City Council - Regular Meeting

We'll call the meeting to order. Thank you, everybody, for being here. We'll get started. It's 5.30. It's great that the council chambers are full enough and loud enough that you can't hear me to get started. Hello? Hello? Calling the meeting to order. Thank you for being here. Okay, we'll start tonight with our prayer from Councilman Scott Phillips, and then David Johnson will lead us in the pledge.

Thank you, Mayor. Gracious Father, we come before you tonight and we ask for your blessings on this great city and all that we have, the abundance that we share together. We ask for your guidance in our decision making and we ask that we will respond with those kinds of decisions that are the benefit of all citizens of our community and we thank thee Father for our first responders, for all they provide to us to keep us safe We ask that we have additional moisture that comes our way, and we hope that they will continue to bless this city, its citizens, and all who reside here. We ask all of these blessings in thy son's name, Jesus Christ. Amen.

Amen. Please rise and follow me. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the

All right, thank you. First, anything agenda-wise that we need to change?

I don't think so, Mayor. I would move that we accept this agenda order as outlined for our action meeting on July 22nd, 2026. Second.

I have a motion and a second. All in favor?

Aye.

Any opposed? Great, so we don't have any Mayor and Council business. Staff, our first one, we'll have David come back up for his end of year report.

Okay, Mayor and Council, thank you. Paul asked me to keep this to 10 minutes. I think I have like 10 seconds per slide, so we'll do this. So this is my fiscal year end of the year recap and I've given you a handout with more details essentially from what's in here and keep in mind both this presentation as well as what I handed you are only the highlights of what we view as the most significant and important things that have substance to them as far as what we've been working on. So our mission to serve as a community liaison to inform and engage the public support business, create jobs, and diversify the economy and revenues that enhance quality of life. So I'm going to give us some high-level things here. Some of the strategic focuses, manufacturing and distribution, retail, small business, tourism, renewable energy, and then supporting key industries are higher education and transportation. Our population in Iron County now is around 67,000 people and within the city just under 42,000 people. If you look at the non-farm jobs, so any other jobs not related to farms, that's increased from about 24,000 to 27,000 over the last recent years. and manufacturing jobs constitute about 10% of those, and the average annual wage, according to the Governor's Office of Economic Development right now, is based on about 46,000, but other statistics that we use have us actually closer to 50,000, but based on business incentives and things like that, we use this 46,000 average annual wage.

David, before you leave the slide, could you say, how recent is this information from Workforce?

I just pulled this. This is their most recent information. Keep in mind that sometimes the workforce information can lag either a quarter or two quarters, so up to six months. Thank you. So some of the information I'm presenting in here may vary based on what the most recent quarter I've received. So thanks for asking that. So you'll see here that construction jobs are the number one in both the city and the county. Educational services, number two. Health care and social assistance, number three. And then you'll see a distinction retail trade in Cedar City. And oh no, it still follows the same pattern. There was an area that I was going to point out.

That's strange that they're exactly the same.

You know what happened is I copied and pasted the exact same chart. So I'll send you the updated version of that. That's what happened. Reposted the same. There is distinction. What I was about to say is that the manufacturing is higher in the county because obviously there's not as much retail in the county. So I'll send that to you. So residential growth. So this is pulled from our certificates of occupancy from our building department. And you'll see that single family homes for this last fiscal year, these are new single family homes. 62% of those are single family homes. So the majority of the new homes built are single family homes. And then you'll see the distinction between the different types of multifamily and congregate living townhomes. No, actually it's townhomes, multifamily, congregate living is that order there. So I'm going to just cover some of our divisions. So we have communications or community outreach in my department, as well as events. Here's just a high level of some of the strategic focus that they have, redoing our website and making updates, putting together a strategic messaging plan. And with our social media and the website, trying to focus more on just positive things. So posting more than just public hearing or road closure on our social media, trying to show the quality of life that we have here. This is just our Facebook stats and if you look, I'll point this one out, in the last year Economic Development's Facebook page with some of the things that we've had, and that's one of the focuses we had to try to better inform the public about what's going on in economic development, commercial growth, and we've grown nearly 100% in our following and engagements there. So events, some of this has been, you've seen before on some of the focus that they have, their strategic focus, increasing staff, getting a box truck for events, and focusing on getting sponsorships, and specifically that part-time sponsorship role that you approved in the budget. This is the same from my mid-year report because the only major event that we've had outside of America 250 is the Spring Fiesta. We moved up from about 3,200 participants to about 3,800 participants. That's a 19% increase, 700 of which are from out of town. Economic development. So here's the four points of strategic focus that we've had over the last fiscal year and I mentioned this to you during my last fiscal year report. Before we were doing a lot of responding to a lot of requests for information but we've had a lot of projects that are coming here or looking to come here and so the focus has shifted on that reactive type engagement to the proactive on the grounds helping see those companies that have said they're coming here or bought land get across the finish line. And so we have quite a bit of that as well as doing market analysis. So we bumped up the economic development assistant to an economic development coordinator and one of our goals is to start doing more quarterly and annual reports to be more data driven. So two key components of economic development are relationships and data and being able to balance those. These just highlight our three different boards that we have in the Economic Development Department, and this doesn't include our many, many committees for events that we have. Okay, so here's the highlights of what you have in here. It's the summary. So we responded to requests for information to 16 different projects. In the first half of the year, we probably received maybe five, one a month requests for information. So the majority of those responses have just been in the last six months because they really slowed down the first half of the fiscal year in getting those requests from the state. But we've had eight project announcements, two ground breakings, and seven ribbon cuttings and grand openings for industrial and manufacturing, which is a huge thing. So American Pacific, LS Electric are some of the ground breakings. Announcements, what Suncor's doing, PPI America that's taken over the Mueller Building. I'll touch on some of those. Actually, I have it right here.

David, before you move on, do you have a number on those seven projects where we've cut the ribbons in terms of total investment?

I don't have the investment number on here, but I'm sure we can get that. Thank you. Okay, so and then here are some of the updates on our large existing buildings. So when I got here, Mueller Copper had moved out and then Genpak East and then Smead and now Genpak West. So the Nautilus One building is in Iron County and that's part of the BZI Innovation Park. Mueller Copper was purchased by PPI America, which is a Korean company. They make large-scale pipes for infrastructure, and so they work with municipalities, governments. The East GenPack building was currently being leased by Utah Steel, and it's under contract for purchase. When GenPack West closed, we actually had a collaboration between Department of Workforce Services, the Business and Innovation Center, the Entrepreneurship Center, myself, or I should say the Office of Economic Development, and we put on three different job fairs to try and get those individuals placed, and we had probably more than a dozen employers that came to those job fairs. And then the Smead building, they're not making any public announcements, but it is in its final stages, and it does have a company that's purchasing them, and they'll be opening hopefully in the next 18 months or so, or at least starting work in the next 18 months. When everything's closed, they'll probably use it for distribution and move on to retrofitting the building for their manufacturing.

