, but we want to make sure that we're competitive with that. The other negative ones are leadership doesn't implement new ideas. So this is like in the context of an employee gives a suggestion and it doesn't get implemented. People don't usually like that. No growth opportunities, retaliation, frontline staff ignored in decision-making, lack of communication between leaders and staff, bad leadership training, and afraid to speak up. So with these common themes, there are overarching lessons that we can learn with the really high counts, like good people, we're happy about that, overworked, we want to look into that. Other ones, since they're on both lists, so like we have good leadership on the positive list and bad leadership on the negative list, we can kind of infer that we're doing okay. We're kind of neutral in the middle. Obviously, we will still be looking into things, still be brainstorming for room for improvement, but, um, you know, it kind of evens it out. Okay, um, the— this is the like AI summary from the platform of the Big topics. This doesn't separate it into a positive or negative connotation in the comment, but overwhelmingly most people talked about communication. And then we have, you know, career leadership benefits, pay, that kind of thing following it. This is just a few examples of the positive comments with action items that we can look into. Once again, saying, I just like the people that I get to work with. Orem City does a good job at prioritizing its employees. We also found in the comments that employees really appreciate regular one-on-ones to talk about what's going well, what can we improve, that kind of thing. And we, we provide really valuable things to the public. Just some examples of improvement comments. It sounds like a lot of employees feel they are siloed in their department. We want to increase more interdepartmental cooperation. Communication again came up a lot, feeling like there's a gap between executive leadership, middle managers, and then frontline staff. So making sure that we fix those gaps and make that communication better. And then, yeah, once again, just people feeling that they're overworked and not compensated for it. This was a specific question that they asked, what 3 words describe the culture of the City of Orem? So we just wanted to show this word cloud to show that the 3 most common words were fun, friendly, and family, which we're super excited about. These were also words that weren't mentioned in the other benchmarks as much. So we're happy that people, you know, generally like working here. Overall, we learned from the survey that employees desire greater transparency, communication, and consistent accountability on all employment levels. So we are looking into this. This is like the biggest thing we're looking into citywide. Other action items. Our department or division, Strategy and Innovation, is meeting with every single department to go over their specific results. This is the organization as a whole averages out, but each department looks really different. These specific changes or recommendations will look very different across departments. For example, we met with Gary last week to talk about community development, and one thing that they're facing, or one challenge they're facing, is recruitment for engineering. So, like, we're going to look into that specifically. That's going to look completely different than recruitment for police, you know. So we're tailoring recommendations and research for each department. But citywide, we are mostly focusing on communication. With all that said, we are super happy that this survey— in, in the survey, we were named a top workplace for Utah in notable areas such as values, professional development, employee appreciation, and work-life flexibility. And we were in the top 5% of supportive managers and then top 25% for meaningful work, innovation, employee appreciation, and and cooperation. So we're super happy with the results overall. Um, again, no bad scores, nothing too concerning. Um, we've just been going up the last few years, and that's what we want to see. But we always want to use our employees' feedback to continually work better and to, um, keep building a better ORM. So any questions?

Thank you. Did you have a question?

Yeah, I just wanted, uh, to say thank you for doing this. And thank you for giving the employees a chance to be seen and heard. That means a lot. And the fact that you're now doing something about that is impressive as well. My main question you already answered, and that is, do we have departmental information? How does it break down by each department? And you're all over that. I think that'll be fun to dive in and look for. Ways to continue being amazing and ways to improve along the way as well.

I would just add that the—

like, I'm sorry, Quinn—

on the comments, each department executive has gotten their comments from their employees. It's all de-identified, but they know the comments. And I can tell you that we might get 25 positives and we take the one very hard to heart because Everyone here at this table cares so much about their staff. And so we are taking this very seriously, and we want that one bad comment to turn into a lot of good.

We needed you to have a—

I thought Quinn—

oh, Quinn.

Thanks so much. This is great. A couple of questions. How did we get such great response rates this year? What kind of incentives did you offer to do that? Because I'd love to see that kind of response rate again.

So I'll answer that if you don't mind. We offered, if your department hit 90% participation, the entire department got 2 hours of PTO added to their PTO. And that was a great incentive to— and one department in particular Was this close? Like, if we could have just had one more, one more person participate, they would have gotten the percentage.

But we know that they will all do better next time because of this.

It was a really good intention.

It was kind of fun to see the competitiveness between departments.

Also, what's the How is the benchmark data collected? So is that every municipality takes this survey? Is it nationwide? Is it Utah? I'm just curious as to how we get that benchmark and how we might be able to access the data.

Yeah, absolutely. So the benchmark is all local governments of a similar size, so between 500 and 2,000 employees. Um, we're pretty much in the middle of that.

That are clients of this survey provider, or—

Uh-huh.

Yeah, yeah.

Do you know how many that is or what the geographies are?

Good question. It's all from the first slide.

It said how many?

49.

Oh yeah, yeah, it's 49 other, uh, other respondents. Respondents. Um, for the 27 other, um, organizations in the group that got Top Workplaces, we can actually we know what cities they are. The other ones are just listed as local government. But yeah, so it's 49 other local governments between 500 and 2,000 employees across the nation.

I—

we can't see all of the states for this, the like anonymous cities, but in the top workplaces, we're the only one in Utah. So it does kind of depend on the platform. And then for, as for the data, I'm sure that we can— it's, I think it's like single sign-on, so I'm sure that we could get you a sign-on if you want to look into it more.

Or we could give the reports. Yeah, generate from the company whatever reports you want.

Okay. Maybe both. I'm happy to talk offline about that.

Okay, sounds good. Any other questions?

Yeah, so a few questions. So what year is this? The 2nd or 3rd?

We've done it 3 times. The first year we did it, we didn't get a very good participation rate, and it was several years ago. And then we did it last year and this year. So we're comparing from last year to this year.

And have you done— I guess those are the comparisons. That was my next question.

Yeah.

Was this against us from last year to this year?

Yes.

And then for the other 48.

Can be statistically Different small, small sample sizes can be a little hard to work with. Yeah, you can work on that, right?

Over time.

Yeah, I think we'll see trends one way or the other.

Okay. So you talked about, well, first concern about those who feel overworked and not compensated. Do we have that? Is there a department trend? Is there a— do you know what I mean? Do we have that zeroed in? Maybe offline, I'd like to understand that as a council member, better to see where we can provide more support there.

Yeah, there are definitely a few departments where that's the big trend. So we're in our department meetings, we're addressing that with the department director. We plan on having meetings with the entire department to talk about this as well. And so some of the direct— some of the departments we, you know, like comparing to other cities, It, like, we have a similar number of employees, so we want to really dive in and see, like, why, you know, like, what exactly is making you feel overworked? What can we do to help you with this? Because the data doesn't tell you everything.

I'd also say it's not always pay or needing to add additional personnel, but maybe it's giving them the tools they need to lessen their burden. So maybe if we can get them some kind of a software that improves their their ability to do their day-to-day functions, or, or a certification that helps them learn how to do their, their jobs better. It isn't always that we need to add additional personnel or giving them the tools to respond.

And, and cities talk, people talk between cities, so they might know about some of those things. I appreciate the one-on-one, the request for more one-on-one to maybe share.

And sometimes there can be a cross-departmental solution too, right?

Maybe just knowing the way another department does that are not feeling they can go ask for help from their parents. So we want to work here in those directions as well.

And then my last question is, um, you talked about maybe doing an efficiency study in the future. Is that something like the MGT study that we did a few years ago? Is this an in-house— what, what, following that model? Because we learned for— we paid for that a lot, and we learned a lot. So now we know how to do that. Tell me what your forward is on that.

Yeah, so I'll take that one. Um, that came out during the, uh, budget discussions. There was a request from some to make sure that we're being as efficient as possible. And so we did pay a lot with the MGT study, but we didn't have a strategy innovation team at the time. And, um, as you know, that team can do what any other third party can do even better. And, and they know staff and know the inner functions of every department. And so, um, I would recommend that we We don't pay for a third party this time around, and we do it in-house, but model the same.

And do you feel you have enough resources in-house to do that?

Well, yeah, because we have Jenica and Heather and Whitney.

Okay, I just, I don't, I'm just trying to figure out, you know, are they the overworked, underpaid? You can talk to me after. Otherwise, thank you.

You're welcome.

Any other questions?

I do.

First, I'm really grateful that you did this, and I'm grateful that you're listening. And I think your comment specifically about this idea of overworked, like, if you just listen, you'll learn a lot of things. And I think we can do a lot of great things to improve that. So thank you for that. And this idea, there's 2 questions I have for you. You said stronger accountability at all leadership levels. What does that mean? Like, when you say accountability at leadership levels, what does that mean?

That's a good question. It will depend on the department, of course. But I think the The main theme is like employees at the frontline level should be held to the same standard as department managers or whatever, and making sure that if I am told, oh, you shouldn't do that, make sure that's applying at all levels and in all departments so that everyone's treated fairly. and disciplined in a fair way.

Consistent accountability. Okay.

2-way communication or sort of 360 accountability.

Okay.

At all levels.

Okay. Thank you. Then this, I feel well-informed at 3.7%. I think that's a challenge not just here, but probably for most organizations, just getting the word up and down the, you know, grid. So I'll be really interested to see how you sort that. And I think you can sort it really pretty well, but I would just love to stay informed as you do that because that would be awesome.

Yeah, and some things like that can be tricky. So like, for example, we have the internal employee email, the City Ditty, and a lot of times that has a lot of good information. Some employees just don't read that. And so they feel like, hey, I'm not informed of things. So, you know, sometimes it's not like we need to invent a whole new solution, but like, instead of coming up with a whole new way of communicating ideas, well, how do we just get all the employees to read the City Ditty or something like that?

So.

You know, it's all— it's not all going to be, let's completely remake the wheel and restructure the entire thing. It might be little changes with like that.

Well, I'd be interested to know too, like, what exactly they feel not informed about. So I think there's a lot we could learn from that. So, anyway, thank you. I think this is awesome.

Yeah, thank you.

Thank you, Council. Any other questions or comments? I'll add my thank you. Thank you for doing this work. There's, there's so much that can be learned from this, and I'm grateful the employees felt safe enough to share their comments and to share their thoughts. And that speaks highly to the leadership here. So, thank you. All right, next item on our agenda is a presentation by Jared Hall, our planning director, regarding the text amendment definitions relating to accessory dwelling units ordinance and nonconforming sign ordinance. It's a 20-minute presentation, 10-minute Q&A, and these— both of these items, Council, are on our agenda this evening.

Okay.

Um, first up is the—

this is—

so this is related to the nonconforming signs ordinance. Um, so it's in Section 1442. This came to us from an applicant that owns a sign along the freeway on private property along the freeway. It's not an off-premise sign. It's not a billboard, but it's oriented to the freeway. And they wanted to make a change to it, replace the cabinet. Our current nonconforming sign ordinance would not allow that to happen. You can't change the cabinet out. You can change the face plate in the cabinet, but not the full cabinet. And their particular sign, they wanted to change that cabinet. And we said, well, the only way you could do that is if we changed our ordinance about nonconforming signs. So they said, okay, we'll make it. We'll make a request. So that's what we're looking at here. Just for to understand kind of. Basically, where we start, materially altered includes that cabinet. You cannot change that cabinet, and that was their main deal. You can make minor repairs that can't value more than 50% of the sign. Anything that's specifically excluded, like the cabinet, even if that were 50% or less of the sign, you still can't because it's specifically listed. Um, the commission heard this on September 2nd. They did recommend approval. The vote was 5 to 0. I want to show you just a couple of things. This is the language that's been proposed is here in red. What it basically says is this. It would only apply to freestanding signs that are west of I-15 and that are oriented to the freeway on properties west of I-15 that are oriented to the freeway, and only in this one specific area. Uh, it wouldn't allow them to increase in height if you change the cabinet, and it wouldn't allow them to increase the surface area of the cabinet. So we'd have to stay the same or get smaller. Stay the same height or get shorter. And then no structural changes to the supports or the foundation. If that support foundation is in bad shape and you've got to spend more than 50% to fix that, then you're out of luck too, even, even with this change. These are just to make it clearer or easier to understand. This is the area we're talking about west of I-15. And in this sign zone B, you're not allowed to have the sign ordinance won't allow make some of these signs, or most of these signs that are along this freeway, nonconforming.

There are—

this is the sign in question, actually, right here, the one that generated the request. There are 6 others. In doing the research on it, there are 7 signs total that would qualify under this exception if it was allowed, this new section. And we can come back to this in just a second because I want to show you one more thing. These are the regulations that would preclude it from being changed. Sign Zone B is that Zone that you were seeing on the west side of the freeway here is all sign zone B. You can't have more than 225 square feet in area, but the killer for them was not the area. It was that pole signs have to be set back a distance equal to the height of the sign. So, as this— to get the sign above the freeway, you have to be far enough back that they'd be in the middle of their buildings. We won't let them attach a sign to the top of a building. There are all kinds of problems there. So their exception is just for those freeway-oriented signs. This is here to show you that sign zone E actually already has an allowance for freeway-oriented taller signs. So, on the east side of the freeway, weirdly enough, you can have a freeway-oriented sign. You can be 5 feet above the grade of the freeway, et cetera. But on the west side, you are punished. No signs for you. So, that's basically what we're talking about. The big question on everyone's mind was the one we didn't consider that night. What do they want to do? What does it look like? What does it look like? This is the sign they want to replace this cabinet and cover the pole. This is the current sign, Alamo Storage. And when we ask them about why they want to change it, they just say it's weird looking and doesn't serve our purposes anymore. These, these octagons are supposed to be for tenants. They're too small for anyone to be able to read it.

It's—

they want to just do a simpler sign with a couple of tenant spaces for them. Set and then cover the pole. Um, this is the sign depicted as you would see it from the freeway. That's the height that it is currently. That's the height it would stay. You can just see the last vestiges of the octagons right there. Uh, any questions about what's being proposed?

So the little octagons, were there— was their square footage calculated and then added into the total of the cabinet? Yes.

Okay, that's what I thought.

This is—

this—

they're, they're all calculated in there now. And then just for interest's sake, I actually think this is kind of a cool looking sign myself. They don't like it, and it's their sign, so I'll stay out of it.

It's like it's from 1970.

It's kind of cool if you like that kind of a vibe.

But the mid-century sign, they're just—

yeah, exactly.

They're not interested in vintage.

They want to go super boring and utilitarian, and there's all this coolness, but that's something.

Okay, go ahead, Jen.

Why would it be only that one specific area? Like, is this something that has broader appeal? Why?

That's, that's a good question. The first part of the answer is just that it's what they asked for, and we didn't bring this as staff. They— this is generated by the property owners. They've asked for their area, and they felt like their best chance at getting an approval was to limit it to only certain signs. I don't think it has broader appeal necessarily, because these are— these are all of these signs they're showing here are nonconforming as to the height because they're too close to the freeway for that new height ordinance that we have. It says you have to be the same distance as the height of the pole away. So they're the only ones that it would apply to. We have the same kinds of issues on State Street where pole signs are supposed to be going away. So they're nonconforming, and as they— as they aren't replaced, we let them go away. As they get removed. That could— that would be holding the line down here saying these freeway-oriented signs have been selected for extinction. Let's let them go away. And this— their request here is a reprieve from that to say these 7 signs are the freeway-oriented ones. Let's let them be their own class like the sign zone E allows over here. So I don't think it has a broader appeal necessarily, because nonconforming means we don't really want that anymore. So it doesn't— it's freeway-oriented signs that are not billboards are kind of unique in their own way. They're not, not like the other signs.

So, thank you.

Yep, you bet.

Any other questions? Councilor Quinn.

This is more of a comment, but as I watched the Planning Commission kind of get their mind around this, I think the trade-off that they're trying to think through is in an ideal world, nonconforming signs would go away. But the current world is that the sign owners, like that Alamo Storage sign, have no incentive to take their sign down. And their sign is— you know, I'm respectfully disagreeing with Jared here. The sign is not appealing. It looks like it is not well taken care of. So the Planning Commission came to the conclusion that anything that helps that sign look better is a positive step.

Yes.

And the nonconforming issue just doesn't apply to that many signs. And so it's not a particularly big change to be able to do this, but it would probably improve the aesthetics of that corridor.

That was the logic.

Good. That's a good point, except for the vibe part.

I have some questions.

Sure.

Are any of these signs lighted?

I think all of these signs are lighted. I couldn't tell you exactly, but Emma would be able to tell you. She's not here, unfortunately. She's looked at all of these. I believe they are all cabinet signs. They're all lighted.

Are they?

They're not.

You need to clarify that.

They're not EMCs. Is that—

we've had several problems. Residents about the electronic—

Yeah, highly. Yeah, these, these aren't— these are not those. Um, those, because these are all nonconforming for predating that era. Um, so they're lighted cabinets perhaps, but they're not electronic message center signs. The billboards, unfortunately, I believe— I don't know how many years ago it was the billboard companies got making their signs, digital signs, to be considered maintenance. That didn't apply to anybody else. So you're getting complaints on the freeway for digital signs, they belong to Reagan Impact or somebody.

Not the state legislature.

Um, do we have— okay, the problem with those signs, um, they're blinding. Yes, they have no— well, I don't think they've ever changed the lumens requirement. Do we have a lumen maximum on these signs? Could these be the bright white also, or—

Well, we, we have, we have lighting standards for signs that are lighted. They're not supposed to be above a certain level. The problem that you have with the digital signs is they're— the lighting technology is completely distinct. These are backlit cabinet forms. The LED signs are LEDs, they're light-emitting diodes, and it's direct light out at you. And that's why they can— they get controlled a whole different way. They don't even measure that light in lumens. They measure what's called nits. Our ordinance doesn't deal in nits.

Excuse us.

That's a whole other thing.

Well, that works. Um, so in your opinion, you don't see a problem with where we are right now on the level of lumens permitted? These signs— if these signs get refurbished, we're not going to have people calling and saying they're too bright now?

No, I don't think so. Our controls are pretty good.

And which leads me to my next question. These areas where these signs are, Are they residential, industrial, manufacturing?

What—

This is— this whole site is mostly industrial.

Do we have any residential impact?

Oddly enough, the residential impact that you would have would be greater here that's already existing with the signed Zone E. On the east side, which is a little odd. The residential impact would be very little. Well, take for example, a case in point, the one that's— that generated the request. This is solid industrial park area. This is by that today, Industrial Park Road, et cetera. I don't— Yeah, the impact from this, it's one of the reasons the Planning Commission, like, like, like, when I was mentioning, one of the reasons the Planning Commission wasn't as concerned about it as they wrestled with it was the limitations of the impact, because it's just these 7 signs, just the freeway-oriented signs. If it had a further-reaching effect, it might have been more concerning, but these are going to be the locations and they're not. If you look back at— sorry, where's my picture of it? Again, this location here, it's not so far up above the freeway, and none of them really are. They're all just barely up above this, that visibility. You're not going to get light across the freeway to the east side, and that's where your residents are.

And we're not going to blind any drivers who are going.

Not with backlit cabinet signs. The digital stuff can be really bright at night, the backlit cabinets.

It looks like they're all on the west side of the freeway.

All west side.

All of them.

That's the only place it would apply, west of the freeway.

And then my last question, and you and I kind of talked about that. We don't have anything in place from a code enforcement perspective that incentivizes or that prohibits this. You know, if I don't get what I want, I'm just gonna let my sign Or if I don't have any money, I'm just gonna let my sign look bad, and we have no way to enforce any type of beautification.

