Cc - Regular Meeting

Thank you.

Yes, you get the message.

Are you ready to go, Christina? All right. Okay. Good evening, folks. It is time to start our regularly scheduled city council meeting this September 17, 2026. We welcome everybody here. We will start tonight by inviting our friend Cody Rasmussen, who serves as the first councillor in the Brigham City 20th Ward, to offer a either a thought reading or an invocation, and then we've asked Council Member Smith to lead us in our Pledge of Allegiance.

Our dear Father in Heaven, we're grateful for this night to convene together as Council and as civil members of Brigham City. We love you so much, and we're so thankful for the beauty that this city gives us and for the opportunity to come together and discuss the needs the wants and necessities. We ask that you be with us and also in our hearts and as we present what is needed here, those that have come to share their voice will do so in accordance with respect and civil approach, as well as those that are receiving and that they'll be able to come together as one to find solutions. We love you with all our hearts and we're so thankful for all the blessings that we receive. We say these things humbly in the name of Jesus Christ.

Amen. Amen.

I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Thank you, Cody, and Council Member Smith for starting us off. Council, there are three items in consent, the approval of the September 3rd, 2026 Council Minutes, write-off of the utility accounts being sent to collections, and library, same thing, accounts being sent to collections. Do we have a motion to approve consent?

Moved.

We have a motion by Council Member Jeffries. Do we have a second? Second. Second by council member Troxell. Is there any discussion that needs to happen on those three items before we go to a vote? All those in favor? Aye. Any opposed? Thank you. Motion passes. Tonight we have a public hearing pursuant specifically for the consideration of a resolution approving an amendment to the fiscal year 26-27 budget to reflect an increase in expenditures in the capital projects fund. We will invite, I don't have a presenter on here, but I'm assuming it's Derek Euler that's presenting, our city administrator. And for those of you that are in the audience or watching online, you'll notice that there are exactly four city council members on the roster tonight. We want to excuse Council Member Hipp, who isn't able to join us tonight. But what that means is there's an even number. And so if there is a tie, the mayor will be casting the tiebreaker. Mr. Euler.

Thanks, Mayor. Go ahead and come up, Chris. So I'll just quickly introduce this. I believe this is, so we're going to talk about indoor recreation space for Brigham City in the public hearing budget revision tonight. I believe this is the third time, maybe fourth, that we have discussed this in a public meeting. So I have asked Chris for the benefit of the public, not necessarily council, because we have seen a lot of these slides in the past, to kind of just review this topic. Like I said, there's a third and fourth time we discussed this, so your Council you've seen some of these slides before, but I'm gonna let Chris go through some of these slides and then I will talk about the funding and the financing. So Chris, go ahead.

Alright, thank you Council for the opportunity to be here tonight to present again. So I just want to first deliver some of the findings and things that we've learned since the last time we were here. So some of the things that we've learned, we went and talked to Voxelder High School. And my understanding is the athletic director, Jesse Roberts, has also come and presented prior to this. So some of this you might already know, but we learned that Box Elder High School has added five sports in the last five years. And although five might not sound like a large number, one of the things that Jesse shared with us is that when you consider that some of those sports have multiple teams, varsity and sub-varsity teams, that really it's almost like adding 18 different sports and that they all need space. And that correlates with some of the things that we saw when we looked back at the data that correlate with the gym access in number of hours that we've lost over the last five years, that it makes sense that the school's growing and that's great for our student athletes. And it's something that's out of our control as a city as to how quickly they grow, but it's great for them But it does impact our accessibility. We also learned that Box Elder High School had partnered with the Junior Jazz Bantam League, which we were aware of a little bit when we were here last time. But they did report that that has taken some significant gym time. That again correlates with not as many hours that we have access to. We've also learned that adults have an interest in some of our programs returning. Just this week, we had an email and a phone call from two different individuals that had played in our adult men's basketball league in the past that we're calling to ask, hey, are you guys offering your basketball league again? We've played in the past. We've also found that individuals understand that there is a need for a city-owned facility. They are seeing the impacts of losing time at the schools. And so from talking with individuals, You know, they understand that as well. One of the things that we did since we last spoke, Derek directed us to go out and, you know, look at some of the other recreation facilities in the valley, see if there's anything in terms of amenities that, you know, we're overlooking as we consider just the gymnasium space.

So with some staff, we went down to Spanish Fork and just headed back north.

And one of the things that we found is that we were aware of the Farmington Gymnasium. It's a city-owned facility in Farmington. It's a gymnasium only, and don't want you to get confused with the county facility that's just west of it, about a mile or so, but Farmington has a facility that's just a three-court, multi-court facility. It does have an elevated track, but what we learned from our little trip was that that is a gymnasium space. It was a really good model of what we need here possibly that would provide the needs that we have identified compared to like the full on rec centers that we had seen throughout the valley that have, you know, all their cardio and fitness spaces and leisure, aquatic leisure amenities. So with that, we kind of reconsidered the design compared to what we had shown you guys before with using that facility in Farmington as kind of a model. But before we show you that, I just want to remind you of, again, you know, one of the things that we wanted to make sure that we were doing was reaching out to our community partners and working with them the best that we could. And in doing that, I don't think we learned anything new, but we were reassured that our partners do want to work with us the best that they can, but they're limited in what they can give to us because of their own needs as they operate their organizations. So some of those core programs that are core, Issues that are impacting us continue to be accessibility, reliability, consistency, and then sustainability and growth. So just for some context, when we talked to Box Elder High School, you know, one of the things they were trying to consider is, hey, can we come up with, you know, a night once a week that the day wouldn't change, that could be consistent, that we would offer to the city. The facility might change, but hey, can we come up with a day that could be consistent? That's something that we left the conversation that they were going to talk about that internally, and we're waiting to hear kind of what they decide if that's possible. And then the Boys and Girls Club, we reached out to them. Initially, we asked, hey, could we get three nights a week throughout the year? And the three nights a week was denied because, again, they needed further space to operate. So we re-reached out and said, hey, what if we could do two nights a week? And that was something that they said they could accommodate. So we are doing the best that we can to work with our community partners, but at the end of the day, what we found is nothing new, and that is that relying on non-city-owned spaces does not resolve those core issues that Brigham City Recreation Programs are facing. So in terms of the revised concept of the gymnasium idea. This kind of shows you where the gymnasium would be in relation to our current recreation office there in Pioneer Park. It would be an addition. So the light colored area on that diagram is our existing recreation area for recreation offices. The yellow area to the right or to the east, along with the three illustrations of the basketball court, that is all the new square footage of this concept. It's a total of 26,500 square feet. This is just a track overlay that's on ground level that just is illustrating that, hey, in this facility, when you push back the bleachers, you could have a perimeter that people could use to walk around. And with this model in size, about 10 laps would equate to a mile. It's kind of a rough estimation. But BCBO architect is who built the gymnasium, the Farmington gymnasium, along with a lot of other facilities in the Wasatch Front. They estimate that a facility like this would cost roughly $10 to $12 million was just their estimate in the offset. So that's just a wrap that I have, and I'll turn it over to Derek.

Okay, thanks, Chris. So the last

Hold on hold on. Yes. We haven't opened a public hearing yet. When we do, you'll be able to do that.