David, can you say on the Genpak West, you said you walked through with the president of the company?

Yes, so GenPack is actually owned by, it's kind of like Meta with Facebook and Instagram. They have a parent company, and that president came through with his technical staff to walk through the building to see what needed to be stripped out, what could be sold. A lot of their racking, they're probably just going to sell for a buck to other industries that need it, and I say that kind of flippantly, but basically trying to figure out what they need to scrap, what they need to sell, and what that has an ROI to take to their other facilities.

My question there for you was, did he indicate at all, I mean, what was the reason in leaving? Were they not profitable?

No, this was one of their better producing. That's what I thought. One of their better producing facilities in the country, as well as one of their best facilities for employee retention. The primary reason why it's closing is because of regulation in the West over styrofoam. Okay. And so it costs too much to produce it here and to ship it back east. And so they still have a lot of backlog of the materials. I'm not thinking of the right word. Product. Thank you. That they're still selling off right now. They should be through most of that here soon.

Thank you.

Yeah, thanks. Okay, retail. So we have seven major retail developments and I use that meaning it's a retail development that probably has a large pad with smaller pads probably around it. We've had two announcements and ground breakings. We've had over 30 ribbon cuttings and openings between the Chamber of Commerce and our office. that we've done throughout the year. So you're talking two or three a month that we're doing. And that doesn't even include all the businesses that didn't really have ribbon cuttings or new businesses that came into town. So that's quite an accomplishment. And then proactive outreach. So we go every year to the ICSE, which is a big retail conference, and we have been working with about 18 different . Sam's Club and Costco and Target, all the things that the people want, we're talking to them. It just takes time because they want certain populations and certain radii, which is typically like a Target or a Costco or Sam's Club want 110 population in a five mile radius. We don't have tax for sales, I should say, and the number two or three for visitation. It waffles year to year. That's because we have about a 90 minute regional draw from we're kind of the rural hub. Okay, so I'm buzzing through this. Here's some of the things about our historic downtown. One thing that our historic downtown committee is doing is they've initiated tiny tweaks. So little things. Can they do like window paintings with our businesses during events? Thankful on Main is kind of similar to tiny tweaks. doing monthly cleanups, things like that. But what I want to draw your attention to is at the bottom, right here, this capacity building grant and recreation grant. So last year, the city council budgeted about $10,000 for our historic downtown position. And then we also have costs related to softwares that we use, as well as travel. These grants, We budgeted $10,000. These grants fully reimbursed to the general fund all of the time are historic, and this is a one-time grant, so let's be clear on that. It refunded, essentially, our expenses, so just put back in the general fund what we had budgeted and spent, plus some to cover costs for some travel to some of these Main Street conferences, as well as helping cover costs for some of the software that we use. Let's see. Our small business grant, this is funded through the Governor's Office of Economic Development. It's a competitive grant every year. That's the top one. And these are the four businesses that were awarded. We have our Iron County Economic Development Committee. They go through a rigorous competitive process. They can ask for up to $30,000. The highest grant that's ever been awarded is about $20,000. I was going to show you a video, but for sake of time, we're going to not show you the video, I'll email it to you so you guys can kind of see some of these grant awardees. And then these on the bottom are open. We give first preference to historic downtown, sign facade and tenant improvements, but this year we didn't utilize all, the last two years we hadn't utilized all the funds, so we opened it up to other businesses across the city that were interested as well as in Parowan because this is a county grant. This, we just did our fancy ribbon cutting for the wraps on the buses to better promote our public transportation system. And then this is what our committee has recommended on how that grant is being used. So we receive $200,000 every year through the Governor's Office of Economic Development to go toward economic development needs. And there's a committee that makes recommendations to the County Commission of how that money's spent. Everything in white is something that has been one or two more years consistently. And everything in pink are what we're going to do one time this year. So that wraps up. I don't know if there's any other questions that you guys have. I just fire hosed you.

While you're thinking, there's a couple seats right here. There's three and there's one back here if you'd like to come in.

Just say, David, I know that directly is not your department's responsibility, but I would be interested to know in the future, because the city is so involved in July Jamboree and they participate so much in providing services and different things, if we might include some of that data in some of our event stuff maybe in the future about in terms of visitations and growth and that kind of thing just in the future.

Yeah, that would be great. I did originally have tourism data and was going to present some of that, but I didn't want it to be too long because I already knew I was going to fire hose you. But, yeah, we can definitely make sure some of that data. One of the things that we're working on the last three or four months that Daisy's been here is we've started – putting together what data do we want to pull, how do we want it to look, and how are we going to start presenting it. So this, what I've done here for the last three times, last year, mid-year, and right now, is just kind of a taste of what we hope to do and provide a lot more data that's going to assist you as elected officials and administration in decision making of where we should go strategically. So, great.

Any other questions? And to that point, I'd add any of the other types of events like the

Livestock and Heritage Festival.

Livestock Heritage, the 24th of July event that we gave some money to. Oh, yeah, the Pioneer Legacy. Yeah, if we're going to continue to do those things, then data needs to support that it's generating revenue from people coming in from out of town. Sure. So any of the tools that you have access to to help us evaluate those would be-

Absolutely and we actually are evaluating those and so we can put that in some of our reports. I think that those softwares that I was talking about helps us pull some of that data and what's nice is there's also like data that we're getting from the governor's office not related to events and census and we find some of that data is lacking so lagging so we can pull the data from our softwares and then take some of the real time like the housing data that I pull census is light years behind. I just pull the real time certificates of occupancy, multiply that by the average household size, and we know real time what our growth is. And so we're trying to take the info that's out there as well as what we know here internally to give you better data.

Great.

Okay, thank you. Thank you.

Okay, Jonathan, let's talk about water. We've actually had some the last little while, so it's good.

It's been great to have a little rain, that's good. Jonathan Stathis, City Engineering Department. This is a report on the calendar year 2025 water report that was emailed out to you today. It's also posted on the city website. I did receive a few comments today, so we're gonna make a few small revisions to the report and we'll repost that. Just in terms of what the report is, the city actually has to file a report with the state by the end of March each year, so we did that, and then it takes us a little bit of time to finish up the full city report that you received today, so that's why we're presenting it to you this evening. I'd like to thank Shane Johnson, who actually put together most of the report, and of course also Matt Baker with the Water Department for their help on this.

Let's see.

As far as overall water use in 2025, the total number of acre feet was 8,795, which is actually 3.8% less than 2024. And how many more users? Approximately.

That was about 400, right?

Yeah, between 350 and 400 homes are built every year. So yeah, that's great. That's good.

So that means that our conservation efforts are paying dividends.