Well, we don't, we don't have a good mechanism, but we do have code that says if it deteriorates and becomes debilitated and abandoned, we can take steps to make you remove it. And where we might, we might end up using that kind of code on something like this sign if they're not willing to put money into it or whatever. But that's a long Process removing people's properties, especially a sign where you have to calculate the value of that sign and everything is difficult and not something you undertake. I don't see—

I guess that would be my question is, you know, we're making these efforts. We're talking about beautifying State Street, buying, you know, our corridors. Is that something that we should look at? Is it— I like the incentives better than the penalties. But is that a way that we can kind of shore up our ordinances and our opportunities?

You have that tool. It's just a tool that brings with it, if you use it to say this is a deteriorating sign and it's reached a level that we're going to want you to remove it, that's going to bring with it a lot of pain. To me, that pain would be better spent on State Street than on the west side of 15.

But in your opinion, I guess in the summary, your opinion, our ordinance is strong enough now. We don't have to look at that to kind of change that also.

I don't think you need to change the regular The standard nonconforming language as it, as it could be applied to State Street. I don't— if we, if we thought that, we'd be bringing it to you as we look at State Street beautification and other things going forward that might change. But right now, no, I would recommend—

Any other questions?

I think that signs— yeah, I was noticing that today on the way here, and you got the good side of the sign. Yeah, the other side is just completely Yeah, yeah. And the opposite side of the freeway, trying to think if there are homes on the other side, and it's all businesses on the other side of the freeway as well. So I don't think there would be any impact.

Yeah, the freeway corridor is pretty well insulated.

And, you know, that's a great way for them to advertise their business.

Yeah.

Yep.

All right. And everyone sees this sign up close and personal if they are going Taking the exit off of I-15 onto 800 North. So it's— it is a marker of the city.

Well, yeah, that's true. You know where— you know where you're at. I always know when I've crossed 8th North when I'm looking at—

I like how this does incentivize beautification in and of itself, right?

That's true.

It's a good point.

All right, if there aren't any other questions or comments, we'll move on to the amendment definitions related to accessory dwelling units ordinance.

Start out by warning you that this is 70% less exciting than what you just lived through.

So, this is changing the—

it's changing the definitions because of the definitions when you adopted Section 22611, replacing 2269I. You're already glazing over. That was accessory apartments, and now We don't call them that anymore. Um, as soon as we were— the Planning Commission adopted or recommended for you the change to accessory dwelling units and detached dwelling units. And legal was quick to point out to me that that affected definitions in other parts of the code, a far-flung bunch of them. These are the definitions that we adopted inside of 22-611. Accessory dwelling unit shall mean a single-family dwelling subordinate to the primary dwelling on the same lot or parcel. A primary dwelling is a single-family detached home permitted by the zoning. An interior accessory dwelling unit is an accessory dwelling unit that is contained within the footprint, and the detached is an accessory dwelling unit separate from and subordinate to the primary dwelling on the same lot or parcel. Um, what it changed, or how the problem it created, is that we called all these things accessory apartments, and they get referenced in the traffic chapter. They get referenced in the water chapter because of meters and things. They get referenced all over the place. When you do in home occupations, and I have, helpfully, I have every single one of those changes in a slide. So we can go through all of them together.

And just ask a question. Is it literally the only thing changing from accessory apartments to accessory dwelling units?

Almost.

Let me show you one slide.

One of the 20 items.

So here's the normal one. Here's the And I'll save you some time. Here's a typical one, 19, traffic. Apartments, accessory apartments become accessory dwelling units. But if we go 2 more in, look at this. Here we had to just, on this, we had to say, hey, an accessory dwelling unit, a single-family dwelling, which we had to, they had a definition of their own in this section. So we had to replace it with the same definition.

Wow.

But even more interestingly, here you go. This one had to reference A couple of other things because of the change in definitions. That's pretty exciting. Accessory dwelling unit shall mean a single-family dwelling unit, which is subordinate to the primary. You've already heard that a million times on the same lot or parcel, which has its own eating, sleeping, sanitation. So there's a couple that— there's a few more phrases that have to be added, but they're all related to that same basic definition change.

There's nothing else that—

There's nothing else there. It's all—

that's it.

I concur with your 70%.

Told you, might even be like 80%, right? It depends. If the sign thing had been more interesting, you know, it really is just there are these sections that have to be changed to make it work so that there's not conflict between the way we're defining it in different chapters. Oh, we did have to— this is exciting too. This is— it was referenced 2269i, and you all know that's gone now, so we had to change that to this reference in 22611 through .

That was riveting.

I was updating community development.

That's a big—

Yeah, that's— we had a moment that we could fix development services, community development. We're just getting those at random as we go through things. But yeah, there you go. All right, I had forgotten about that one.

Thanks.

You just upped the excitement level. Yeah, slightly.

I can feel you. There's an energy here tonight. Yeah, that, that's, that's what I've got for this. This is— so it seems more exciting than it is. It's just updating those definitions because of what you just adopted.

All right, counsel, any questions?

Oh, and Appendix A, don't forget.

Oh, he's not done, there's more. I apologize, Jared.

Appendix A, there it is.

Can you explain every instance that we're updating, please?

Yes, you just saw them actually. You want to see them slower?

He was talking and he just scrolled through.

That's great.

Yeah, any questions about how that is going to work? It really is— that's all it is.

I don't—

I wish it was more.

It's so cute.

And I put it in there one more time. I figured it's the last time you're going to see it.

We do appreciate it.

Okay, this is cute.

So cute.

I want to go move into it as long as it's in order.

All right, anything else I can answer for you about those 2 items?

All right, counsel, any other questions, comments? Any other— any other exciting information? All right, you have—

Get out of your hair.

Given us exciting information. I think our next item on our discussion is going to be Even more exciting. Jake, are you up to it?

I mean, Jared's made my work seem so intriguing.

That's right. Put him before you so you could just— yeah. Thanks, Jared. We're back on our hike, my friends.

Yeah, Jared talked about the NIDS, and I guess Um, you got to deal with it in wit, I guess, on short-term rentals. So, um, okay, so again, my cautionary reminder, we are looking at this through an owner-occupied framework. So, as we talk about, um, the ordinance, um, as to the different regulations, Again, the world that we're talking about here is an owner-occupied world. Um, in brief recap, we've hit several different markings along the trail of our hike. I did remove our validations because we haven't really earned our cancellations of the hike yet. So they are not here. They will be coming later. Kind of just brief outline of what I anticipate trying to cover in the next 90 minutes. Waypoint 7 is we need to talk about occupancy regulations. And then Waypoint A is, would there be any exceptions that the council would be open to for any deviation from an owner-occupied framework? And then we will earn the cancellations for the different waypoints by making sure that there's consensus. On the different waypoints that we've talked about. So briefly, I'm gonna just kind of give a high overview because again, the purpose of that last, the last portion is where is there consensus? So I kind of want to just talk about occupancy and then the exception world, maybe more theoretical rather than what would actually How it would work in practice, I guess that could be done when we look at where there is consensus. So, occupancy, what does it mean? This is very different than the density that we've talked about elsewhere. Density and the numerical caps are talking about how many STRs would be located within the city of Warren. Occupancy is dealing with the number of people that would be able to rent or stay in an STR overnight. Again, potential different options would be that you adopt some version of the single-family definition. And you can say single-family could, could stay in a short-term rental. It doesn't necessarily matter the amount of people, except that the square footage of that short-term rental would regulate the number of people that a family could bring. So you couldn't put a family of 10 necessarily in a short-term rental that is 400 square feet. But when it comes to unrelated, it would be capped at 8. That was one option that we had discussed over the past 2 years. Another option is to look at Creating a tiered square footage kind of calculation where up to 400 square feet, you allow 2 individuals. 400 to 800 square feet, you allow up to 4 individuals. 800 to 1,200— 800 to 1,000 would be 6, 1,000 to 2,000 would be 8, and then starting at 1,200 square feet, it would be 8 individuals. And then you would be adding 1 additional person per X number of square feet, whether it's single family or unrelated. Again, knowing that we would not allow a property to be divided into multiple STRs, there would be 1 single STR on the parcel itself. And the other occupancy regulation that has been discussed in the past has been Creating a basically an estate or a large STR category that would be separate and distinct from the other STR occupancy regulation. And that would be basically identifying parcels within the city of Orem that are over a certain amount of acreage or square footage of that parcel. So, 1.5 acres, the dwelling unit itself has to be X number of square feet. And that the off-street parking has to, has to equal, you know, basically 1 parking spot per 1,000 square feet available in the home. And then you would allow occupancy based off of that square footage again, very as a tiered calculation. Are there any overall questions, just broad questions about occupancy in that? Of those 3 different options.

You know, I mean, I see your square footage and how many people. I mean, do we— have we figured that out? Have you seen like, okay, a typical 2,500-square-foot house that's gonna have this many people?

So trying to basically kind of see what this would look in practice. Again, knowing that this is, um, again, thinking about it in the world of an owner occupied, right? So most of these STRs would be in the traditional sense would be in a basement. Um, you converted basement into a living, living unit or separate dwelling unit. And so if you've got roughly a 2,400 square foot home, That's going to basically put 1,200 square foot on the main floor, 1,200 square foot in the basement. So, um, the image here is a floor plan for, for 1,225 square feet. So that would show that you'd have a living room, a dining area, kitchen, and then basically 3 bedrooms, a primary bedroom, and then 2 other secondary bedrooms. So, as you look at that, if you were— if we're talking 1,200 square feet, could you easily accommodate 6 or 8 individuals in there? I think again, with a pullout couch, you're going to have a sleeping room here in the living room with a pullout couch, and then 2, 2, and 2. That should easily accommodate 8 individuals. So again, it's not that you were trying to cram so many people into a small space. The one next to that is more along the lines of about 1,000 square feet. And again, that's going to show 1 secondary bedroom, a primary bedroom, and then a living room that again could have a pullout couch. So that should easily accommodate 6 individuals. So again, the idea is not that we're trying to cram, you know, as many people as possible into a small space, but what we Practically work in that space safely.

So go back to your other chart, 1,000 square feet, 800 to 1,000 has a maximum of 6. And this is not necessarily— so we're not worried whether it's a legal bedroom or not. We're just Or are we considering language that indicates sleeping quarters, square footage of sleeping quarters?

No, because I'm not— I have not drafted any language that goes towards bedrooms. And the reason for that, I believe I've tried to explain that in the past, is what I don't want to see is individuals try to create sleeping quarters or bedrooms that are Would, would not typically fit what our building code would require as far as size and egress. Um, and I don't want any sort of gaming of, well, I can take 1,200 square feet and put 6 bedrooms, and I can put 2 people in a bedroom. So now I get an occupancy of 12. Um, square footage is much harder to gamify that way, as opposed to putting up extra walls and having You know, 70-square-foot bedrooms. And so that's why I've done the calculation based off square feet.

I feel like you and I did talk once, though, and you said something about a minimum, like everybody has to have a bed. So I assume that would be part of this.

Yeah, that's kind of the question I have is you have to have a pullout sofa. You're saying you can sleep 6, you have to have somewhere they could sleep.

Correct.

Yes.

Then I'm wondering how that with the occupancy, if you can remind me how this interacts with sober living facilities.

Yeah.

So again, we've— there's been a lot of conversation about group homes or sober living facilities and the interplay of occupancy. Um, as we've done our research and as we've looked at and tried to digest different ways to treat short-term rentals. Um, we believe that there's some very distinct ways that short-term rentals would be treated separately and differently from a group home. Now, another side could always make an argument that's different than our calculation and our research. And we think that we have good arguments on our side to defend this ordinance.

Well, that's changed. Yes, what you were advising us 2 months ago, correct? I would love to have a little mini meeting to, to see what those— where the confidence level is, where the changes are. I'd like to see case law. I'd like to better understand that because right now, frankly, I'm a little confused because there were— there was different messaging, um, recently.

Is there case law that Has changed?

No case law has changed. Again, what we're looking at is ways that we could distinguish. And again, I don't want to necessarily play all the city's cards in a public meeting.

That—

so as we've continued to research it and try to figure out what strategies would work best for the city, um, what we've reached is that there would be arguments that another site could raise. We think we have good defenses to those arguments.

Unless there's legal precedent to defend that, I feel like that gets into stinky territory.

So again, I don't necessarily want— I mean, happy to have a mini meeting, but I don't necessarily want to talk about all the strengths and weaknesses in a public setting.

But it's a concern. The point we're trying to make, this is not a cut and dry.

This is a—

there is still the— we could get sued.

Yeah, quick.

Of the options on occupancy that you presented, this one, this tiered square footage, makes the most sense to me. And I kind of like the way you laid that out. The one concern I do have is I just don't think it's possible from an enforcement perspective to distinguish whether someone is a member of the family or not. And I know in our previous discussions in this This meeting, that it's been very hard to figure out how that would be determined, right? Um, and so my preference on number 5 would be that we just— we eliminate the family and unrelated group provision, and we just say 1 additional person for 400 square feet.

That was my question.

I think as well, from an enforcement perspective, I think it would make it easier IT offices or office responding, because then we're not murky waters of what is everybody's genealogy tree.

Oh, that's what you want to go out then, have everyone reading my notes, relatives around me.

Say your note, PJ.

No, I would, I would agree with that.

So I would agree with that.

To that again, taking away Putting in place of 1,200, you're just going 1,200, and then you're doing a per 400 square foot, 1 person. Just to clarify. Okay.

And again, this again, I don't want to— I want to reach this kind of the high level, and then we'll go through and again go through the other areas, because I know there's other areas where there's still questions. And I want to hit all of those questions and make sure that we build the trail that we've started down. So, on the limited one-time licensure, this would be a potential exception to the owner-occupied world. What that means is that we would allow some sort of temporary window or period of time for non-owner-occupied Short-term rental become licensed within the city. Uh, potential, um, ways that we could do this is by establishing a criteria. And that criteria would look something along the lines of, they would have to provide proof that they were in operation prior to January 1st, 2025, or whatever date the council feels comfortable with. They provide that proof to community development at the time they apply for the license. That they show that they've been in some sort of continuous activity operating. It wasn't a one-off time. They did it sporadically, but that they, they were actually using their property in that way. That they had obtained a rental dwelling license through the city. That they had received some sort of licensure from the city, and that they had acted in what they thought was good faith. And that they can show that they've been compliant with their taxes, that they've been paying the transient room tax, so they've been remitting those payments to the appropriate tax agency. And if so, then what we would allow for is that we would allow for you know, them to obtain this short-term rental license, and that they could renew that license for a period of time that the council sees fit. If they wanted to, in essence, amortize that use over a period of 3 years or 5 years or 10 years, or leave that open indefinitely, if the council wanted to do that. That way, as long as they came in with a— within a certain window of time, They could obtain that license, but then from there on, in essence, the non-owner occupied short-term rentals would dwindle. We would basically amortize that use out of the neighborhoods.

That was my question, was just the amortizing. So, if the council were to put a date saying that by this date, short-term, non-owner occupied short-term rental licenses will no longer be available after Whatever date, correct? 2, 3, 2, 3, 5 years, whatever, 10 years.

So, in essence, what you'd be doing is you'd be saying, for now, we will allow the use, but know that there's a sunsetting of that use.

Okay.

And again, the findings here would be not that we're obligated to provide that license because it was never a permissible land use, but in essence, That we are taking a ministerial action to allow people who thought that they were acting in good faith and allow them this use and allow them some time to recoup whatever their investment was, um, and to, to operate that way, that, that operation is going to have a sunset period.

So I have a problem with the representation of what people thought. They thought they were operating good— in good faith. I mean, um, yeah, I, I just totally dispute that. You're supposed— if you're running a business, you should be doing your due diligence, having an attorney go through your paperwork. And if they had, they would have found that they're illegal in warum. So, um, they've been illegal for decades. So I have a problem with that phrasing. I think it is creating this thought that that is a reality. And while it may be in someone's mind, it doesn't mean that it's legitimate.

I don't know that I disagree. I mean, for years as a prosecutor, I've been called a Grinch or heartless or whatever other names people have thought to call me because Because they may, they may not know what the law is, but everybody's presumed to know the law. And at times that can feel harsh. And people have come in and talked to me and said, you know, this doesn't feel right, this doesn't feel fair. But nonetheless, that's what the law is. And as a prosecutor, oftentimes people will think you're heartless for that.

And I can say everybody on the freeway is going 90. How come I can't go? Yeah, that's the— that's the— what is that that we learned about? 85th percentile is legal.

And I understand that. I have a question, though, and I'm— since I've only been on this for, what, 10 months of the 3 years now on this, have— it was my recollection that people did receive in some sort of written form, either it was a text or an email or something, indicating, indicating that it was legal, and that, that's what I—

It was indicating they could do it, and it was from a desk employee. It was not from an official zoning confirmation.

Yeah, so individuals have come in and shown that they had requested information about operating a short-term rental through, like, the podium access in 311. Somebody in the 311 department would respond and indicate that, yeah, you can, you obtain a license to operate that. Again, there's a very difference in authority from a clerk at the front desk versus some sort of actual ministerial formal action.

And to that point, and the only reason why I'm making this point is, once again, if we were to be sued for that, we have a very strong case I've been told, right, James, is that they would not prevail.

Yeah. And again, we feel that in our office.

Yeah.

It would not be said that we gave them permission.

But what I want to distinguish is, at this point where you're making a policy decision, you're not necessarily the prosecutor on the boots on the ground, right? As an executive, Branch official. I follow the law that the legislature passes. You're the legislature. You have the ability to weigh that and make an exception if you so choose. Jen.

I just had a question for you that if we go this route, which I think is a fair way to honor the people that really did feel like they were acting in good faith, this— they would be subject to the same rules and regulations of all the STRs. So if they fail to follow those rules, they would be suspended regardless. So whatever this license might grant them.

That is correct.

I mean, this would not be new, like, just clarifying, would not be new licenses. It would only be the non-owner occupants, would only be those that were whatever the date the council—

Maybe you could reshow.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So in essence, I mean, there's a lot of words here, and I— there's one thing I hate to do about on a PowerPoint is put a bunch of words to make you read it. But the summary really is that you would create a window of time that for the next 30 days or the next 90 days, if you had been a non-owner-occupied short-term rental operator, and that you could show proof that you had been operating prior to January 1st, 2025, or whatever date the council so chooses, that you are actively engaged in that operation. that you had been paying your taxes and remitting transient room tax, and that you had obtained an ADU permit, or that you had obtained a short landlord rental dwelling license, and that you were acting in what you thought was good faith, that we would then allow for you to be licensed for a period of time. That's the high-level summary.

I'll take 2 questions. Did they have to be operating legally? Well, they have some that have been Airbnb-ing the top and the bottom of a home. That's an illegal use in Orem.

Well, I see that it would be hard for me to go back and then again show how have they been operating. I don't know that I'd have evidence. So, so what I'd have to be looking at, I'm trying to find objective things that we could say, yes, we can prove that, or no, we can't prove that. And so I'm putting the onus back on the operator.

Look at advertise— I mean, the legislature gave us the opportunity to look at advertisements. They're advertising the top and the bottom separate.

But we could put something in there, couldn't we, that just says that there's one, one, uh, they have one, one unit?

Well, I guess my point is they over— because what we're doing is we're basing this exception on good past good behavior. So I would like to have something in there that rewards that past good behavior if we're gonna do this. And if someone who has been illegally received at home, that's not good behavior. So why are we rewarding them?

Or—

that's my point.

The question I would have is administratively, how do I have somebody in community development make that decision? I mean, at the time the application's coming in, um, are we gonna have a period of time that we then investigate that, that individual and see if they've been in compliance? I don't— I think that puts—

Maybe we let the neighbors bring— maybe in that 30-day period, we let the neighbors bring their evidence of the behavior forward.

I think that becomes very difficult from a practice standard. Quinn, you had your hand up.

