City Council - Regular Meeting

Ooh, that's actually quite tasty.

Hey, I'd like to call the city council, Centerville City Council to order. And I would like to welcome everybody that's here tonight and our council members as well. And I'd like to have a roll call so we can make sure we can do business. Neiman present. Mecham present. Hurst present.

Plummer present.

Bangor present.

Okay. Um, we're going to start with a legislative prayer of thought and we're going to have councilman Hearst.

Okay. I'm going to offer a prayer. Our dear kind father in heaven. We're so grateful for the opportunity that we have to be here this evening and to gather in service of our community. We thank thee for this nation, we thank thee for the Constitution, and we thank thee for the 250 years of freedom that we have enjoyed in this land. We ask thee for thy guidance this evening as we deliberate on the items that are brought before us on the agenda. Help us to act with wisdom that we'll be able to work together, that we'll be able to deliberate and to come up with solutions and answers that best benefit this community. Please bless us with vision to see the needs of our community, not only for today, but also into the future for our future children, grandchildren, and that they will be able to be blessed by the decisions that we make. We also ask for blessings upon our land that we may receive rain and moisture that we so desperately need during this drought. And with that, Thank thee for all that thou hast given us, and we say these things in the name of Jesus Christ. Amen.

Amen. You can all stand and say the Pledge of Allegiance. We will now go into our open session, which is the part of our city council meeting where we allow members of the public to comment or address the city council on matters not listed on our agenda. I don't think we have any public hearings, so anybody that has anything they want to say should get up in the next few minutes. Our open session comments should be tried to be limited to two or three minutes per person. Please state your name and the city of residence. And also know that we can't really discuss a lot of the information you give us at this time, but it's good for us to give the information so that we can put it on other agendas. But where it's not noticed, we can't go into a deep dive on that. Do we have anybody here for our open session that would like to come up?

Well, good evening. My name is Michael Christianson. I'm a resident of Syracuse city. I'm the director of a small nonprofit organization. And I just wanted to give you a little update about some of the things we do here in this area. Uh, we're called go unite and that we've been fostering civic engagement in Davis and Salt Lake counties since 2021. In 2025, we worked with community members to pick up 95 large bags of trash from public parks. This last month, we had a trash pickup here in Centerville. We worked with between 88 to 200 volunteers. We hosted 27 events. This next one's a little strange. We also launched our first campaign, which is a petition to stop Elon Musk or Tesla or any company from releasing humanoid robots. That's a particular subset of robots that I think is morally apprehensible. Also, tomorrow night we have something kind of fun. We're doing kind of an art, a community art event that's kind of run like a potluck event. That'll be at the Syracuse Library where community members can bring up to two pieces of their original work. There's no curatorial process. It's all free. People can just kind of come and show their art. So those are just a few things that we do to try to get people engaged in the community. I don't know if you have any questions, but that's the end of everything I have to say. Thanks.

I'd like to thank you, and thank you for coming in and helping clean up our parks. That's a great service to us, so thank you.

Our pleasure. It was a great time. Thank you.

Do you have anybody else that would like to come up and give us a little bit of what you're thinking about? You don't have anybody online, Jennifer?

No.

I'm guessing that we have no one else. We will close the closed session. We're going to close the open session. And then we're going to have a presentation from South Davis Recreation District. I don't know if Haley wants to introduce. Thank you.

I think most of you guys have heard from Tiff already, but this is Tiff Miller. He's the executive director of the South Davis Recreation District, and he's here to give us the annual report.

Appreciate it.

Thank you.

Thank you so much. All right, well, thanks for having me. I think it's been really close to just about a year since I was with you guys, so just wanted to take some time. uh just to talk about what's been going on with the south davis recreation district and highlight a lot of the things that's uh representative the the city of centerville with our programs and different things that we do um but just talk overall as well about the district some of the the things that we've been doing and how 2025 ended up for us uh last year um and just uh talk about some of the things we've been doing this year so going going forward um this uh We are in our 19th year this year with the South Davis Recreation District. So I know a lot of people remember the bubble. It's been 20 plus years since the bubble was in place, but we are now in our 19th year with the South Davis Recreation District, mostly focused at the South Davis Recreation Center. With all of our programs, we also have the ice ribbon that is part of what we operate on Main Street in Bountiful. We completed our 2025 financials in April. Revenues continue to increase. Program participation amongst the majority of our programs increased or stayed around the same level. The facility is aging, so we do continue to see larger expenses on capital projects each year as we work to maintain and update the facility. And we are in the process of discussion on projects going forward, whether there are certain things that we may try to do. None of these are in place at this point, but there is discussion just to find out feasibility and our current board's appetite for any of those projects. But just today, just wanted to go through a review of 2025, some updates for 2026. Um, how we've been working with center bill city and all the benefits we get from you guys. Um, the pro some program updates and just a little brief discussion on the district. So quickly in the 2025 and review, um, as I mentioned, uh, this is our 19 years. The last year was our 18th, um, annual pass revenues were significantly increased in 2025 compared to 2024. So we do amortize our past sales. So every year, based off of what you see in our budget, it's not based off actual month-to-month sales. It's amortized for each month for that year. So we're up $76,000 compared to 2024. 6,000 more visitors in 2025 than 2024, so seeing an increase in participation. And that's just people coming to the facility. That's not our program participation, which was also up. 32,500 participants, and that's not including fitness classes or daily missions. So just really busy with what we've got going on.

So what do you attribute the increase to with regard to visitors and participants and programs?

So I think depending on the program, certain programs have grown. So our flag football program, which I'll talk about a little bit later on, has also grown. Soccer continues to grow. Our programs, our fitness classes continue to grow. I think 2025 was just a good year for people to be able to go out and participate in recreation. I think just a lot of things aligned and made it good for them. This year is still going pretty well also. But I think 2025, as we came out of COVID, And started to get back to normal. I think 2025 we started seeing even more of that So I think we saw more people feel uncomfortable buying more passes, and I think we're continuing to see that going forward But our audited financials or excuse me we have a as of December 31st of 2025 we had about nineteen thousand three hundred members four thousand of those being Centerville City residents, so just twenty point six and of our total members which is second to only bountiful with bountiful just has more residents so overall just a great number there from centerville and just so excited to see those numbers continue to be where they are our audited financial revenues of 573 000 in 2025 which is 74 000 more than 2024. We completed some capital projects in 2025 on our ice arena dasher boards, installed a new leisure pool filter, we plastered our outdoor pool surface, we replaced treadmills, and resurfaced pool hallway locker rooms, and we've In 2025, and prior to that as well, but especially in 2025, we've started to see an increased demand for ice time. And we've continued to see that in 2026. We've gotten even busier. With the Mammoth, with the Olympics coming, we've just seen more and more people interested in ice sports. We have the one sheet, so we're pretty booked. So we're trying to find spots for people sometimes, but we've been really busy on the ice, and it's been a good thing. It's been a great revenue producer for us.

Tiff, how about, and this is just for my own education, in regards to hockey, I assume that some of you are crazy about The Mammoth, right? I mean, I've finally started to watch hockey because of them and it's really exciting. What about women's hockey? Do we have women's hockey leagues?