It really is, especially with new development with the conservation tier. Almost all developments now are going into that conservation tier, which limits the amount of turf at each home. So we're adding residents, but we're seeing a decrease in water use, so that's great. And we're seeing conservation as well. People are really trying to conserve, so that's good. So you also see this on this chart with the per capita water use, so that's the average daily water use per person and we're down, we went back down this past year to 183 gallons per capita per day, which is very good. So the trend generally is downward in per capita water use and so we'd like to see that continue. So we'll continue to encourage water conservation and also with new development to see that water use continue to come down.

Except for that 1st, year COVID, where everybody was home and then decided to go up, I guess.

Yeah, that 2020, that's exactly what it wasn't that high number to 248. I was.

During 2020, I'll use this as an opportunity to plug the new meter. So all of you that are here know that you can log in and create an account and you can see your up to minute water use. So. so you can be able to track if you've got any kind of a leaky toilet or your sprinklers are running when they shouldn't. You can actually catch all of that and help with that conservation piece. So it's a really cool tool to be able to use.

I think so. Yeah, I actually went over the weekend and looked at my water use and it's amazing how you can see every time you use water. As far as the city's water rights, the city currently owns over 25,000 acre feet total of water rights. In terms of safe yield, that's unfortunately less. In terms of underground rights, about 4,400 acre feet. And then the city also owns safe yield water rights in Basin 71, so that's the Borough Enterprise Basin, about 1,000 acre feet. In terms of how much water was used by the city, 8,795, so that's about acre feet, which is about 34% of the total water rights the city owns. So the city continues to acquire water rights from developers and then also the city purchases water rights as they become available. In terms of water use, the peak day in calendar year 2025 was 16 million gallons per day on August 5th. The peak day average over the past 10 years has been 15 million gallons per day. The peak day is very important because that's what the city has to construct in terms of infrastructure to meet that peak day demand in terms of source and tanks and pump stations and everything and pipes. So anything we can do to reduce that peak day is good. And of course, the peak day happens during the summer months. So anything we can do to reduce outdoor water use is a benefit to the overall system. And then the average daily use in 2025 was 7 million gallons per day.

Is that also in the summertime? I would imagine that's also in the summertime?

So that's over the whole year. So averaging over... Oh, it's just the average of the entire year. Between the winter and the summer. In the winter, we're down to about 3.5 million gallons per day. So you can see there's a big difference between water use in the winter and the summer. Right. As far as aquifer trends, continuing to see the water level decrease in the Quechua area. It was down to 128 feet last year. Over the past 30 years, there's been an average decline of about 2.2 feet per year. And of course, one thing we're looking at doing is diversifying our water sources in collaboration with the Cedar Valley Water Conservancy. They're looking at wells in Basin 71. Of course, there's the Pine Valley project that's looking at coming online over the next several years. and then we have a project budgeted this year to continue to look for a new location for a well in the 3000 North area. So anything we can do to diversify the locations where we're pumping from will help, because right now most of our wells are in the Quichapa area and the Enoch area. So if we can spread that out a little bit more, it will help in those areas where we're seeing those declines. As far as the recharge, unfortunately, we had a very poor snowpack this past year, so we know that we didn't have as much as we would like. The Water Conservancy District continues to keep that data, and we monitor that in terms of how much water actually gets recharged in our pits. This just shows the continued decline in Enoch and Quichapi area, which we know that that's happening, which is why we're trying to diversify those locations of water sources. Some of the projects that, we've completed quite a few projects last in calendar year 2025, and again, of course, there's projects in 2026 that we're working on. Two of the big projects are the pressure reduction and chlorination project, which is That project's being mandated by the state to chlorinate water coming in from the Quitch Pie area. And then, of course, the Cedar Canyon filtration plant, which we're working on the design on that currently, which is also being mandated by the state treat the spring water coming out of Cedar Canyon, and then we have several other projects that we're working on. One project I've put on here is the effluent reuse, which was a big project that was completed. It was actually completed earlier this year to finish the disc filter units, and then we're continuing to work on adding a pump station at the treatment plant and continue to work with the Conservancy District with the grants that they've received to continue work on the reuse. As far as water conservation, the city continues to have watering restrictions in place. No outside watering from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. In 2025, there was only 30 first-time violations. This was down quite a bit from previous years, so residents are really starting to understand the importance of keeping within those time restrictions of when they can water.

That's the ones we caught.

Exactly, that's true. That's true. And of course, with the tiered water rates and ordinances that started in 2022, that's really helped to reduce overall water use and conservation. And then one thing that came out of the general plan update we did last year was to form a water conservation committee. So that's something that we'd like to start looking at and bring that back to you for consideration as we look at implementing water conservation measures in the future.

Not that one.

That's all I have on this presentation. If you have any questions, let me know. Matt Baker's also here if you have any questions.

No, we just got it today, so there's a lot to digest and go through, but we appreciate the explanation. I don't have any questions. Any of you have any questions? No.

Okay.

Are you guys looking for a seat? There's two empty ones here if he moves his backpack, and there's two right over on this side. We can pull these back, too.

Thank you, John.

There's three right here. Well, two. We can move another one, and there's several over here. Most people leaving right now.

Hey, and Matt, would you mind pulling these four back and just letting them, let people be able to sit in there too? Under the aisle, yeah. Yeah, thank you. I don't think we'll need them up there.

Nope. Ann doesn't bite.

Now she's not on the front corner, though. She won't know what to do. I'm surprised you didn't move over.

Notice how Tom can put one next to him. You're going to have to move, Ann.

All right. Thank you, Jonathan. Next item is the consent agenda.

Mayor, I would move that we approve the consent agenda as outlined. Second.

I have a motion and a second. All in favor? Aye. Any opposed? Okay, and then we'll get to our action agenda. Number five, which I'm gonna make an assumption is what most people are here to see the outcome of. I'll just kind of start with a brief explanation of process, because many of you may not come consistently to council meetings. It's not the most exciting thing to do on your Wednesday night. So the normal process is we have a work meeting, which is the main discussion meeting where we welcome all public comment. We wanna hear every perspective, idea, make sure that we're really thinking through and working through issues that come up to the city. And then from that work meeting, we have a week until the action meeting to continue that discussion so that the citizens can still engage with the elected officials, can still ask questions, that there's kind of a week of opportunity before any vote's taken. On this particular issue, we did our work meeting about a month ago. We didn't feel at the time ready to act on it and we actually allowed public comment at that next action meeting because there were a lot of people here that had heard about it during that week and showed up to be able to talk. And so we've had about a month of opportunity that we've had a lot of engagement and probably many of you here have sent us emails and I know me personally, I've watched a lot of videos and read a whole lot of articles and I think all of council has tried to be diligent in understanding the arguments and the perspectives. I explained that just from a normal business operation of the meeting practice is the action meeting is now the opportunity for council to have any final discussion with each other and vote on it. There's not a public comment area related to the specific item unless council chooses to override that practice and open the meeting to more public comment. So barring that, the council is going to discuss the item and you get to listen and either be frustrated with the discussion or excited about the discussion and send us nasty emails or thanks afterwards. But that's kind of the process. So we'll start there and any other discussion you wanted to bring to it and then council will deliberate.