Well, I was just thinking, if we go this route, then they're applying for a license, right? And so whatever requirements we have on that license, it might be an inspection, for example, would require compliance, at least going forward. Yes. And so if we're worried about compliance, we have a mechanism in the licensing process to do an inspection if we so choose, because they would have to abide by whatever the—

My point, my over— you know, we're like, oh, we're being unfair here. And I think actually we're being unfair to the residents to grandfather these people in. But my point is, why are we— would give an opportunity for someone who has demonstrated— by testimony of the neighbors should be enough— demonstrated poor behavior, um, you know, not being a good neighbor. Why should we allow them to have a benefit of continuation when they have already proven themselves to, one way or another, um, if we have the evidence presented to then have this benefit. It's just a protection and lets the good— that, you know, we always hear, oh, there's good hosts and bad hosts. Well, is it a way that we can weed out the bad hosts initially and reward those who have been good?

Yeah, I mean, again, I think it just poses from a practical standpoint for staff A very difficult way to go.

The point is, we write it up so staff has parameters to review.

I think we're talking about really relatively small number. I mean, I would be surprised if there were more than 20 of these. There's a very small number that we're doing, so I'm not sure what administrative burden appropriate. I think it's probably a really fair way to address both things. One, the neighbors can see that this has an end. 2, the people that have been acting in good faith, whatever that may have looked like, At the time, I mean, we can say they were illegal, and maybe they were, but it was buried in the appendix of some code. Even when I got on the council and asked what the rules were, I was told there were not. So I think that there's a lot of gray area there, and this is a really fair way to just stop the discussion and move forward constructively.

So I'm going to disagree with that, and with a number of those things that you said. Once again, we keep saying that this was fair or not fair. I don't know if any of us here really know what fair and unfair is. I think that's in the perspective of the person. We have a number of these that are— have already had significant complaints that have been violating our code currently, complaints from neighbors that it looks to me like this would grandfather them in. This would legalize them. And they— I just went to a meeting last night with some neighbors who asked me to come and talk and Um, yeah, they, they're frustrated with the city that we haven't acted on these, and that there's the potential that some of these that have their nose at them as neighbors will be granted, uh, uh, you know, rewarded for their lack of care and their lack of, of respect for the neighbors. So for me, this should be an opportunity. We should give the neighbors, the residents, a voice. We should come up with some type of, um, you know, feedback to let them say— have a say in what's happening in their neighborhood. Because we are looking at something that is illegal, it has been illegal, and has received complaints about that, and trying to reward that. So for me, that's unfair to reward someone who has had Prior bad behavior documented.

So you have a comment.

Okay, Crystal, then Jeff, and then Quinn.

So, let's say you have somebody who's been renting one portion of the home as a long-term rental, and one portion as a short-term rental, or the top and bottom as both short-term rentals. You're saying that we would just allow them to continue operating like that, even though that's clearly outside the bounds of our code? With this grandfathering in that scenario, I would indicate if they've been renting—

top is long-term rental, bottom is short-term rental— that would be different than the scenario of a pure non-owner-occupied rental.

Okay.

Um, the way I would treat that is, again, we've, we've discussed, you know, prohibiting having 2 rentals on the same property.

So, how would, how would the staff read that out and know?

So that's what's happening in the application itself. Again, we could, we could again ask, you know, there's only 1 rental, whether it's long-term or short-term rental on this property. And then the answer to that is in the application, the application itself, if you ultimately find out that they have provided false information in the application. That's grounds for suspension.

And I would like to see, to her point, I testify, or I certify, whatever word we're going to use there, that I have never done this, that I haven't done this, under penalty of law, whatever that penalty means, that I, you know.

We have those certifications in the application, and we could add an additional certification there.

So would this then—

there's not a way we can check against to see if they are breaking laws in that way. It would— there's not— we're not asking the staff to like look at the property and make sure there's no complaints against it or any of those kinds of things.

Again, I think we would have in the application, you know, we'd have community development staff check with 311. Is there a long-term Rental license, can we confirm that that is an active license and then compare it? Are there 2 or 1 for that property? If there are 2, then that would disqualify it because then it would have a long-term and a short-term rental.

Would we be looking at if there have been complaints against that property thus far?

You could add that, but again, my question that comes back to is a complaint does not necessarily equate to a violation.

Like, that would qualify as a violation under what we are looking at. Does that then prohibit them from being able to get the licensure?

That's ultimately going to be a question for the council to decide, and not necessarily for me. Is that what you want to prohibit somebody from obtaining their license? If there is a pending complaint, or if they've had a prior violation, is that enough to prevent us from issuing that short-term rental license under the exception?

Under the exception, and I think that's what's key right there. This is not a blanket checklist for everyone who wants to have a short-term license. This is what's key, is this is an opportunity for those neighbors. We have had over 100 communications through email or people speaking at city council throughout the city of Bull Run who have listed complaints about STRs in their neighborhoods. So for me, this is a— this is a way that we can help them feel heard, them weed out from their neighborhoods the bad actors. And, you know, if we decide to do this, this is a gift. This is not— we're not going to do this all the time. So there should be a level of responsibility and performance to receive this.

Thank you.

That's my people.

Sunsetting gift.

We haven't talked about that yet.

How do I know?

We just did.

It's been mentioned, but we haven't decided.

I'm sorry, but the whole discussion is talking about the opportunity will be there for some form of having them be involved and then a sunset. So if you're a non-owner occupied, from my understanding, so let me just repeat what I understand. Um, from a non-owner occupied, we have an opportunity to have a possible license granting timeframe for them to have a license for a period of time. That is sunsetting, it's going away. And, and with the intent that eventually there will be no non-owner occupied, but those that have been acting for a period of time and can meet all the criteria. could then continue for a period of time. That's my understanding of what's been talked about.

What's your opinion on what that period of time should be?

I, I don't—

the sunset clause?

Yeah, I'd like us to talk about what that is.

So I'm just asking you for your opinion, Chris.

What do you think?

Um, at least 3 years.

Anybody else have thoughts on that? I think a year. It gives them plenty of time to divest of that investment. That's kind of been the concern, right?

So rather than going farther into the weeds, I'm going to pause. Oh, sorry, Jeff.

Jeff and Quinn each had something to say.

So, um, I, yeah, I, and I, I hear what you're saying and I agree. Um, you know, we've, we've had those complaints about certain properties continually. Some of those have gone away and it feels like That has changed a lot. But I, I, it would be nice to be able to give some level of comfort that, um, if in my neighborhood there was a known house that was a problem, that there was something in place to either—

Yeah.

Already had their 3 strikes. Or that there are some really hard— just some really solid— maybe one strike, you know, you blow this opportunity later. We really need you to— we really need you to toe the line as we move forward with this. I don't know if that's possible to do something like that. Because I, you know, on the one hand, you have those that have done everything the right way. And no neighbor complaints. And, and now, from their perspective, we're throwing them a curveball. Um, so, you know, I, I, I like this thought. I've been wondering how— what can we do to kind of mitigate this situation for those that have been Good neighbors. And I know that we've had— we have some of those that have been good neighbors. They follow all the laws, no complaints. Um, and so we're proposing making a change to their life. And so I appreciate this thought. I've been trying to think of, you know, how could we do something, uh, to make— to make this happen. So thank you. Really good, good thought process. But at the same time, I don't, I don't want those neighbors that have problems in the neighborhood that are known problems to have to continue to deal with that. But it looks like the city's kind of, to Lenee's point, giving them another, you know, before throwing them a bone.

Let me ask a question about Quinn before you make your comment. Is there some— this is to your point that I have a list of things to think about. So, if an SDR has— I don't know what the right word— violation, is it adjudicated violation? Whatever type of violation, like they did it, then they would not— with the current owner, that they would not be able to apply for this exception because they've had complaints that have been proven legally. What's the word I'm looking for?

Verified.

So, what we would say is substantiated or—

Substantiated.

Okay.

Adjudicated, because we would have taken them Through our ALJ process.

No, I don't agree with that. No, we have one. Who do we— how many do we have in front of ALJ right now?

We've got— we have adjudicated 2, and we've got a 3rd pending.

Right. And that's it. And I've heard so many other complaints.

But this is kind of— so I guess for me, the staff, I'm just thinking that's where it becomes hard, is if I've just got a complaint How do I, under a due process clause, how do I—

See, that's what I was trying to find.

We have the power. Do you just tell us city council decides these things legislatively?

Why?

How is that due process? What we're doing is we're determining which side we're on here as a city council. Are we on the side with the residents who have in good faith and frankly a lot of angst, uncertainty, called and made a complaint against their neighbors that they don't want to complain against? Or are we on the side of the ones who finally were fed up with it and it's time to shut them down, and those are the only people we're gonna make held— be held accountable for what's going on at their business?

I don't necessarily see it in that frame of words. I, I, again, I agree Conceptually, what you're saying is how you see it.

I'm not asking you how you see it. I'm asking you, is it appropriate as a city council to wait, use that information to make our decision?

It is absolutely appropriate for you to say, should we grant an exception? Because it may allow people who have complaints to get a license. That's a policy decision. What I'm talking about is, if you're telling me, staff, not to issue a license because somebody has a complaint, a complaint doesn't necessarily equate that it actually occurred. And that's the problem, is we have a, we have a rule that you can't drive without a license, right? And we want people to drive on the road safely. Somebody could drive without a license. And until they get caught and adjudicated, their period of time to actually obtain that license never gets suspended or gets elongated for the fact that they've been driving without a license until it's actually been verified and adjudicated.

This is an exception, Jake. I don't understand. To me, that makes total sense with an initial license, but we are creating a little carve-out here. We are creating an exception, and we should be able to control the terms of that exception. I don't know how that would not hold up. We're making a special exception, a one-time law that's not going to be, you know, held— we're not going to be held accountable for the future or past. We are making a one-time exception here. So for me, legally, that we have a lot more leeway on that.

So perhaps we close the clock to the whole council about essentially the differences put in here, uh, uh, looking at accusations of guilt versus proven guilt.

I think we're just trying to figure out the step. How does— when rubber meets the road versus versus the principal.

And let me ask you this. So the photo of— I mean, I know one house right now, we all know this one, right? They've— they— we've told these neighbors how many times, you know, we now have to have the police go out and catch them. They sent— they have sent pictures, recordings, door cams, everything, but that's still not enough. So you want me to tell those neighbors I'm going to grandfather in that house even though we have pictures of buses, we have pictures of Cosmo dancing in the street, we got pictures of 12 men walking out, you know, we're violating every law that we have on the books from occupancy standpoint.

I—

to me, that's where— where's the standard there? Are, are we saying it only counts if we have a police officer go take care of this? And really, we want our police officers spending their time doing that? I mean, are we saying we don't care if we took a— you took a picture, neighbor, it doesn't count? Can we say you took a picture of paper, that counts?

Just a second. Okay, because I want to make sure Quinn has a chance. I was— I interrupted between Jeff and Quinn, and I want to make sure Quinn has what he has to say, and then we'll come back to this.

I don't have anything profound to say. I think we all are very concerned about problem properties. And that we want to resolve those as quickly as possible. And I'm extremely anxious to get something passed because I think that is our surest mechanism to have clarity about how to enforce any violations. So I think we're on track to have a pretty rigorous ordinance that has teeth in it for violations, and it's going to be so much better Than the ambiguity that people are living with right now, and so you know on this issue I think only I can't adjudicate. I think only things that have been previously adjudicated make sense for me. But as soon as we can get something in place, bam! We have a process now where violations can be dealt with very efficiently and effectively. I think so. I'm just very anxious to get something in place so we can take care of those properties that continue to.

Okay, thank you.

All right, we'll go back over to this. Any other discussion on this?

I'm just going to disagree, Quinn. We can, we can create parameters as a city council. We can say if you meet these parameters, we will give you this license. So the word adjudicate just kind of makes it sound, um, Like it's been to the judge, but we don't have to have it go to the judge. We as a city council can say, if you've— if there have been pictures sent in about your property, if you have had complaints from neighbors about your property, if you've, you know, you violated our occupancy standards, whatever, it's at our discretion whether or not we allow you to continue to operate.

It should be at our discretion as a city. This is an exception. This isn't a right that you have. This is completely an exception. So if you've had any sort of complaint against you, it's at our discretion whether or not we allow you this licensure, point blank. Like, there shouldn't be any other way to do that.

So this may be a good place to to get everyone's input on the ground, so on. Difference between— and so accusation versus proven and adjudicated.

Can I just, before we do that, um, so we had a situation just recently where an STR was accused of having a really big party, 150. I went up there, we all got Dick Brent's phone call. I went up there Um, and there were a lot of people there, and it was totally different from what he described in his message. I'm not saying—

it was—

to me, it felt like a young single adult ward party that was going later than it should have. Well, come to find out, it wasn't even an STR. That that place is not an STR. It has people that are renting there. And so I, I, I— my point is, sometimes a complaint can be made, but it's false or inaccurate or misunderstood, and we're casting stones at something that we may—

Which is why I think it should be at the city's discretion, right? We should have the discretion to say— and it wouldn't even matter for that one because it wasn't even an STR in the first place, so it wouldn't have applied to it anyway.

Right.

But what I'm— that's my point is people make complaints, but we don't always have all the facts when we're making complaints.

I also feel like there are so many short-term rentals who have not had any complaints made against them because too many people want to be nice. They don't want to rat out their neighbors. They want to be nice about it. And yet they come in behind the scenes to us, say, I really hate this. I hate this so much. I hate the way this is degrading my neighborhood. I hate that I don't feel comfortable in my own home every time that short-term rental is being rented out. I used to not think that it was that big of a deal. And as we've gone on this journey of, I guess, that we've taken in figuring this out, the more people I've talked to, the more our residents who don't own a short-term rental do not want them. They don't want them in their neighborhoods. They don't like them, whether it's owner-occupied or not. They don't like them. It's degrading their neighborhoods. It's degrading how they feel they know their neighbors. It's degrading their relationships with other people. It's degrading their trust in other people. And yet we're just saying, okay, let's keep doing that for the sake of business. Let's allow these businesses to take over our residential zoned areas and allow these people who bought homes in Orem in good faith to live in a neighborhood and have neighbors that they know and love and have a community around them. We're saying that doesn't matter so that all these people who want to have a business run out of a neighborhood can do that, that they can have hotels running out of our neighborhoods.

I don't think that that's what we're saying, though. I think what we're saying here today is we have a problem, we have a situation, and what is the fastest and best way to, to an answer that works and is, is good for—

Yes, my answer for that is let's listen to the residents. Let's listen to all the people, not everybody who owns a short-term rental, but the people who live around them.

And, and, and I agree with that. And, and that's what— that's why I said I think those that have been good actors, good players, should be able to move ahead without them.

And my argument against that is those that have been good actors and good players probably have people who live all around them who just haven't had the guts to speak up publicly, but they've said something here and there. That's where I'm uncomfortable.

Yeah, maybe we should adjudicate. Maybe we should have an open table, an open open time for, you know, notify the neighborhood, this, this, we're grandfathering in this short-term rental next to you. Would you like to come in and speak to that and give us, your city council, your opinion on that? Then we hear their opinions and we can decide.

Jen had her hand up.

Um, I would love to see us move forward with this discussion. I think there are Valid points on all sides. I think that this discussion we just had, there are other perspectives that we haven't included as well. There are people that are very against them, and there are people that are very for them. I think we're all trying to do the best we can to find an appropriate and healthy middle ground for all of the residents of our city. So my question is, how can we move past this discussion and onto the next thing? Because we have a lot to cover and only an hour left.

Thank you. I was trying to just calculate the time and see how far, how long.

Stop at 5 for dinner, and then Probably stop at 5:30. Let's see, we've got— okay, and then we've got your council report and review the agenda. So 5:30, 5:35. I don't know, that work?

Yeah. So what I want—

Wait, Jen, you need to give your opinion then on this matter.

Said anything?

Who has?

I mean, if you want to—

how do we move past? We don't just move past and not talk about it. We've had people that have said things. So now, Chris, let's hear you. Jen, let's hear you.

I think that's— before I interrupted Bryn, I think that's where you were heading.

Yeah, Bryn, you were—

I'm sorry.

So what was it that you wanted us to weigh in on? Well, adjudication for complaints versus violations.

Basically, what's the line we draw?

The standard we're trying to hold to be able to apply for this exception. Is it Just adjudicated, or is it somewhere?

I'm happy to weigh in on that.

I'm going to say what's somewhere in between.

That's to be defined by each of us, I guess.

Yes.

Okay, that's what I— somewhere in between would be something creative. Something out there that I just want to make sure. Okay, go ahead, Jen.

The first thing I want to say is I feel like it's difficult to have this discussion where we're trying to hold people accountable for What happened before when there were really not specific rules to hold them accountable. I know that's something you can debate, but I think creating this legislation is guardrails for both the property owners and the neighbors. And I think it will provide both a path to exist peacefully together, because if they don't keep the rules, they're done, period, end of discussion. So that said, I think I have a real problem not allowing due process to run its course. So I would advocate for only adjudicated, convicted, whatever. I don't know what the word you want to use is. Um, those maybe we consider not allowing, but the rest of them, I think if it's just hearsay, someone said, it could be misinterpreted. I think your example is great, and I've heard that over and over again. At the same time, of course, we want to respect the neighbors, but one, if it's following due process and been adjudicated, then maybe we can say let's not include them. 2, going forward, we have a really clear, strict definition that protects everyone, and I think that's a healthy way.

Would you define adjudicated?

Adjudicated would be that we've issued a Administrative citation, and that citation was not appealed, so it was upheld. Or they appealed it, and we went through the ALJ hearing, and our ALJ judge upheld the citation.

We have one of those right now. One— you only have one house that that would apply to right now.

We've had 2 homes that that's applied to.

Well, they're shut down.

Right?

I mean, they're no longer— so this wouldn't apply to them.

They couldn't apply.

Yeah, they can't apply anyway.

That would be, again, if we go with adjudicated, they would not be eligible if we went with adjudicated.

But they're not eligible already. They have been shut down consistently. Yeah, they've already been— they're off the table. But again, we have one.

Yeah.

Yeah, so all that does is answer to one Residents, which frankly is very close to being discontinued as it is. We have other cases that have come to our attorneys that are still requesting— our staff is still requesting additional evidence. How many of those do we have?

Not necessarily requesting additional evidence. We're asking for cooperation so we can present evidence.

How many of those do we have?

Off the top of my head, I can think of one.

So really, this— I guess what I'm— the reason I'm asking these questions is because you're talking about 2. This, by using this adjudicated word, it doesn't really cover anything. It doesn't solve the problem.

We said adjudicated nuisance and building code. So not just STR-related, other nuisance code violations or building code violations, that that would change.

What would that entail?

Again, I don't know that that's going to change the number, but what my point is from staff is, if we use complaint— Steve, feel free to correct me— but if we use complaint, That is very ambiguous as far as it's not verified. So if you've got a neighbor who just doesn't like the other neighbor, they can make a complaint, and that's sufficient enough if you use complaint to keep somebody from doing that. And that, I don't think, meets the due process guidance here.

How about more than one complaint? I mean, from different people.

Can I weigh in? Yeah, Mayor, I'm gonna weigh in on 2 things. I really— I've been thinking about the— with the grant, with the sunsetting. I think 3 years is too long. I'm gonna start with the easy one. I'm pushing it at 2 years. I think that that— and those are for the ones who had the good faith, that they good faith me. And I know we disagree on, on that part, but the, the 2 years is something that 24 months, that gives somebody the opportunity to either rent it for A little bit more, then sell it or make it a long-term rental. For this other thing, my concern is if we, if we go to complaints, that starts a slippery slope. Because if we start being complaint-based in our short-term rental ordinance, let's say that I have a neighbor who parks 6 cars in the front of their house or whatever, and 3 of them aren't operating. And, and then I complain. Does that mean— could there possibly be some ordinance out there that would punish this person because they got a complaint? I'm concerned about ordinances coming forward.