So we don't host any leagues ourselves. All the hockey leagues that we have at the rec center are rentals. So there are female women's hockey leagues that do rent ice from us. And in our younger youth leagues, there's a lot of youth female participation in those leagues as well. Wonderful. Um, so in 2026, some update in events. So we have, like I mentioned, we hosted our 19th anniversary this year and we had a, um, celebration in April where participants for patrons have the ability to get $2 to 50 off in honor of America to 50, um, off a daily mission. Um, so we had a chance to receive some discounts and there was a bunch of different prizes people could receive. Um, our current admissions pool and ice sales are up over 8,000 compared to 2025. Attendance has almost up 3,000 visitors so far through mid-July compared to 2025, so we're seeing good continued participation and growth. Our registration software, we use a software called Sportsman. Back in late February, early March, had a nationwide outage. So for a few days, we were struggling to get our information and our systems up and running. Luckily, with our partnership that we have with Bountiful City that helps with the financial things, we were able to have a temporary system in place where we could still operate and still continue to do our business. Just some numbers, tallies of attendance, things like that were missing that we wouldn't be able to get back. But overall, five days basically passed without system going down. But so far, even since then, our numbers have continued to grow with our participation and our attendance to the rec center. Um, so we replaced most treadmills, uh, in our facility this year, and we had replaced two of our pool boilers that heat the pools for both leisure pool and lap pool. So those are what we were expecting to do one. We had to do another one as well, um, because it also went down this year. So we had to move some money around from our capital projects to, to adjust for that. But, um, they're working well now and continuing to keep the pools warm for all of our visitors. So some upcoming events and important dates coming up for us. Actually, last week our fall Junior Jazz registration opened, so I don't have numbers so far for 2026 for Junior Jazz, just because that just opened, but we'll have that coming up in the next few months. Our handcart dates races is this Saturday, starting the first race, Some people can start at 5 a.m. So if you want to come run at 5 a.m., definitely come join us. It'll go all the way until 7.30. We have a half marathon that starts 5.30, a 5K at 7.30, and a 1K at 6.30, and a 1K at 7.30. Um, we have our hand, we are participating in the handcart days parade right after that, uh, race. Um, so we're taking your float. That was part of the center bill parade, which was great. It was very well organized and it went so great for us. Um, we'll be doing that parade this Saturday for handcart days. Um, our last session for swim lessons, summer swim lessons and summer camps is starting next week. So if anybody has anybody that wants to jump in on those for a session fives, We can do that for one more session this summer. We do movie nights just like Centerville City, so we have our last one August 1st. We're having GOAT, if you've seen GOAT. That will be coming up in just a few weeks. At the Rec Center in a few weeks, the ice will be closed down for a figure skating competition called Copper Cup. We are the host site. We don't run the event, but we are the host site, and it starts on August 12th. Um, our facility hours changed from summer to back to school schedule on August 20th. And then our fall soccer flag football and volleyball began on August 24th. And then we have our labor day triathlon, uh, coming up September 7th. So not a lot of things happening over the next few months. Um, so working with Centerville, I mean, we, we've been working with Centerville, obviously since I've been here long before me. Um, but the community park, we touched on it in, uh, the, the work session you just had, and it's been a huge benefit for us. And we understand the fees and if there's questions that you can, if you wanna ask us too, feel free to do that. But we understand that there's a cost and we're looking and working with Haley for those. We use them for our soccer program, and I know there was a question about how many participants. So last year we had about 1,650 for the entire year, so we have two seasons. So we have a spring and a fall. So the spring was just over 900, and the fall was just over about 750, or excuse me, about 700. So we're seeing big numbers in our soccer programs continuing to grow, and it's interesting. I think part of it is because the facilities that we already use are just great, and it's just been a great opportunity for us to grow those programs. I've been talking to Haley, too, just finding ways we can work together in other capacities and find ways we can mutually be beneficial to each other. As you saw, 20.6% of our members are from Centerville and that doesn't include just the daily residents that come in and use the facility. So finding ways that we can help Centerville residents and if there are ways we can help improve their quality of life together, we'd love to work and do other things and find other opportunities. And one of those ways is the Centerville City Day. So we try to do this every year is where we can offer a day for residents to come in for free. And the way that works is they just come in with their ID or a power bill or whatever it might be. And they can check into the front desk and they can come and use the pools the fitness or the ice and use that for free that day so we definitely want to try to find a good time for that and i've talked to gene a little bit about that just trying to find a good time that works for all of you and if there's a better time that coincides with the events or maybe something that's going on within the city that might work too to get the word out so um Just overall, just continuing finding ways to work with you guys. Like I said, the parade was great. It was lots of fun for us. The weather was great, so that made it even better. But overall, just wonderful working with you all, and just want to continue to find ways, and if there's ways we can help each other, even through just basic promoting each other's opportunities, events that are happening with the community. We'd love to be able to do that. So just to get into our programs a little bit, Right now, in 2023, we had 30,650 program participants. And in 2025, we had over 32,000. So almost 2,000 additional program participants in a two-year period, which is a great number. I mean, as you asked earlier, we are continuing to see our programs grow. And I think it's not just the number One city, it's all cities are starting to see that and seeing different areas of growth. So we're excited about that. We're also trying to incorporate different programs. Something we started a few years ago is our adaptive programs. We received an email from a Centerville resident a few weeks ago, just happy that we have those adaptive programs that are available for their children. So we're continuing to find ways that we can grow those. And if there's other opportunities there to find new opportunities to expand those and see if there's other programs we can incorporate within that adaptive programs. But overall, just growth in the programs. And just wanted to go through now and just talk about some specific programs, starting with soccer, just showing you where we've been over the last few years. If you see the participation numbers in 2024, we had 1,432 and we had 228 from Centerville. In 2025, we had 1,613 with 272 from Centerville. And so far this year, we're still picking up some folks going into our second session. We're at 1,512 and we had 287 from Centerville City. So we're seeing growth there, especially from Centerville. We're seeing more people participating And that soccer program goes from pre-K all the way through fifth grade. So we're not going past fifth grade into junior high or anything like that. But it's a great opportunity for recreation soccer. We're not competition. We're recreation soccer. So it's a lot of fun. It's a lot of opportunities for people to learn and grow. It's not competitive. We're not taking people on travel trips or anything like that. We're trying to get people in the community to be able to play together. But great growth there with soccer. Flag football. This is also seeing a lot of growth there. 2024, 891 participants. 2025, 1,089. So we 69 from Centerville in 2024, 78 last year. And so far this year, we've had 100 from Centerville City. So 1,141 so far for this year. We may see a few more people before the season starts register, but that's where we are as of right now. So just big growth there. We run this out of West Bountiful Elementary. So if we are able to grow these programs, we'll have to find additional space and may have to do that through the school district if they have things available for us to be able to do. Youth volleyball, seeing a lot of growth. It's a smaller program, but we're still seeing good growth. In 2024, 489 participants. 2025, 535. And then this year, we're already at 562. And pretty consistent with Centerville. We're sort of seeing a little bit of growth there. But at Centerville, in most of these programs, y'all are probably the second highest in participation programs, other than baseball, just because you have your own baseball program. So it's just been great to see these programs continuing to get better. And I think that even though these are reg programs, I think we provide good quality programs that are what people are looking for in the community. And we'll continue to do that. And volleyball is one of those programs that continues to grow year after year. Touching on baseball, right now we are at 648. We had 648 participants for the year. It's quite a big jump from over the last two years. Centerville, like I said, has their own baseball program, so these numbers will fluctuate from year to year, but we do get some participation from Centerville, so definitely appreciate all that. But overall, just we're looking at growth from, in a lot of it, it's T-ball in the younger age groups. So we're offering more of that during the spring season and the summer sessions that we have And we have got a lot of requests for fall. I don't know that we are going that route We've told people that Centerville does fall baseball But we have got the questions about it. So that might be something we continue to hear in the future But something we can discuss with you guys as well Our learn to skate program so Along with Mammoth, along with all the hockey demands, figure skating and just learning to skate has been a huge growth this year. If you look at last year's numbers, for the whole year, even though we didn't have it in May because of the closure for working on some projects on our Dasher boards, so we had 946 people participate, 88 from Centerville on our Learn to Skate program. So far this year already, just through July, With September through December still to go, we're at 890 participants, and 84 from Centerville. So people are wanting to be on the ice, and they're wanting to learn. And I think with all the things that are happening, I think we're seeing that desire to be out there and learn more about ice sports. And Learn to Skate program is showing that. We have also included a Learn to Skate hockey component. to some of our sessions. So we do have some hockey coaches that are out there teaching those who've reached certain levels to learn more how to do different things that'll help them when they're playing hockey throughout their next few years. Junior Jazz. So I mentioned we don't have any numbers for this year, but if you look at 2025 compared to 2024, we saw a large jump participation there, almost 300 participants. 348 of those were from Centerville. If we can get more space from the junior highs and the school district, because that's where we utilize most of our facilities is through them. Because we do have the junior high gym connected to us, but we can only do so much in that space. So if we can get more opportunities, then we can expand more as well. We have expanded some. towards the south part of the county, towards Woods Cross for some nights during the week for our younger age groups. But overall, just the program continues to grow and we're excited about that.

Do you feel like you fill up really fast? I mean, are you turning away?