The last public meeting we had on this subject, I'm reminding the council that we had the two concepts. You directed staff at that time to take both of those concepts and bring the council back at a future date to bids for the different sizes of the concepts. um with city engineer that had done those concept plans previous to that and with the all of our staff that was involved in this project we started to kind of prepare those documents and um kind of realize that that moving forward with an engineering concept to an actual bid is not in the best interest of us being able to bring us a staff being able to bring the council back actual numbers without a lot of change orders. So specifically why I'm here tonight and why it's obviously quicker than what we had discussed in the last public meeting is we as staff realized for us to bring an actual hard bid back to the council for approval, we need to get a plan set that is complete to be able to send this out to bid so we can get actual numbers for the council to weigh this instead of just engineers estimates and square footage. So when I'm talking about an actual plant set, it's the flooring type, the paint, where the outlet's located, you know, everything from start to finish so I can get you an actual bid so I don't come back, you know, after we, you know, we decided to move forward with $1 million, $2 million, $3 million worth of change orders. So these contracts for architectural and engineering and, you know, We've done this at Brigham City. I don't necessarily want to talk about the past, but in 2016, we actually did an RFQ, went through a process, hired an architectural firm when we went out to a general obligation bond for a building. And by the way, this building that you're looking at today and what was on that the voters looked at in 2016, in my opinion, is apples and oranges. That was a rec center and a senior center. about four times the square footage of what you're looking at here in front of you tonight so so that's what we're asking tonight from the council is a budget allocation for an architectural firm to get us a bid package together so we can actually bid the project um i have received a couple questions throughout this week from council members concerning this so i'm going to take a couple of those just right now and and go through One of the biggest ones I think that one of the council members talked to me about is, you know, a process like this, why would you not do an RFP and, you know, put this out for bid of architectural firms? So first of all, our current procurement policy and the state code procurement policy allows professional service contracts, which this is, to not necessarily be based on price. The history that I have and other staff members have had with projects like this is they, architectural firms, engineering firms on projects like this base their costs on a percentage of the value of the construction. So I'm not saying that we as staff won't, if we're directed from the council to do an RFP, we can. It's a number that is hard to come up with because you're basing the cost of the design and the engineering for the design on a number that is yet to be determined because you have not bid the project, if that makes sense. So any questions on that? And like I said, one of the council members, what I'm doing in the budget revision, what I'm asking the council to do tonight is this is simply a percentage of the cost estimate to the $500,000 for this. If this is a $7 million building, that number is going to be significantly less. If this is a $14 million building, that number is going to be more, if that makes sense. I'm using this estimate in the budget revision as the estimate of the cost of the construction of the facility, which is not going to be determined for months from now. And I think on that subject, I've seen somebody turning on a microphone. You got a question for me? No, go ahead. Okay. Okay. So if there's no other questions on kind of the professional service portion of the contract or putting this together, timeline is another question I received from council this week. So obviously estimates, we're going to be between four and six months for all of this work to be completed. Timeline for the project, frankly, if we're four to six months from now before the bid package is put together, We put that bid package out for another couple months. The conversation about this project moving forward or not moving forward is frankly going to happen during the 2027-28 budget year with the mayor. So timeline, I would expect the council to weigh in on this and vote yay or nay or whatever we decide to do is going to happen during next year's budget process with a construction period of starting most likely next summer, whether that happens or doesn't happen. I think that's really good feedback. Your vote tonight has nothing to do with whether we're building or not building this facility. What we're trying to do is put together the plans that have been discussed in multiple public meetings in the past and come up with the actual cost of what this would take to get done. So I believe that is the majority of the questions that I got asked this week from some of the council members, if there's any other questions for me. If not, I'm done.

So if there's any additional questions for Mr. Euler, if not, then you're satisfied and ready to open a public hearing. We will entertain a motion to open a public hearing specific to the budget amendment for the plans moving forward.

I have one quick, quick question. This change in the budget, does it change any of the other capital projects that were approved?

No, so this funding would come from the funding that has already essentially been identified to build this facility. Great question. There was a little bit of confusion during the budget process. This project is not in the fiscal year 26-27 budget at all. It has not been budgeted. Nothing to do with this project has been budgeted other than staff time, which there's been staff time going into this and a little bit of the engineering from our in-house engineer, our contract engineer, I guess I should say. So the monies for this are going to come from appropriated fund balance, and those monies were identified, you know, as we talked about this in previous public meetings, there's monies available for this project specifically.

A motion to open public hearing.

Okay, we have a motion to open public hearing specific to the budget amendment of fiscal year 2627 to reflect an increase in expenditures in the capital projects fund do we have a second second we have a set of the motion was made by council member troxell the second was made by council member jensen all those in favor all right any opposed okay motion passes Pardon me. We now stand in public hearing. Public hearing in Brigham City is specific and open to Brigham City residents, those who can vote, own property in, and hold public office within the City of Brigham City corporate limits. We would love to hear from you for up to three minutes. We need to open up the mic here and love to hear your comments pertaining to this public hearing and budget amendment. Oh, sorry. If you'll please state your name and where you live for the public record.

My name is Sheila. I've lived in Brigham since 2008. I've been in the United States since 1984. I'm a voting, I vote, and I'm also a U.S. citizen. Now, you're referring, I don't know, has this city recreation, has this already been approved or is it still in the process of being approved?

Okay, so it was just talked about that all this is the budget reflecting making the plans that we won't be moving forward.

My question is you're calling it a city community or recreational slash gymnasium.

No recreation. Please do not put that on there. This is just a gymnasium.

But five years ago when they said the students are growing, there's a lot of extra students and there's a lot of extra people in Brigham City and the surrounding areas too. So I think what we need more is a city community Community building. Which is all because he said. This is going to be mostly for the students because he said one night a week. It might be open to the city, but why don't we have the community? Why doesn't that? Five years ago was put on the ballot and it was voted down and new community center and the students could come and visit that too, but it would be open to the public. Because right now it's it's called a community center, but all it is is a small room and senior center. We used to have the down floor, which was a pool hall, but the city took that for storage. So it's called a community center, but it's nothing more than a small senior center. So I'd like to revisit that if I could.

Thank you.

And I'm not in favor of the city recreation thing.

Hi, my name is Marcia Boots.

My name is Marcy Andrews. I live here in Brigham City. Do you need anything more than that?

Okay, good.

So I was reading Cami Sabin's article, and she has mentioned a few things. I'm just going to rattle them off because my three minutes are running. She stated that in 2021 to 2025, direct hours were 387. And I just did an extrapolation out, and I know these numbers are not exact. detailed or accurate enough, but they give you a general idea that if you take 387 hours annually, divide that by eight, which is eight hours in a day that a rec center could be used, but sorry, not a rec center, a gym, my apologies, could be used that literally 48 days. The cost for this, and I understand you're looking to be able to utilize it more, But so far that's all that's been allocated or used through that time period. 48 days is an awful lot or is not very many days for usage for something that's going to cost $10 to $12 million possibly. And even to be looked at at a $500,000 expenditure just to look at it. And that is not only Brigham City that's using those. I'm sure it's going to pull from around the county, but it's still the Brigham City people that are going to end up paying for it. The mention with six programs that were discontinued, what specific six programs? And I'm being facetious. If it's pencil sharpening, it's not worth it. So I'd like to have a little more detail on what those six programs are being claimed that were discontinued. Has there really been that many complaints that there's not space to do these, to utilize? And if so, how many? The gentleman mentioned, and I apologize, I've forgotten the name. He mentioned that they had two people call in and ask if they were doing adult gym. Two people is not enough to warrant this gym, in my opinion. We need more details. And we're all five of these newly added sports from Vauxhalla High School, all indoor sports. And if so, were they all going to take up all that space and time? So there's just a lot of questions that are still remaining that the details have been omitted. It was a broad brush of information that was given to us, and it's not enough. We already voted down once this gym. And at that point, it was recreation center. This is not the time to be spending that kind of money on something that's not going to really benefit the Brigham City population or even the surrounding area population. Three minutes. That's it. Thank you.

Thank you.

Malone Mulgaard, Brigham City, Utah. I think that first I want to say thank you to all of you because you guys put yourself out there and you guys make the hard decisions, and I appreciate that. In hearing the presentation, you kept saying need, need, need. Need is fire, police, water, electricity, gymnasiums, not a need, it's a want. No matter how much it would be nice, and I'll agree, it would be nice to have gymnasium space. It's not a need. $10 to $12 million to build it is still going to require user fees, just like the pool or the golf course that we're going to have to pay. Still going to require subsidies. The Farmington City gymnasium is being looked at as what we need. Farmington City... subsidizes their recreation fund at $1.8 million a year. They paid off the debt for building, but they have to spend $250,000 annually of other revenues to the general fund to support ongoing parks and recreation operations, another 490 for equipment for the facility. And they continue to subsidize that building by local sales tax allotments and general fund property taxes. So this is something that is not just going to be a one-time spend $12 million. This is going to be an ongoing increase that is going to require continued maintenance. More people hired to run the place, it's going to be much more of a cost, which is eventually going to require a raise in taxes. Thank you.

Good evening. I'm Brett Reeder. I also live in Brigham City. I honestly have not checked into all the details of this, so I'm not as familiar with it. I myself love to play sports. I still try. I'm not very good. I still try. But the important things here are it is such a small minority of the community that would actually utilize this. And I see every day throughout the business and living and working here in this community that people are struggling and people don't have the finances to be able to support something like this, especially that they wouldn't use. I'm not opposed to having gymnasiums or anything like that. But even if you went out, which I would highly recommend to anyone. Before you present something like this, I would like to see you go out and try to get supporters from the community businesses around. I think there's a lot of money out there that you could get that could be donated for purposes like this and not put it on the shoulders of the taxpayers that are struggling. Even if you got the money donated for it, though there's such an immense ongoing cost to maintain and keep these things going. One of the ladies here had mentioned eight hours a day in all honesty, if you put money into a gymnasium, you should be using it 14 hours a day. And you're talking all day, every day. Um, it shouldn't be, if you're going to put that much money in, there should be enough use to justify it. Even eight hours a day does not justify it. I see many gyms on the private sector. If it, if it made sense and if, if there was, uh, If you could justify it, there'd be more private sectors doing it. I see currently, in fact, I just found out about another one yesterday. The private sector businesses, some are starting to file bankruptcy. It's a hard economy right now. I would love a gymnasium in Brigham, but I don't think it's the right time. I don't think the taxpayers can afford it. Thank you. Thanks, Brett.