One, it's only for— it's not for short-term rentals from here going forward. It's a one-time.

I get that. I get that. I'm just concerned about complaint-based. We all ran for office. We've all had complaints against us. Were they, were they things that were true? Probably not. Most likely not. Or were they misunderstood, or were they just not? Anyway, I'm just concerned about using complaints and, and if anytime we move away from due process and not have that, what I believe is the bottom line of that adjudication or something like that, I think that that puts the city in a precarious position. But I do recognize, I just want to acknowledge that I understand the fact that we as a council Legislatively can create what we, what we choose to. I'm just sharing what I think.

I didn't say my years.

I prefer 5 years.

5 years, just to be contrarian.

Yes, I prefer 5.

For 5 years? Yeah, you prefer 2.

He's more than 3.

That's okay.

I'm 1.

Did you hear me say 1?

3.

Then I would go with 2. Um, uh, it's not as easy to sell a house as It always, you know, we've had times when you can have multiple offers in a day, and I've noticed more and more homes sitting for longer periods of time. I feel good with 2. I feel like that gives them enough time. I feel like that would give them enough time to make something happen. 1 year might be a little tough to do. Like 2, like 2 years. And, and if you know that this is happening, you want to do it sooner than later. Maybe you want to just get on it, get done, and I don't know, sell before the market drops, right?

But let's see this.

You have a chance.

Okay, um, so we didn't have a— we did not have 4 votes on a time.

No.

And so here's kind of the roadmap for where I want to go on the last 45 minutes that we've got, is we've gone through a bunch of different waypoints, and I know that there are still some questions, and different council members have approached me and said, well, you know, I still wasn't sure where we are on this. So I want to hit each of the waypoints one last time, and as we talk about them, Um, see where there's consensus from the council. Now that we've gone through, wait, feel where there is consensus.

Can I interrupt you for one more?

I'm so sorry. Your last, the grandfathering in, what if they own 2?

There would only— it would only be allowed to be one.

They're going to be subject to— because you didn't have that listed on that side. I changed that other side to say subject to all of the provisions of the new law.

Are you asking if they own 2 separate properties or 2 parcels on the same property?

2 separate properties. I know of 1 person who owns—

I think it's, it's no matter if they own 10, it's going to be the same. It's just they've—

But that wasn't clearly stated on your right-hand column, right? So maybe that right-hand column Is that totally inclusive of everything, or is that like— is that the language, or are you going to say—

The language that I've prepared so far.

Yeah, so that doesn't say anything about that.

So again, let me clarify for the— because I want to make sure that I understand where everybody is then. So we are saying only 1 STR on the parcel. That would be— they are still subject to all the same rules as before. Now, if they owned 2 STR properties, this doesn't necessarily preclude that. They could have 2 owner-occupied STRs as long as they were paying their taxes, they had the landlord rental dwelling license, they could have that, but they couldn't have 2 on the same parcel.

There are—

go ahead.

One rental period on a parcel, right? Not just an STR. One rental period.

Yes, it's one rental period.

It's that STR, so I just wanted to clarify.

But our ordinance says you can only own one.

What do you mean?

Per property?

Per—

no, owner-occupied.

How could you own owner-occupied? You couldn't own 2.

Yeah.

Are, are you talking This ordinance or the ADUs?

Short-term rental ordinance.

Yeah, if it's owner occupied.

So we don't, we don't have— so I need to come back. We're talking about owner occupied. So owner occupied, you would only be able to have 1 because it's owner occupied. So there's nothing that's explicitly saying you can't own more than 1, because by the practical matter, it's owner occupied.

I'm sorry, I'm talking to the exception.

There's no language that— under the exception, there's no language that says you can't own multiple non-owner-occupied STRs.

I'm saying I would like to add to that that they need to choose. They need to choose which one of their ones they want to keep as an owner-occupied, non-owner-occupied. I'm not going to grandfather in their 4 properties.

Okay, just rapid fire, understand where the council is on that issue. Does it— is there consensus from the council to limit if we were to take an exception? Because we haven't even resolved if we're doing an exception, but if we were to take it, this is all just a giant— if there was an exception, do you want to limit it to 1 non-owner occupied, or do you—

That would be the parameters I would want to be in the exception. How about I say it that way?

Will you say that again for me?

So, in order to qualify for an exception, the 1-time licensure criteria You get one gift. You get one gold ticket for one property.

Okay.

This is the non-owner-occupied properties we're talking about. So you get one. If you own 3 Airbnbs in Orem, we're going to let you keep one of those.

And I would be on the opposite side of that. I would support letting people who have acted in good faith continue to operate those in good faith, but also knowing that they come to an end.

So, yeah, this good faith language is really insulting.

You can say that.

I'm just telling you, you're, you're putting things in there. I think they're acting in bad faith. They're, they're illegal.

We have different perspectives on that one. That is totally—

I'll start saying they're acting in bad faith. They're illegal.

You're welcome to do that.

I don't like more than one because I don't want our housing stock to be investments. So I would prefer it to be one.

I don't have a strong opinion about having only one because they're going to be gone within 2 years or 3 to 5 or whatever the timeframe is.

Um, my knee-jerk reaction is, uh, keep it to allow them to have one for each property, but I, I could be persuaded otherwise. I mean, I'm not really heavily on that, but that's where I'm leaning right now.

Yes.

Um, I don't think there should be a limitation.

Yes.

Okay.

So, as I see—

What was Mayor's choice?

I, I see what you're saying, but I don't think— the fact is, is that it, it exists, and I think that's what we're talking about here. And so I would— I, I support just letting them have all of them because they're all going to go away anyway, and they're already there. And if, if they, if they meet the requirements for this, And I don't know how we say, because you own more than one, that you don't get to— Just say it. But I see what you're saying.

Okay, so with that, I'm gonna now kind of rapid-fire go through our different waypoints. Um, as I saw it, there wasn't a lot of, uh, question or controversy about owner occupancy Is a general concept for definitions. However, there were some questions that were brought up about— we had some language in there about that if it is a trust, that the trust was created solely for the purposes of estate planning. Those were questions that, you know, an individual from the community brought forward and a couple different council members. Where does the council feel about inclusion of that type of language in the definition of owner under the owner occupancy?

So, for me, the cleanest way of defining owner occupancy is, is this person's primary residence? I think we have a legal definition of that, right? This is where they reside most of the year. And I know that some people who operate STRs sometimes put their home in a trust for liability purposes as well. So it could be trust for estate planning, it could be trust for liability purposes, and I don't think we should have specific language about that.

I agree with that. I think estate planning is— that's an important part of your estate planning. So if you're living there, you're living there.

I'm not sure how easy it would be to establish intent either. So if it's— I don't see the necessity of it.

I think the question is, I guess, I—

Yeah, primary owner occupied is owner occupied.

Okay.

Yeah, I do have concerns with that 10-month thing, though. I mean, I assume we'll scratch that. But you said just primary residence is you claimed on your taxes, and that's where you live.

Well, the 10 months is the next thing he's going to talk about.

So on the 10 months, some individuals again brought forward concerns about it being too long. Um, wanting to shorten that, wanting just to, to say primary residence. Again, I do think there is some benefit to at least say that it's, it's more than half the year, um, rather than, you know, not having any timeframe. But again, I'd want to see where the council is and whether there is consensus on the, on the 10 months. Should it be less? What should that look like? This time I'm going to start with Chris and work around the other way.

So they have to be in the home, but they They would have an opportunity to go traveling, and some people, when you get to a certain age, travel more than others. So definitely more than half the year. I would say closer to 10 months than requiring more than that. So I'm probably between 6 and 10. That's just my general thought for all those reasons.

So maybe just—

yeah.

Are we choosing the number of months then, or are you just asking for the 10-month opinion?

Asking for your opinion on 10 months, or if you have a different calculation that you'd like to see.

And Jake, just to clarify, what does that designate? Does that designate the amount of time they have to be present in the home, or does that—

Time that they have to be present in the home to designate it as their primary residence.

So I have a question. What if I decide to go travel, make 6 trips over the, over the year, of course, the year, And they're 2 weeks each. And I have a short-term dwelling rental license that I choose not to rent it during those times, those 2-week periods through the course of the year. I'm gone 12 weeks, which is more— is more than 10 months.

Then you will get 1 strike.

Get 1 strike?

Yep.

You will not be shut down for doing that. If someone keeps track of your calendar—

I can't even keep track of my calendar.

I'm thinking, why are we spending so much time on this? This is ridiculous. Just say 10 months. Let's move on. No one's gonna— no one's gonna police that. The re— the way that's gonna get policed is if you have someone who is abusing and gone all the time. Yeah, like, so the 10 months is a safety. It gives us some teeth if we have to If we have complaints, it gives us the opportunity to point to something if— when we see abuse. And still, we're going to have to have 2 or 3, depending on what we talk about, that next one, complaints before that gets— that is something that affects that property. You see what I mean?

I do.

I feel the unintended— I think it's an unintended consequence, but you're right. No one's going to be Monitoring my calendar.

So where would you land on that?

It's not— it's not a— I'll just do 10. I'm fine with 10.

It's not—

I just wanted to point out that there are exceptions. There are people out there, there might be exceptions, but I, like you said, Lynnae, I don't think people say, well, Karen's on her 3rd 2-week trip to—

Way too many cruises.

Taking too many cruises.

Oh, yeah.

So I've never been on a cruise.

I would probably say greater than 6 months, because I, like, I agree. I don't think that's something people are going to be actively policing, but if we're not going to enforce it that way, I'd rather have us just be a little bit more liberal on that.

I think the primary residence language of more than half of the year is what matters to me.

And then Jeff.

I would— so I'm just thinking about Councilmember Eakin being out of town for 2 months doing a study abroad program, and sometimes those can be 3 or 4 months. You know, sometimes those opportunities or responsibilities come along, may or may not have control over that if it's employment related. So I would feel comfortable with a little shorter than 10 months, maybe 8 months. And I'm not, you know, it's not a fast and true. Crystal, did you—

so what I'm seeing is I'm seeing 6 to 10, greater than 6, more than 6, 8 months, and then 10 months.

So it's not 8 to 10 would be fine with me. I'm hoping it's not— to me, the most important thing is that it's the primary residence.

I'm not going to necessarily make you hash out a month right now. I'm going to take that into consideration when I draft it. There'll be language in there that tries to reflect that.

What are— are there other ordinances out there that have the residency required, or what is Primary residency is generally defined as being 6 months plus 1 day.

Um, owner's presence. So, under owner occupied, we had presented some information that to rent under the owner's occupied, and then I will take the break for the dinner. But, um, under the owner's Under the owner's presence portion, we were saying the owner would have to be present in the home during the time period that the STR was rented. That was language that was presented. I did feel like there may be some questions still lingering about that, and I wanted to bring it back to the council and see where the council was on that provision of the owner occupancy.

Are you saying there have been council members come to you to say, we want to rediscuss this and rethink this?

There were questions surrounding it.

So I'm looking up there. Where's the— where's the thing that talks— is there the person that's around 24/7? Does that fall under the owner's presence?

No, a 24/7 person would not count as owner's presence. The provision that we had presented before was that the owner would have to be present, and anytime that they had left to run an errand or something, they would have to have that person to be available, but they couldn't be away overnight. So you couldn't go on vacation and rent out the STR. You couldn't go out of town and rent the STR. You'd actually have to be in the home during the STR.

I had to go out for a little or wedding, so somewhere else. I could not rent out my STR if I was leaving to go attend a funeral and somebody made the reservation 3 months in advance.

Correct.

You got a designated sitter?

So again, that's, that's the question I'm, I'm, I'm bringing back. Do you want to have the 24/7 person Um, account for the owner's presence. Do you want to have the owner's presence, or do you want just to have the 24/7 representative? That's the question I present back to the council.

Which side? This way or that way?

Which— wait, before we go on that, so the— I want to just make sure that— so, 24—

confused.

Why are we discussing these again? We've already been through— we're trying to expedite the ordinance. We've decided Where the owner occupied means the owner needs to be there, and now we're rediscussing that.

We're going back through the different waypoints where I felt that there was contention or questions about that and trying to see where there's consensus amongst the council.

There were people who thought— I don't remember that, but there were council members who didn't think in an owner-occupied short-term rental that the owner should be present when the being rented. That's supposed to be the advantage to the owner-occupied designation and why we're doing this ordinance, because those are fewer complaints because the owner is on premises.

Yes, yes, that was—

I'm trying to understand why we're spending more time talking about this.

I'm just thinking, what happens if I have to do— go have to go for a funeral?

And maybe we do that. Maybe we do an exception, or, uh, you know, if you say— if you get reported If you have someone there and something happens, your 24/7 person doesn't show up and you get reported, you can forego the violation by proving that there was an unintended interruption for your stay. So a funeral, a vacation, no, but a funeral.

So that was what I was going to ask. Is it the fact that there is somebody accessible 24/7, or does it have to be the Is that— that's so—

and when we talked about that before, we did not want to have property management companies managing owner-occupied rentals. The idea was these are— these are— we are allowing these because the desirability that the owner is there means fewer— Almost the hope that there will be fewer fractions.

Jeff, could I start with you on this?

Did you have a question?

Go ahead, Jeff.

I was just gonna say, I feel like it's nice to have somebody there all the time. It's a little bit unrealistic. And I would be comfortable having a designated person to deal with problems. Obviously better to have the owner there, but I feel like there would be circumstances that come up that you can't be there. So to have somebody on call to respond in case there's a problem.

Okay.

What's important to me is that 24/7 point person, and I think they should be local. So I don't want a California property manager. Being that person, I think they need to be local and locally responsive. That to me matters much more than the owner's presence.

Yeah, and I would add to that, I think they need to be accessible within like 30 minutes max, but I agree with that.

I just want to make sure that there is an exception for these emergent— if they're emergencies, like if I can— I understand the vacation thing, I could just walk out so I wasn't renting it out. But if I— if somebody— if some sort of family emergency arose or something, I would like to have some flexibility for that. I don't know what that looks like. It may be the 24/7 person that I'd be okay with.

Okay.

Yeah, so I think owner-occupied means owner-occupied. I think the reason, as we've had these discussions all year, like I say, I thought we'd already decided all this and had all these discussions. The advantage is the owner is there. If something happens, they are on site to take care of it, where the neighbors aren't waiting 15, 20, 30 an hour I think we ended up with an hour away. I really have great agreement with the mayor when she says, let's add something in because there's a funeral. You know, I just had to go to one of those in Arizona a few weeks ago, last minute. So that happens. That's life. But I feel like owner-occupied means owner-occupied. And if we're going to turn it over to property management companies, then that's easy. That's not solving the problem. Ones that we've had problems with too are when you have a management company that is responding instead of someone connected to the neighborhood, cares about their next-door neighbors and how— what behaviors are happening on their property. That helps act though. So I agree with that.

I think that if you are doing owner-occupied, you as the neighbor Responsible to your neighbors for what's happening around you. Now, if we put in some sort of provision for emergencies, funerals, those kinds of things, it just gets hard for what— you know, there's always going to be an exception to every, every rule. But if that's the only time they've ever not been there, again, this only matters if they are reported there is a problem and they are reported by their neighbor. Right? So, because this isn't a, like, oh, we can tell that they weren't home when it was being rented out. It's not like we're putting GPS on all these people who are having short-term rentals where we're monitoring their locations.

Like, if I want to go to the grocery store or—

This only matters if there's a big problem that happens and they're not home or they're not available. And so, Again, having some sort of provision for emergencies, funerals, I can see that. I mean, I had an emergency this past week. Sometimes you go to the ER, it happens.

So I have a question. I want to make sure we're kind of— you seem to be kind of talking about the same thing, but I want to make sure we're talking about the same thing. Sorry, Chris, we haven't— so are you saying that people— what about if somebody wants to go to movies or if there's It's a kid's birthday, one of their grandkids' birthday parties, and it's—

So I think it only matters when they're spending a night away from home, right?

Spending a night away from home.

You are— let's say I have a short-term rental and I have a full-time job and I'm not actually available during the day, then my 24/7 person had better be available when I'm not.

Okay, I wanted— okay, the overnight. I wanted to make sure that we had some flexibility overnight, but it was not chained to my house.

You live there. Exactly.

You cannot be renting that out. Unless you are home. That was the whole point of the owner occupancy, in my opinion.

Thank you for the clarification.

And again, you end up in the hospital, guess what? That's an extenuating circumstance. You have to spend a night in the hospital. I can see why you're not there. It happens. If you have a funeral, heaven forbid, a loved one dies, a friend dies, and you have to go, then yeah, that could be an extenuating circumstance. But other than that, if you're spending a night away from home, that's a choice, not an emergency. Yeah, your lack of planning is not the city's emergency.

Sorry, Chris.

You're good. It's everybody's good. These comments are all very helpful.

Thank you.

Again, I also think the definition of being in the home for the period of time they live there, it's their primary residence, they'll be there on occasion. They may be out of town. If they are out of town for that night or whatever else, they must have a designated 24/7 and 30 minutes as Is also applicable.

So we have a home the next door over from me that they short-term rental that house while they're on vacation. They go on a cruise for 3 weeks. They are not present, and there have been issues not there, and they're not even reachable.

Well, do they have someone that—

they haven't, not so much. But, and of course, you know, trying to address that. But once again, I just come back to this definition of owner occupancy. We had this discussion before. The whole idea, the whole, um, appeal was that the owner was on site.

So let me maybe sum up what I again have heard from your council, and then if Your comments. It sounds like the preference is that the owner be present, but there's a 24/7, that's important to have them be responsive, be there within 30 minutes, that it's local. Preference, though, is owner being present there. But again, if there's exceptions or if there's— again, that's kind of how I'm going to try to approach this, is the preference is owner being present. With the 24/7. Is that again what I'm— is that not a correct analysis from what I'm hearing?

For me, it's if you are not there, it's an emergency. Not just I made arrangements for somebody to be in charge of it while I'm away overnight. If you're away overnight, it's a funeral or you're in the hospital.

There's not—

I don't see another It's hard to say. There's always other emergencies, right? But somebody's in the hospital or somebody's died.

That's—

otherwise, this is a lack of planning.

And then you're making—

Enforcement.

Well, it's entirely possible that I'm a much worse planner than Crystal. But I, I feel like that's unrealistic for most people. I just think that things come up, you do things, and that what's important is the responsiveness. And I just don't think we can regulate people's locations.

Nobody's forcing any of these people to run a short-term rental, though. If this is the job that they're choosing to have, that's the life they're choosing to live.

Yeah, that's why they have the license. That's one of the parameters of having the license. You have to be there to lessen the impact. Once again, what are we doing this all for? We're doing this for the next-door neighbors. We're not doing it— well, we shouldn't be doing it for the short-term rental operator. What we're trying to do here is protect the person who lives next door or across the street.

I think our goal is to mitigate impacts, and I think having someone accessible 24/7 within 30 minutes does that, and if it doesn't, then I think that leads to a strike. And I think still the fact that we're doing owner-occupied, like, whether the person's there that day or that week, whatever, they still live in the home and are very much impacted by what happens in their home. So I think they're still going to be much more responsive, responsible owners, just given the fact that they're sharing the home with whatever STR people are there, whether they're there that minute or not. So I feel comfortable with 7.

So can that person—

can we do—

can we exclude management companies then?

Can it be you?

If you have a 24/7, it has to be someone that is not— we're not extending the business enterprise nature of it.