Certain age groups for sure. So I would say certain age groups do. It just depends on the session. But I would say, if we're looking at it, we don't ever fill up completely, just certain age groups do. And a lot of that, like I said, is just because we just don't have the facilities to expand it more than we can right now. We only get certain spots from the school district. Now, if we wanted to go into elementary schools, we probably could. limited in the amount of space that's in there and you can only do so much in those spaces and then you're spreading yourself thin having to hire more staff and be at a lot of different facilities so our costs go up as well so I would say we do fill up but not it's mostly in the younger ages where we see those those fill up swim lessons is one of the things that continues to be really important to me and to our district we saw four four hundred and 4,731 lessons last year, 644 were from Centerville. So far this year through our session five registration, we are 3,508 and 462 of those are from Centerville. And that's almost the same total as 2024 with four more months, five more months to go. So we're seeing a lot of participation. It's really important to me and it's really important to our staff that people learn how to swim. We've already seen a lot of people, a lot of older and young adults pass away this year just from swimming in open water. So we definitely want to encourage people to learn how to swim, but also take safety precautions no matter how well you can swim. Just make sure you're protecting yourself in the water. then our summer camps um i know you do your summer camps as well and so um this year we've we've gone down a little bit compared to last year in our participation we're still picking up a few more people for our session five um but our participation from Centerville, I think probably just because of the programs you guys run is here as well. And I think y'all run for quality programming. So, um, we, we share some of the, the, the participation depending on what we do and what you guys do as well. Um, so 576 so far this year, just under 639 from last year, last year was very, it was very busy for us in our summer camps. So just some future, uh, improvement, uh, information. So we are still looking at the future. We have projects that we would love to be able to complete at the rec center. We always get questions about the second floor restrooms or we know with through legislation that we need to improve or there's a desire from the legislature for us to improve our locker rooms. and making sure that we're making changes to those. So that's something that we've been looking at over the last few years. We've always talked in the future about whether there's a desire to grow into other areas. So we've talked about Hatch Park in the future. We've talked a little bit more about that with their second phase. We haven't put down any numbers, just seeing if there's any feasibility there. That would be something we'd have to really get more numbers on and we're working on those to see if it would even be feasible to have a space there. But that would be an opportunity in the future to have a second facility, much smaller facility than what we currently have.

Tiff, you said that there's a desire by the legislature for you to improve your locker rooms.

What are you referring to?

So in 2025, they updated their regulations on who can use the restrooms and things like that. So that's part of, we have big open locker rooms, not very many family changing rooms. So the desire would be to change our locker room configuration to more family changing individual stall uses for the families. And mostly it's from our families wanting that when they come to the rec center. A lot of people don't enjoy their kids going into a locker room with open space and open showers. So they want to have a more private use of the facility. So that is a project that we've been looking at for the last few years, trying to figure out how that would work. Um, and then just, uh, overall, just those projects are something we are discussing, but like I said, we don't have anything budgeted and these are just topics that we're having with, uh, conversations with our account, with our, with our board and something that we'll continue to do going forward. But. Overall, that's pretty much what I have for today. Just didn't know if there's any questions, other questions that I could help answer or any other information I could help share.

So is that picture, if you went back to that last picture, it said, or it showed the existing pirate ship play feature and then next to it. Is that a proposed six lane lap pool outside?

So with our master plan, we were looking at opportunities and that was a proposed, I believe six to eight lane lap pool would be a coverage structure. That would be something that we could use year-round for additional lap lane, because that's one of our biggest questions that we get is, when can we have more lap swimming usage? And that would help to do that. It would also help with some water polo, as well as some other opportunities and other programs.

I just know that a lot of... Feedback I get is that people really miss the outside pool that was once there with the bubble and that had the diving boards available, much like what you have over at Farmington right now. Yeah.

And so this would be similar, a smaller version of the old bubble, basically, much smaller version of the old bubble on the existing pool deck that we currently have.

And outside, correct?

It would be outside, and the thought would be either have another bubble, which I know staff isn't super pumped about, or a tractable roof that could open up and be glass. So it would still be, some would come in, but you could open up during the summer months and still have fresh air to that as well. But all these things are stuff we've discussed. Nothing's been set in stone or budgeted at this point. Okay, thank you.

So many of your slides celebrated your revenue gains, and I am really glad to see those. How are expenses?

Expenses are still there. They're increasing a little bit in certain areas, depending on what the program is. I mean, every year, especially I would say starting with COVID and starting after that, we started to see it to bring staff on. We had to increase some of our costs for wages. So we've leveled out pretty good there. So our wages are pretty much in line, but we're starting to see other expenses go up for us. Our utilities continue to rise. Cost for things like chlorine and things for the pool continue to rise. We've tried to level those out by finding new vendors and looking at other opportunities in the future. There are ways to produce chlorine on-site, and that's an avenue that we look at to see if it's something we could do. It's an on-site cost, an upfront cost, but could save us in the future. Those are a lot of the costs that we're seeing continue to grow is those maintenance and operations expense that relate to the pool. And just capital projects are another big expense where So almost 20 years into the facility, so a lot of things are getting close to their life. A lot of rooftop units, we're now in the process of changing out each year. So that's where we're seeing a lot of our expenses. I would say over the last 10 years, or especially since I've been there, we've started to tackle a lot of the capital projects just because we're in that time frame of where things are starting to get to their life ending.

Would you say with regard to the revenue, is the revenue, the increased revenue that we're seeing from more participation, more use of the facilities, more participation in the programs. Is that offsetting expenses? Are we coming out more ahead from the increased revenue or are we just sort of maintaining?

Right now I'd say we're maintaining just because of the size of the capital projects that we're doing. We've created some spreadsheets and some things that we've shared with our board. Right now we're in a phase that we knew would probably be sort of a leveling out phase. And once we've gotten through some of these projects, then we'll start to see the things start to increase. But right now we're pretty level balancing out things right now.

Great. Any other questions? Mr. Miller.

I have a question. Mr. Miller, this is Councilman Bangerter on Zoom. I just want to congratulate you. That's a great program, but citizens of our surrounding communities, and especially Centerville, really benefit from that. I would like to ask, I really appreciated the numbers where you've identified the participation of Centerville specifically in several of those programs. I would love to see the other cities' participation. If you had some information on that at a point, you could send some of that along to us. I'd be real interested to see how we compare to some of our neighboring cities.

And just off the top of my head, I know, like I said, typically it's Bountiful, Centerville, North Salt Lake, Woods Cross, then West Bountiful is typically the order of most things. But I'll try to get some more detailed numbers to Gina that she can give to you guys and she can provide those in the future. Perfect.

Thank you. Yeah.

Any more questions? We'd like you to thank you for coming and thank you for all the service you give to our residents because we do know that you serve a lot of our residents.

Thank you so much. Thanks. Have a good night. Thank you.

Okay, we're going to move on to our business items. Our first business item tonight is the Ferguson Group. And we're going to turn it over to Brant to introduce...

Yes, thanks, Council Member Mecham. On the agenda tonight is a renewal with the Ferguson Group. This is what's being proposed is a two-year renewal with the Ferguson Group. Mike Miller from the Ferguson Group will represent and representing the Ferguson Group here to give us a presentation and give us an update on everything that's been done so far. We've worked with the Ferguson Group for, I think, six years now, and they've been a valuable resource for a group that helps us have greater access to our representatives in D.C. as well as the federal agencies to potentially access funding to help our projects. The more projects and federal funding we get, the less impact it has on our residents for property taxes, which I think is a great benefit. So the philosophy really is if we're paying our federal taxes, then why not try and get some of that back here instead of increasing the property taxes on our residents? So one of the things that I've done is I have reached out to our representatives, because lobbyist kind of has a bad name sometimes, right, Mike? And honestly, I've reached out to Congresswoman Loy and Congressman Stewart in the past and asked, how is the Ferguson Group doing for us? Are they representing us well? It's a big deal to know because I don't want our lobbyists to be, our representatives to be pushy. And they have both said we love working with them. We love working with the Ferguson Group. They're organized. They represent the city well. And honestly, it's great to have that level of professionalism. So I appreciate the Ferguson Group representing us so well at that level. So I'm going to turn the time over to Mike Miller if you have anything else to add. But thank you for coming. I appreciate it.