I've been communicating with all of you through email since you first proposed this back in April. And I'm still waiting information, um, on some data that, that Mr. Jeffrey's asked for that. I don't know that he's received. Um, you invited the school district to come in and preach your cause of no gym space. Um, they also want a field house and they've pulled it off because the taxpayers have, have bought that. All right, you justified providing a $26,000 raise to the city administrator. You justified an electrical raise, a water rate increase because we need infrastructure. And it was said at a council meeting that we'd see $6 million a year for infrastructure. Well, if you have nine to $12 million to build a gym, use that for infrastructure to catch us up. I'd like to know if Mr. Jeffries has received the data. The mayor has told me that I can dig through all the city council meetings. The presentation that was given wasn't there, and you can't see it in the recording. So there's tons of information that's not provided here. I came from a community that's much smaller than Bergen City that built a YMCA without any tax dollars. We have the Boys and Girls Club. Now, maybe you're going to stay at the Conflict of Interest because Mr. Jeffrey's wife runs it, but you have gym space there. Two beautiful gyms. I peeked in the windows. It was locked, okay? I've been communicating with Keith Mecham. If anything of this goes forward, it needs to be in partnership, and it should not be built at the park. It needs to be attached to the natatorium so that the school district and the city can use it. But I know you personally said you've been dreaming about it. Okay? Your dream doesn't match what the citizens voted on when you were on city council. Remember, that wasn't very long ago. And so the fact that you want to, I came in late because I just came home from work. A half million dollars to study it? No. That's a lot of wasted money when the taxpayers have told you no. We're here, nobody's spoken up for it. I'm in favor of gym space, but not at the taxpayer's dollar, because I've seen it done. I've been in Norfolk, Nebraska, where Nucor helped with the YMCA. So there's other ways to do this. I would hope that there's no vote for a half million dollar study. You just tried to raise our taxes, and because I've met with many council members multiple times, Thanks, Mr. Smith, Mr. HIP, who's not here today for spending a lot of time with me and talking about things.

Okay.

Well, do I get more?

Because thank you, Mr. Donovan.

The, the, the, you're invited to the school board.

Got me. Mr. Donovan.

Okay. Julianne Larson, Brigham City, Utah. My purpose for being here tonight is to address some of the issues I have discovered in the course of looking at the proposal for this particular project. And I know that you guys had meetings about it. I remember when you talked about how great it would be. I have family members who said they would use it. But these are the questions. And I know you don't take questions, but I want the council to look at them, at least read them. and think about what I'm trying to say to you tonight. In your minutes for this meeting, you discussed the design services for the new facility and taking revenue through the fund balance to the tune of $500,000. And I'm looking at that, and I heard you guys talk about planning what money needed to be spent, how much in each project. And then I hear somebody say, well, no, we're not going to touch that money. It's not even in the budget. If it's not even in the budget, where by the time it's going to become a reality, where is that money going to come from? Because most of us are still bouncing on the walls from the prices we've just had on the electric and the water and the power and the whole nine yards. A person of one living on a fixed income should not have a double raise in their utility bill for one month. I've seen this. This is a reality. So you say in the 26-27 budget that the capital projects fund is going to be impacted and will be raised by the $500,000. And I've listened to where you've said you've gotten money before, but if you're going to talk about $500,000 to look at a blueprint, and no action, and then tell us how much we're going to get to pay for the project. That sounds a little bit unrealistic to me, particularly like the gentleman said, with regard to water leaks and road fixes and all of the construction, the repair that's going on within our city right now, all the streets that are closed to be fixed. We need to have that money available to do that. And what I think really bothers me is in that packet of information that I read clear through. I was talking about this very thing. It didn't bother to say that in your document that as soon as you get the okay tonight probably to go ahead with the project and it's already a done deal and we don't have any say. We've not, there have not been very many public meetings with this mayor. There have been a few meetings where you guys have discussed it with this council. and with the group. But in terms of talking to the community and the people that are going to pay the bill, I don't see a whole lot has been happening with that. And so I think that the people need to understand where that money is going to come from because my money tree died three years ago. So I wish you would go back and look at it.

Thanks, Julianne.

Glenn Wright, Brigham City. I take a look at this and we talk to, I mean, I could be wrong, but the city, first of all, thanks for everything you guys do. It really is a hard position. We have the city administrator tell us that we need this facility, but where's the rec department on this? I've not heard from any of them saying that they need this. I don't know. I have no idea. I know this is a project that wants to get done and I'm not opposed to gym space either, but It kind of feels like we're building a field of dreams here. If we build it, then the rec department is going to be able to fill it as opposed to we have needs from the high school and we have needs from junior jazz, but there's nothing that they're going to be willing to help us with to do any of that. I just expect the city and the residents of Brigham City and the county to float that for them. I'll be honest with you. I don't have much faith in our rec department. I don't see many facilities being run. Most of the facilities that run through the rec department have mostly to do with a bunch of the parents who are involved with that, their soccer and the basketball and all that. I don't see much city involvement in it at all. So my question is, why are we building this field of dreams, building the cart before the horse, just to hopefully build the golden pathway to get to what we want as our rec department in the future. So that's my two cents.

Thanks, Glenn.

Oh, hi. This is Wendy Cano, Brigham City. I would just like to know if you've gone through and counted how many basketball courts there actually are in Brigham City when you count the high school and the natatorium and the junior high and the boys and girls club they're not the only community member we have lots of state centers that have amazing basketball courts and I'm sure that they would be glad to cooperate with the city plus elementary schools that have basketball courts and I think you know people just aren't thinking about you know so what if you have to drive somewhere else besides the high school or just one central location it's doable you got Perry and Willard and all the other schools around that would use it too. Thank you.

Thank you.

Hello. My name is Anna Marie Hall. I live in Brigham City over by the hospital. I have five kids. I spend a lot of time at the baseball field. We lose our souls from May to June as we sit at the baseball field. We coach. We coach basketball. We coach baseball. We're there. We're there. I don't have a lot of knowledge about this, but I just like to – I'm not for or against, but I would implore or suggest that we partner with people, we work together with people. And there's a lot of information that I don't know, and so I'm not going to come in and yell at you, but there are. Community development block grants that are available. Through the HUD Department, there's the USDA has rural funding grants that we could use that we could apply for. EDA's Economic Development Administration. I know Gail Miller. She has given a lot of money to. To build rec centers. She gives a lot of money to a lot of things, but she partnered with a rec center down in Sandy. She gave $2 million for that. At our elementary school, I helped with the parent organization there, and we had a thing where we wanted to get a book vending machine, and it was a lot of money. It was for our budget, but we were able to partner with the Kiwanis Club, and they have a grant. They gave us money. They gave us $2,000 to help by this vending machine for our kids. Had it just been us going alone, I would not have felt comfortable doing that because I would hate for people to think that we were just lighting money on fire, which is not what we want to do. But working with the Kiwanis Club with that small project, there's a lot more buy-in in our community with that. I know that it's a small group of people that it benefits. Like I said, I'm not for or against, but I feel like there'd be a lot more buy-in in our community. If we partner and we don't shoulder it alone, the Weber County ice sheets is an example of the County ice sheet, but it benefits. The high school that benefits the colleges. It benefits a lot of other things, so if we can work together, if we can learn how to get along together with. The county with the school district and with the city with Perry with Willard making it a community endeavor, I think would go a long way for whatever plans are ahead. I think that the big thing is partnering with people. Like I said, I'm not for or against. I just feel like there needs to be a joint effort which shares the burden so it doesn't go right back to the Brigham City residents where we have a community here that would use it outside of just our city limits.

Thank you. Council it appears is still public.

Mayor, I have the one from online.

Other than that's what I was just going to come to. We got one online that's requested to be read and we'll have our city recorder read that.

This is from Lane Christensen. I'm not able to attend the council meeting on Thursday, September 17th, where the city owned gym space will be discussed. I highly support having gym space in Brigham. I would love to see a city-owned fitness center, including basketball, volleyball, gym space, weightlifting space, and additional rooms for instruction classes. I've wondered why there is not a facility like this in Box Elder County. Please advocate for a new facility in Brigham City.

Lane Christensen, is that what you said his name was?

Yes.

Thank you. Now, council appears we've exhausted public comment during this public hearing. This isn't public comment part. We could get to that. But during this public hearing, somebody would like to make a motion to close public hearing.

Motion to close public hearing.

We have a motion by Councilmember Troxell to close public hearing. Do we have a second? Second. Second by Councilmember Jeffries. All those in favor?

Aye.

Thank you. Motion passes. Council, do you have any questions or would you like to address some of the questions that were asked by the public?

So, yeah, as we talk about this, in our essence, it seems, Derek, a little bit, a little backwards for me. And I kind of guess I understand the construction part of it, to spend X to find X to see if this is what we have to spend X to draw. So part of me is like, okay, we're running this off of estimates, but that estimate of 500K is a ceiling for sure. Is there something you can do to get that less? And in sitting through this, I mean, there's a lot of – I mean, I have a lot of different things. I think we get – and most of you know who I am. You can get a hold of me. I think we think gym space and we automatically go basketball and that's it. So the 48 days or 40, whatever I wrote down, 48 days, yeah, that's what you said, 48 days, at the schools is only the basketball program. That's it. In a gym space with our rec department, we want to do many other things in our community, not just basketball. I've talked with a walking space in the wintertime for all. I see tons of people as I drive to work in the mornings that are walking up and down our streets. But it's cold and rainy, and those people still like to go out walking, and this gives them an opportunity for them to do so at this facility. Hold on. I wish sidewalks were free. They're free? Well, just kidding. Good point. That is a good point, but still. So as we talk about this, and I understand, when he sent this packet out, it was a $500,000 thing, and I had a lot of sticker shock with something like that for a drawing.