Help me understand. Should be— I mean, if we've got somebody who is a professional property manager, they're going to be coming with maybe more savvy than the next-door neighbor. So help me understand. The reason why we would exclude a business.

Because they're not— what if they get 3 calls, 3 properties at the same time? What if they, you know, I'm sorry, my daughter's at BYU right now, and some of these property management companies—

That goes back to the— I guess the way I would view that is that goes back to the owner, then, that they've contracted with a business management company that was unable to service the contract. They didn't respond within 30 minutes. Now they got the strike because of that.

But once again, you're coming back to a business where we're talking about a business model. I'm talking about an impact model. The whole reason why we're writing this ordinance is because of impact, to protect neighbors from impact. If we keep giving away, um, things to businesses to make it easier for the businesses We're creating loopholes, we're creating confusion, we're creating opportunities that give us less teeth to when a neighbor has an actual problem.

So, Lynette, can I— who is it? Like, are you thinking like the next-door neighbor or a family, another family member that may live close by?

I'm thinking of someone that I would be more uncomfortable calling because they're my friend versus, oh yeah, I'm paying that guy. I'll just have him take a look at it while I'm gone for 3 weeks. You know, really what you should be doing is, if you book it out— and once again, we're coming back to the same thing— this will not be an issue unless there's a problem on site. That's the only— that's when it's going to get reported. And so to, to, to— and I, and I'm also coming back to the same— every— all the residents we've talked to that have come to speak, their thing is, look, we might be able to do owner-occupant Owner-occupied, because, um, you know that there's someone there at 2 in the morning hearing the people in the hot tub. So when I have to get out of my bed and go take the picture of the, of the people swimming in my pool, or go turn on it, take a video of the people in the hot tub, the person sleeping in the bedroom next door who owns the place hears those people too.

That's the whole Yeah. So, but with the neighbor, if the neighbor had a complaint, then they could call the property owner. The property owner could— if they're not there, then they call the property owner, calls the people, their 24/7 person, and says—

Yeah.

How's that going to work? We have a hard time reporting them as it is. So I'm going to wake up, someone's swimming in my pool, or I hear loud music or whatever. Am I going to call? I'm the next-door neighbor. It's the morning, you know. Oh, my neighbor gave me this 24/7 number call. I, I don't know how that— how's that going to look?

Middle of the night, I call the police. I don't care who—

there seems less, um, it's going to be a strike.

So again, the enforcement mechanism is you call dispatch. Dispatch then routes either an on-call NIT officer or a patrol officer. A patrol officer or NIT officer gets out there, makes contact with the homeowner, The homeowner's not present. They call the 24/7 number, which is the property management or whoever has been designated. They don't respond within 30 minutes. That's the strike.

Well, that's a whole lot of stuff going on at 2 in the morning versus your neighbor who lives there hears it and takes care of it before anybody has to even call.

That's—

or, you know, the person living there takes care of it before their neighbor's disturbed because they don't want their neighbor Mr. That's kind of my point here, is in this, in this whole conversation.

I see what you're saying.

The idea is we're gonna— the people living there care about their neighbors, they're gonna take care of things without the neighbors having to police it.

Sorry, we've gone over. You need a break for dinner, and we can—

are you ready for dinner and take a little break? Do you want to just— do you want to keep plowing through to 5:30, and then we eat Eat dinner and then— yeah, I'm gonna do council 10 more minutes and then we eat dinner and then—

okay, thank you.

Okay, go forth.

Summary for this one is the draft that I come back is going to try to at least show preference towards owner being present overnight. The way I count the numbers based on what I heard is there's a preference for that, but they're also okay with the 24/7. So that's how I'm intending to write this. Next is violations and strikes. There was some questions, concerns regarding the numbers of strikes. There was several conversations about 2, 3. What is that lookback period? Is it 12 months? Is it 18 months? Is it 24 months? So I want to start there. And if I could start with Chris.

3 strikes, 18 months.

2 strikes rolling 18 months.

Sorry, rolling.

So 3 strikes, 18 months.

Yeah, and I'd say probably the rolling just so that that catches them, right? So they don't get on the—

and then, Crystal, you said 2 and 18 strikes rolling 18 months.

I'm siding with the neighbors.

Okay.

Um, 2 strikes, 24 months rolling.

Rolling.

Okay.

2 strikes, 18 months rolling.

3 strikes, 12 months rolling.

3 strikes, 12 months rolling.

And 2 strikes, 18 months rolling.

I'll switch to that so you have consensus.

So 2, 18 rolling.

Okay.

Suspension period. Again, we had talked about suspending initially for a 3-year period. There was some hesitancy about 3 years. If we're going to treat all strikes equally, does that treat somebody too harshly if they get their strikes and now they're suspended for 3 years? Should there be a 1-year suspension? Should that escalate upon another Suspension, what should that look like? I'm going to start with Jeff.

What did we decide? Or did we tell you before?

3 years is what we had discussed.

Would you repeat that? I'm sorry, could you go through that again?

Sorry, that was really—

I was still back on rolling months.

So when somebody goes through and gets their strikes, we would suspend their license. Then the ability to get another short-term rental license. What we had talked about in the previous work session was a 3-year suspension. Our question that I'm presenting to you is, should that 3 years stay 3 years? Should it be lessened? And if it is lessened, should it have an escalation to it? Meaning that first time they say they lose their license, it's a 1-year suspension. But if we suspend them a second time, Then it goes up. What is that? How do you view that, Jeff?

I would agree with that. I think if they're suspended and then they're— again, that needs to be an increase.

Okay. What do you view as kind of the right metric for the suspension period, the initial and then the escalation?

I would say probably 2-year suspension. And then the escalation, I don't know, maybe 3 years next time or 4. And a fine.

And a fine.

And fines, yes.

If they hit their strikes, I would say 12-month suspension and that they have to reapply. Well, they're not guaranteed that they get another license because they were egregious, right? It's at the city's discretion whether they get another license. And you get another license and have violations, then double the period.

I agree with that.

So with what I support with the 2 strikes over the rolling 18 months, the suspension period, the first one would be for a year. And then the second would be for 3 years.

Okay, interesting. Sorry, Lynette.

I'm going to go with what we had originally agreed upon when we discussed this. I'm not sure why we're revisiting all of these. We had negotiated these things and had conversations in the past, so I'm a little frustrated now that we're going back and relitigating all of these. We're losing ground with some of the concessions that were given on other things. And I'm not appreciating that. So 3 years, I'm going to go with what we had originally had these discussions on these topics. We were a few that were unclear, but there were several that we had agreed upon. So I'm a little frustrated now that the collaboration that occurred back then is not being honored.

So, well, I thank you. 3 years, if you Rules instead of harsh penalty.

Uh, with— let's see, and I'm at 3 strikes before you're— so if it goes to a 2-strike, then that 1-year suspension would be— but they would have to reapply. Quincy, you'd have to reapply, and if it's any kind of a—

we just—

it doesn't mean we'd give it to them anyway.

Yeah.

There's not a general consensus. It looks like 1 year initially with somewhere between 2 to 3 as an escalation. That's kind of what I'm seeing from— so I will write along those lines. Sorry, just so I can keep track myself.

Stamped his passport.

You're almost like Jared, almost.

Density spacing numerical caps. Um, I wanted to see where there's consensus again on this and where the council wants to move on these. So I'm going to start on Chris.

500 feet, like I've said before.

That's where I was last time.

So on—

so I'm going to go through each one. So, um, so on geographical spacing, 500 between STRs.

Yeah, 500 on geographical, 500 on elementary. And, uh, the numerical cap, are you talking percentage or number?

Number or percentage.

What have we discussed on that?

I don't think we ever reached a consensus.

Talk about that one more. Can we talk?

Can we—

Numerical cap would be how many STRs would you feel comfortable with?

So it's like a 1% of housing stock.

Well, that counts all the apartments.

You see what I mean?

Do we count— do we add the Aston Apartments at University Place?

What I'm going to ask you is, if you say 1%, what do you mean by 1%?

So then I'd say 1% of those that would qualify for an STR. Of all the housing that could be used, maximum of 1% could be used towards STR. So 99% would be left.

So, are you talking like single-family homes?

What can an STR go in?

So, we haven't even talked about whether you can do an STR in an apartment.

Yeah, I don't believe you could.

You can't.

It has to be a It has to be a home, a single-family home.

That's the definition.

Unless I clarify, you can't do an ADU in like a duplex or fourplex, right? Or can you do an ADU in a duplex or fourplex or something like that?

I don't think you can, Steve.

You can't do an ADU. Um, but I'm not sure, Jake, maybe you can clarify this. I'm not sure that right now in your draft you have anything that says you couldn't do one in a condo or an apartment. Well, if you could potentially— I mean, the scenario I'm thinking of, say you have a 3-bedroom condo. Possibly you could have a person living in 1 room and renting out a couple of other rooms. I know there's been discussion in the past about not wanting to allow that scenario, but I'm not sure that that is really written that way right now.

That's correct. I mean, if we were to do the ADU requirement, then it wouldn't be allowed in a condo. So it's going to be kind of determined by the next poll too.

So yeah.

Okay, just gets confusing.

Um, I would say 1,000 feet, 1,000 from schools of all kinds.

Um, I don't know, 200 numerical cap.

Yeah.

Um, 1,000 and 1,000, and I, um, So I would like a numerical cap in each one of our neighborhood districts, equivalent numerical caps in each neighborhood district, and, um, capping out at— I don't know, I'll go with Crystal— 200.

Sure.

No, taking the 200, dividing it by the neighborhood district.

We have 9. How many neighborhoods?

So that would be roughly 20-some-odd.

Neighborhood area.

Okay, Mayor.

All right, I've been thinking about this since we've— we talked about this before. Um, I think 1,000 feet's a little too— I'm okay with like between 5 and 750 for the geographic spacing. Question I have is, I'm not— I think I understand why we talked about the proximity. To the schools, as far as it's because we were— the concern who might be renting and the school— what, what, what?

Help me remember why it was that, because there was one right by Aspen Elementary, and the problem was the visitors would park in areas and they were unfamiliar with the area and they were putting children at risk because of the way they were driving.

So, okay.

of where they were parking.

I'm familiar with school times.

Um, yeah, time.

It was a safe walking—

the safe walk routes for getting to and from school.

Safe distance.

Yeah, so that's why they asked— the residents asked for the 1,000 feet.

1,000 feet.

So like other cities had done that too.

Lehigh City is the only one that— that has adopted that.

That's where we got it, was from Lehigh.

Okay, so it was for the parking, the parking with the, the But we're talking about owner occupied, and then we're talking about having parking, off-street parking, and no on-street parking.

This isn't about parking.

It's just drive— if you're driving by a school and by a school.

Oh, okay. Yeah, I see what you're saying.

Drop-off times are— you're not familiar with the area and where and when kids are walking for their safe walking routes and things like that.

How close can you be to a school and have an STR?

They just had some close calls. From—

yeah, okay, that's what that means.

I, I know, I appreciate understanding that purpose because I was wondering if it had to be with— because of who might be renting the STR, then I was not comfortable with that because, yeah, it's not really going to— yeah, safety issues. But the safe— that safety issue, I would do that like the 750. I mean, it's— to me it's flexible. I, I'm open. I just don't want them next to each other. I want them at least 500, but Um, I know I'm wishy-washy, but it's— so this one I'm just kind of sharing numerical cap. Numerical cap, the, the 1% of single-family homes, that would be how many homes?

Area, roughly 21,000 single-family homes.

So that's 20—

that's 200.

Or is it closer than 21%? That's 200 and closer to 25.

Oh, just my thing, Ben. Spread it out. Let's see.

Got it here.

So 1% is about $210,000.

Yeah.

Okay, then that's— yeah, that would be about what?

No, no, no, single family.

Single family. Yeah. Okay.

The ADU is going to answer that in a minute.

So if you go specifically single-family homes, that's going to be $165,509.

So let's say—

oh, so $16,000 is the overhead.

Okay. And that's really only—

so I'm even more restricted.

$16,000.

So I am.

I'm with— I'm okay with that.

Okay, correct.

Oh, okay.

I'll go back to the 1%.

We have a change.

Okay, Jen.

I'm at 2% of single-family homes cap, and I, I wouldn't geo-restrict or geofence it except for within schools, maybe 500 feet.

How many feet? 500 feet.

Okay. Um, I, I I don't see a geographical restriction issue for me at the moment. And if it's owner-occupied, I'm not really worried about density very much. But I could go to 2% if we wanted to.

And any spacing on elementary? So, do you say spacing?

I'd say no. I just think it's just really hard to Advantage.

And then Jeff?

I would go $750,000 and 1.5% cap.

The $750,000, does that apply to both?

Yes.

So that's my way of saying I could go either way.

I wish you watched it later.

What was your percent? What's your percent?

Did you have a percent?

I could go up to 1.5%.

We only have Jeff.

That only gives you 2 votes.

Trying to find—

I was looking to try and go up to 300 was my mind, because I thought I would go up—

in my mind I was going up to 200.

200 is about what we— that's, that's, that's just over 1%, 1.25 or 1.5.

That was the number, was more the, the 200 was where I was thinking more than the—

If you stay at 200 and you go to 1.5, that's a—

we're—

there's 5 of us that are about similar.

Ish.

Yeah, 1.5% is the same as—

okay, I'm just going to ask straw poll hands, 1.5%.

Okay, I mean, 1.5% is how many?

240.

240.

Okay, more at 1.

Okay, sorry. See where we go from there.

Yeah.

Um, ADU requirements.

Oh, well, you know what? It's— we're there. We gotta eat our dinner, my friend. Think about this. I don't know.

We need—

this one's important because I've had some more conversations.

Let me just really quickly say—

just say yes, because we already used that.

Yes, because that's how I thought about it before.

But there was a—

is that for all?

That is to require an ADU permit for any owner-occupied estate.

No, but I had a question. Let me, let me throw a scenario at you. Your ADU requirement requires that the ADU has a door on the back. Or not visible from the street. Let's say that the person's living downstairs and then the upstairs is the—

I think it's just not on the front side entrance.

Yeah, I just, I'm just concerned there might be parts of the ADU that might We actually, like, 3 years ago—

who helped me out here? When did the state come down and a lot of what we had here in Norham had to throw out and loosen those requirements? Like, we used to have to have separate HVAC and things like that.

Yeah.

Oh, yeah.

Yeah.

The health— I'm not concerned with ADUs health and safety.

Yeah.

Now our inspections are mainly, do they have GFIs? Do they have proper ingress/egress? Do they have And they can't be on the front of the bill.

That's, that's probably the biggest—

I have several of them in my name.

Separate utilities.

So I answer first.

It used to be.

Yes. So it's really quite—

And are there size restrictions for ADUs?

Can they only be like a certain percent? Oh, you know what? We need to eat our dinner or we're going to be hangry in our city council meeting. And nobody wants to be hangry. Nobody else hangry. Oh, that'd be great if you would say a prayer. Thank you.

Father in heaven, we're grateful for the opportunity to gather this day and to discuss important matters related to the city. Thankful for the food we have to take up. Pray that it will nourish and strengthen us. We're grateful for our blessings, the opportunity to collaborate and serve together. May thy continued guidance and direction abide with us, we pray, in the name of Jesus Christ. Amen.

Jake, thank you.

We haven't summited Everest, but we have made—

Look at—

we have 3 stamps.

I was hoping to get 4. We could almost answer the 4 now.

You should have started with the E, feel more accomplished.

I know we had some tough discussion today.

Oh, thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

The next item on our agenda is, uh, city council reports. And so I'm going to turn it over to Council Member Millett for her council report.

Mine is really easy because I only have 2 assignments. Um, one is the Recreation Advisory Commission, and the RAC has— which is the— I don't know, Chris, where's Chris? What are we calling this? The RAC? The PRAC?

I don't even know what we're—

because we're adding parts to it, right? Bryce, what are we calling this?

Gone.

We've not made like an official motion, but we have definitely changed our agendas to be Equal Parks and Rec. So probably should make it a motion of what we want to— that's not even ours, maybe that's city code.

So I think we'll, we'll get something submitted for to clean up the code for that.

So really exciting thing with that is we are looking at, um, our parks plan, um, our rec. We're talking about a lot of the new rec, um, uh, the soccer team league and some of the great things happening there. One of the things I want to say, the BABO just had a great idea to plant more milkweed for the monarch butterflies. And, um, I'll try to do that. Maybe we can get a butterfly garden here in Orem. That wouldn't be— would be fabulous. And then, so, you know, great team there working together well. Transportation Advisory Commission recently approved our a portion of our active transportation plan, uh, of the map. They looked at a lot of biking opportunities and planning for the future on that. So that's kind of all I've got going on right now. Very positive.

All right, thank you.

Busy.

Thank you for your service of being the liaison for those commissions.

Well, Mayor, I do have one thing for the council, if it's okay, to follow up on the last Sure. Um, at Planning Commission last week, I learned that one of our planning commissioners is going to have to relocate, uh, because of his employment. So that means that this fall we will have a second Planning Commission opening. Make sure everybody was aware of that because I learned that this past Wednesday. It was Michael Ladle. He's being relocated by his employer to Arizona. He's going to join by Zoom until we find a replacement for him, but we need to figure it out as a replacement for him.

Okay, thank you. So do we want to have that be part of this current round?

I think we provided instructions that on October 22nd, people to share Their top 3 preferences of people in the system as of October 5th. That's what I had read.

Yeah, tell them through Mr. Ross.

Wait a minute, you put a— because I've asked other people to apply into your email.

Oh, I don't have my phone with me with my email, but it had the second email that when we went back after, or when we had our email, when we emailed. That we're opening it back up to everyone in the— who was in the portal on the day, the day that I sent out the email, whatever that day. I don't know what the day I sent out the email.

I think it was October 5th.

So I'm going to disagree with that. I mean, we have— I thought we put in place a process that we were going to follow to select our, our Planning Commission members. Well, this was not followed at all. Um, we were told there's a meeting that Quinn had chosen someone and submitted the name Mayor, that's not how it's supposed to work.

I did, I did not choose anybody.

I, I just told that you had submitted a name to the mayor, and that's not how it's supposed to work. What it's supposed to be is we're, as a council, are supposed to be made aware of an opening on the Planning Commission, or opening to planning, and then we encourage people to apply. We interview people, submit our top names to the mayor, and, and they select from that. So that's my problem, is We have a process and it wasn't followed.

Okay, the part, part that we did— it sounds like where the disconnect is, the encouraging to apply. My, my understanding of when we talked about— we went back and said, okay, we're going to open— it's open back up.

You're talking about just recently?

Yeah, October.

I'm talking about the process we put in place last time we had to find— yeah, and then we agreed on that process as a council, and I would like to follow with every appointment.

So So what you're saying then, it sounds like that what we're doing now is following the process except for the part where the people are applying. So what my concern was is that people continued to apply after I announced the vacancy, after the vacancy was announced, and I said, go into the portal, look at everybody, and you have 2 weeks to interview and talk. My concern would be is if we continue to take applications, there may be somebody who, um, on the date, on one date, interviewed people at that point, and there may be applications that come in after and weren't aware of it, thinking that they have done what they're supposed to do. And so now there are other applications in the portal. I'm fine. We can interview whoever you want. But my concern is, is I just wanted to make sure that all the council members had the same opportunity to interview the same people if they went in the day after I sent out the email or in 2 days after I sent out the email. That, that was the—

I don't have a problem with that. I believe it is wise to have a cutoff date. My contention, my issue is when Quinn, as the liaison, is aware of an opening or Now, you should say, okay, from here we'll have 2 weeks, we're going to close this.

Okay, so do you know what I mean?

Okay, so what we'll do now, longer time period, so then we can encourage people that we know.