Thank you, Brant. Really appreciate those comments. And Chair and Council Members, thank you very much for giving me the opportunity to speak with you all tonight. I have a few slides that sort of summarize where we stand currently with some of the funding that we're pursuing on behalf of the city of Centerville. And I just actually noticed that this is the now somewhat famous, currently famous reflecting pool or pond, depending on your view. I didn't realize that I'd put that in there until just now. But before I launch into those slides, I just want to tell you all what a honor it is to represent the city of Centerville. And what a pleasure it is to work with Centerville's congressional delegation and your staff. Your staff is fantastic. They make our job a lot easier. And we appreciate that. And we appreciate the support for the efforts that have been provided by the mayor and by the council and by, again, your city staff. It's made our job much easier. I'm going to see if I can advance. There we go. Just a real quick background. I worked on Capitol Hill for eight years as a member of a House member staff. Sorry, a member of Congress staff. And when I was working on the Hill, my focus was primarily on helping cities and counties in my boss's district secure funding for important projects and then also with some regulatory assistance. issues as well and since that time I've been with the Ferguson Group as a partner for 29 years next month. So it's been a great home for me and we were founded in 1982 and the firm represents almost exclusively cities and counties, local government, regional government, joint powers authorities, water districts. We have a number of clients in the in the western us so we know water really well we know transportation really well things that are important to the city of centerville i'll move forward here so i'll just dive right into the current federal agenda you'll see two main categories up there the pending earmarks and then also the water resources development act and i'll explain a little bit about that in just a moment. But first, on pending earmarks, this year has actually been a very successful year thus far for the city of Centerville. There are four earmarks that have either been requested by your House and Senate delegation. And in some cases, the House appropriators have already approved those projects. for 1250 West. The reason that there's a range there is that on the House side, Congresswoman Molloy was able to secure $1 million for that project. Senator Curtis requested $4 million, as did Congresswoman Molloy. So we're waiting for the Senate to take action on their FY27 appropriations bills. And when they do, we'll see whether Senator Curtis's request was carried forward by the Senate Appropriations Committee, and if so, how much? If the Senate provides $4 million or somewhere between $1 and $4 million, the trend in the last couple of years has been that in the House-Senate conference, the appropriators have broken towards the higher number that was requested. If we were to secure $4 million on the Senate side from the appropriators, it's, historically speaking, at least over the last two years, more likely that at the end of the day, when we get the House-Senate conference, it would end up closer to $4 million than $1 million. So that's why that range is there. On the well and pump, Congresswoman Malloy secured $1.35 million. That's been approved by the House Appropriations Committee. still awaiting floor action and waiting for action on the Senate, but that number is pretty solid for this year. It would be very surprising if we did not secure, if the city didn't secure that 1.35 million for that project. On digitization, this is actually an interesting project. There's a, we've sort of found it somewhat obscure item in appropriations that has been earmarked infrequently previously. It's in the financial services appropriations bill and it's actually provided under National Archives and so Senator Curtis requested $400,000 for that project and again The Senate committees have not released their list of approved projects, but there's a very good chance that we might end up with that full 400,000 for that records digitization project. And then finally, on the Firebreak Road, the $55,000 figure is the maximum that we could secure in this initial foray into this effort. And that was requested equally by Congresswoman Beloy and Senator Curtis. And it is in the House bill, we're awaiting action on the Senate side, that $55,000 provides the gateway to additional construction funding in future appropriations years. So it was important to get that $55,000. Moving into the Water Resources Development Act, this is the legislation that comes up every two years and it authorizes and in some cases funds Army Corps of Engineers projects for the coming cycle. And this bill was just about a month ago dealt with by the House Committee and Congresswoman Molloy was able to secure a $20 million authorization for water infrastructure projects in Centerville. And then last week, Senator Curtis was also able to secure a $20 million authorization on the Senate side as well. So we have a matching House-Senate authorization for $20 million. Those funds can be used for really any kind of water or wastewater type project or projects that we have. We've identified with your staff several projects that we're interested in using these funds for. They don't need to be used immediately. There's really not a sunset on these authorizations. The one thing that we need to make sure, you'll see that I have in that first bullet, this is step one of a two-step funding process. We need to have the authorization in order to be able to go after the appropriations in follow-on years. There's also another way to get those funds. It's through getting ourselves into the core work plan. We work pretty closely with the Sacramento Core Office, which is the office that covers Utah. And they're becoming more and more open towards using their discretion with their program funding. to do these types of projects, but really what we're going to primarily focus on is after we get these authorizations in law, which it should be enacted, it actually could be enacted potentially in September, but more likely in December. Once we get that authorization, then we can request appropriations for projects that are eligible under this. So it's another revenue bucket that the city can access, and it's somewhat limited. There's there are probably in the neighborhood of 800 to 900 projects authorized nationwide under this program. And it's not an easy lift, I'll tell you that. We still have a ways to go on this, but it's great. And I know that Senator Curtis in particular, and Congresswoman Malloy, but Senator Curtis went out of his way last week during a committee hearing to mention Centerville and how important this authorization is. So that to me is evidence that the senators you know, very strongly in support of this, and I think that we can count on his support moving forward as we go for the appropriations under that authorization.

Mr. Miller, may I ask a quick question? Councilman Bangerter, I'm a little newer to the council, and I apologize for my... I'm not understanding all this well, but I noticed we're having items moved forward by a particular representative, Celeste Malloy and Senator Curtis. What about Senator Lee and other representatives? Do you have a better relationship with these federal congresspeople, or how does that work?

It's an excellent question. And we have a really good working relationship with Senator Lee. Senator Lee does not engage in the earmarking process. He has stated and has followed up on his statement that he does not support the earmarking process. And what he has done for the city very strongly is he's helped us when we've gone for grants competitive grants where we apply directly to the agency on behalf of the city for funding. He has provided letters of support for those efforts. And his staff also has been helpful when we've had regulatory questions. For example, when we were doing the closeout on the green tank, the city had some questions for us about that process working with EPA And we talked with Senator Lee's staff about those questions, as well as Congresswoman Malloy and Senator Curtis. So the reason that I've not mentioned Senator Lee in this section is because he does not submit earmark requests, but your other two delegation members do, Congresswoman Malloy and Senator Curtis. As far as the other Utah delegation members, Typically, a member of Congress does not request, and in some cases doesn't really go out of their way to support other members' requests. Occasionally they will if there's sort of regional impact, but when we're talking about appropriations and even the word authorization, the other members of the Utah district first decide whether they're going to submit earmarks, and then if they do, They generally do for projects that are within their congressional district. So that's why we haven't talked about the other members.

Does that answer your question?

Thank you. Yes, that was very helpful.

Great. So my follow-up on that, Mr. Miller, would be Congresswoman Malloy has these earmarks. there'll be a change in representation come the new year to Representative Moore. How is that going to affect the earmarks that Malloy has placed and does Representative Moore tend to go the way of Senator Lee or go the way of Senator Curtis?

Great question. Questions. The first is, so long as these appropriations bills are enacted in this Congress, Congresswoman Malloy's earmarks should be fine. It gets a little dicey if Congress passes a continuing resolution into the next Congress. and that might be a case where you've got a new member coming in, well, we will have a new member coming in, and then that member will need to assess what they want to do with earmarks, and it is more common than not that when this has happened in the past that the earmarks are carried forward and that the new member will start fresh, with a fresh slate after these remarks, you know, would be enacted and would be funded. So, you know, there's Congress just, well, right now is actually working on a short-term extension of funding because the federal fiscal year ends September 30th, and there's no way Congress is going to finish even probably one of the 12, but certainly not all 12 of the bills that are pending. So they're looking at an extension past the election, and it's just given the way that this appropriation cycle is run, the House finished all of their bills before July. That's Really good when you look at recent history when I was working on the hill, frankly We got all of the bills done before October 1st. That's not because of me. That's just the way Congress worked back then but The house did a really good job with its appropriations process this year So I think that there's a very good chance that these bills are going to be passed and enacted and the earmarks will be included with those by Sometime in early to mid-december at the latest. That's my thinking As far as the new member coming in, it's somewhat, to a certain extent, it's speculation because we don't know for sure who's going to be in that chair. I have to sort of be that way. But it's an excellent question. And honestly, I don't know because I have not talked with that member and his staff. you know, where they are currently on earmarks. We can go back in and we can take a look and see what they're, you know, what they have done in the last couple of cycles. Without having spoken with staff or with the member, you never can be sure what they might do in any given year. And, you know, Utah is an interesting state with respect to earmarks because, you know, there's a very strong voice in, you know, in the Senate that doesn't like earmarks and so we'll have to see how that sort of plays out. So I wouldn't want to say that, oh yeah, you know, that member has earmarked, you know, in the past and so definitely they're going to earmark in the future. But it seems like just generally in Congress, There are more and more members who are engaging and actively engaging in earmarking because they see the benefit to cities and counties, which are really the only entities that can receive earmarks. They can't go to private entities. They've got to go to cities and counties, joint powers authorities, and generally they go to public works projects, water resources, transportation, those sorts of, There's others in there, but as a general proposition, earmarks remain favorably viewed by a majority of members of the House and Senate.

We touch on the limitations with House versus Senate.

With?