What I thought was, can we wait four years?

I'll go back to engineering school. I'll come back, draw said things, and give you a deal and have my schooling paid for. Or can we take said things and hang them up in the Louvre after it's half a million dollars from the engineers? sell them for $2 million. But those are just, I mean, those are some of my thoughts about some of this thing. Would I like to know what this building is going to cost us for sure? It would be good to know that. It would be good to know. I understand there's going to be future costs involved in this. One of the things that frustrated me living in Brigham City for the last 20 years is I have four boys, and every time we would play sports, I'd get out half of an hour a week to go and run a practice on Tuesday and then turn around and try to play a game on Saturday. I can't teach my kids hardly anything about basketball in 30 minutes a week and have them remember it by the time Saturday comes.

That was frustrating to me. Now I know some of you guys who don't care.

Whatever. And I understand that. And I'm grateful that we have differing opinions, that we can chat about some of this and come to some sort of whether it's an agreement or a conclusion or whatever. But that's some of my things. We have been talking to, and maybe somebody can give a little better discourse than me. Yes, of course we would talk to community businesses to help us with something of this magnitude. Yes, we would. Would that make a difference? I don't know yet because I don't know what they can offer and what we can do. But So from where I'm sitting, and I don't know that the school district, yes, I think they want to build a field house down here. My guess is that probably will still happen. That's my guess. Well, I'd give it a couple years. They've got some box elder bees that are pretty jealous of the Bear River field house, you know. And so you have all these things. And they probably, again, it will be a while. But they have the funding now to be able to build their gym space that they need. And I see no problem, I'm hoping, with something like this. But yes, it is a great community thing. Lots of people in the community could use such a thing. Currently, that's my 2%, my 2 cents, sorry, which is really only 2%. And anyway, those are some of my thoughts I've had as I've listened to you talk. And I greatly appreciate it. Thank you so much for coming. tonight and expressing your opinions, I'm grateful for that. Usually that does not happen. And so it gives me a lot to consider and think on tonight, so thank you. Anything I said that you guys want to comment on? Mayor or Derek?

Go ahead, Rob.

All the suggestions that we've been getting, I just want you to know, yes, throughout the past years, Different City Councils and administrators and community members have talked about different ways that we can provide sports and recreation to Brigham City residents. At a time prior and I think prior before COVID and before COVID we did have a shift in programs not being able to be available. There was a shift in society and economics and such. So it's not like we've never had good programs for our family, our growing families. And that the numbers that you see from the last few years are what we can expect in the next few years. Yes the economy is very troubling right now. I've spent this whole week and I'll talk about that in my public in my comments with different organizations that are struggling to help families in poverty. I think if you remember Mayor Bott was one that voted no on the recreation center. He was the vote that made it so that we didn't go for a bond and do a huge multi-million dollar recreation center. I do talk to and go to a lot of events and a lot of sporting events. I'm the grandma that has multiple grandkids that probably do every single sport in Brigham City. And I can tell you our fields are full with the sports that with the things that we do have. I remember a time growing up grew up growing up here in Brigham City and also have been raising kids where the recreation programs were very robust. And even at some point now with some of the ones that we've started being able to provide in the last year you have to get signed up quickly because space ends and if you You can't you know they can only do so much with the staffing. So I think that us doing something as far as getting actual plans for gymnasium space with all the talks that we've been doing on making it be reliable by working with the school district and seeing our available space for programs that used to just We used to have adult volleyball, mixed volleyball, men's basketball, you know, used to do a whole lot of exercising at the senior center. And those teams actually do pay a fee towards that. There's fees that you pay to have a team on an adult volleyball league. I think that in my mind, this is a very good and prudent way in talking with the administrator on the different sources of funding that is available with the different organizations that he's identified. Now, these are, it's not like we have $12 million that we can just do that. You know, we don't. We don't have $12 million.

that can just be moved around. He's out. We're not going to have you disrespect the council like that. Get out. You're welcome back next council meeting.

And we do talk very, very intricately with working with NUCAR, with the source of the funding to build this, with the different ideas. We, you know, we do want to do the grants. We do want to do these different things and to make sure that the build is not just out of the general fund and totally on the taxpayer. And I do talk to a lot of people that would appreciate an indoor gym for their kids. young families to have the opportunities. And we need to remember that we are a manufacturing community. We have a lot of growing families, young families that go into manufacturing and distribution that necessarily can't afford the big comp teams and the big expensive things that some of us kind of get into that we, you know. But it's such a great opportunity for the youth and for the community and for, you know, companies. So I do think that we will be able to get some companies involved. I do think that the that in order to go out and get those grants, we do need to have a set plan and an architectural plan, because how else are you going to get the grant money? I do think that that's a lot. And it blows me away that it would be that much. And but I do realize that that's the very top end of what possibly be doing. There's a value. There's a dollar to dollar value in infrastructure and what a city provides. And those are very important. But there's also a value in community services. our senior services, our parks, our recreation, our museum, our library. All those things are what makes living in a close community and a value that cannot be dollar for dollar. And so, I do just want the community to know that yes we we are thinking and talking about all these different ideas. We are talking to the different school districts. There was a time when yeah we could we could go to the churches but church that that all the gyms have changed their policies also. And so it's kind of been a flow of. it not being available and I appreciate that we didn't aren't going full blown the community has been very open and saying we don't want to bond for these big huge things just like the school district or or something like that and so we've been trying to take a prudent way to do what we can do and what we need to do and identify the different um funding um roads that can possibly make it a little at a time without overly expensing our property tax. And I think our administration has spent a lot of time on those types of details that can't necessarily I know that we say, you know, we talk in generalities, like we, but there is a lot of details that have been looked at. And we have talked ourselves and stuff out of, you know, it being big to something that we really do feel, I feel, which be a highly valued asset to Brigham City moving forward.

Let me add my three cents. I'm going to plus Ryan up by one cent because that's probably all I'm worth. As experience goes, I can tell you the city isn't near the gym. I've been there, done it. I've read basketball for many years for the city. My kids played through here. I understand the importance of the gym. I get it. I used to run a gym. I get it. But when I saw the agenda item for, actually it was on Friday night at Peach Days when I opened up my email and I saw the agenda that this was on the agenda at $500,000 like Ryan pointed out.

Yeah, it is sticker shock.

And because of that, I'm dealing with two things. I am a council member that is supportive of the gym, but I am not supportive of going about it this way. I have a hard time, and this is not news to the city council because I think they've heard this before. I have a hard time supporting it because it wasn't in the last budget. We just approved the budget two meetings ago, and this wasn't on there. That's the hardest thing to sell to the citizens of Brigham City is that it missed the budget. I get it. Derek, I understand what you said before about how this is going other ways and other means. I can accept that. I can see that a little bit. but I have a hard time selling that to the citizens of this community. Therefore, I can't support it tonight. So I won't be a surprise when the vote comes through. But I am in favor of this gym. I just want to see it done the right way. So if it goes back to the drawing board and done where it's a part of the budget for next year, great. Let's look at it. This might put us down the road another six, seven months to actually get the gym built. That's okay. at least in my playbook. But I think it is a need for the city, and I think it needs to come. I think it needs to be done. I do like the ideas about partnering with other groups. There is experience in this city about how that works. I think there's still an opportunity to partner with the school district and maybe do a joint venture. Who knows? But regardless of that, I have a hard time. Again, I have a hard time with the fact that this was two meetings after the budget. And that's what I deal with, and that's what I struggle with. But that's my three cents.

I didn't want to take up all your time, Matt.

I guess we're going down the road.

But we didn't need to. That's a good point.

It just happened. Did you want to touch on that, Derek, again, why the timing? Because I agree with Dave. It kind of is. It is right after we passed the budget. Now, the budget, though, started six months ago.

But this was never in it. And I asked, remember?

I asked. No, if you want to touch on that, I would love to.