Thank you, Mayor, Council, and staff. Darren Adams with the Police Department. Thank you for your discourse and for the thoughtful consideration you've given to this. I was just asked to provide a couple of items of information with regard to the cases. I know I covered the last two meetings some of the successes we've had. Just to reiterate, the business burglaries that we cleared for Tropical Smoothie, IHOP, and Pond Plus, without flock, we estimate it probably would have conservatively cost us around between $8,000 and $10,000 in man hours to track this individual down. There was $6,200 impact on tropical smoothie. We returned $3,000 from the stolen safe to the owner. Two rifles were recovered from the Palm Plus burglary, multiple items of value stolen, value in approximately 5,000. And then a $2,500 impact on the IHOP restaurant for a total financial impact on that one case of $24,000. A felony arrest warrant, $1,000 impact on the victim, a hit and run accident, arrest, $500 damage to the victim. A larceny theft wherein money was accidentally dropped at Walmart. Suspects picked it up, didn't return it, and took off. We tracked them down and returned the victim their $900. A stolen vehicle and a pursuit with four juvenile runaways out of the state. That vehicle was recovered at a value of $25,000. and then a stolen semi-trailer that was just recovered last week out of Ohio that came through, and officers were able to stop that based on a notification, and that was a $10,000 value of the trailer. So conservatively, in the last year, we've seen about a $62,000 in measurable cost related to the flock system. Just a couple of written comments before I leave, and I appreciate the time. I just want to share my commitment to you As many of you know, I have served with the police department for nearly 29 years, 29 years in July. I've lived in Cedar all my life. I love this community. I'm passionate about protecting people that call Cedar City home. That includes our families, our neighbors, our businesses, and the many visitors who come to enjoy everything our city has to offer. Over the past year, as I have demonstrated, Flock Safety has proven to be an exceptional partner in that mission. As I've previously shared with you, the technology has played a significant role in helping us identify suspects, recover stolen property and vehicles, locate endangered individuals, and solve cases that I'm confident would have remained otherwise unsolved. More importantly, it has helped bring justice to victims who deserve answers and accountability. I also recognize that with any technology comes a responsibility to ensure it is used appropriately. Accountability is extremely important to me. Since implementing this system, I have made it a priority to audit its use and ensure officers are using it in accordance with policy, the law, and public trust. Public trust is earned, I understand that, through transparency, accountability, and responsible leadership. Those principles have guided our use of this technology from the beginning, and they will continue to guide us moving forward. Additionally, I've had conversations with the mayor and council regarding what that looks like moving forward, and I am committed to providing more in-depth information to the council and that community on a regular basis. I also want to acknowledge that I serve at the pleasure of the mayor and the council. I value your leadership and your oversight, and I respect the decisions you make on behalf of our community. Whatever decision is made tonight, I will support and implement faithfully. Based on the measurable results we have seen over the past year, the lives positively impacted, the crimes solved, and the justice provided to victims, I believe the evidence clearly demonstrates that flock safety has been a valuable investment for Cedar City. And for those reasons, I respectfully recommend approval of the renewal contract before you this evening. Any questions for me? Thank you, Chief.

I'm sure there are a few questions. Go ahead.

No, go ahead.

No, I was just going to say, Chief, maybe more than a question. I just want maybe just a clarification, not for me so much, but maybe for some people that aren't aware. This renewal contract that we are discussing is not expanding the current thing in any way, correct? I mean, we're not adding any more cameras. We're not doing anything that is not currently under the existing contract. Is that correct? That's correct. Okay, I just want to make sure that's clear. Yes. Okay.

So, Chief, I have a few questions. One, can you briefly just, I know it's been mentioned in one of the meetings, can you briefly walk us through what the recourse would be against one of our own officers if they were caught misusing the system?

Yes. So there's a, we have a policy that strictly guides that, and then there is a statute under 41-6A-2006, which makes that a Class B misdemeanor to utilize this data, this hardware and software in a manner contrary to the statute.

Okay. Another question that I have is our contract with them, I know we're on kind of a two-year cycle essentially. The plan is in our current contract or in this renewal contract, in no way, shape, or form are we on any type of an auto renewal, right? Is this something that will always come before the council every two years no matter what?

Correct.

Okay. Another question I have is, and this is one where I tread a little bit lightly just because I want to make sure that... you know, we allow you to do your job as far as the toggles and everything in the permissions. I know where they're at now. What are your plans going forward as far as if we were to change any of those, is that something you would bring before the council?

Absolutely. I mean, it's kind of been that it was up to your discretion, but I think after seeing what we've seen and the public's input, I think that would be part of, of our annual, um, information sharing, whatever that looks like to have those discussions. But I have no intention to change any of that without involving the council.

OK, and then another question I have is, you and I had discussed a little bit about this. As far as what can we do to get some better reporting? I know you've mentioned it briefly, but I mean, what are your thoughts and plans as far as? You know, in simple terms, I mean, this is how many times it was used in the last quarter, this many crimes were solved, these are the types of crimes, obviously, I know you can't give details for people's privacy, but what, you know.

Yeah, those are my thoughts exactly, is to come into council, at least on a quarterly basis, and share the audit information, what was searched, what the result was, and to make sure that everything is on the up and up.

Yeah, and when I say, and I know I used a word that... When I meant privacy, what I meant was if it's currently an investigation that's happening, we don't want you to come here and say all the details of an investigation that's still underway or court proceedings that are still happening. I mean, once that has happened, I have no issue with if somebody's found guilty, I have no issue with their... you know, misdeeds being published, but I don't want to mess up a court proceeding. Yeah, an active investigation. I don't want you to come here and tell us, oh yeah, we've got this one going on and this, this, and this.

I think that's only common sense. I was going to suggest that today we actually formalize a request that we add an additional auditing layer to the process that's already being implemented by you, Chief, and that auditing layer becomes that reporting cadence that you were just conversing with Councilman Wilkie about, and the council becomes the last approval for that kind of process of monitoring the use or abuse of any of the parameters as they are established today. and also I would like it to be on the record that even though you're committed to that, I know you are, that under no circumstance any changes would take place to what already exists and we have approved up to today without bringing it to the council with a very detailed explanation of all of the parameters as well as the impact that it may have on any increase monitoring or I hate to use the word surveillance, but so I think that you were in agreement with that, right? So what I would like is for you to develop the outline of that quarterly report and let us know what that looks like so that we can digest it and then return with any additional comments. and then that report becomes a cadence that we go through constantly. So that's one of the comments. The other comment is, I think we've talked about it offline, but we need to make sure that the public is confident that any abuse any abuse will be treated swiftly and with the highest of consequences to the officer that would have abused their privileges in this system. Is that something you have?

Yes, without question, absolutely.