The limitations of how many projects Congress

So yeah, there are limits, particularly on the House side. When earmarks were reinstituted in FY 2022, members were only allowed 15 total earmark requests. That number has been raised to 20. But it's still highly competitive. And the fact that Congresswoman Molloy used three of her 20 earmarks for Centerville is notable. It's really notable. And that speaks to your staff work, putting together really good solid projects, giving us good solid information so that basically Centerville makes it easy for the members to go for those earmarks for Centerville. And I, again, congratulate your staff and your leadership for doing that. On the Senate side, there has been more pressure. And in fact, this year for the first time, there are actual stated limitations on the number of requests that senators can make in each bill. That's not ever happened before. And actually, I think it's a good thing. It makes the senators and their staff really sharpen their pencils and focus in on what's important to the state and what's important to their constituents. But as we move forward into this next cycle, there's going to continue to be more competition for earmarks on the House and the Senate. And probably we'll stay at 20 requests on the House, but there may be even more limitations on the Senate side. So we're going to have to continue to do our homework to move forward on those FY20 requests.

eight requests that are just around the corner and i do want to share the two of these projects the 1250 west extension and the well and pump congresswoman malloy's staff reached out to me for follow-up questions so staff did an excellent job preparing it they reached out to me for follow-up questions and clarifications to help find a way to to put it into you know the various agencies that would fund it and it was a great conversation both of the staffers essentially said It was so well prepared. It's just so easy to work with this. It was a slam dunk for us. It was so well written, so well organized. I just need these clarifying questions. They were very helpful and complimentary of the Ferguson Group as well as our staff. I just want to share that. That's why we're making their job easier, which is why I think we have three that are being pushed forward by the Congressman and the Attorney's Office. I just want to share that. Thanks.

Thanks, Grant. And then one thing that I think that we and your staff do well as we communicate, we have meetings every two weeks with your public works department. And every month, in addition to public works, we meet with your police department, your community development department, and really any other departments that want to attend your finance folks. And your administrative offices also attend all those meetings. And we have really good conversations about where things stand. And we're going to start getting into developing our projects probably late summer or into the fall, looking at FY28. So we're going to finish up what we've done. But we're also looking forward towards what we're going to do next so we have enough time to develop those and to make sure that the congressional delegation is well informed on those projects. Let's see. This is just a review of what we've spoken about previously, the prior years with the green tank project and the metering. The green tank was an earmark from Congressman Stewart. And then the metering project was a competitive grant that we worked with your staff on writing. We have put in actually three Bureau of Reclamation competitive grant applications. We secured one of those three. I'll tell you on a sort of national average, that's a pretty good batting average, 33%, because really I think the average is sort of one in 10, at least for earmarks, but also I think grants as well. We're finding that Typically grant programs have about a 1 in 10 ratio of awardees to applicants. And then the two that we didn't win, the first grant I think that we wrote at a heavily discounted rate, and then the second one, what ended up being the third, when we didn't win the second one was we did that one for for no charge. And we're gonna continue to submit those applications to the Bureau of Reclamation and other agencies that have grants that will fund projects that are priorities for the city. So this is, we talked last year about return on investment and you know, I think it's helpful. I think that it, that ROI of, you know, 1500%, that's a huge number. And I don't really think that that's a good number. I think that if you just look though at, you know, the effort that we put in and the funding that the city has secured and the projects that are funded, you know, I think that we've had a lot of success. And in the past, But I think that this year in particular we're geared up towards significant success for public works projects. And then also the digitization, which I think is a great project for the city. But those are sort of the totals there. You'll see that this year I split the difference with that $4.305 million. That's that $1 to $4 million range. I took the middle of that. And so if we were to sort of split that down the middle, we could end up with as much as $5.88 million in earmarks for FY27. Real quickly, just in addition to just going for the earmarks with the appropriations advocacy, and I mentioned the WERDA authorization, we do look at grants for every grant that we've gone for. I think we probably have decided against going for one or two grants because we didn't feel like we had a really good chance at going for them. And it does take a lot of time and effort on your staff's part and frankly on our part to get those done. And sometimes it's better to decide early on that the risk is not worth the reward. We also always track and report on legislative and regulatory activities that are important to cities right now. There's an issue that's going on with The Office of Management and Budget published a proposed rule that would significantly impact how federal funding is distributed to states, cities, and counties. And we have done a lot of work commenting on that and also talking with the congressional delegations of our clients to make sure that everybody's really well informed and understands what the impacts of that of that rule might be. And so we'll be tracking that. We provide weekly and biweekly reports. We also do special reports that we provide to your staff to make sure that everybody at Centerville understands what's going on on the federal level that is relevant and important to the city of Centerville. So that's sort of our ongoing services. And moving forward, just as a general overview, we're going to continue to look for funding opportunities for infrastructure and public safety. And on the economic development front, there are a couple of projects that we've been starting to develop, including the possibility of attracting federal agencies to relocate to Centerville. in the very early stages of developing an approach to how we can benefit from from Olympics in terms of transportation, economic development funding. One of our clients is Johnson County, Kansas, which just hosted the World Cup. And we were able to help. We didn't do it all on our own, I'll tell you this. But we were able to help Johnson County secure a lot of transit funding. And there was also some airport funding that was aimed specifically at Johnson County in light of The World Cup.

Sounds like a front-runner station, Council.

That's kind of where we're going. So that's the end of my little slide presentation. Very happy to answer questions, and I apologize for going on, but there's a lot of information, and I hope that that was helpful to you.

And I do want to show the 1250 West extension is a huge economic development opportunity. We have property owners there waiting to develop the property. But we need the road and the infrastructure first. And then we potentially could get the economic development agency to come in. And we can also find some other incentives. So that's where the Ferguson Group can help us with that. So anyway.

Any more questions for him at this time?

I have several questions. This is Councilman Bangerter. In support of and appreciation for Councilman Plummer, who's had some heartburn over the cost that the city outlays for for TFG, but completely recognizing that return on investment being extremely advantageous to the city, I want to thank you, recognize that. But I do have some questions. I've done a little research and I've identified 13 other companies or organizations that do like research, writing, pursuance, administrative compliance, and reporting for cities on grants. I just wonder, has the city, have we looked at any of these competitors to any larger degree? Now, I'm not saying that we ought to change, but I would like to know that we're not just plugged into a hole here that's been productive, but that we aren't looking at options and alternatives that could be, I don't know, more economical and... and advantageous different opportunities with various legislators. I don't know. I just, and Mr. Miller, could you comment to that a little bit first?

may i come at first that they can survey so yes there i have explored various there's uh... various other groups out there but i will share in terms of wraparound services i believe the ferguson group offers more wraparound services there are other agencies that i feel You could hire someone to just be a lobbyist and just chat, but they don't write grants. Or you can just hire a grant writer or group to just write grants, but then you don't get the back end support. So what I appreciate about the Ferguson Group versus any of the other competitors is the wraparound from beginning to end. They help you write the grant, they help lobby and write the letters, and they also help with the back end support. So I think those are what's critical here. piecemeal everything with other different groups, but I feel like the Ferguson group does a much better job than others. But also, I just do want to recognize that the fee that we pay has not increased in the seven years, six or seven years we have used them, which is also somewhat unprecedented, so I appreciate that. We have not explored with a full RFP of late, no, because of the progress we have made and I think the successes we've experienced. So we have not explored other options at this time. Is that fair?

I might add to that as well that it's taken some time probably to develop the relationships that, you know, we have a biweekly meeting going on a monthly meeting with all departments. I mean, that takes time. Ferguson Group has had to get up to speed on what our city's needs are, as well as staff working with Ferguson Group and learning what types of information they need. And I think you would have a hard time, perhaps, I mean, I'm happy to say, send it to an RFP and check that out, but I agree with Brant that the price probably, where it has not increased in seven years, is good. And also, would this be considered professional services? Because if it is, you go out and you bid, and it's not a cost bid. It's a qualification-based bid.

It's not apples to apples when you go to professional services.

Right. You're looking for qualifications. So it's a little bit different than a construction project. So I do think another company would This is just my opinion, and it could be wrong. If you do an RFP, we'd find out. But I think it would be difficult to compete with the Ferguson group at this point because of their background and experience in knowing what they know and in the successes that they've already had.

Undeniable successes. Undeniable successes, for sure. Yes, yeah.

Not just agreeing, but just saying there are some things there, too, that you know, I think they're well positioned to compete with that again, I guess.

And the focus on local government is critical. I mean, if you find there are other groups out there, but they have some clients in local and some clients in private, but then it becomes somewhat of a conflict in who you're representing. I feel like the first group with the primary client is local government is very helpful. They understand our needs and understand the agencies.

Well, I kind of agree with what, just a second, Rick. Gina said as far as I feel like I'm a better council person now than I was my first two or three years because I know how it works, I know our city, and I feel like if you were to switch from the Ferguson group to somebody else, it would take maybe a few years for them to get up to speed to where the Ferguson group is. And then the other thing is, I was looking for somebody to work in my home today, and my husband said, I want somebody that somebody else has used, even if they're more expensive, so we know what we're getting. And I feel like that's part of what we have with the Ferguson group is we've already given them a test drive and they've really done a pretty good job. So if we were to save a little bit of money here or there, and not get what we're paying for now. We'd be in trouble.