So let's do this. You said that the current commissioner is willing to just be on Zoom. Let's get this one. Okay, we have that one.

Point of information, our code says that He can be away for up to 60 days.

Okay.

So we need to fill it up as soon as possible.

Okay.

Within 60 days or else it's vacant.

Okay, so let's do this then. So what we'll do is we'll go ahead and proceed with the other vacancy just like that. And then, Quinn, if you can send out—

send me—

you announced the vacancy, if you can officially send me an email.

Yeah, I'll do that.

And then what I'll do this evening is I'll send out an email Saying that there's another vacancy, and then maybe just have the second one was up. Would that work?

I just disagree with the process.

No, what is it? What would you— how would you recommend going forward to fill this?

We have to fill 2 vacancies. Let's set a timeline of 2 weeks. At the end of 2 weeks, we interview everyone, and then we get somebody in place by our December meeting.

I think we need at least the first one by then, though, because that vacancy's—

Cut off now.

Let's interview and let's put them in.

Because that clock's ticking on that one right now. The 2 weeks is ticking on the first vacancy. About probably— yeah, we're in a bit. So if we do the— then open up the—

Let the cutoff be today. Okay.

And then—

For the second one?

For the first one. So the problem is I don't know what this October 5th—

I don't know.

I sent an email out, a second email out. I, like I said, I don't have my phone, don't have the email with me, but there was an email that was sent out saying that you— that when you did the vacants and I said go into the portal. And do you know, do you have the email in your phone what date that was?

I do.

It was October 5th.

October 5th, I sent out a another email on October 5th that said, go in, you have the vacancy, go into the portal, look at the individuals that are there as of this date, and interview and visit, and then give me your recommendation. That's what I understood the process to be.

That was not the process that we had done earlier in the year.

Earlier in the year, we had a lot of other— I thought that was what— Decided going forward in the beginning of the year, we did, we did have an interview committee and all that. I thought going forward, once we got a lot of those vacancies—

Let's just do this.

Do we—

did you pull up the portal?

Mine's not working, which is what I'm trying to get.

I'm just trying to say, um, are you looking now, Quinn?

Who?

Um, there have been 2 people that expressed interest to me months ago, and I, when I heard of this opening, I called them and I said, Okay, I did look at the portal.

So, um, as of yesterday—

I'm just trying to find out if they meet the October 5th.

As of yesterday, I looked at it.

Um, we have new—

the people that are new from when we did our previous round. So we have a couple of people that applied, and then we had 2 people apply October 6th. The mayor sent us—

so can we go to October 6th then if you have 2 more people to choose from?

Sure, that's fine.

Okay, and when do you want that?

October 22nd.

22nd.

The 3 names to you.

3 names to me by October. That's fine.

We haven't—

that they came that close, that's just funny.

So that solves it.

That's fine.

I'm trying to preclude anybody from applying or anything.

So, so are, are we saying beginning today? So are we continuing?

October 6th for the past ones.

Okay, October 6th.

So people that apply tomorrow, considering for the first date.

So how far do you want to go, Mayor? 2 weeks?

Give people 2 weeks? 2 weeks from today.

Today.

It's going to be the same group, isn't it? Or do we have people who—

Be the same, but there might be new ones.

But the new ones, though, are the— the new ones aren't in the portal now. That's the question I have. If they're not in the portal now and we send out the email tonight, do they—

I guess I don't know what he was saying. It sounds like what he was saying is 2 weeks from today, we'll close down. We will say the new ones and past ones will be considered for—

Oh, I was thinking 2 weeks from today, it will be when you've gotten your 3 names to me.

That's what you said.

That's what I—

no, that's what I understood.

But if now we hear of another opening and people want to apply, they're hearing about it online.

Yeah, so maybe, maybe let me make a proposal. Okay, see how this works. That, um, because we haven't announced our First opening, a couple weeks ago.

Did you get it working?

I think we'll do apply by October 6th.

The first opening.

We'll not do the other one right this minute.

And then the second opening, um, let's just put a, a second date. So if we're going up, um, 3 weeks from today or something.

Apply 3 weeks from today.

That's October 25th. October 25th, you have your recommendations for the second opening.

Yeah, and do them in November.

I would love to—

I think December is just this open on new tasks. They're always a little bit stressed if they're gonna have a quorum. I just, I want to alleviate that as much.

Um, you can do 3 weeks, I don't really care, whatever you want to do.

What I heard was October 22nd and October 25th. Um, As the deadlines for openings.

Who's considered? So, are we— have we stopped? What if somebody applies Thursday? Are they considered for the 2nd opening?

Yes.

What if we just set a deadline for that, for consideration for the 2nd one?

Well, let's say if they— let's say if they apply by Friday, this Friday, then I'll That sounds fine. Fine with me. Yeah, apply by this Friday, they'll be considered for the second open.

Okay, same thing. We've got 2 minutes.

Ah, okay.

And you've got— okay, I'm gonna need somebody to make— let me know what we make sure— confirm. I want to make sure I confirm. October 6th, people through October 6th, close on the 22nd. Uh, people who apply by Friday, which is October—

just putting the date out there—

15th, 16th.

October 16th.

October 16th.

Moving forward, when you're aware of a vacancy, make an announcement on our meeting. We have 2 weeks, interview and submit.

Interview and submit. But who are we interviewing? And at what point do we—

Anybody, past and new, 2 weeks.

Even if they apply the day before the The applications do. Okay, so let's say that—

Oh, I see what you're saying.

Let's say that everybody—

You got to give 2 weeks.

Okay, how about this? Sorry, that once a vacancy is publicized, then we have a week where people who might be interested in that vacancy can apply.

That works.

And for, for city councilors, they have a total of 2 weeks to make the recommendation. That sound okay? Is that appropriate to you folks?

Yeah, that's fine.

Very reasonable.

I'm okay with that.

I get—

wants to adjourn?

Oh, to adjourn.

Second.

I, I wasn't making the motion.

I was actually I made the motion.

We know you did.

I said I thought in hindsight it sounded like I made the motion, but I knew you couldn't, so I said I voted.

Good evening. I'd like to welcome you to this evening's City Council meeting, um, this October 13th, 2026. And, um, I, as the mayor, will call the meeting to order. And we have an invocation this evening and given— will be given by David Romney, and our Pledge of Allegiance will be led by Daphne Romney. So welcome. Thank you.

Dear Heavenly Father, we are grateful to, uh, be here today, both citizens as well as members of the City Council and the mayor and other We're grateful for the time and effort on both sides of that that goes into these meetings and grateful for sacrifices that everybody makes to try to make our city a great place to live. We ask for your spirit to be here, that it will help guide everybody toward a spirit of consensus building and trying to find solutions to any problems and, uh, and other affairs that are on the agenda to be taken care of this meeting. And we pray for that spirit to be with us in the name of Jesus Christ. Amen.

Please say the Pledge of Allegiance with me. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

Good job, Daphne! That was awesome. That was one of the most confident leading of the Pledge of Allegiance I've ever heard. Thank you, that was great. All right, now we'll turn the— we have a couple presentations this evening, and we'll turn the time over to our Fire Chief Mark Sanderson and our Emergency Manager Heath Stevenson for presentation on Fire Prevention Night, our fire training Training facility open house and the city drill. So, oh, okay, we have Chief Hurst representing Heath. So welcome.

Thank you, Mayor. Um, I'm going to turn some time really quickly to Pete and thank him and his team that's taken this presentation off of you having to listen to me, and we're going to watch some really cool video.

And in a larger fire department, what we've traditionally been doing is finding—

And let me just set the stage, I guess, for everybody. Sorry. We just had an open house for our fire training center, which is amazing, along with the same week Last week we were super busy. We did our fire prevention night while also having our emergency drill within the city. And so Chief Hurst and I are going to just cover a little bit of the details about all 3 events after this video. So I appreciate your time and patience.

Checkers out.

We'll try it.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Every fire department has the need to train. And in a larger fire department, what we've traditionally been doing is finding either abandoned structures, abandoned warehouses, abandoned homes, and working with those owners to come in and train. And with that, there's a lot of liability that there's concern from their perspective. There's concern for our perspective if one of our people get hurt in somebody else's building. We're really fortunate to have this facility because it is going to be essentially a regional training facility for fire departments throughout Utah County and potentially the state.

There's been a longtime need for this type of facility. I think we can lift firefighting in all of Utah County, more modernized, more advanced, more aggressive firefighting that'll hopefully save lives. As you'll notice, we have 2 separate structures out there. Each one is purpose-built for a unique setting. Grandma's House, that's designed to be a single-family residence, so we're going to frame that out so it'll look like a home inside there. Certain levels will be built for search, other levels will be built for fire attack. The other one's called the Forge. Forge is where you get hardened. Truck work is designed to go in that structure. It's designed to simulate a 4-story building, hotel, garden-style, center hall. We have many apartment complexes coming into Utah County, and it's designed to replicate those as well.

Between those 2 buildings, we're really trying to just simulate as many types of situations that firefighters can be presented with on the fire ground in terms of layout. And so that helps us become much more efficient in terms of speed and practicing the foundational drills that we do.

Unique to this facility, most of these structures that you're going to see out there in the Forge and Grandma's House will have 1 or 2 burn rooms. We built this to where we can burn in every room. When we went out to other fire departments, they'd say it's great, but the fire is always in On the door on the right or the door on the left. In both of those structures, we can frame out a new layout every year or 2 to give a fresh look for our firefighters. We always want to push the edge in our training. There are certain limitations per NFPA of how we can push that, but the sensors that are built into this structure allow us to take training right to that edge to where we can provide the most realistic experience in the safest manner possible. The crews that have been down here and had a chance to work through this in the soft opening have been able to appreciate the, the speed, the effectiveness of the tactics that we're implementing, and the training that's taken on down here.

The goals and objectives that we have here is essentially supporting the fire department, supporting the guys that are training. So as we built this building, there's things that we might think of differently in terms of like logistics support for training. For example, we have a forklift down here. You know, we don't have a forklift at the regular stations, but being able to move pallets that we're going to burn, lumber that we're going to build props to train with, and things like that. And so really it's a combination of shipping and logistics and manufacturing and a little workshop down here, which is really different. And then probably the second major thing is just room for growth. So you can see there's a large gravel parking lot that just gives us a lot of extra space and then room for the future for different things. The facility comprises of the classroom, and a small kitchen and an EMS training room where we're going to set up like a sim lab to host other departments and other classes and then do our own internal training here with Orem Fire. A large portion of what we do is EMS. So when we say we're firefighters, we're also paramedics or EMTs. And depending on whatever the call is, that is what the response is. And a large percentage of our calls actually do involve the EMS side of things. So the goal with supporting the EMT and paramedic side was to have an EMS In our EMS sim room, or simulation room, it was important that we kind of utilize equipment that mirrors or matches the equipment we have in the field. And so we purchased an iSimulate machine, as you see behind me, that can mirror both our LifePak 15 monitors, as well as our Hamilton ventilator monitor. And we can run various scenarios using the simulation monitor with the mannequin, and then our day-to-day training equipment to perform various EMS treatments and other things. We truly feel so supported by our city officials, administration, by the community in order to have this. And it really means a lot to me to be able to have one area where we can come and set up training, both fire, as you've seen, as well as the EMS side of things, to offer not only our firefighters and paramedics and EMTs, but as well as any community member.

We intend to host several different types of courses down here. Right now we have a cadet program that's a high school-based program. We take students from all out, all throughout Utah County into that program. But we're planning to launch 2 more programs. One will be based for junior high age and one for elementary age students next summer. So we can help facilitate growth in the community as well as hopefully foster some new firefighters.

I'll just talk really quickly about that, the open house. I appreciated you all being able to attend. You really— there aren't words that can express the value that this is actually going to bring to the organization. This is the one component that Oregon Fire's always missed. It has been a long time since I was on the floor doing that kind of work, but we didn't have these facilities, and we always thought we were so good. This facility's actually going to put us to task with the challenge that you've all put upon us to be the very best. We're going to be able to put our money where our mouth is and prove that we're the best. And so, from our training facility, I can't even believe the stars aligned. It's amazing. And thank you so much for that opportunity.

Before we get into Fire Safety Night, I want to excuse Heath Stevenson. He had a family event that he couldn't miss tonight, but I just want to recap the city drill that he conducted a week or two ago. He puts a lot of effort into this. It's a huge community event. We had over 40,000 residents participate. And he thought that number was really high for— we had 2, 3 areas that didn't participate at all. We had a new block captain in that area that didn't quite understand the role yet. And so he's hopeful we can get participation in all 21 areas next year. But it truly does bring together a lot of volunteers throughout the city. The ham radio operators that we get to test the EOC. And really test how and how we would respond in a major event and whether we can even get the communication back to the city on how we need to do. So we feel really fortunate that we have the EOC to function in. We're still making some modifications. Every time we've operated that, we've learned a few new things and we're making some tweaks, but we feel like we had a really successful drill this year. So.

Yeah.

Chris, are we good to go on this?

Okay, uh, because to learn about fire.

Yeah, to learn to be safe around fires and to be prepared just in case there's a fire.

Yep.

I'm just really passionate about emergency preparedness. Any event that helps the public get more familiar with what is offered to them is a great event.

We came because my 2 boys absolutely love fire trucks, love everything that has to do with fire, and it's super fun, really fun event to just be all here together.

Oh, we love Fire Safety Night. It's great to The opportunity to interact with all the kids. We always tell them, when you see a firefighter, wave, because you wave at your friends.

This is just a good opportunity to reinforce that with the community.

See, I love fire trucks.

That little guy sounds just like I do. Um, I, I hope that this just shows you all, as well as the people in attendance, the interaction our people have with the community. It, it's not been— it's not always been this way. Fire guys, police guys, the interactions with all of our departments that work together to make these things come together for the community is what I— is that I'm most proud of, is that it's not just a fire department event. It's not just a police event. It's not a city function. It's, it's our Orem city and all of the residents that attend and provide the support. So thank you all. And We're open for any questions.

All right, thank you. Any, um, Councilmember Meekum?

Uh, Chief, first, you're a natural on camera. Uh, I think you should just be making videos all the time. Uh, I, I, I, I thought you were great. Uh, what a great video. And I, I just want to say thank you for, uh, taking the city council out, uh, and suiting us up and putting us in Thank you. And giving us a chance to feel a little bit what it's like to be in that situation. Such an impressive facility. It's just, it's a remarkable credit, I think, to the fire department that you were able to push to get this built. And I really think it will do nothing but bolster our reputation standing all across the region as people come and train here. I think it's just marvelous. On a personal note, I also just want to thank Orem Fire. My daughter, as part of her paramedic training this summer, had a chance to spend a lot of time with Orem Fire and spend a lot of time on calls with you all, and she learned so much, and I'm grateful for everything that you were able to teach her. My question about The emergency drill, and I don't know if either of you can answer this well, but what did we learn about where our gaps are and things we need to improve on citywide as we conducted that drill this year? And grateful as a family we were able to participate in that.

Well, I'll speak for Heath on this. I think one of the continuous struggles of this drill is continuity. People in these block neighborhood leaders Rotate out of those fairly frequently. And so, um, our best performing areas he mentioned are the ones with more tenure in those roles. So that's our biggest struggle is the continuity.

I think the most fascinating thing, though, is when you think about just our population, and I remember the first year that I was the chief and we had the event and it was similar numbers. It was tens of thousands of people. I actually just couldn't believe it.

I didn't—

I would have never thought that a community, even our size, would have that kind of active engagement. 40,000 residents checked in and were available on that evening, which should blow everybody's mind. It's just fascinating. Heath does an amazing job in hosting it and continuing to learn the lessons that hopefully it never happens, but when it does, we'll, we'll definitely be ready and be at our best.

Yeah, Councilmember Millett.

So just 2 things. The Fire Night Out was amazing. So wonderful, beautiful weather, beautiful people. The kids loved it. And I think we just need to, um, yeah, get the word out.

I think a lot of—

as I've talked to some folks who saw my social media posts, they're like, oh, when is that? We want to come next year. So let us help you next year to get the word out. Um, I do have to ask, I feel like I got a text message from the City of Orem about the monsoons that were coming through. Um, is that through our Evergreen? Is that what it's called? I'm trying to remember what it's called.

What's it?

Everbridge.

Everbridge? Oh, Evergreen's UVU.

Sorry.

Heath will give me big props for mentioning this. He always pushes that citizens can sign up for that and opt into that, and we would love all the citizens of Orem to be a part of that. So we could notify in the event of, I mean, it doesn't have to be a natural disaster. It could be a hazmat spill or anything like that, or a major fire that we could notify certain areas. So, but they have to opt into that. So we'd love for all citizens to participate in that.

Maybe can we get something like that reminding people to sign up for that? Because I was pretty impressed that I got that text message about that weather that was coming our way. So good job. Thank you.

Right.

Anyone, anyone else? Councilmember Gail.

I just want to say I'm super amazed by and inspired by this awesome training facility. We loved the opportunity to get dressed up in the— I don't know, what do you call them? Turnouts. Turnouts. And experience what a fire was like. And I respected the fire department tremendously. They saved my home from a fire. But having put that on, and how much do those weigh?

So, you're about 50 to 60 pounds when you have your full turnouts, your boots, your helmet, and your SCBA on.

So, we got to experience that, carrying 60 pounds of gear and imagining running through a building trying to save a person, and it's just mad respect for you guys. So, thank you. And it wasn't just, you know, that, but it was just to see the passion that your people have for what they do. And we are so lucky to have you guys. So, thanks for what you do.

And can I add, I said to the firefighter who was in the room helping us up, Because you guys had us kneel down, right? So the fire, so we'd be lower.

And I was like, you're going to have to help me up.

I don't think I can get back up.

That's why I never kneel down.

Right?

I was like, anyway, thank you, whoever. I couldn't tell from his mask who he was, but he helped me up off my knees.

Thank you.

Well, that was a great experience. We were so glad to be able to get you down there. And if you were to look at that facility now, just several weeks later, it's transformed with all the work they've done this week to build it out in preparation for our very first Recruit Academy. Or our new hire camp. Grandma's house looks totally different. It looks like a home inside right now. So.

It was pretty exciting. I, I'm going to say something probably inappropriate for council meeting, but I can tell you hot flashes did not prepare me for how I felt in that burn room with the turnouts and that pack and everything. I just— but I, like Councilmember Gale said, I had respect.

Wowzers.

And I, I won't, Council, go back over what I— my remarks I said at the training facility. But anyway, it was a great event. The fire night at the park was great. Everything from the pumpkin being named George, that the one that got burned at the kitchen, the grease fire, to all the kids in the fire trucks and taking the cars apart, having the contest to get out the dashboard on the car. It was a very nice evening, and I'm glad that so many people participated in our drill. 40,000, you know, might look like, oh, that's less than half, but that's almost half the city. 40,000 people, that's awesome. So thank you. Thank you for all you do, and look forward to hearing great stories about the future.

Thank you.

future.

Well, Mayor, thank you.

I just—

my last statement, I just want to make sure that you all know that I recognize you realize how smart I am because of the person I put in front of the camera. And I appreciate Chief Hurst. Councilman Meekum, he does a very good job. So Chief Hurst, thank you.

Thank you. And I do want to acknowledge the, the work of our prior administration, that this fire training facility that we have It was years in the making, and so I want to express my appreciation to those who in the prior administration worked hard to, to get this fire training facility here as well. All right, the next presentation we have is our Constitution Art Contest winners. We have Pete Wolfley, our Civic Engagement Executive Director, will, will be leading the presentation. I imagine we are going to have some other people involved in the presentation too at some point.