Yeah, I'm good touching on it. So, obviously, it's from the previous four public meetings where we've discussed this. We didn't have a number to put in the budget to do it. So, why am I back this quick? That's kind of where I started. I don't want to be back in front of you having a budget revision two weeks after I realized that. But so the last direction, like I said, the council gave us is I want the actual number. I told you five, six months before to get that actual number. And he backed up. You know, why are we asking for this money tonight? Here's my biggest fear. And why am I trying to tie this down immediately? No disrespect to the contract engineer Brigham City has, but he doesn't do this stuff for a living. He builds water lines and sewer lines. That's who we've been using to build streets. That's who we've been using for our design up to this point in time. If I take that package and send it to a contractor to bid, the odds of the change orders being 1 million, 2 million, 3 million, 4 million, when we actually get there, increases significantly. We spend the dollars up front right now to put a bid package together with 40 cut sheets that say what kind of tile is going on the walls and what kind of everything's going on the walls, then when I come back to you and say, here's the cost, not saying we're not going to have a change order, but now I can give you the cost for next year's budget, that this is what this thing is going to actually cost, and I'm not going to have to come back to you if you approve a $7.5 million budget to build. I'm not going to come back to you in December and say, I'm sorry, council, it's $2 million more because of change orders. That's what I'm trying to avoid.

Right. Sorry, Darrell. I may have really interrupted you.

No, you're good.

I get that, and I think we all understand that process. But with all due respect, we struggled with almost a 30% property tax increase at the start of the budget cycle. We got it down to almost three, and then it turned out to get zero. And a lot of it was trying to find about $150-some thousand to pay for a gap in a lawyer cost. So we struggled over a property tax increase to pay for $150,000. I was not prepared to see a $5,000 addition to go out and bid this out and get the bid. That's what I'm struggling with. If this was like $100,000 or something, okay, man, we'll find the budget. We can probably do it and be fine with it. But it's half a million dollars. And just a few months ago, we're struggling trying to figure out how to get our How to pass a budget without a property tax increase to cover a gap of $150,000.

But to be fair, that $150,000 was ongoing year to year, not a one time. So it's not really apples to apples.

Again, that backs up my other point. I'm just trying to communicate that to the citizens who just read this in the paper. It's a hard thing to sell to the residents. And I take my job very seriously. And I try to answer the people who come talk to me. And I try to be upfront with them. And when this came up over Peach Days weekend, that was probably the biggest mistake is that this came out basically the night of Peach Days. Because at least for me, that's all I got asked about all weekend. And unfortunately, I apologize to you guys. I would not have made that. I would have pushed off another at least maybe two weeks. But regardless, I couldn't answer that question correctly. I just couldn't. So that's kind of why I'm struggling with. So back to you. You're up to a nickel, though.

I love David. Is there a way to lower that cost? We talked, Ryan mentioned that a little bit, and I know it's continued on so many things. Is there a way we can build in a maximum amount of what we're willing to outlay at the start here?

Yeah, so I went back. Like I said, there were some questions prior to the meeting from council members, and that question, frankly, was asked of me. So I went back and talked to the VCBO through our engineering firm. I don't have a problem stating this, so this would be a subcontract through our existing engineering firm. So A couple ways to look at that. Remember, I kind of chatted about the professional services portion of the contract, and this is based on a percentage of the total. So what I learned through asking that question, and great question, Council, roughly 80% of their cost to do the design happen in the preparation of the bid package. So 80% of that total cost of whatever that is. So let's just do the math. Let's say it's a $12 million building at 5.5% is what they're, you know, you're going to back it, that's $628,000. 80% of that's roughly $500,000. So that's the number that is in the budget is exactly that. They're going to expend 80%. So their other 20% is essentially construction oversight, making sure their plans, contractor that's hired does the job, build what they build.

With the 80% being so high, there's not a lot of wiggle room to bring the cost down?

No, there's not. You're spending 80% of the money on the design to bid it, the preparation to get that project to bid. Great question, though.

How did you come up with that 80%?

$12 million.

You started at the max.

5.5% of that 80 percent right around 500 000 plus or minus so this person will go out and spend that 80 percent yes i mean the tile will be oh yeah you're gonna max amount you're gonna have a book that thick just like you have a book this thick that built city hall in 1971 we still have it there's a book this thick that built this building that said that kind of ceiling tile, well, actually it wasn't that one, that's been changed, but that puts that type of ceiling tile in there. I mean, every single detail will be in that.

So there's not much incentive for them to build for architects a $9 million facility with super materials.

Yeah, realize the architect doesn't bid the construction. They put the package together based on Here's our standard. This is what the city wants, X, Y, and Z. This is the type of floor we want in there. Here's our standard toilet we put in normal city restrooms. Here's our lighting package. Here's our HVAC. They go put that all together, and then you send that bid. So that's a competitive process when contractors bid it.

And it's different than the architectural thing to draw the building and put that package together.

You'll have different people that actually bid contractors the bids. Does that make sense? Yeah, great question. Sorry, Matt.

No, that's okay. I mean, I would hope, you know, we could build in something, but with the percentage that high, it sounds like that's not a huge option.

I've knocked down the actual cost 80% already. And by the way, Mr. Jones, and I'm going to say it for him because he asked me to, so the city's contract engineer, like I promise you, council, me, our engineer, all of us have sticker shots. Like, when we did this in 2016, those percentages are nowhere near where they are today on the percentage of a construction project. And, you know, Brett would not charge us that.

You know, and that would end up with change orders that would add up in the construction.

And that's the issue. Like, okay, council directs me, hey, go do an actual RFP for this engineering and architecture work, which what you're telling me there is, is go take the low bid. Go put it out there. You take the lowest level possible to save us $200,000 to have a potential of a million dollars worth of change orders. We at staff don't think that's the smartest idea in moving forward.

Ongoing costs. You and I talked about it a little bit. We didn't expect it to be as big. But some of the public members mentioned that. You want to talk about that for a minute?

You know what? I'll do whatever the council wants me to do.

Right. No, I get that. I think we're probably a little early on that.

Yeah. And if you want me to try to address it a little bit, but yeah, the public builds a building with public money. We need to do everything on our power as a city for the costs that we have to keep it open to the public to be used. That's my statement. And we'll work towards that through future budgets and do the best we can. I can live with that.

Do you want to talk maybe about restricted funds and the money? Can we use the money for somewhere else? I know a lot of people think, well, if you've got this money saved up, why don't we use it for a water project? Or why don't we use it for an electric project? I love Dave Pip's analysis of different colored pots of money. You've got the green money and the blue money and the yellow money and This can go in there, but this can't go that way. You can mix them all up. There's different rules on the government accounting that people might not understand. Do we have restrictions on some of this money?

No. So, by the way, I'd normally let the finance directors take that. I'm sick today, so I'm going to take that question. So, no. The monies that have been identified are unrestricted, but they are general fund monies. So a water project, a sewer project, a power project is a utility fund money. Brigham City Corporation could transfer money from its general fund to the utility fund to fund projects. I don't know for sure. I've been here almost 16 years. I would lay bet that the city hasn't done that for probably 100 years. Obviously, monies that are in the general fund are for things that have been discussed publicly and you know, tonight, police, fire, all those types of things. So the money's available already in our general funds. So, you know, I'm not saying you can't, as a council, transfer funds from the general fund to the utility fund. I've never heard of a city ever doing something like that. I'm not saying right or wrong. I'm just saying it's not what government does. It's usually the opposite. We do that once a year, transfer money from our utility fund to our general fund to pay for public safety, frankly. So But maybe just real quick, there's been a lot of conversation. And by the way, I feel bad. When you prepare these things for these public meetings of staff, you kind of never really know what to do. I wish that I would have had Chris. And by the way, our recreation director is the one that did the presentation before me. I wish I'd have had him start at the top and go through all four meetings that we have previously discussed this because there's been a lot of questions from the public that were answered in previous meetings, almost every single one of them. But on the conversations about donations and businesses involvement, there is a lot of discussion about that. I am not going to publicly release any of that information respecting those businesses and their wishes at this point in time. But there is a lot of community involvement that is not for public dissemination at this point of the local businesses in our community. So let's say it's a $12 million building. There will be significant portions of those funds that come from the private sector.

The only thing I would add, or if anything, about the private sector is one of the questions that was asked is, how much is the building that you're building? so they can get their head around what would be an appropriate donation.

What is the square footage of your building?