Okay, and you can determine what that is under the policies and the legal parameters, but I want to make sure that on the record that is an established policy coming from the council.

Councilman Rookie. I asked you this question earlier too, Chief, and I think it would be good to, you know, especially make sure we get that out there publicly. What, as far as our ramifications against FLOC, if anything is abused that we've discovered on their end, I mean, I do, I think for a lot of people that is, I'll say the bigger concern is FLOC side of things, not necessarily so much our in-house people, but, you know, so that's a question to you and to Randall as far as what are our ramifications against them as far as, one, breaking the contract and, You know what can we do if we discover something?

And I can read you from the contract and I quote in the event of any material breach of this agreement The non breaching party may terminate this agreement prior to the end of the term By giving 30 days prior written notice to the breaching party provided however That this agreement will not terminate if the breaching party has cured the breach prior to the expiration of such 30 day period so if we feel like they're in breach and and we can obviously prove that, that that's obvious, then we have a 30-day written intent to terminate. Sorry. Councilman Phillips.

Chief, I had a question too also. In the terms of the contractors that currently is, and this might be a question for Randall as well, if there is damage to the cameras for whatever reason, whether it's weather related or vandalism of some type, how are those repaired and who's responsible for the repair of those cameras?

So we are.

The city is?

Correct. Okay. Yeah, we pay the financial side. Flock actually does the work.

Okay.

Thank you. Any other discussion? I feel like this one's one that has enough public interest in it, even though I don't get...

Sorry, I wasn't here last time. I was at a family reunion, but I was the time before. But I do want to just express my sentiment about this. I was very... big brothers watching us when this came about a year ago. And I was skeptical, to be completely honest. However, as I've watched and studied and learned about what this does, I have I still have concerns and I think if we go down this path we need guardrails. We need termination immediately of any officer that abuses it. I think if there's any outside entity that requests any data from our database that that be disclosed publicly. For example, if there's an outside investigation and they have the proper warrants to get the information that after that investigation is over, that's disclosed so that we have transparency all the way through. As I've thought about this, the internet, it can be a tool or it can be a weapon. Our cell phones can be a tool, they can be a weapon. Almost every technology out there can be a tool or it can be a weapon. And it depends on the integrity of the people using it and how we safeguard it determines what that is. And I honestly think this can be a huge tool if we have the proper guardrails and the good people. I mean, not every police officer is a good one, right? But most of them are. And we get a bad rap for the few bad ones, right? And I think there's, I mean I could go through a list of things that were concerns. I mean the human error involved in the license plate read that was incorrect was actually human error in keying the license plate in wrong. It wasn't the flock. So we're gonna have that human error even if you type that in in your vehicle, correct? I mean you're gonna have that potential for human error if you're reading a plate out of a car. Um, There's no secret that they solve crime. They really do. Google and Apple know where we are every hour, every day, and what we do and what we buy and where we're at. Ring cameras are on so many homes that that's a thing. I know that's private property. Another thing that's been brought up consistently is the Fourth Amendment. And trust me, I'm probably, I don't know, maybe one of the most conservative Republicans You are. I respect property rights and I respect the Constitution. I respect the rights that that gives us from government. However, there's 30 judges that have determined that there's no reasonable expectation for privacy in the public domain. So any one of us could go and take pictures at the park on the street, take pictures of driver's licenses and there's no expectation of privacy because we're in the public. This isn't going into your home. It doesn't follow you home. It does track patterns and that's a concern. And that's why we need the guardrails for the rogue ones that... that we hear about, right? The ex-girlfriend or the ex-wife that they know they're not home and whatever. But our lives are, so I had someone, and I don't want to mention names or offend anyone, but they were concerned about knowing their kids, this, that, the other, everything else under the sun. Well, out of curiosity, went on their social media and everything was there that they were concerned about. Anyway, so enough of that. If we banned anything, any technology that had been abused, we wouldn't have any technology at all. And so are we going to utilize the technology to better do our job? Or are we going to say, because of these few bad apples, that we're going to throw it out the window? And trust me, this hasn't been an easy decision for me. I've lost sleep over it. I've thought about it a lot. I've done a lot of study. I just want to, I read an article today. The cameras in Beaver Canyon gave early warning of the flash flood and they saved lives. They got them evacuated before that. Are we not going to use that technology to help people's lives? I just don't understand. And I am literally almost throw up sick every day when I see these predators that are kidnapping children. And when we can get them quicker and we can get property returned to citizens quicker, I'm willing to take a risk that this is a tool as opposed to a weapon. And once it becomes a weapon, I'll be the first one with the pitchfork and the torch. And so I am willing to take the chance, give it a try, and hopefully make this a good tool that we can all be comfortable with and will help return assets and return abducted children and everything else. One last point. If we decide not to have this and St. George does and other cities up and down the I-15 corridor do, this is where the drug deals are going to happen. It's shown that they're going to these smaller communities that don't have these because they have the way out and they're not going to be watched. So there is an element of protection in if everyone along the corridor has it and we have it, then they're going to go somewhere else. But again, I love this community and I would not want to do anything that would harm its citizens. I've lived here nearly 30 years. and I've watched it grow and watched it become what it is. I also want to make a statement that that we not get one narrow thing and think that that's the end all be all, that we need to have a broader vision of what we can and can't do with this. And so that's my two cents, my two bits, and I missed the fireworks last time, so I thought I'd need to express that, so thank you.

Can I just respond? You bet. I just want to make sure that everybody's aware. You talk about these things that have happened in communities with misuse. That has not happened here. I just want to make sure that's clear. Correct. We train. We watch carefully. We audit. It's a topic of conversation amongst the officers all the time. They know how I feel. They know if they misuse it. It's trouble. So we are on top of that, and we will continue to be on.

Councilman Schmidt.

I read a bunch of court cases just like everybody else. I appreciate what all the council members have said. I appreciate what we've heard from the public. Had a lot of emails, both positive and negative responses. I just want to read in doing this. to point out one thing toward the end. It says flock cameras are legal to use across the United States, but their deployment remains a subject of intense legal and privacy debate. Courts have generally ruled that there is no reasonable expectation of privacy on public roadways, making the use of automated license plate readers legal on public streets. While inherently legal, their use is heavily governed by state and local regulations. And I hope that the public here can see that the council is taking that sentence very seriously, that our chief is taking that very seriously, and we're trying to put the regulations and the procedures in place that this stays a very positive tool and it does not get out of hand. And so I hope everybody can see that this is not a haphazard decision, that we are trying to put protection in place to help you. It's funny, I just talked with one guy a couple days ago, in fact, I was at his place there, and that night, At 1.46 a.m., a couple kids trying to kick his door in on his house, and he said he's all for the cameras. He goes, you know, if you'd had a camera at the intersection, I'd know who did it. And I like what it can do, and I think the regulations that we're trying to put in place speak a lot for how we're trying to present this forward.