Yeah, so as you know, through September was Constitution Month, and as part of our tradition to celebrate Constitution Month, we do an annual art contest, and I'm here to present the winners to you. So first up is Melody Crockett.

Is she here?

Come on up. And what's fun about Melody is how many years in a row have you won this contest? This is her 3rd year, back-to-back-to-back champ. So I wanted to give her an opportunity to just talk about what her inspiration was for this and how it ties into the Constitution. Well, did you bring it?

Nice.

You come over here and hold it.

Nice.

Go ahead. I made the art piece because it was the the, like, 20— uh, sorry, 250th anniversary of our country fighting for our freedom. And yeah. And he— I named it, uh, Because of the Brave because he is a brave soldier, um, a brave soldier mourning one of his friends.

One of the fun things with Millie doing this for 3 years is you can see how she's grown as an artist. So, this is really cool to see each year how much better she's gotten. So, congratulations. We actually have a little gift for you. There's some fun things in here including a $100 gift certificate.

So, congratulations.

Congratulations.

Our other winner is Emily Evans.

Is Emily here?

Come on up, Emily. And so she was also one of our winners, and her piece is titled James Madison. We'll let her talk about it.

Yeah, the inspiration behind my painting comes from the Colonial Heritage Festival, which I've been going to since I was a kid. And this past summer I went to it again, and I was just struck by the Founding Fathers' efforts in creating this this incredible nation. And I had the opportunity to attend the Constitutional Convention under a tent in Serra Park. And yeah, I was able to sit a few benches away from James Madison, who was at his desk taking notes in front of the convention. And yeah, just being able to step back in time and witness that historical kind of scene was It was just so powerful. And yeah, it just reminded me how incredible this document is and what it's doing for us. So I just wanted to capture not just the event, but also just the significance and lasting influence of the document and the father of the Constitution.

So the same for Emily, a $100 gift certificate as well as some other little goodies. And congratulations.

Thank you for participating.

And as you can see, this is a great way to celebrate the Constitution.

Oh, Emily, don't go. We got a question.

Oh, Emily, I have a question for you. Can you tell us what medium you use?

Oh yeah, this is just acrylic paint. I've been wanting to do printmaking for ages and ages, but I haven't gotten around to it, so I painted it instead.

I'm impressed because that's not easy to do. Printmaking is a whole different ballgame, and to make that look like a print, that's, that's so good.

Thank you.

Congratulations.

That's coming from an expert because that was Jeff's line of business. So that's a huge compliment.

Congratulations.

Thank you so much.

Pete, would it be possible to hang these paintings in the library hall? For some time. I mean, we don't want to take their paintings away from them, but on loan, is that something that the artist would be willing to—

would you guys be up for that? Okay, we'll go ahead and— did you bring yours, Emily?

Okay.

Yeah, we'll take— we'll collect those tonight. We'll get them hung up.

All right, great idea. Thank you. All right, next is item number 8, and it's personal appearances. Time has been set aside for the public to express their ideas, concerns, and comments on items not scheduled as public hearings on the agenda this evening. Those wishing to speak are encouraged to show respect for those who serve the city. Comments should focus on issues concerning the city. So those wishing to speak have signed up at, um, already, and If you will please leave, uh, limit your comments to 3 minutes. So the first person on the list that I have here is Janelle Hale, and after Janelle will be Judy Christensen. Welcome, Janelle.

Thank you.

I'm Janelle Hale, uh, 1115 West, 1130 North in Orem. Lived here 16 years, love it. Really glad you're here today. Love you all.

I just love Orem.

It's just great.

I bought a residence in Orem so I could live here, that I could have my family grow here, and it has happened. And yet I still have more time that I want to live in Orem. I am a resident, and my next-door neighbor is a resident. She moved here and her family moved here because she's a resident. I happen to be a piano teacher, and I do run a business in my home, from my home. I do have certain times that my clientele comes in, and we have parking and other limits in my piano studio. Research shows that cities thrive when There's a separation of 30% of rental units in a city, and we currently have 50%. We have people who cannot afford housing. That is a very big concern. We also want to have prosperous lives. I love being somewhere and Getting money if I breathe. And that's what we do when we have STRs. We are earning money as we breathe.

Isn't that great?

However, STRs come with many things that need to be enforced. And with that, from the outside, I just love the idea. I love that idea. I always like want to help others and provide space and this kind of thing, but it just Doesn't work. Um, it's just not a one-size-fits-all, and we can make all these 800 square feet, so many people per square feet, all this kind of thing, but it is really going to take a lot of enforcement. Our law officers have so many more things that they could be doing. So I please hope that you will not have STRs allowed in Orem City. Thanks for your time.

Thank you.

And you're amazing, and you're— all your staff are awesome.

Thank you. All right, um, Judy Christensen, and after Ms. Christensen, Ethan Stauffer.

All right, as you know, I'm Judy Christensen. I'm a citizen of Orem community, and I'm grateful for all the hard work that the city council and our mayor, all of you do. And I'm really thankful also for The people who protect our city. I have fond memories of bringing Cub Scouts to have fire adventures and safety and learn from them. And I remember Ben Williams especially and Chief Hurst leading us in our learning and our fun there.

Thank you.

One thing that was mentioned in a previous, a couple of meetings were some remarks that kind of hurt my heart when I heard them. I believe in beauty for ashes, and I think that's kind of what's happened because when I heard some disparaging remarks about our Muslim neighbors, I decided to find out The truth for myself, and I've had— I've made some really good friends, and they're here tonight or today to tell a little bit about themselves. I just want to say that I have found them to be upright, wonderful people, good neighbors, and very welcoming. I happen to be a member of an organization that believes in building bridges and welcoming people of all faiths, and I hope that we can continue to be a great city full of diversity and love.

Thanks.

Thank you. All right, next up, Ethan, and then is it Masool? Is that how I say your name? Masool, you're next.

Good evening, Mayor and council people. To begin with, I would like to apologize for my disheveled appearance. I am on hour 13 of my day, and after this I finally get to go home, so I hope you will forgive me if I look a bit scattered. But I would like to begin by saying that I did have the privilege of sitting down with our mayor and our police chief about a month ago to talk about some of the concerns that I had, mostly with ICE and with FLOC. And I would like to give some concessions and to give credit where it is due. The problem with Flock has some differences from what I thought initially. For instance, another city or organization cannot take Orem City data without it being approved by our police chief. That is good for me to know and for me to feel, but that doesn't quiet all of my discomfort with it. Our contract with Flock says that they cannot sell or give our data, but it does not say that they cannot train off of our data, and it doesn't say that they can't use our data for their own means. I brought this up to our police chief as well, and he said he does not believe that Flock will do that. I do not share this belief with my police chief. Every experience I have had with, you know, tech companies and with all of these oligarchs is that they do want to use our data, and they are going to. I believe that even if these concessions feel like enough for our police chiefs or for our city council members, it doesn't necessarily feel like enough for our citizens. At the end of the day, we are private citizens and you all are public servants. I believe that the contracts we make with other companies, especially private companies that can train off our data in their own databases, deserve to be something that the citizens of Orem can see and can give feedback on so that we know what is being recorded, who it's being sent to, and how that data is being used. I don't believe that it is up to these private companies that we just hope that they have our best interests and we believe that they won't hurt us, because time and time again, experience has shown that that isn't unfortunately the case. Thank you.

All right, thank you. Um, enjoy the rest of your evening. All right, Masul, you're welcome. And then after you, we have Luma Wood. You'll be up after.

Thank you very much. Appreciate it. My name is Massoud Amin. I teach at UVU. I teach mechanical engineering. I have lived here in Utah County for many years, as a matter of fact, up and down the county. So I heard about, of course, some comments that have been made about the mosques, small mosques. we plan to build. And I just want to support the mosque because I really think diversity is good. It's good for the community. And also, if you look at Salt Lake, as I remember when I moved here, there was only one mosque in Salt Lake. And now there are quite a few. And although in every community, we cannot say every community is 100% perfect, but if you look at the statistics in Salt Lake City, which now has larger community of Muslims and quite a few mosques, and you don't see any Muslim gangs, you don't see any violence. So the community would stand I'm very proud of. I can tell you everyone that I have met here in Orem, in Salt Lake, have raised quite good family and good kids. Most of their kids are extremely educated, doctors, physicians, engineers, and have become very, very good citizens of this country. So again, we appreciate your service. And we'd like your— we'd like to have your continued support. And believe me, the mosque itself and the Muslim community here are going to be a good addition to this community, and I can testify that.

All right, thank you.

Thank you.

Appreciate you coming this evening. All right, welcome.

Thank you. Thanks for having us and for the opportunity that you gave us to speak today. So my name is Luma Wood, and I'm a resident of Provo. I attend the Orem Mosque regularly, and I'm here today in hope of promoting a better understanding about the growing Muslim community in Orem and in Utah County in general. So Muslims come from diverse backgrounds. Our communities span over every continent. Culture, race, and ethnicity. And the Muslim community in Orem, in Utah in general, and throughout Utah is a peaceful community. We're your neighbors, your coworkers. We are business owners. We are healthcare providers. We are students and friends. We abide by the law and practice our faith within the protection guaranteed by the United States Constitution. Unfortunately, many people form opinions about Muslims without ever taking the time to learn about Islam and rely from reliable resources. They may have never read about, you know, read from the Quran, visited a mosque, or have meaningful conversation with Muslim. Yet understanding can only come through knowledge and personal interaction. I'm grateful that many members of the LDS community regularly visit the Orem Mosque. One of them here is Judy. I'm so grateful to have her as a friend. I also feel privileged to have met and spoke to many BYU students who come, I think, through world religion class. They come to the mosque and they want to learn about us. They want to learn about Islam firsthand. They ask questions. We engage in healthy dialogues. And when we speak, actually, it's really mutual knowledge. We learn from each other. And we— the more time we spend together talking, we come to the conclusion that we are very close, actually. We have so much in common, more than differences. We have common values, such as the strength of prayer and fasting fasting, charity, family, service to others, and devotion to God. So the need for a larger mosque in Orem is not about luxury or prestige, really. It's a matter of necessity. The Muslim community in Orem continues to grow, and the small townhouse we currently have, and we call it a mosque, is simply not— it doesn't work anymore. Our children need space to learn, build friendships, families need room to gather and worshipers need adequate space to pray. I stand before you today with a simple request to take the opportunity to get to know a Muslim, visit a mosque, read the Quran for yourself, ask questions, and listen with an open mind. Our differences were not created so that we could fear one another, but that we could come to get to know one another. Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you for coming this evening. Right, that concludes our personal appearances. Um, council will now move to item number 9, our consent items, and we have 1 item on the consent calendar, and that is approval of meeting minutes of September 22nd, 2026, and our joint Orem-Provo City Council meeting on September 26th, 2026. So I'd like for a motion on that. So moved.

I move that we approve the consent items as listed.

Right, a motion. Is there a second?

I second.

All right, second. All right, go ahead and start with you, Councilmember Meekham. How would you like to vote?

Aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Aye.

All right, thank you. The motion carries. We now go to, um, number 10, our scheduled items. We have 3 public hearings This evening, our first public hearing is for an ordinance amending Section 14-4-2 of the Orem City Code regarding alterations to legal non-conforming signs. And so, is the applicant here this evening, perchance? Okay, after Mr. Hall gives his presentation, you're— well, I'm going to give the opportunity to come up and say anything. So you can paper, rock, scissors, or if you all want to come up and say something, you can. Whatever you want to do. But I'll give you that opportunity. You just not say anything, it's up to you. But I just want to give you the heads up that I'll be giving you that opportunity. Welcome again, Jared.

Thank you. Um, to start with tonight, this is a text amendment that has been— the application was made by the Boggesses. They're here tonight. The proposal they've made is to add a subsection Section D to our current Section 1442. I know, I know how obsessed you all are with the chapter headings and things. Normally, we're talking about 22, but this is the sign code, which is a different article. So 1442, that particular section is the nonconforming ordinance for signs. So anything that has been, has been allowed in the past, but that is no longer conforming to standards is legal, but nonconforming. This ordinance change that they're requesting only applies to legal nonconforming signs in a certain area and of a certain type. And I'll go through those for you really quickly. Um, our nonconforming ordinance basically says right now that a sign that's nonconforming can't be materially altered. And one of the things that's included in material alteration would be changing the cabinet of the sign itself. And the sign that the applicants own, has an odd— um, yeah, it's odd, an odd cabinet that they'd like to replace fully. Um, and, uh, just before I forget to do it, um, the Planning Commission did hear this on September 2nd, and they, they voted to recommend approval 5 to 0, uh, to the, to the council. Um, what the applicants are asking to do is apply a change to our nonconforming ordinance that would allow, uh, Changes to nonconforming signs that are freestanding signs west of the I-15 corridor and that are oriented toward freeway traffic. So, not normal signs on the property, but those that are against the freeway oriented to the freeway traffic. They would propose that it not be allowed to increase the height of that kind of nonconforming sign, or an increase in the surface area, the display area, and no structural changes to the supports or foundations, but it would allow them to change the cabinet out. And the best way to explain why they want to do that is to show you a quick picture of that sign. This is— and we'll come back to this in a moment too. This is the sign that they own. They'd like to exchange that cabinet for something more utilitarian, a little more useful, visible, but not increasing the height and not actually reducing the area a little bit. But we'll get back to that in just a moment. The, um, the text of this, this text amendment would only apply to signs that are west of the freeway, as we said. And freestanding signs that are oriented to the freeway traffic. There are 7 signs that fit that bill in the city. So these are mapped on this, on this chart right here. You can see the whole city and the different sign zones. This is the sign that the applicants own that they'd like to change the cabinet on. The same rules would apply to 6 more signs. Again, no increase in height, no increase in the display area of the sign would be allowed. Uh, the current rules require that a sign be set back from any property line at least the height of the sign. So, in a case like this, it might be 30 feet from the freeway. It's no longer freeway-oriented in that, in that instance, and it's actually in the middle where the buildings on the site would be. That's going to be the case for a lot of freeway-oriented signs, and that's why they've asked for this. Um, Emma identified— Emma, the associate planner, also identified that sign zone E, If we go back to this map, that's this pink coloring here. Sign Zone E actually has allowances for freeway-oriented signs that could be closer to the property lines of certain heights and such. So this is really allowing the same kind of thing on the west side of the freeway. We're in Sign Zone B. There's no, no allowance like that. That is the request that they've made in a nutshell. Again, this would be the sign they would like to do. The current code would not allow them to remove that cabinet. They could reface it. Uh, put new, put new cabinet faceplates in and redo all these octagons, et cetera. But what they'd like to do is something more like this. These are sort of what would be visible from the freeway the way it stands. Do you have any questions for staff at this point?

All right, council, do you have any questions for staff? All right, Councilmember Gale.

So, if I understand you correctly, they're essentially just trying to update the sign to be more aesthetically pleasing and functional. So you can read it.

That's correct.

Okay, but we're not making any other material changes.

Nope, it would stay the same height. Their proposed amendment would not allow you to get taller. It would not allow it to get larger. It would just allow you to replace the cabinet. So if it's an odd-shaped cabinet, you can change that cabinet out, or if the cabinet is just so old that the new lighting systems can't be displayed inside of it, or things like that, they would, they would change out for this.

So essentially lets us modernize our city a little bit.

Yep.

And only in this one. It's important to note that it's only in this one particular area, just that that section west of the freeway there for freeway-oriented signs.

Thank you.

Right.

Councilmember Millett.

Yeah, we discussed this a little bit in our pre-meeting, um, our work meeting. Um, I just feel like I want to kind of clarify a few things for our public, right? Um, legal nonconforming. Would you define that?

Yeah, the common— so the common term, that's a great, a great point. The common term is grandfathering, right? Um, the technical term is legal but nonconforming. So, at the time that this sign for— let's just use them as the example. At the time that this sign was erected here adjacent to the freeway, it was allowed. The setbacks were 5 feet or 0 feet or whatever they were. Uh, it was allowed to be constructed, but since that time, the code has changed. Sorry, wrong way. The code has changed to say that if you are a pole sign in sign zone B, you shall be set back a distance equal to or greater than the height of the pole sign. Uh, this sign can't meet that requirement. So our legal nonconforming ordinance says, if you used to be okay, but you're not okay anymore, you can maintain the sign. You can even make repairs as long as those repairs don't— aren't valued at more than 50% of the sign's value. But you cannot change that cabinet out. You can change out who's there. You can change this from saying Alamo Signs to Joe's Coffee or whatever it might be, but you can't replace the cabinet. Um, legal nonconforming ordinances apply to lots of different things. We have a specific one for the sign zone. And it's just a little more stringent than our normal legal nonconforming structures or legal nonconforming uses.

And so typically, as a city, and this was a decision that was made by a prior city council to change this ordinance, and typically, just to educate again, those changes are made for a particular purpose. Usually in this case, it would be for beautification purposes.

Yep.

For—

yeah, go ahead.

Yeah, no, that's—

you're right.

You're right.

You're exactly right. One of the points that Emma made in her staff report is that the code for sign zone B is geared— I'm going to go back to the sign zone map. The codes that relate to— it's standard across a lot of these zones, H, especially along State Street, our A sign zone, and then the B sign zone here. If you, if you're going to be allowed to have a pole sign, you have to have it set back the same distance as the height of the pole. That was, um, That was written to kind of create more space and less visual clutter right on the street. So it's obviously kind of very oriented for localized streets, for local streets, as opposed to the freeway. And we don't have a specific— and haven't had a specific freeway-oriented sign ordinance. So our feeling as staff in reviewing it was that this wasn't— that the net wasn't really cast for these freeway-oriented signs necessarily. It was cast for State Street. And for the local roads in here to push signs back away from them and orient people more toward monument signs or less impact signs. So you don't get as much visual clutter on the street frontage. But I-15, we're not as worried about the visual clutter of these 7 signs. It's pretty good.

And in our hopes are in, in a way, in bringing these into a legal frame, is that there will be more beautification efforts. Investment, investment upkeep, you know, appearance improvement for these signs. I mean, I drove today on the freeway to look at them, and there are a few that need some improvements.

Some need some love. Yeah.

Yeah. And but I recognize also how important they are to those businesses because you don't see those— I don't— I wouldn't even have known those businesses were there but for their sign. So I totally understand that. importance of supporting the businesses in that area. So I guess I wanted to just kind of clarify that, explain that, that we do have legal nonconforming that we don't always make exceptions for because we want to encourage renewal, right? And revitalization in our city.

That's exactly right. And to just to build on that for one more point, these signs that are legal nonconforming, it's kind of important. And I don't know if people realize this or not, but because it only applies to the legal nonconforming section of 1442. The only, the only signs that are allowed this kind of thing are those already existing legal nonconforming signs. This doesn't result in new people applying and saying, hey, you can't see my business from the freeway. I want to get a freeway-oriented sign. That would be something else. This is just an exception for these existing 7 signs.

And then the last thing I want to point out, which we also discussed, which, because I've heard a lot of things over the few years, is the lighting. Would you please explain how these signs are lit, how they're different from when you think of a billboard? How these are different.

A lot of the, a lot of the billboards, because the state legislature has granted them a different status, and they're allowed to consider maintenance to be digitizing their signs, making them LEDs and change copy signs, things like that. EMC signs. These would— these are backlit kinds of signs. We go back to the picture. I know I had a picture, didn't I? I'm off.

Oh, there we go.

Yep.

So this kind of a cabinet, this kind of a cabinet will be backlit. So there's lights inside of that, that vinyl that lights it up. So it's, it's more ambient and not as direct. Um, EMC signs or LED signs, that light-emitting diode, is a lot more direct light. So you get a lot more kind of glare from that. They're supposed to dim them at night. I don't know how many of them really do, but they're supposed to be on computers that dim them automatically. But you get a lot more brightness from those diodes than you do from backlit vinyl signs like this.