It may not potentially be worth it based on, I will say, I do think there is quite a bit of synergy and velocity of movement here. Like you've gone and that's attributed to staff, but it's also attributed to the Ferguson group that I mean, we have four potential projects that ended up in earmark position that I think that's taken some time to kind of develop that, but also it is what's available with federal money, right? Like you have to have that opportunity developed and sometimes we're aligned with what the federal government is offering as far as grants or earmarks and sometimes we're not, but right now we're, a good position and I think I'm grateful for the relationship that we have with the Ferguson group because I think that their ability to help us you know get the right information to our congressional representatives has been very helpful in achieving those four projects for this year

Rick, did you have something else you wanted to say?

Yeah, as I mentioned, I have several questions here. Another one would be the amount, honorable, appreciated that you haven't raised the fee, but it's the $5,000 a month fee. Is that... What's that based on? Is that a municipality's population? Do you have other cities you serve in Utah? And how are rates established? I have no idea how that number was derived.

So we've been in business since 1982. Our client base is almost exclusively cities, counties, agencies. Our fees have always reflected our client base. We're not a firm that represents pharma. We're not a firm that represents large corporations. We don't have $30,000, $40,000 retainers. I'll be a little bit of an advocate for the Ferguson Group here just for a moment. A $5,000 fee for when you compare it to other firms that do the work that we do is very reasonable. It really is. And I invite you to take a look at it. But it truly is. Our costs have gone up, as some of the previous speakers have mentioned. And I've actually gotten a tiny bit of pressure from my other partners to take a look at fees. And I've said, no, we're not doing that with Centerville. In fact, we're not doing it in Utah. We have another client in Utah, and their fee is the same as yours. And their success is similar to Centerville's. It is, you know, when we look at our fees, what we try and do, is we look at how many hours it takes us per month to provide the service that we provide, and that service that gets the results. It's communications with the Hill, it's communications with the staff, it's research, it's writing, and there's a certain amount of, you know, There's some variables involved that we can't pin down. But we do keep very close track of the amount of time that we spend. And I can tell you almost universally, when you look at our hourly billing structure and you compare it to the amount of time that we spend, if I were billing at my billing rate for the amount of hours that I put in and my colleagues put in for Centerville, we would be in the probably $12,000 to $15,000 range if we were charging our billable rate. You have a good deal, at least within the Ferguson Group, and I think actually industry-wide as far as the fee that you're paying right now. But in all of the months and years that I've represented Centerville, I can tell you that there's not been, there may have been one December and maybe one August when if you were to look at the number of hours that I put in and you compared it to the retainer, there's only been one or two months out of the entire time when my number would not be over 5,000. We work a lot. And it takes a lot of time and effort to do this. It takes a lot of time to write a letter right. It takes a lot of time to write an email to a congressional staffer. You've got to hit the right tone. You've got to tell them what they need. You can't upset them. And it's an art form that's developed over time. And it's... it costs money to do that but i think you're you're doing well in that regard one other thing one thing that i hear from new clients who've come to us from other representatives i'm not you know picking on any firms it's just they've been their experience with federal representation we had a great example of this about three or four months ago We started with a new client. They had been represented for three years by one of the larger firms that's a law lobbying firm. And after our first two days with them, they said, you know, we have never been treated like this before, ever. They never talk to us. They don't call us. They send us a report once a month. And, you know, you guys are engaged with us. You're interested in, you know, who we are and, you know, I've seen that enough to know that we're pretty unique in that regard. There are other firms that do a really good job. I have many friends who are, you know, lobbyists in Washington. But we do as good a job or better on behalf of our clients than other folks. And that's 29 years of experience coming at you. So take it for what you will. And I'm taking my advocacy hat off. Thank you.

Thank you. I appreciate that, and I wouldn't expect you to do anything but advocate highly for your firm and your work. And I, again, reiterate, I'm grateful, we're grateful as a city for what you've accomplished for it. I hope that we all appreciate, too, that the work that Ferguson Group is doing for us is taking... a good load off of our staff too. If you work in Centerville as a department head or something, you got a group that the city's paying for that's helping staff do a lot of the grant writing and things that other cities who don't have that kind of a service have to expect of their staff. So that's a benefit to work in Centerville. The other thing I did want to ask, and I know this would be hard, but when you've had such success as you have with us, thank you, is is there a tendency you have a number of other clients their limited number of dollars appropriated for grants and is I don't know I I don't want to have a situation where hey we got Centerville a lot the last couple years you know let's focus our emphasis on this other neat city in the Midwest or whatever and and I just I just want to point that out that Please, let's build on our success and not diminish service, which I'm not accusing anybody of doing, but I want to point out that... There could be some tendencies that way, whereas Freshblood, a new client, a new service provider, a new operation, they want to have great success and work hard to do that, to win money. the allegiance and alliance that we have with TFG. And in saying that, I do totally recognize that there should be some loyalty and appreciation for that, which I acknowledge and would like to be able to support. But going forward,

enough said thank you i haven't seen any indication that the ferguson group hasn't put our needs first i want to say that based on everything that i have heard about this group i have no concerns in that regard but additionally mr miller would you agree that i have beat the tar out of you about that in the past

And I have to say I have I also have not observed that there has been any backing down I I think the proof is in these earmarks and and the one thing that that you did not put in these slides but you did verbally mention is that yes we have actually gone after a couple we did not win that will happen like there will be times that we are just not going to get the funding in my mind that's not necessarily a loss it's just you know sometimes we're going to win and sometimes we aren't and and you are pursuing them when and where. I've several times sent emails to staff and said, hey, I read this in the TFG newsletter this week. Does any of this apply? And then a lot of times they've already talked to the Ferguson group or knew why it did or did not, or they were already, you guys were already chasing it. So I do think, that's why I say I think we have a lot of synergy going here. And so, but yes, I agree with you that, you know, if our staff were not taking advantage of this opportunity, I would be having a very different conversation about this. But I think that we can say that this system is working and it's working well.

And our staff speaks really highly of your services and of working with you. And that means a lot from my perspective. When I have staff members advocating for your services, I mean, you're helping them. And they would not be up here advocating if you weren't doing a good job.

Well, I agree with that, Shaylin, and I've heard a lot of advocating for them. And at this point, I really like the Ferguson group, and I was one that was a little questionable. I'm pretty tight, so they've won me over. That says a lot for them. But I also want to give our credit. to our staff who have worked with the Ferguson Group. Without our staff, the Ferguson Group wouldn't have the success they have. And so the Ferguson Group opens the door and helps us, and our staff runs through the door. So I think we need to acknowledge our staff as well as the Ferguson Group when we're talking about this.

And I don't want to go into too much, but if I can answer Council Member Banger's question a little bit further is that What's great about the Ferguson Group, especially Mike, is that if they are responding to an RFQ or an RFP, they do send me an email saying, hey look, so and so city is looking for lobbying and we're interested in submitting a proposal. Do you have any issues or concerns? So they respect our opinion. I mean, if we feel like it's bountiful, Maybe we'll say no because we're actually in direct conflict with them for the same, I don't know. But ultimately, they've at least respected and said, hey, we're thinking about, are you okay with it? And on all their proposals, I haven't. I've said, I think they're fine. I think that's great. So anyway, they make you feel special, right? Like you're the only person that matters, and that's what I appreciate about the Ferguson Group, even though they have other clients. Yeah.

Do you have any other questions?

Thanks for all the positive comments. And I agree, Council Member Mecham, that it does take a team. And our staff obviously needs to be commended for the great job they've done in working as a team member with TFG. and we've had some obvious wonderful successes. Just one last question. I would like to know on economic development, and Brent mentioned a little bit here about the 1250 West and a few things that are going to help with that, but what are some examples specifically? And Brent, did I hear you say maybe we engage your economic development wing or group or something? Is that Centerville needs... a transit hub, and we need economic development to keep our taxes down. And so highly important to me, to our city, to our citizens, is an economic development factor here and going after some grants that are going to help us. Do you have some specific considerations? Can an additional emphasis be put there? And I'd appreciate your comments on that.

Let me go first.

So the Economic Development Agency, the EDA, it's a great organization, and their money, well, I'll let maybe Mike speak, but they have really good opportunities that if we can prove a benefit to the community by creating jobs or whatever it might be, they have funding available. So those who want to develop on the West End or to redevelop some of the West End area, if we can document and prove, which the Ferguson Group will help us with with staff, is showing a... a benefit to the community we potentially can have some funding to help incentivize which you know councilmember banger you and i have discussed how do you incentivize the redevelopment or the development well the eda i think is our our opportunity for that but we really haven't engaged them here i've engaged them in the past they're great they'll fly out here on on their own dime and look at the project evaluate it And then we're potentially in their portfolio of potential funding. So once we get 1250 West extension in, I think that's the next step. And I've met with the property owners over on the west side, and there are some opportunities. They're ready to prepare or put together any of the numbers we need to submit that to the EDA. And again, that could be the first pilot to see how it works in Centerville and explore it beyond that. So as far as the redevelopment, redevelopment's a little more challenging, but new ground is a little easier. We might be able to experiment with that.