Yeah, what's the square footage? What do they know to donate? We can't do anything. We can't answer that without the plans. Now, that's here and there. If I could just, there's a couple questions that were asked that have been addressed. Mr., Mr. Horsley our recreation director gave a phenomenal probably half hour presentation back in I want to say May on the need. We had Mr. Mecham the superintendent and Mr. Roberts the AD at the high school. They came for public comment about three four council meetings ago and Mr. Roberts brought a graph on what those sports are. No. A lot of lacrosse, softball, those are outdoor sports, but they start in the spring. So they start practicing in the winter. So practice is an indoor sport. That's just the way it works, unless they don't have that, which they haven't in the past. Dave and I both coach lacrosse. We both know that winter lacrosse practices not only suck, but... Can't find white balls in the white snow in lacrosse a lot of times. And these were all good comments, by the way, and they're all things that over the last three years we've been doing. I have been speaking to surrounding mayors about the idea of participating in a gym space because there's some wisdom in economies of scale. None of them, they all declined participation. And not just no thank you. It was a hell no. So I have spoken with them. There are a lot of ecclesiastical and religious buildings within our community and the surrounding communities that do have full-size gyms. About, I'm going to say, 10 years ago. Is that when you and I coached lacrosse, Dave? It's been 10 years? At least 10, yeah. 10 plus years ago, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints made an insurance liability decision not to allow those types outside of their organization. If it's not church sponsored, they're not allowed in the building. And so that took away quite a bit. Before that, it wasn't unknown for a junior jazz coach to use those facilities. And so, yes, we have engaged that. Derek has touched on the private partnership. That is ongoing. I think it's interesting, at least for me, to say that it's not a need. And this is just my opinion. But I feel like it was a need in the 80s when DJ Bot was playing basketball and baseball. I felt like it was a need in the 2000s when DJ Bot's kids and DJ was coaching basketball in the community. Of course, back then, there weren't so many high school sports. We were able to utilize the high school gyms and the school district gyms. And I feel like it's a necessity that my grandchildren have some place to play in. Now there isn't gym space in either churches or with the school district currently. And so those are just my feelings. I don't have a dog in the fight here unless it's a tie vote. And so those are just some comments for the – let me just look down my notes here to make sure that I've at least touched on or we have all have touched on some of these things. There was a question as far as getting this out to the public and getting public input. We've been talking about this since May, June and July outside of taking a bus and forcing people on the bus and coming to public meeting. I don't know how to get people here, but it's been discussed in public meetings where the public is more than welcome to come and talk. And I understand it's difficult because we're all busy. And so I would point to the electoral system where every November or every other November, we get to elect four individuals, five individuals that represent you and they're accessible. And some of you have reached out. I can say that I've received quite a few emails this week. And I was down at the park last night asking questions at Peach State asking questions. And it was I got both support and non support. And so that's why it's up to the Council to decide this. So that's my comments. If the Council has any more questions, we'll entertain those. Otherwise, we've had the public hearing. We've heard from the public, both online and in our room. And we can now take an action in the form of a motion as to whether or not to approve the amendment to the fiscal year 2026-27 budget to reflect an increase in expenditures in the capital projects funds.

I was just going to ask, there was a cost when we did work with the school district and stuff in leasing the space. We still expended funds.

Yeah, there was lease. There was lease costs. And when they use our facilities, there's a lease there as well.

By the way, I wouldn't If Brigham City can grow, we've had these conversations three or four times in previous meetings. Brigham City's limited availability within the district facilities will not be terminated if we were to move forward with this facility or not. We need those hours inside of the school facilities that we currently have. We're currently working with the Boys and Girls Club on a long-term deal that those It's not, hey, if we build this facility, those things will go away. We absolutely still need to continue to use to run the programs that we have of every square foot of gym space available to us to run our programs for our people.

And I'm just wondering from those city council members if there's a different idea if

That you could, that would still move us forward, but. Well, what's in front of us is to approve a $500,000 expenditure to hire a firm to figure out what's going to cost. Yeah, and to discuss actual gym and everything, that's going to come later. But right now, we're just here to approve a half a million dollar expense on a bid. And like Bo said, it seems a little high, but Derek explained it, so. I don't know what, I don't know. I wish there was an opposite, different solution. Like I think Ryan wanted to do it. He's willing to go back to school to figure it out. Pocket some money. I don't know.

How quick could you get through school? I don't know. I can really, three years. I really pushed it.

I just wish there was another.

I couldn't, I couldn't, I'm not smart enough to get through three years. So a couple of thoughts have occurred to me as I've been sitting here. One of them, and I, is I just don't, I don't believe that this is,

a life or death right now.

I don't think we have to decide this right now if we don't want to. What I would love to do and what I loved today was the fact that we had a bunch of people show up to come talk to us. And we have had work sessions, as it were, with other things as we've gone through the budgetary process. To me, I would really enjoy a couple of those. To get, make sure that people have the opportunities that they feel like they have to ask questions and get those answered in a way in which we can communicate versus the structure that is a city council. More town hallish, but that's how I would, if I'm sitting here and I'm just contemplating the things I've heard from people, the questions, because I know we didn't get to all of those answers that everybody wants. And I know we say, hey, we've done this in other meetings, but I would rather saturate it.

Yeah, put a comma there for just a second. You're absolutely right, Council Member Smith. There's not two motions that are available here. There's three. You can table this for further discussion and then schedule those work sessions if that's what the council would like to do. Totally up to you on that motion, whether it's a yay or an nay or a table. You have more discussions. Totally up to you.

I think that would be important before we pull a trigger on such a Frankly, controversial. I won't mean the subject as I've listened to people tonight. Anyway, to be able to get more opportunity for more people to come, ask questions, get their answers, more information out, never hurts anybody.

I see that coming more as we get closer to building the facility. But right now, it's just about do we want to spend half a million dollars to draw plans? And that's To me, that should have been in the budget. I can't get past that part, but. Sorry, Derek, but.

So I don't know, but I understand. I understand what you're saying, but I think that makes it a little more palatable for for us to be able to do that once we've had some more discussions out there. Really to say OK, hey, you know what I think we have. Enough, let's let's continue on the path. But I think Brigham City needs a gym. I mean, I've talked to a lot of people that told me you look, Brian Brigham said he needs gym space. But I just, I mean, it's not life or death tonight that we say, hey, I want to spend half a million dollars on that. I just, I don't see that.

It could help the process. I think you're right on that. I think it will help the process as it moves forward.

While you're chewing that, I just want to point out this is exactly how government works. These discussions should not be going on behind the scenes as far as how they're going to vote. This all occurs in a public meeting. I just wanted to point this out to the public. What you're seeing here is a waste of time. This is how it works, how it's supposed to work legally as well.

I like how when we did the overpass or when we, you know, and we say we're going to have plans and we're going to continue on. And this is just kind of like the first step to like starting it. I would like a commitment from the council or something to have information available on our website, more often a dedicated space.

About what?

About the different, because we kind of get the same questions, and letting people, go to a place on our website to say where we are now or what's happening now or what are, you know. Just so that it doesn't feel like we just spent this money and that now we're just going off and not keeping the community up to speed. Like moving forward with something that may not actually come to the council for a vote but is good information for us to have on where we're at now or in a couple months or what is happening and I can see committing to that open dialogue and maybe having a couple work sessions to answer questions My thing is, if we don't do this, what is a possible other way to go about getting it started? Go back to the bid process?

We don't have anything we can give them to bid. So this is the starting spot. This is your starting block.

Yeah, and so like would updating the community or having the work session change how we do this?

I wouldn't see how, I mean, I guess, well, yeah, you could decide to not do it at all. I mean, but if we're moving forward and you need the actual numbers for next year's budget, we've got to spend the funds to get a bid together. And that's.

You can remember that we're not taking any other capital projects that were already voted and approved through the budget process. We're not removing anything.

Yeah, that question came up during the public comment. And this comes from appropriated fund balance of capital project fund. There's monies available for this purpose.

So are you saying we should have some, have work sessions, decide if we're going to do the project or not altogether? Because if we're not going to do it, then let's not spend any of this money.

Yeah.

That sounds like what you're leaning for. Or if we're going to do it, then this is the way to go. Or you're looking for some other options?

No. Well, if we don't have any other options and we want to move forward, then, you know, what else can we vote on?

Right.

But I just want to have, like, Through the through the rest of the process and open dialogue for questions next steps and where we're at.

So what what would what would what would be the scope for lack of a better word council member Smith of the work sessions what are we what is it you'd like to have.

So my feelings my my feelings from listening tonight and I don't I say it over and over and over again. Freaking hate Facebook. People tell me there's stuff on there. So I'm guessing that there are questions on there as well that are not, that the people are feeling like they're not being answered. And so that's where I am coming from is to try to push more information out, easier to access information from us. Hey, this is all we're going to talk about tonight. That takes us three hours. It takes us three hours. It's it. You missed it. Watch it. And there's the information for you. Because I know that – and there's probably – and I understand. I don't mean to be facetious. I know what you're going to say. I understand. I knew that was coming out of your mouth. I get it. And I'm not here to say it. I'm just saying what you just described literally happened the last three months. But clearly, it's hard for people to find.

And is it – so it sounds like just a suggestion maybe just for Robin's. which I was a little confused because it sounded like you wanted, you were going after the design plan.

No, no.

But also you were going before frequently asked questions. I just wonder, I think we've got some comments tonight. I would say just, I would speculate that the comments tonight are just rehearsed again on Facebook. I just wonder if our public relations specialist, for lack of a better word, that's not her title, but if she doesn't put up Freakingly asked question, which is what has been derived tonight and then the answers that have come from the three, four months that we've been talking about this on either the recreation page or social media.

Okay. And for me, this face-to-face is significantly more better. How's that? I...

I get what you're saying.

I like this face-to-face being able to discuss with people like this. Yeah. I like it better than email this question and somebody else emails the same thing. I know. So the face-to-face stuff, I like it better too.

I guess if I was going to push back on that, sorry, I didn't mean to interrupt you.

Push back away.