Councilman one I I just I don't want to take too much more time on this subject but I want to address everyone that's here in this room today because much like my colleague Robert I've lost a lot of sleep over this I've had probably I don't know 30 40 conversations I can't imagine how many emails I've answered. Just yesterday with an 18-year-old concerned citizen, my neighbor, I spent an hour and a half talking to him about all of his concerns related to this process and this system. You know, I appreciated and I continue to appreciate the thoughtful intervention by the citizens so that we can have all of the information we need on both sides of an issue. But I can assure you that just like My friend Robert expressed his desire to mitigate the suffering that goes on in some of these circumstances. All of us are united in that. And if this tool will help us to mitigate it, then we're gonna go for it. And I think you've heard us talk around the subject, but we're talking around it in a positive way. We're gonna vote in a minute, and we are convinced, I think, from my conversations individually with all of my colleagues, that we have taken the time to evaluate every aspect, every, documentary every video every hackers warning as well as the other side of the equation so that we could make an informed decision I just want to make sure that we have those guardrails in place right off the bat and I'm going to defer to my colleague Scott to to lead us in the.

I actually would, I think it's fair on an issue like this. I don't vote, right, but I'm still a representative that was elected by you and I also want to just express kind of where my thoughts are at on this so that I can be held accountable just like the five of them that will vote on the issue from people that genuinely care about this. I mentioned a few weeks ago I'm naturally very skeptical of big business and big government. And that's what I feel like as I've talked to so many people about this is the biggest issue that most of us probably feel. a tool that we had created and was on our own servers in our own community. I feel like that you all can call us and I'll show up in your living room and talk to you and you can hold us accountable. But there's a fear of Big Brother and of big business. So my personal feeling is I do feel like the way we're using the tool has a ton of value, and I can see the positive outcomes of it when we use the information in the right way. I personally do, my recommendation that I hope council has talked about and will be part of the motion is that we do come up with some very specific policy guidelines that the council approves of how any system we employ that is a plate reader system has some very strict accountability, review, auditing processes that are very public and transparent I don't know if we can come up with all those exactly tonight, but I would hope that part of our motion if the council chooses to continue using this tool is that we will develop those and develop those quickly. And then I hope that we also look at other ways to use the tool. The flock is maybe not the best system. that there's enough question marks out there about the company's integrity and some of the things that we have read and learned about them. I'm not sure that they're the reputable business that we should be doing business with from a long-term basis. So I think that that's another part of it to me is that if we choose to keep using them for now that it's not a long-term, and that we do look at other options of how to still provide the tool to our officers with maybe a better software.

Mayor, I would say that at one time everybody had blackberries too, remember? Okay. I want to say that I think trust is one of the key words that has been brought up tonight in integrity. And I think that all of us up here are looking for the best decisions we can make for the safety of our community. This is a two-year contract. We can always renew and we can always look back and we can always make changes if necessary. And I think guidelines are important. The one thing I would ask, Mayor, I know generally speaking on contracts when we vote, it's just a up or down. I think this is an important enough issue that we do a roll call on this vote.

I would support that.

Because I don't have any problem. I think people should know where the councilmen stand on this vote.

That's why I expressed how I felt about it.

And so with, yes.

Can I make a comment before? Yes. Are you getting ready to make a motion?

I was.

Okay.

Right ahead.

No, no, I just, you know, I asked some questions earlier. Now I just kind of wanted to make my comment. Obviously, this is something that, yeah, we've heard a lot about. I actually just read, I just double checked. I personally received 34 emails on this comment. Well, 34 different people. Some people did send multiple emails. I think it probably is the most that I've heard from people on an issue. And so what I tried to do in my own self, I believe that people get passionate about things when it's something they're really against or it's something they're really for, right? And in this situation, we've definitely heard from people that are against us. And I do hear that and I've seen that. So I've tried to go out and just talk to as many other people as I can. I had to go out and reach out to them. It's not something that they disagree with so strongly that they've decided to reach out to us, so I've reached out to them. I can't go out and talk to every citizen. What was the number we saw tonight, David? you know, 42,000 people. And so I've tried to do my due diligence as best I can. And a lot of people support this as well, right? And so we hear from those that we're hearing from those that are against this. And I do see that. And so one of the things that I am fully in support of and the mayor had just mentioned it. I know this is something that's not going to be done overnight. You know, is this is something that does we are dealing with a private company here, right? They have a profit to make. Right. And so I totally, I totally understand that. And so I would like to see I mean, I know this technology is not cheap. But I would like to see what are our options in the future. I mean, we're spending $157,000 a year. I don't know how much cameras cost. I don't know how much the server costs. I don't know how much all those things would cost. And there are benefits to being part of a bigger system. But there are also a lot of dangers of being part of a bigger system. And so right now, it's the system we use. But I also would be in favor of possibly looking to see if there is a way to keep things more in-house. You know what it would cost. I don't know. I know the county uses this Enoch has flock cameras. The county has flock cameras. I don't know if there's a way for us to try and combine our efforts and do something just locally. And so, but at the end of the day, when I ran for office and when I got elected, I told people, I says. Well, politicians should never make a promise, right? And so, but my promise was that you won't always agree with the way I vote, but I'll at least gonna tell you why I voted the way I voted, so at least you know why I decided to do what I did. And mine tonight has a lot to do with what Mr. Cox had to say. I have five young children at home, all under the age of nine years old. And if something were to happen to one of my kids and this system could be used to save them or any other child, then I think there's no price that you could put. And so that's just where I stand. Are there things that scare me about it? Yes. Does Big Brother scare me? Yes. I think it would be ignorant for us to not acknowledge some of those concerns. At the end of the day, we're about to make a decision of the known good that we have seen it do versus the potential bad. There is potential bad. I'm not going to sit here and say that there's not. And that's after spending, Councilman Phillips and I spent an hour on the telephone with flock people asking questions directly. We've had them here. We've spoken to a lot of people about this. So do I still have concerns? Of course I do. But I still think the known good that we've seen it do and that I think it can do and know it can do outweighs the potential bad for now.

So. Okay. Then Mayor, I would move that we approve the contract renewal of flock safety in the amount of $157,500 per year with the understanding that this is a renewal that will come back to the council in the future years. If there's any infractions or changes, then we will abide by that and get out of the contract within 30 days' written notice, and that in addition to that, We add guidelines in there for additional auditing procedures to be fully transparent and brought to this council body on a regular basis.

Yes, sir.

Can I amend that to say that we also adapt our policy for any misuse so that it's clearly defined on what happens, and I would suggest immediate termination.

I would be open to that friendly amendment. That would be my motion, Mayor.

Let me clarify the motion to make sure that I understand it.

And maybe we need those in two separate ones. I don't know. Maybe it'll be easier. Randall, you can...

I think they can be combined.

I think it's from a...

It can be combined and mainly we're going to be bringing that back to you with a specific language. That will be right.