But is EDA completely separate from the Ferguson group?

Yeah, it's a federal agency. It's a federal agency.

Right. So can T... Can the Ferguson Group help us more specifically with an emphasis on economic development grants? That was my question.

And the answer is yes, Councilmember. One of the things we have been working on is 1250 West. It's been one of the priorities over the years. We've not been able to get funding for it previously. This year we're on track for that. That will kind of, I think, open the door. We've had a lot of success working with the Economic Development Administration. It's an agency under the Department of Commerce. And one of the interesting things about EDA and engaging them is that typically the regional directors within the EDA wield a lot of decision-making authority over which projects to go for. So if we go to them with a really well-developed plan, and the old number was if you could create 100 jobs, you probably could get an EDA grant of some sort. provided it felt within, you know, felt within eligibility. But, you know, that number kind of goes up and down. But, you know, one of the things that we've been focusing on, obviously, is drought. That's been a top priority for the city since we've represented, you know, the city water infrastructure. We've had some success there. We're starting to move with 1250 West now with the earmark. And So yes, that's an area where we've talked with your staff. Your staff has talked with us, I should say, about that as well. This is not news to your staff. They're very interested in working with EDA and taking advantage of federal opportunities, and we're going to assist them with that. One other quick thing I would want to mention, and that is that we've It's absolutely true, and I said it, you all have said it, how great the staff is and the city as a whole is. But I don't want to fail to mention again that the earmarks don't happen without your congressional representation, and that's the members and their staff. You're well represented on Capitol Hill, and it's a pleasure working with those folks. And so I didn't want that to go unsaid.

Okay, so I have a couple things, actually. Let me first say thank you to Councilman Bangerter for your questions and your support. Secondly, thank you, Mr. Miller. You obviously do your job very well. From what we can see here, you are doing the good work for Centerville, and That being said, I think my concern has always stemmed from a frustration from the inability for Congress to decrease spending and balance a budget. Do you believe that this process of earmarks is pushing us further and further into a situation where the federal government is not going to be able to recover.

Earmarks are limited to less than 1% of discretionary spending. So some would call that de minimis. It's a big number. It is a big number. But when compared to the overall discretionary budget of the United States, it's actually relatively small. When you look at the impact, that many of the projects that we've worked on have in communities. It's amazing what some of these projects have done for folks. And the thing about earmarks is that they are another avenue for a city or a county or, you know, joint powers authority to secure funding for a top priority project outside of the competitive grant process. And it costs a lot of money to write competitive grants. It also costs a lot of money to go after earmarks. But if you get a really good project and you advocate it well, and you've got a member that's willing to go for earmarks, we have a pretty high success rate of getting solid federal dollars to really good projects that have you know, relatively speaking, immediate impacts in communities. And so, you know, do I believe in running an unbalanced budget? Absolutely not. My two kids have made sure that, you know, my hair is graying. I know what it's like to run an unbalanced budget. I don't like it. But I don't think your remarks are a major problem in terms of adding to the deficit and the debt. And I think that they have tremendous impact in the communities that receive them.

Indeed. And I can see that with the monies that we have currently been earmarked for Centerville, which, again, I appreciate that work. And that is the part where we would look at and say that Truly, that is money that has been taken from our community and then given back to our community through the federal government. It is a system that I believe is flawed and slightly corrupt. So that being said, we have a senator that does not do earmarks, but he doesn't do anything about not, or to fix the process that would help us out of this situation where we are required to get earmarks. So, for that being said, I believe that we, I will support this year the Ferguson Group's sixty thousand dollar let me say that i i do appreciate it but i i feel like again it is a frustration with what you do per se but it is the frustration with the system back there in washington dc that we can only change the voting but even then it seems that our representatives aren't able to change that Again, frustration.

And if I could share, Congressman Stewart, I think meeting with him, because he was a really big advocate for Centerville. He said it best. He was on the Appropriations Subcommittee. He actually was an advocate to change the system. He was the one fighting, saying this system doesn't work and we have to fix it. but he's also the one who's saying, look, I can't fix it, and I'm going to do everything I can to get money back to my people. That's what I appreciate about Congressman Stewart, and Congressman Malloy kind of agrees with that sentiment. Again, we're not necessarily saying we agree with the system just because this is happening. I'm not saying I agree with the system, but since it's available, why are we not doing our best? $20 million to our residents is a pretty significant property tax increase. To do the projects, we have to get done. And so let's, if the system is what it is, would rather that $10, $20 million come to Centerville or go to New York City or go to California or go to, and that's where I find that I struggle and I have the same dilemma you do. But I do feel like let's do our best to lessen the impact to our own residents if the system is what it is. but we can advocate against it while still cashing the check, right? This is the system, but we got to talk to our representatives about it. I don't know, Mike, if you have anything else to add to that. I appreciate Congressman Stewart and his sound advice. He's dearly missed. I appreciate him.

Any more comments or questions before we move on?

I would like to just ask you, Mr. Miller, on the return on investment slide, when you talk about total professional advocacy and grants services fee through July 2025, it said $307,395. The pending through fiscal year 27 is $367,395. This is on your slide deck. Sorry, it's this one. I don't know if that helps you. Yeah, go up two or three.

Right there, return on investment.

Yeah, can you just explain those two numbers for me? I'm assuming that's what you have invested in helping prepare the grants up to this point, but can you verify if I'm understanding correctly?

Those total professional advocacy and grant services fees are retainer that you folks have paid us over the years and then added into that.

It's for all the years. Yeah, for all the years. This is our $60,000 per year up to that point.

Correct. And then there are additional... amounts in in in those that are The year that you paid us to write the grant application the year that you paid us Reduced fee to write the grants application and then I think that there are a few Fees that And I'm not even sure that we actually collect those anymore. In fact, I think we don't but we have a you know over the years we would pass along some of our you know costs of doing business for example we have in the past used you know legislative tracking services news services that are very focused on areas that are important to our clients especially in the water and transportation fields and those are costly items to get a hold of. And so what we've done is we've spread that over our client base, but I don't think we, in fact, I'm pretty sure we don't do that at all anymore. But there may have been, especially in through July 2025, the 307 probably includes, you know, a few thousand dollars over the years for some of our prior services that we used that we no longer charge you for. So that 367,395 is the $60,000 fee.

Okay, thank you for clarifying that. And Councilman Plummer, to your point about the earmarks, yeah, I agree, and I agree with what Brant said. This is a question that I often ask residents when I'm out and about. I ask them how they feel about the earmark situation and whether or not they want us to continue to support chasing those, and I am often met with a positive, yes, if that is the system, please continue to pursue that until that system changes. I do agree that advocacy to maybe not have them is a good idea, but this is an opportunity to bring some of those federal tax dollars directly back, and they do benefit our residents in a really good way.

I will say, at the risk of going on too long, that back in the old days, when I was on Capitol Hill, and then even up to the earmark moratorium in 2010. Congress did not do a very good job of telling the public what it was doing. There were a lot of what were called airdrop earmarks, things that came in that were not vetted through the subcommittee and committee system. They would be added in a House Senate conference committee. And they were earmarks that, you know, the famous one is the bridge to nowhere, the old bridge to nowhere in Alaska, right?

Yes.

You know, Congress took a good, hard look at the process, and they saw those kinds of things going on. And the rules that are in place now are much better than they were in terms of transparency, disclosure. Members have to make a financial disclosure. It's public. It's on their websites to show that they don't have any financial gain from the earmarks. That was not required previously. And each of these earmarks goes through a subcommittee and a committee vetting process. And most members go through their own semi-public vetting process as well. And they have to publish all of their requests. that they submit on their website. So the transparency has really improved. And that is, I mean, I agree with the sentiments of Council Member Palmer, but it's much better from transparency perspective than it was previously.

That's actually really helpful. to understand that. I also appreciate some of your education to us on the amount of money that does go to an earmarks and specifically the earmarks are only for cities and kind of local government type, which is helpful in understanding a little bit about how they work, so I appreciate that.

Okay, do we have any more comments or questions?

Would you like a motion?

Yes, first I'd like to Thank Mr. Miller for coming all this way and for answering all of our hard questions and being pleasant about it all. So thank you so very much from our council. We appreciate you and our staff. Yes, I'd love a motion.