It's not really push back on that. It's a push back on us, generally speaking. We observe tonight the beginning of bullying. within our city council. And that makes it so that people that may have a differing opinion than what's being expressed by maybe even the majority doesn't get expressed. Not just tonight, I experienced once where a lady after a U city council did an update years and years ago, once they got out in the hall, the lady went out in the hall and started berating them and calling them socialists. And so it's not my fear, But my concern is that we aren't civil enough to each other in those seats. I'm fine hearing it. The individual that was asked to leave, I'm fine hearing that. But there may have been somebody in the room here that maybe wanted to comment opposite that individual who now feels like they shouldn't. So that's my concern. And I'm not saying let's not have that meeting. I'm putting a shot over the bow of the public that we don't clap, that we keep our whisperings to a minimum so that people are comfortable expressing openly. They're either for or against.

Yeah, and I agree. I think we can do that. People in Brigham City can do that. I agree 100%. We have great dialogue all the time with the people. So that's where I would go. I don't know who else is on board with that, but

Well, you'd make a motion. I can make a motion that we table.

Is there a time limit on a table?

What you said.

No.

In the motion.

Only what I say?

Okay.

So it's, I don't know what it is.

Well, if you remember where I'm coming from, my whole thought is put it in the budget. So if it has to wait a whole nother, until we start that budget process again, another six, seven months down the road, then that's where it sits. So if you want to have these meetings and stuff, that's not probably going to change where I'm coming from. I'm still going to get stuck on that.

So now I might be softened up. I don't know. But it's just an interesting comment because over the years that we've been serving together, there have been plenty of budget amendments where a well or water rights have been appropriated that came up out of the blue that weren't in the budget in July, the July budget. I just find that an interesting comment because it happens quite often where the budget is amended.

Well, 100% totally because I've been up here and done some of that. But you're also talking about something we've been talking about for weeks and months and months and months. Past the budget, two meetings later, here we are trying to get an amendment. At the time, it is just so hard. I think I told you I am supportive of Jim and I will fight. I'll hang out with Chris and we'll go sit in the street corner. And I saw you have peace days throwing up support. I commend you for that. I have no problem. I've been a lot of time in the gym. for this city. I know there's a need. I just want it done right. And that's the way I can answer to my neighbors, to my friends.

That's all.

But I think once it does go through, which I think it will eventually, we'll get to that point and we'll be back talking about the plans of the gym and to Ryan's point and to Robin, I think there'll be a lot of discussion of, okay, well, we're going to build this gym. What are we going to do? And it's going to be 25,000 square feet. Do we really want three courts? Yes, we want three courts. Do we want a snack bar? I mean, that's all going to come up later. But tonight, we're just sitting there talking about do we want to spend half a million dollars to have some guy to build a plant? I just wish it was two weeks ago. I'm up to a quarter.

yeah i know he's taking a lot of time so i want my two we need a motion in order because otherwise we're going to be a perpetual city council meeting by the way i'm going to just share one statement ryan just for the public record not derek's opinion but um council i have you you have all received a lot of emails this week through the online um contact form of the city's website And I'll tell you that all of those that were sent to you, there was only one that was opposed to the city moving forward with plans. The remainder were yeses. You guys all received those this week. I think that's important to say for the public record.

And I will say also that I do spend a lot of time down at the different sporting events. And I was last night down at the black football. I do talk to a number of people that are excited to give their kids another opportunity throughout the winter with the indoor gym. But, you know, practice is tonight. So yeah, they're not, they're people trying to raise young families and they can't come out. But I do talk to as many people as I possibly can. And I try to look at the whole spectrum of the system and stuff. So my thing is I don't know any other way to move forward outside of this, outside of getting some plans to start the rest of the process. I don't know what would change if I didn't vote for.

Tonight's Genesis will be a motion of some sort.

Yeah.

And then see how that flies. I'm afraid to throw that out there.

I can chuck a motion out there. But I move that we table this discussion for days, middle of November. And we have some discussions about it. That's going to be my motion.

Interstate discussions about it in the form of work sessions. I'd love to have two.

I would love to have two work sessions.

But that's me. So we have a motion by Councilmember Smith, the table, for 60 days, which puts it to about the middle of November. It's about that far there that I can look at. Do we have a second?

What would the work sessions entail? Alternate ways to move forward or to get plans or?

Well, I don't know. Or different cost-effective ways? Just communication with the, just communication.

Uh-huh.

I mean, time is on.

We have a motion out there. Is there a second? Last time. Motion fails to have a second motion fails. We would entertain another motion of your desire.

I didn't want to go past 55 days, right?

So, so if we put, if I, so then if I say a $200,000, are we going to get plans then?

No, no.

So it's all or nothing. Yeah, I mean, I mean, if they're basing it off, that's the part that can be.

I think what you would, I think what you're asking me to do is go through the request for proposal. That's going to force me to take the low bid. And I think it significantly increases the chance to change orders if you move forward. Can I get a set of plans put together for, did you say $200,000? $200,000, can I put a set of plans together for $200,000 to get us a bid? Yes. The possibility of the increased change orders of more than a $300,000 difference, I would say you're 75% or greater. So that would be, you know, that's why professional service contracts, according to the procurement policy of the city and the state are not required to be low bid that's that's just the fact well if you want me to make a motion i'm happy to do it i just want a motion whether you make it or not a motion would be nice okay i make a motion to deny the resolution of a proven amendment to the

fiscal year 2026-2027 budget to reflect an increase in expenditures in the capital projects fund.

We have a motion by Council Member Jeffries. Do we have a second? We have a motion by Council Member Jeffries. Do we have a second? Last call.

Second. We'll see where it comes out.

OK. We have a second by Councilmember Smith. This will be a roll call vote. No. Yes, because it's amendment to the budget. We'll start with Councilmember Jeffries, move to his right, and end with Mr. Jensen. I guess I would say yes, right? Mm-hmm.

Thank you.

Yes. Jeffries is an aye. Aye.

No.

Russell's a no. Ryan's aye. Ryan's aye. That's a no. I lost count. 2-2. So that means I break the tie. Here's a no.

All right. I'll read. Can Ryan make that motion again? And I'll second it if he does. No, no. Ryan's made a motion. I know. He can't make another one? Well, he can. But I think you should. I'm okay. I'm okay if we table it for two months. Is that a motion?

Yes. Well, just let me finish. Okay. Sorry.

I'll make the motion that we table for two months and have some work sessions. I'd like some feedback from these people.

We have a motion to table for 60 days and have work sessions scheduled by the council at the next council meeting. You didn't say that, Matt. I'm asking if that's when you want to schedule them or if you want to schedule them tonight. We're in between question marks? What's that? I said we're in between sessions question marks? Would we?

We would be in a public session.

At least two work sessions and we we talked about again in one of the meetings in November.

OK, we have a motion to table.

We have a second.

Second, we have a second. This will be a roll by Council Member Smith. Motion was made by Council Member Jensen. This will be a roll call vote again. We'll start with Council Member Jensen then move to his right. That's an I. There is a no. Robinson I Ryan's I motion passes. The motion to amend the fiscal year 2020-26-27 budget is tabled for 60 days. A schedule will be set up at our next Council meeting, which will be October 1st to set dates for future work sessions for discussion on amending the budget for the purpose of drawing putting together a bid package. on a future gym space for Brigham City. Thank you, Council, and thank you for public for your comments and for being here. We will now move on to just plain public comment. This is where we. What does the staff need to do for those?

Well, what's the question? Sounds like we're going to set this schedule on October 1st.

We're going to set the schedule, and that's when you'll give staff instruction. So you've got a couple weeks to figure out what it is that you'd like to talk about. And then we can note the public. And put the put the make sure that that is the opportunities given for the public to come and participate. But that is a good point and Ryan made it in a work session. We are able to have. We do interact where we're able to ask and answer questions directly because there's no decisions made in a work session. So alright, now we are in our public comment section of our City Council. And this is, you can come to the rostrum, those that live in Brigham City can vote in Brigham City and hold public office within the corporate limits of Brigham City. We'd love to hear from you for up to three minutes on any subject that you would like, if there is a subject, and we invite you to come up now. And after Brett.

Thanks again, Brett Reeder, live in Brigham City. I want to thank you all. Hard decisions aren't fun to make. They're not always popular decisions. Right, wrong, or indifferent, whether I agree with you or not, I appreciate your decisions and the thought and effort you put into it. With talking about a gym, a couple of questions because I personally have dealt with this quite a bit. I know there is a lack of gym space. I have people contacting me all the time every year wanting to use my gym for stuff like that, basketball and such. There are some things that I've encountered myself that you've probably already thought of and talked about. different surfaces only work for certain sports. There's no surface that works well for everything. So when you're considering building it, if you're building a wood floor, you're only going to hit a couple of sports. So just keep that in mind when you're talking about all the sports, the softball, the lacrosse, all those things, the soccer, that need to start practicing in the winter. Most of them are not going to be able to use a wood gym floor. Just one thing to keep in mind. The other thing that concerns me is just everyone wants you to work with the school district. I know it doesn't always work that way. Just don't duplicate something they're going to do because you'll still be short on certain space. We're getting hit with tax dollars to build them both. So please work together enough to make sure they're not duplicated and that you can work together to have enough for everything. Thank you. Thanks, Brett.