That's the clarification I want to make is what you're really saying is you want a policy brought back to us that includes how we're going to audit, how we're going to make it more transparent and consequences of any misuse as part of that policy.

And no further expansion beyond the terms of the current contract. Yeah. We don't control outside the city.

No, but I think that's part of the overall policy piece, right? Like how much are we going to allow anybody else to even have access to it, right? And like those discussions are all part of exactly what needs to be defined in that policy. And potentially then if others are using it without our permission, then that's a breach of the contract.

That's a breach of the contract to get out. That's a very fair point to include in the policy that comes back to us. It needs to be a very comprehensive one. In addition to what has already been said.

And I can include that in everything I bring back. Yep. Okay. So is that a good clarification of the motion?

Sure. I'll second his motion.

So we have a motion and a second. Let's do a roll call starting with Councilman Phillips. I would vote aye.

Aye.

Aye. Aye. Aye.

Okay. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you all. And genuinely, you guys, like I know, I can't state how much value I put on the fact that people care and try to engage and communicate with us. So thank you for all those that reached out and we had conversations with them for being here tonight. Okay, next one. Consider a resolution to approve a replacement board member for the trails of Shirts Canyon PID.

Is there any other changes from last time? No, there are no changes.

Everything is the same as what we presented last week, no changes. Okay.

I'll entertain a motion if there's no discussion.

Well, with that, Mayor, I would move that we adopt the resolution approving a replacement board member for the trails at Shirts Canyon PID. I'll second that.

I have a motion and a second. All in favor?

It's a roll call because it's a roll call. Oh, sorry.

Thank you. Starting with Councilman Cox.

Aye. Aye.

Aye.

Aye. Okay. Number seven, consider resolution approving the Heritage Center fees and contracts.

Jason Clark, Manager, Heritage Theater, Festival Hall. In conjunction with the last several times I've been before council, we have put together a proposal that we believe meets those points that you were concerned about, and we'd like to present that here today. We want to make sure that we are responsive to council and the administration's desires to once again narrow that gap between revenue and expenditure. And so we put forth the following proposal to look at those. We'd first like to look at the festival hall current rates. We were asked specifically if we would make them competitive. You can see in there that our rates are significantly below competitive per square foot. We decided to do it by square foot because then we're literally comparing apples to apples, oranges to oranges type of situation. In conjunction with that we have decided to basically double those rates to make them in line. As you can see that dotted line is kind of the slope and we basically have put ourselves into the same category as everyone else. And at this point, we'd like to address the heritage theater. One of the things is, while you're renting a room generally based upon the square footage, how large it is, theaters as a rule are designed primarily, a director or a choreographer, they may have some specific technical requirements, but you're generally looking at the capacity of the theater. And so that we would be comparative, we looked at what it costs to utilize our facility versus other facilities on a per seat basis. And we are currently at the rates that are before you. In our last meeting, we were asked to bring that up to where we were at least at 105 or $1.05 per seat. And we have done that. uh... for the sunday through thursday were actually added dollar eleven proceed on the friday and saturday so we believe we are we're now at that level that puts us in the ballpark with other similar sized facilities uh... that is the proposal that we put before you uh... and uh... that That means that our current rates of $750 or $800 per performance on Sunday through Thursday and Friday and Saturday would go to the following. This includes lights and sound. Some theaters do it as part of the package. You're getting sound and lights, others it's not on. So just so that we can be clear, this would be including a sound and a light technician for every performance. And as you can see, When we have included the price increase, also with the technicians and the rate, that we've managed to flatten out that slope significantly, and we believe that puts us in a competitive with our fellow facilities. So to give an example, we pulled four different events. I had my staff pull those, calculate what we currently would charge versus what the new rates would bring. And as you can see, the more complicated event or the longer term the event, the return really is significantly higher. Small, simple events, there's not that big of a change. But you can see that that significant jump, particularly in event A and event B, those are sizable gaps between the two. So to clarify, let me see. Hang on. Okay.

Do you want me to just pull up the PDF? Yes.

Okay, so this is the current fee schedule with our proposed rates increase. Once again, rounded to the nearest $25 as requested by council, just to make it more fluid so we don't have those odd 12 or nine or whatever it is, and also addressing the need to be more competitive with our current situation. So that being said, at this time, what questions and concerns would the council like to bring forward?

Just wanna make sure I fully understand. So everything that we're seeing in the far right-hand column? Yes. That is what is the proposed new fee, is that correct? Correct. All right.

Okay, Councilman Schmidt.

Well, Mr. Clark, I would like to thank you. We had a little stiff conversation in our last meeting, and you have done what we asked you to do, and so I want to tell you thank you.

You're welcome. We appreciate the guidance that was given the last two meetings. It helped us really dial in this proposal.

I think we're sitting a lot better, so thank you.

You're welcome. Can you scroll down a little bit? I can't find it.

The first top of this is primarily meeting rooms, both in Festival Hall as well as the meeting rooms underneath the floor.

Will you go back to six and seven? Yeah, right there. Oh, that's if you take meeting rooms one through six. Yes. Okay. Like, for example, like when the Board of Realtors does their... Correct.

When we have a convention or type thing. Okay.

I'm like, wow, that's expensive for one room, but all the rooms come back. Okay.

All right. Okay. Kent, would you scroll down? No. No. And as per the concern, we made a much larger request for the rental of the theater, the lobby, rehearsal space, as well as we eliminated the discount for rehearsals on Fridays and Saturdays, as was requested, trying to make sure that those dates are, I mean, if they need to rehearse, they can, but we want to preserve those primarily for performances. Gotcha.

Okay.

I think that's good.

Any further questions for him or discussion?

My thought is I think the proof will be in the pudding. It'll be in the numbers. I mean, we see the revenue once a year on the budget, and I think we'll let this roll for a while. See what happens. At the end of the day, you can do business and actually cost more than, again, this is not to try and make money here. This is a community theater, and I think this will affect some people to the point where they may not be able to use our theater, but I guess hopefully that doesn't happen too much, and we'll just go from there.

Councilman Glover? We've had many conversations on this subject. I think we're 99% there. The one thing that we need to do now is also figure out how we're going to market ourselves internally within our community, those that we already have with bookings, and then also for future from outside interests.

We are aware of that, and we begun that process, but we decided to pause that because there's no reason to get a lot of marketing going when we were going to significantly change the rates.

This comes first, the marketing comes now.

Once we establish this, we definitely want to develop a marketing plan, and we'll be working with economic development and other entities that have specialty in that regard.

I'm looking at you, David.

Thank you. Yes, Councilman Phillips.

First of all, I want to thank you also, Dallin. Excuse me, Jason. Dallin deserves a lot of credit, as well as the Department of Economic Development and my staff. This has been a collaborative effort. This hasn't been only Jason. We have cast a very broad net, and we have reined that in. I've called upon other people with their talents, and they need to be commended as well.