Okay, so from a, from a lighting perspective, these will look more like ambient light. They're not going to be that bright light you see going around.

They're not going to be that bright white glaring light.

Thank you for clarifying on that.

You bet. Thank you.

Great.

Council, any other questions? Thank you for the questions to clarify that for the public. All right. Um, would you like to come up and say anything? Like to welcome you up, and if you can just state your name. That'd be great.

Thank you, Mayor. Yes, Ian Bogus representing the Bogus family. Um, no, we don't have much more to add. I think Jared has been fantastic to work with. He's struck a nice balance between getting the businesses their signage and not having an eyesore in the city. Also, Teresa McKittrick has been wonderful to work with and getting records and understanding It's been a very educational experience. Certainly, beauty is in the eye of the beholder, but we very much look forward to updating this sign, and that's all I would add.

Thank you.

Right.

Thank you.

Anybody, any council members have questions for the applicant? All right, thank you.

Thank you.

All right, this is a public hearing, and so if you would like to speak to this item, amending the section of the Orem City Code regarding alterations to the legal nonconforming signs, you're welcome to come up if you just state your name, and you'll have up to 3 minutes to share your thoughts. All right. Welcome.

My name is Evan Thacker. I didn't know about this issue in advance, but I appreciated being able to learn about it. And I, I would say that the, uh, applicants, uh, have proposed a great solution to help them improve our city. So I hope you'll support the, uh, the recommendation.

All right, thank you. Is there anybody else who would like to speak to this? All right, seeing none, I'll go ahead and close the public hearing and bring it back to the council. So we've had this Presentation, and when they have this application before us regarding making some code amendment changes or code changes about legal nonconforming signs. So, council, what would you like to do at this point?

I'd like to make a motion. Okay, I move to approve amending 14-4-2 of the Orem City Code regarding alterations to legal nonconforming signs.

Right, thank you.

We have a motion. So, your second?

I'll second that.

Right.

Thank you, Councilmember Lamson. Do you have any more discussion? All right, I'm just going to say that I think this is a good move. It doesn't increase the size or the height of the sign, and I do think that it will, it will better suit the needs of our business community to be able to have the opportunity to make some changes on that. All right, we'll go ahead and start the voting with Councilmember Gale.

Aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Right, thank you. The motion carries.

Aye.

Oh, Quinn. Okay, it's still— yeah, you know, even though you're the last one, we still— motion carries. Well, now it's a unanimous vote. I'm sorry about that. Um, all right, we'll go on to the next item, item 10.2. All right, buckle up, Council, we're gonna I'm going to read this. Public hearing for an ordinance amending the following sections of the Orem City Code by updating the definitions related to dwellings, accessory dwelling units, and accessory apartments. 19-5-3, definition of dwelling. 21-1-2, definition of accessory apartment. 21-2-2, definition of multiple-family residence. 21-1-3, 22-2-1, definition of accessory apartment, 22-2-1, definition of dwelling, single-family.

Okay.

22-6-8, 22-6-9, 22-6-9, 22-7-4, 22- 11-28E, 22-11-29M, 15, 22-11-31B2D, 22-11-32B2, 22-35P, 22-11-56H, 18, 22-12-7017, 22-14-15 D7 and Appendix A SLU 1111. And whoever makes the motion, I'll give them a candy bar after having to read that. So, all right, we'll turn the time over to Mr. Hall again, our planning director.

You know, it occurs to me that every parent has received a call from a child When they say, I got to tell you something, and it sounds worse than it is. This is not as bad as even that, whatever that call was, because it sounds a lot worse when you read it like that. You're back in Article 22, so you should be in your comfort zone, right? But there's a lot there. This is, this is just to replace— it became necessary to replace portions of the ordinance where we refer to accessory apartments after we adopted 2260. 611, which was our new accessory dwelling unit and DADU ordinance, right? So there's all these places in different chapters in 19 and 21 where it's traffic and it's water and things like that where we say accessory apartments, and we need to fix all of those so there's no conflict. So I'm just going to— if that makes sense, I'm just going to run through a couple of things for you. Because we have to do that because we defined— we needed to redefine some of the things that accessory apartments are. Accessory dwelling units are now what we refer to instead of accessory apartments. Specifically, in most cases, not all, but in most, interior accessory dwelling units. So these are the definitions that got adopted with 22611 that caused the ripple effect here. Just to give you a couple of examples, this is very typical of all of those citations that you read out, Mayor. This is typical where we're changing accessory apartments to say accessory dwelling units. So that the language matches throughout the code. Same kind of thing in other, in other sections. These are going to be basically a slide for each of those citations you gave. There are some places where we had to, um, add a reference or 2. But most, in most cases, in almost every case, uh, we ended up just replacing apartment with dwelling unit, except for something like here where we have to say Meaning a single-family dwelling, which is subordinate to the primary dwelling, because now we define primary dwellings. So we have to say that as well. That's, that's how, that's how exciting it gets. Um, again, there are a lot of them, but they're all the same thing, essentially.

I just ask a stupid question while you're looking at that.

You bet.

So we have our code number, and then we have some words. Is that what you're changing, or is that the heading for that area?

So that in the, in the, in the document in there that describes it all, that's the— it's in some cases it's the heading so that you know where it's at.

Okay, because I was trying to find the change of a definition of a multifamily I didn't see that in there.

It's in there in one of these.

Was it 2122?

Yeah, let's see. I mean, I looked at 21.

Well, we didn't change the definition of a multifamily dwelling, but it affects— you can't have, for example, you can't operate, um, an accessory apartment out of a multifamily dwelling, and we had to say You can't have an accessory dwelling unit in a multifamily dwelling. Is that what you're referring to?

Yeah, that's what I'm trying to clarify.

So we didn't change the definition of multifamily dwelling, just how it relates to that.

So you defined more than one living unit, you add, okay.

Yeah.

And then are excluded.

Okay.

Because I was looking for a definition change, but you didn't necessarily—

Not of the multifamily. Yeah, that's right. Because it's a reference to the multifamily.

Okay.

Thank you for clarifying that.

That makes sense. That's a good clarification.

Thank you.

Um, we essentially, we go through those and finish out. The last ones are in the, um, in the different PD zones. There's a lot of allowances or prohibitions on accessory apartments, and we have to deal with all of those, make sure they're all matched up. The references needed to be changed in a couple of these instances, um, from the old 2269 that was replaced with 22611. So we made those changes, and that is all. And then the last thing we had to do was in Appendix A, where we have our use lists, our standard land use codes. Standard Land Use Code 1111 has always been accessory apartments, that it's now accessory dwelling units. And then it refers you again to the right section. So, you know, whether you're eligible for just an interior or detached one, or et cetera.

So.

Does that make sense? Any questions about this?

Council, do you have any questions? All right, the city is the applicant, so you've already spoken.

So I've already talked about it more than you want me to.

Yes. All right, this is a public hearing as well. So if you are here and would like to, um, address us regarding these changes that I'm not going to read over again at this point, But you are welcome to come up and state your name, and you have up to 3 minutes to, to give us your thoughts.

Okay.

I'm not seeing anybody who would like to do that, so I'll go ahead and close the public hearing and bring it back to the council. All right, council, we've got a very lengthy motion that we can consider, and so I'll just wait and see which one of you is brave enough to—

I'd like—

Oh, you want the candy bar?

I've got, I've got a couple typos. You got a couple typos in here.

Do we?

Okay.

Yeah, you're saying you, when you took out an accessory apartment, you left the an and you put dwelling unit. So it should be a dwelling unit instead of an.

That's good to know. Thanks.

Sorry, I saw that several times.

I'll check for the typos.

I was going to check for the typos.

Okay, who's making the motion? Mayor?

Mayor?

I'm not volunteering to make the motion, but, uh, I just want to say, if you want to make it a little bit easier on somebody, somebody can make the motion and just say, moving to adopt the sections that have been referenced in the agenda item in which you already read.

I have done that, and you just let me go through and do this. Okay. Oh, there are no—

no comment.

All right.

Okay, you're taking away my opportunity.

I'll still give you a candy bar.

I, I make a motion to approve amending the sections of the Orem City Code that have been referenced in the agenda by updating the definitions related to dwellings, accessory dwelling units, and accessory apartments as cited in the agenda.

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

Second.

All right, we have a motion and a second. Is there any Any further discussion, Council? Seeing none, um, Councilmember Lamson, how will you vote?

Aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Aye. Aye.

Aye.

All right, thank you. Motion carries. Okay, I'm going to remember I don't need to read all that next time. All right, the next item on the agenda is yet another public hearing, and it's an ordinance. It's a request to amend— I'm gonna— this one's shorter, so I'll read this one. Article 22 to 2-5-3A and the zoning map of the City of Orem by changing the zone of the property located generally at 1075 South, 1675 West from CM, controlled manufacturing, to M1, light manufacturing, together with a development agreement limiting allowable uses to those of the CM zone. And it's approximately 9.29 acres. And before we Mr. Hall, you get started. Is the applicant here this evening?

The, the Bagases are the applicants from the sign— from the sign code.

Okay, same family, same. All right, I just wanted to give you— again, you're going to have a chance to come up after, uh, Mr. Hall's done, so take it away.

So, um, let me begin by, um, just showing you really quickly. This is the property that we're talking about. For this public hearing. The hearing was scheduled when we scheduled the Planning Commission's hearing. The Planning Commission heard this on— sorry, the Planning Commission heard this on August 5th, and we've brought it forward. There are some concerns, some challenges with the— a couple of things. The condominium nature that have come to light since then with the condominium nature. It's a commercial condominium on the property. The planning commission recommended approval with a development agreement to limit the uses on the property to those of the CM zone that's already there. Um, the applicants aren't concerned about the uses. Their, their, their intent, uh, is in the zone development standards of the M-1 zone. They, they want to be able to use 0 lot lines on their west boundary where there's open space adjacent to them, uh, and to be able to add more units to the site. And that these flex space units, that's been kind of their motivation all along. So the uses weren't important when the uses were a concern to some of the neighbors at the public hearing for the planning commission. Planning commission recommended maybe a development agreement would be the way to do this. Um, and the applicants had no issue with that. So we brought it forward going that route. However, it has been, uh, it's the consideration of, of legal and others that a better way to approach this would be in that case, rather than subjecting the council to signing on to another development agreement attached to the zoning. This would be eligible for a PD zone. It's large enough to accommodate a planned development zone. We could accomplish exactly what the planning commission, uh, intended to recommend by processing a planned development zone for it that, that gave them the use— sorry, the standards of the M-1 zone with the uses of the CM zone. It would be a fairly simple PD zone, but that would be better for the city not to be involved in another development agreement that we have to track through layers of Of, uh, of property ownership, et cetera. Um, so that's been, that's been discussed with the applicants. They've agreed that we can, we can keep a pretty good timetable for them, uh, going that route, going back to the Planning Commission with the PD zone. I don't have any reason to suspect that the Planning Commission would have heartburn with that because it would do the same thing they recommended. Um, so if, if it's all right with you, we did schedule the public hearing. It was already scheduled in advance. This has all been kind of an ongoing discussion. So. That's, that's where we are tonight.

So what would you recommend us continuing it? Or are we going to need to renotice the public hearing?

I'll renotice a public hearing for the city, for the Planning Commission and City Council.

Okay.

Like we did, but for a PD zone instead.

So we just don't do anything with this? Yeah, just go ahead. What would be— what would you say we—

I would, I would maybe recommend continuing this without dates. And then, uh, then the applicants can submit a new application, and that'll essentially take the place of this one. But, uh, maybe leaving this one open until, you know, they're able to get through the process with the new application, just in case something—

continue this. Yeah, continue this, but not have the public hearing this evening.

Yeah, that would, that would be my recommendation.

Okay.

Yeah, and council, you okay following his recommendation, even though he made me read All of that. Okay. All right. Oh, Councilmember Meekum has a question.

Yeah, it's actually just more of a comment. I don't have any objection to that continuing that. And I understand from what you said, Jared, that from the city's perspective, turning this into a PD zone just makes tracking easier. Um, it's just more straightforward from the city's perspective.

Yeah.

Okay. Just, um, what one, uh, what is one comment to the council from the Planning Commission hearing on this? You'll notice that from the map that he has up that there's just a little corner of this that touches an R-8 zone up there. So we did have a little bit of public comment. You can kind of see that, all right, right there. Um, not, not worried about, uh, The proposed uses of this change, but worried about the other kinds of things that could potentially come in there with the wrong zoning. And that's, that's why the Planning Commission said, um, maybe the way to resolve that is with a development agreement or a PD zone, I guess, would do the same thing. But, um, the applicant was able to successfully resolve those concerns that the resident had. residents had, because they don't intend to use this property for anything that the residents were concerned about.

Thank you, Quinn. That's perfect.

All right, thank you for the comments. Any other comments?

So, just to kind of give me a heads up for what's coming, what's coming.

So, it would be a PD zone that would essentially allow the kinds of Um, the kinds of setbacks and things that we allow in the M-1 zone, which would accommodate the site plan they want to come forward with eventually. There's more to do after they get rezoned, if they're able to succeed in rezoning, but it would not allow them to do uses in the M-1 zone that aren't allowed in this. A lot of them are the same. I mean, 85% of the uses are the same in the 2 zones, but the CM zone doesn't allow meat and dairy manufacturing, tobacco products motor freight terminals, and like Quinn mentioned, motor freight garaging and maintenance, gasoline storage and distribution. Some of these made the neighbors on the north across the road— gave them pause about what if somebody did want to do that. And the applicants have no interest in that. They're invested in the property. It's mostly built. Um, they don't see any need to keep those options open for themselves. They have the kinds of uses that would be fine in the CM. So that's what they're worried about.

So, Steve, well, help me remember then, our PDs, I thought they were usually based on a site plan. Are we not doing that in In this case specific? Well, that's— are they coming back with that? Are you just giving them—

they've been developing a site plan as we go.

Okay.

In fact, they had a site plan developed when they asked for the zone change.

Open.

Yeah.

Well, and normally with, with a zone change like we're talking about, it would be— if they were doing just an M-1 zone, we don't require site plans for that.

This would be a PD zone and they would be tied to have a site plan.

Okay.

Yeah.

So I guess maybe—

oh, sorry.

Go ahead.

I just wanted to clarify, and maybe the applicant can help clarify this for us. Do they have the ability, have the intent to include a concept plan/site plan along with the proposed PD zone? Because that's typically what the PD zone does require.

So I want to make sure that they're able to do that as part of that, that they realize they're going to be tied down to what they submit.

We've, we've, we've been looking at a concept plan for a while as a, as a DRC. So, yeah, it shouldn't be a problem at all.

Okay.

All right.

Thank you.

Grateful to see no gas stations on there.

Did you want to say anything? If you do, I need you to come up and talk in the mic and state your name again, please.

Yeah, I think it's already been stated. Ian Bogus again, representing the Bogus family. Um, yeah, we're not interested in the extra uses. Um, regarding the question of if we have the site plan done, We just found this. It's going to be postponed tonight, which is fine. We're happy to continue discussion. So the site plan is not done yet. If that is what is needed, we can. It's not, it's not done yet. We certainly have a concept done, but no, it is not done.

That's fine if it's— it'll be done with this. Okay, thank you.

Thank you.

Is there anyone here who came to speak to this? Okay, so do you know what— do you, do you have any questions, anything? Just so you know, it's going to come back instead of being like a contract or development agreement saying it's these uses and not uses. It's going to come back and actually be considered for rezoning, which actually I think is a cleaner, cleaner way to do the same thing. It's all on hold for right now. Can you come up to the microphone and then just state your name? So we, uh, please.

Is this the image you wanted?

Yes, thank you. Hi, my name is Jerome Wernig. I've been a resident since God knows when. Uh, one of those houses is mine. You see where the blue line runs up to 10th South? Okay, go over 3 houses where the orange car— that's mine. Yes. When I first moved in there, I could look out my kitchen window and see the entire valley, and it was quiet down there. Everything's been added. UVU's lights in their parking lot make it daylight in my backyard at night. The truck traffic— and I'm a retired truck driver— the truck traffic is amazing. With the addition of the golf course, the cars zooming down there, You need to put a speed trap down there. Uh, anyway, I'm afraid of noise pollution, traffic pollution, odor pollution. It's, it's already kind of messy down there.

Okay, well, there's going to be another chance. Maybe you can meet with the— here, have you met with the property owners yet?

I had no idea who was who.

Okay, maybe we—

I didn't even— Mayor, I'm sorry, I hide in my house. I didn't even know who you were.

That's all.

That's okay. You know, a lot of people don't know who I am.

You're good.

Nice to meet you.

Good to meet you too.

I've been there since 1996.

Okay.

So a long time.

Thank you.

Thank you. Um, would you, um, Ian, would you mind connecting with this gentleman here? And, um, It will be coming back and there will be a public hearing both at the Planning Commission and at the City Council regarding this. But yeah, if you, if you wouldn't mind connecting with each other between now and then, that would be, that would be great. All right.

We'll, we'll renotice both those meetings. So if you got a notice before, you'll get one again. You bet.

All right. I just want to make sure that anyone who was here for this item understood what was What's going— what's happening with what the next step would be is that it's being continued. It's going to come back as a zone rather than a legal, like, a contract or legal document, right?

It'll come back as a PD zone instead of a zone change with a development agreement.

I support that. All right. So, are you ready for a motion to continue? Oh, all right.

I make a motion that we continue item 10.3. With an undefined date.

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

Second.

All right, thank you. Is there any further discussion, Council? All right, I vote aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Right, thank you. The motion carries and it's unanimous. Thank you. All right, next item is just information. We have financial items that were in your packet. We had the monthly, monthly financial summary for July and August. We'll now turn the time over to our City Manager, Brent Bybee, for item 12, City Manager Information Items.

Thank you, Mayor and Council. Uh, first of all, just wanted to thank you for your attendance and support in our BABO trainings. We had my favorite employee training this last Thursday called Orem Listens, and just wanted to let you know that we received a lot of positive feedback from our employees appreciating your attendance and support of that particular training. So thank you for joining us, and it always helps motivate our employees to keep listening, lifting, and loving Uh, each other and our residents. So thank you for that. Um, we do have our popular, um, Trunk or Treat this coming Saturday at University Place. That'll be from 10:00 AM to 2:00 PM. And then, uh, also just FYI, uh, Ryan, Carrie, and I will— are attending a City Management Association training from this Saturday to next Wednesday. So, in our— of course, you can always text, email, or call any of us, but for any in-person needs, our city attorney, Steve Earl, will, will be available. So, that's all I have.

All right, thank you. And just as a reminder, council, with our schedule with Thanksgiving, Okay. Excuse me. And the Utah League of Cities and Towns Conference, um, we end Christmas. This is the only time we're meeting this month, just a reminder. In October, November, we will be meeting, just having our first meeting on the second Tuesday in November because of Thanksgiving, and then we'll just be having our, our second Tuesday in December meeting because of Christmas. So we have 2 more meetings this year and then we're back It with the retreat and year for my— some of our year 2 and some of the year 4 for some of us and others.

So, Mayor, that reminds me, uh, keynote speaker at the Utah League of Cities and Towns conference is going to be Frank Abagnale. He's the, uh, uh, former CIA agent, uh, that with the movie that was made after him, uh, Catch Me If You Can. Anyway, I I've heard his, his speech before. It's actually very, very moving and inspirational. So would encourage your, your attendance of that if you can.

All right, thank you. I am going to take a motion to adjourn.

So moved.

All right, thank you. Is there a second?

Second.

All right, thank you. All right, all those in favor?

Aye.

Meeting's adjourned.