Marcy Andrews. I live here in Brigham City. This feels very much like the rush to add it to the budget or to use money from the budget feels a lot like the AI data center rush that got forced on us. That's what this feels like. And to reiterate what Mr. Malone, or excuse me, Malone-Mulgaard said this is not a need. You need air to breathe. You need water to live. This is a desire. And yes, there may be some usage for it. But again, it is not at this time an appropriate expenditure. And $500,000 just to look at something. is definitely not appropriate when indeed, as Councilman Jeffries pointed out, we were struggling to talk about where we're gonna come up with 125,000 for an attorney that is needed or in addition to wanted. This needs to be a no vote. And I think that you as city council people know that as in the hesitancy for any of you to even make a motion Thank you.

Thank you. All right. I don't mean to draw the meeting on, so if there isn't anybody else. Okay, this isn't like testimony meeting where I sit up here for half an hour, Anna Marie. Every time.

This has nothing to do with anything we've talked about. Like I said, I'm at Lakeview as a parent there, and your grandkids go to Lakeview, CJ. Anyway, I notice as I walk around and you guys have seen the need for sidewalks in our city. In the winter, it's especially bad. We have, right by the high school, it goes, it's like a little game. It's like, sidewalk? No sidewalk. You could, like, play bingo. Like, here's a sidewalk. Just kidding. Here's a sidewalk. Kids have to cross streets to get on the sidewalks. We've had multiple incidents on 5th, where kids have been hit by bikes. As the time will change here in November, we have kids going to school darker and et cetera, et cetera. I would just implore, advocate to the city to start the ball rolling on how we can better serve our students, how we can better serve our children, getting them safe pathways from one side of the city to the other. We have bike paths. But sometimes a bypass don't cut it. We need these kids to be able to have a spot where they can walk to the school or to the baseball field or to whichever way we're going and not have to jaunt across the street or go to the crosswalk, which is all the way down and then cross. We have a huge need to do that. Especially around the schools. I know at Golden Spike, they were working on getting a sidewalk at Discovery Park. they worked on on sidewalks around there and that doesn't there are there are again grants and things that we can do to do that um but just as a city because that sort of falls into the city land i i feel like there is a huge need to to improve our our sidewalks and i know that's not like what we've been talking about but you said i could get up and talk about whatever we wanted and and uh keeping our kids safe to and from school to and from their friends to and from It was just last year about this time we had a child hit down on Fifth. There's a lot of traffic that goes across there, a lot of kids, ACYI around those areas. And I just wanted to bring that up so you guys can chew on that, et cetera, et cetera. I think that's important for you guys to see and to work on, and we can work on that together.

Thank you.

Glenn Wright in Brigham City. I just wanted to maybe take a few moments and just express my gratitude to the city employees. I live quite literally right in the middle of Peach Days, and I'm always amazed that every Sunday I wake up and it doesn't look like there's anything that's ever happened in all that T-square. So as a citizen, if you could take that back to the city employees and just express our gratitude for all the great work that they do, especially with helping with that. And that's just what I...

I'm happy to, Ben. Thank you. All right. I'm going to cut off public comment and let somebody twitches. All right. You two already have. All right. We'll move on to council member comments. If you have any, we'll start with council member Smith and move to his left.

Thanks, everybody, for coming out to the PCHF. I think I had a great time. As always, it was a good festival. I'm grateful to be there. We talked a lot about Tonight, needs versus wants and opinions of what those needs are. I mean, I have a. Anyway, thank you again. Thank you all for coming tonight and expressing your opinion. I greatly appreciate it and hopefully you will come back during our work sessions so we can continue to have a dialogue, but that's what I've got. Thanks, Mayor. Thanks, Councilmember Schmier.

Councilmember Troxell.

Yeah, Pete State was. Much appreciated. I grew up just right on First East and lived there for many years. And I don't know why I'm surprised every Sunday that it's so clean and peaceful, especially after it rains. You have to think that they clean it up during the rain, during rainstorms sometimes. It's just always amazing. So I appreciate the Chamber of Commerce and all the employees and the community members that have year after year made it possible for it to be a great addition to the city every year. Like I said before, this has been week of my meeting. So I attended the library board meeting. We had trustee training from our state library board coordinator and training on the Civic Plus news system for Brigham City on our agenda and packet. There is a lot going on at the library, so I encourage everyone to visit the website and see all the different reading groups and classes and announcements of some great things coming up there. I attended the BRAC Human Services Board meeting. It's usually held in Logan quarterly. We had it down here at Utah State. and focused mainly on the services that BRAG offers Boxhilda County area. BRAG is going through some of the same stuff that I think a lot of communities are where funding has gone down. Access to the BRAG office has gone down but yet the needs have gone up considerably. And so we're working with how we can work with Box Elder and Brigham City and all the different communities to make sure that they have enough space plus support from the cities for grant opportunities and to and they are looking for some space to have more employees from Logan come down to Brigham City to better access the community. And so I would, I'll talk to the mayor on some ways that we can possibly them in some of their grant opportunities. Also, Bragg does offer every year a helping with tax season. And it's very, the volunteer taxing services, volunteer services, are very low here in Box Felder compared to Cache Valley area. So if anybody would like to be trained to learn how to do their taxes plus maybe offer their and help other people fill out their tax forms, it happens at the community center. Contact BRAG. They pay for the training. It's a really good opportunity for the different accountants and things like that all throughout. our city to connect with the community members that need that service. I also attended CAGPA, the Coalition Against Domestic Violence. We had a great speaker today, Alyssa Butler, who runs the Hope Hero Foundation. She's done a lot of work out of personal need to work with the youth and write books and stuff like that on the mental health of just seeing the signs that somebody may be entering a mental health crisis from children to youth and how to explain that. They wanted me to announce that October 2nd, there's a resource rally from 2 to 4 at Boys and Girls Club. where there will be food boxes and hygiene boxes given out and then resources. And then also a DV awareness walk at Jeanne Stephens Park in Tremont and Garland in at 5 p.m. on October 2nd along with the Hope Crisis Center. And let's see. I did my soapbox earlier. So, yes.

OK. Thank you, Councilmember Troxell.

Councilmember Jeffries. Real quick, just a thanks. to Chief Reyes and his team and the fire department for all your work or a peach days. You guys were all around working and to the public works department. It's we all say it every year. It's amazing. We walk up, wake up Sunday morning. That was on Friday. So thanks for all that. That's all I got. Okay. Council member, I'll just echo the same thing. Okay.

Thank you. Uh, I have spoken enough tonight, but I do want to let you know that the reason or tell you why I wasn't here last council meeting. I was actually on a field trip out to Holtec International, which is a nuclear manufacturer. And that is who we, HITECH, who we have been meeting with and are doing nuclear workforce. We had an MOU signing with Utah State, HITECH, and Brigham City several weeks ago about the new training campus that they are going to be working on to put right behind Utah State University, Brigham City. In the dirt there, there will be R&D and little manufacturing training, nuclear workforce training. HITECH has an MOU with Holtec that when Holtec expands their operations, which they know they're going to be doing as President Trump and the whole nation knows that we need to move towards nuclear for baseload power throughout the country by our power needs. They need to expand their manufacturing, and they know that that's going to be out west where we don't have very many nuclear plants, opposed to back east where there's actually quite a few, literally close to 100, 200 nuclear plants back east between Illinois, Pennsylvania, New York, Georgia, all up and down. I was able to go out there. The governor, President, or Speaker Schultz and several of Utah's leadership happened to be there at the same time. It was not a coordinated meeting. I went out there myself with HITECH and was able to tour their facility. It's a 380,000 square foot manufacturing facility. They mentioned that when they expand, they are planning on expanding to Brigham City. They're in talks with landowners around our city. But they're looking at final build-out to be closer to a million square feet of manufacturing in Brigham City, which is high-paying jobs and will be for the future, much like a new core as far as that baseload and reliable employment. It was super impressive. They're right on the banks of the Delaware River, and it's a very clean facility. You can go to Google Holtec.com. They have a little video tour, and I'm here to tell you that the cleanliness that you see on that video, they did not clean the plant up for our tour. It is almost white glove, which I'm understanding needs to be with the X-raying and all the precision that needs to take place for nuclear facilities. But that was very, very entertaining and very good to build that relationship with Dr. Singh and Joy and Patrick. and that we look forward to seeing more of them out West here. And that is, I just want to let the public know and Council know how that went and where I was. And that is all of my comments. We do need a motion to move into closed session to discuss purchase exchange, lease of real property, and I think that's what we're discussing tonight. So we need a motion to move into closed session. So moved. We have a motion by Councilmember Jensen. Do we have a second? Second. Second by two council members. We'll get to Council Member Smith, but we'll let Council Member.