Thank you. I just have one question. The last item in ticketing, is that per show, is that a fee they pay just directly to the theater?

Yes. Basically, it offsets us having a person in the box office that otherwise isn't going to be paid for. We're just trying to make sure that some of those gaps we've had that we've filled are appropriate. Some organizations have decided to do their own box office. They'll just set up a table in the lobby, and they've created their own online. But if we're going to utilize our staff on our system, we want to make sure we're accounting for that and that not being a money loser for the city.

And you're comfortable with them having their own ticketing in the... We've done that for years, yes. I know. I just wanted to make sure that was still what we were... That's still an option, yes. Okay. Thank you.

Okay. Okay, Mayor. I'll make a motion that we approve the resolution approving the Heritage Center, the new adjusted fees and contracts.

Have a motion? I'll second that.

Contracts, we've decided that we're going to be doing waivers. So this is just the fee schedule tonight. The city attorney and I need to kind of work out a little more on the waivers. So just... Yeah, fee schedule is the motion.

I'll just make... a motion that we approve this revolution, approving the Heritage Center fees as presently outlined.

And a second. Starting with Councilman Wilkie. Aye.

Aye.

Aye. Aye. Aye. Thank you, gentlemen.

Appreciate your time. Thank you.

Okay, we now open, anybody that would like to share public comments, you now have the opportunity to. We do have a little timer here for three minutes, just from a respect of everyone's time, so when you hear that beep, then you're done, but anybody that would like to share any thoughts with us is welcome to.

Scottie Harville, post-adjutant, American Legion, Cedar City. I want to thank you all for your diligent work and everything that you do in taking care of these things. You've made the good decisions, and our organization backs you always on your decisions because you back us. The question I have, I want to remind everybody about the Pioneer Day event that's coming up. I just want to make an announcement. Tomorrow, the 23rd, 7 p.m., The gates open up for the Pioneer Day.

Oh, the Pioneer Celebration Legacy.

The American Legion and the Triple Deuce are putting on the Color Guard and Honor Guard to pay tribute to Lieutenant Fence, who recently passed away. Make sure you get there early because the gates open at 7, but there's going to be an estimated 25,000 to 30,000 people. So come see the tribute. It's going to be a wonderful show. We're working really hard at the Legion to make sure this stands along with city events, and we invite everybody to come out and participate. and thank you for everything you guys do for us. Thank you, Scotty.

Let me just make a comment if I may, Mayor. Scotty, I want to thank you again and your colleagues. I've told you this privately. I want to make it public what the way that you presented the colors at the last event that I participated at the Catholic Church, it literally brought tears to my eyes. You guys are so reverent and so Just wonderful. Keep it up, and we really appreciate and respect you for what you do. Thank you, Baldwin.

You're here. It's an honor that we put on, we're doing about two to three averages of honors, of rifle honors to interments here in Cedar City and up at the National Cemetery. Thankfully, most of them are transfers, reinterments, coming from other areas. People are bringing their loved ones to put up here in our local cemetery. So it's not like we're losing a lot of veterans. We're just getting a lot of them come in, so it's like double doing it. So we're getting a lot of those, and of course our local ones. Yes, it's been a pleasure reaching out and having our color guard doing the Cedar High School colors. We're doing this event. We've got the Daughters of the Utah Pioneers. We've got all the different events. We're expanding our programs and getting more services out there and working with all the veterans organizations to bring services to our veterans, our families, and our community, because that's what it's about. We're all one in the same. We all raised our hand to defend the Constitution in this country, and we want to serve, and most of us, like myself, we are looking for ways to serve. And when we can reach out and serve in our community, it benefits all of us. Thank you, Scotty. I thank everybody for your services. And if you ever have any questions, yes, Sir Carter.

No, well, Mayor, I had a question, but to his point, or to one of the things that he mentioned, what is our, as far as leaving our flag at half mass for this soldier that has died from our community, what is our normal procedure? Is that already why we're at half mass?

The flags can be ordered half staffed by the President of the United States or the Governor of the State of Utah.

Those are the only two?

Yep.

Okay. We get a notification in the Legion, a lot of our members, so you get a notification and you can sign up for them. If you want to go to legion.org, you can get that information. You can get signed up on a flag notification where it will literally, I can share that. If you go to our website, our Facebook pages, Cedar City Facebook pages, either one of them, will have that information. I can get that information to you and you can get that so that way you get a notification that says, ding, put your flag down from this time, from this time, like recently when we had the congressman passed away. And those people that we got a notification flag goes down until Saturday and then it goes back up. And then like you said, it's the president and the governor. Okay.

Thank you. Okay, anybody else?

You all sworn to this?

Would you, just for minutes, would you state your name too?

Really against the Constitution, but my name's James Golden Lee.

Thank you, James.

I met you. Mm-hmm. You guys swear to this when you took this office? Do you believe in it?

Mm-hmm.

I know you do. You said so, you said so, and you said so. You know, my family signed this book. I got one question for you. What do you got when you have a whole bunch of fish together? What do you call that?

A school.

You're right. What about a bunch of snakes?

I don't know.

A den. Okay. A bunch of sheep. Flock. That's flock cameras. I'm not no damn sheep. You know, I didn't even know they had these things here. But license plate reader? Why do we need him? If these things are so good, let's get one right here for the whole community can watch these damn things.

That's already there. There is one. Smile.

Yeah, I know. But can I get on that? You're already on it. Well, you can act. It's on YouTube. It's live streamed for everybody to see. Well, I don't do YouTube.

You are now.

Yeah? Send me a connection. It's on it. I'll look it up. Do you know you need to read that? You know, I'm a registered voter and I'm a Republican. I already know who I'm voting for this year. You know, when I taught Senator Michael Lee that our grandpa signed that book, he was pretty impressed. You know, on the Lee side, the family fought the side of King George, which was my mother's side of the family. We became America, and I see that our freedoms are going. Larry and Lightfoot Lee? Nope, that's my cousin, Harry Lee, is my great-grandpa. You know, when my family came here to southern Utah, we lived in Fort Harmony. You know, my roots are really deep here, even though I've only been here for 24 years now, but I moved here to die. The way I wanted to die didn't work out. I wanted to drink myself to death. 22 years now of sobriety right here, and I still help these alcoholics. Them flock cameras don't help nobody except the cops. I saw today on Facebook with flock camera thing with a Mustang. My car. But it ain't my car. I hope they come and arrest me. Because this is clear back east. I'm out here. My Mustang's yard art means it's broke down and parked in front of my house because it was a hot rod. But you know, these flock cameras, I think they ought to be in every one of your offices so every one of us can tune in and see what you're talking about. With that, I'm against them all the way.

Thank you. Thank you.

Anybody else? Okay.

Mayor, on that note, I would move that we adjourn this meeting.

Second. Motion and second. All in favor? Aye. Any opposed? Thank you.