I move that we approve the agreement between Centerville City and the Ferguson Group. Second.

Okay.

Let's vote. Is that for, what is the period of time on that?

This is for two years. Two years.

Is that how long we had it before? It's been a year over a year.

Why are we changing that?

Because honestly with the potential secured funding to your commitment would be very helpful in trying to make sure we take advantage of that.

It also keeps our price at the $60,000.

It's the same price either way. I checked on that today, and the price doesn't go up for one year or two year. But what I did find out is where we've got the $20 million coming in, we're going to need some help knowing exactly how to navigate that if we get it. And so I don't think we're going to want to drop them in the middle of that. I've always fought for the one year, and last year I went again for it. Because you don't know what our economy or what our government or whatever is going to happen. But with the kind of money that we have coming in, I think two years is probably safe. I think we're going to need them that long to navigate us through that kind of money.

Can you help me understand how much it costs, rough idea to write a grant, on top of the $5,000 we pay a month?

Nate's saying that the last two contracts have been two years, but he's going to confirm for me. Has that been true?

Yeah, I looked at them. I mean, they're multi-year.

Okay, so the last time we did this was two years ago?

Well, I can look it up.

I'm pretty sure we did it last year, so that's why. I think we did it last year, too.

It might have been two years, except for last year was just one more year.

Time flies when you're having fun.

So for purposes of making sure that we have a clear record, my motion is to approve the agreement between Centerville City and the Ferguson Group with the contract renewal to continue at a fixed fee of $5,000 per month for a period of two years. which would be July of 2026 through June of 2028. Thank you.

Do we have a second? I'm second. Yeah, I'm supporting. I'm still sticking with my second. Okay, let's have a vote starting with Councilman Hayman.

Aye.

Aye. Aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Okay, thank you. That passes unanimously. Once again, thank you for your services. Okay, number two on our business items was a public hearing for the Whitaker Museum Board, and this has to go to the Planning Commission before it comes to us, so we've taken it off of our agenda tonight, and we won't be having a public hearing or any discussion on it. This is moving on to our third one. We have the public comment for the South Davis Metro Proposed property tax and I'm going to turn this one over to brand

Yes, thanks, Councillor Mecham. I am doing the mayor's job tonight, so I'll just ask for him to buy me lunch later. So I'm here, as we know, the law changed that requires cities to present any future proposed property tax increases within our city. So South Davis Metro Fire Service Area is proposing a 16.31% property tax increase, which will impact Centerville City residents. To the tune of that would generate one point three one million three hundred fifteen thousand four hundred and twelve dollars in revenue For the South Davis fire so giving an example an idea the residential the average residential home for the district the five cities at six hundred fifty one thousand dollars the impact to a residential home will go from a hundred eighty two dollars sixty one cents to two hundred and twelve dollars and thirty two cents of just under thirty dollars and Commercial will increase from $332.01 to $386.04, so approximately a $56 increase for the average commercial. And the public hearing is listed for August 3rd, 2026 at 6 p.m. at Station 81 in Bountiful, which is 255 South, 100 West. So are there any questions for me? So what the law requires is that we just have a public comment. It's not necessarily a public hearing, but allows anybody from the audience to come up and share their thoughts that we can pass on to South Davis Fire. But I encourage you to attend the public hearing if you have questions. That'd be the better time, but you're welcome to share your thoughts here.

Do we have anybody here that would like to share their thoughts with us tonight? Seeing that we have none.

And comments from the council also.

Am I reading this wrong? When it says affected department, then it says proposed budget, and then budget without tax change, shouldn't those two columns be flipped? Isn't the $1,396,083, that's the budget with the tax change.

Yeah, those should be switched.

Okay. I just want to say that publicly just so that it's on the record.

I'll let them know.

It's like a type of a typo, right? But I just want to be clear that that is, it needs to be flipped. Yes, very good.

You don't want to pay the nine?

Just, yeah. I think that we should, if we're going to approve it, or whatever we're doing with this, maybe we're not approving it. We're not doing anything. We're just acknowledging it and having public comment, correct? You're never

Brant, I have a question. Could you help me understand, in addition to the amount per year that it's going to increase a resident and a business that the fire district is going to gain from this much of a proposed increase, how much of their increase that we as a city had to pay, how much per resident and business did that portion of the tax increase we're proposing increase a resident's home. I'd like to understand a total number of how much the fire district would get from a Centerville resident and business on average.

It's hard to say, and I don't know. Nate and I kind of explored the idea of how we'd figure that out a few months ago, but ultimately it would be the county that would have to help us with those numbers to determine what that impact would be. And all we can say is that the... The shift for an average home in the county or within the five cities is potentially $30 But I don't know exactly how much that would be for Centerville as a whole I don't I think what he was talking about was the

Okay, am I misunderstanding? Yes. So I think what he's talking about is the fee that we pay the fire district. They're having this tax increase, but they raised our fees. And so how much of our tax, our property tax, we had to raise our property tax. And part of that was our property tax increase. So if you just took what they're raising us, how much would that be per person? Oh, very minor.

Very minor increase if they increase their property taxes. Again, we could debate this, and I'm with you 100%. I struggle with this, and the board knows. The admin committee knows how I feel, as well as the board knows how the mayor feels. We're both on the same page as far as finding a way to stop seeing the assessments go up when they have access to their own property tax increases. It would be a very minor amount, Council Member Banger, if that's the question. And that's why I somewhat struggle with what the assessment's going up. I don't somewhat. I do struggle with it.

I agree with that, Council Member Banger.

We're working on it.

But the only thing is when you say very minor, I mean, I think our proposed tax increase is Increase of the residents by, was it 56 bucks a year? And I wondered what portion of 56 was the fire district that we identified?

One to 2% was the increase. I mean, again, the jump in our increase that we're proposing to be discussed next month is primarily supportive of a new police officer, which is 11 to 12% of the 16% increase that we're proposing. or so. So it's pretty minor. I mean, our difference was $32,000. So I think, again, our increase is $32,000. And so when you're talking about $32,000 against our $1.3 million increase, it's a drop in the bucket for them to increase it just to cover those. But it's a lot for us because we have a smaller...

It's $32,000 that we will be paying additionally to South Davis Metro. I mean, this is nowhere near, but we have about 6,000 homes. So that's about $5. Yeah. $5.50 a year.

Yeah. Nate's shaking his head.

I mean, that's not hardly a very... It's a little bit of a help, right?

Yeah, either way, you're paying it directly to South Davis Metro Fire through their property tax increase, or we're the pass-through. You're paying the $5 either way. You're either paying us the $5 to give it to South Davis, or they're billing the $5.

I'm just saying, gosh, that's not the average home and center bill, maybe, to just evenly divide it, but...

But that's probably... And our average home is $610,000. So our average market value is less than that of the area, of the five cities. At least according to their sheet that I'm looking at.

And they said the average home value was $623,000. And we said $610,000.

Yeah, 610 for Centerville. I'm looking at what Davis County is preparing to send out to all residents. I'm looking at a form that was handed out at the fire yesterday. So 610 for Centerville, average home. 651, average home in the five cities.

question about the increase in salaries and benefits to remain competitive where do we sit currently are we not competitive are we is the South Davis district Are we losing employees? Are we unable to recruit employees? And how is that going to be just this increase in salary? Is it going to be distributed as a COLA? Is it going to be distributed through merit? Or is it going to be distributed?

Very good question. So step and grade, they have a nine step and grade system. They adopted that two years ago. Yes, South Davis Fire has had a tough time keeping employees. but it's kind of this weird animal. So like in police, here's my own theory, right? Or my own in police Centerville deals with certain cases. Salt Lake deals with a different kind of cases in police fires, kind of the same across the board. So it's not just about paying police because your culture matters a lot more. South Davis fire truly is competing against the dollar, whether it's Salt Lake or others, other departments. And so they're, their tone of, I'm not saying their culture is bad, it's just the opportunity to generate, to get a better paycheck is somewhere else. And so it has been competitive, but we are doing a much better job since we changed the compensation several years ago with the nine stepping grades instead of 11 stepping grade. It has been far more effective. And they pushed through six or seven through the academy, the fire academy, and three or four will drop out. So that's the struggle, is trying to keep them all the way through the academy. So you get through and you think you have it, then you lose some people at academy and you're losing people. So lateral transfers is really hard. So I feel like they're competitive now. I feel like then, so these are the salaries just to keep up with that.

Just to stay that way.

To fund the step in grade. I can't remember what we agreed on. I want to say 2.4% is what we agreed on COLA.

Okay, if we're finished with that, we'll move on to the summary action calendar. Do we have any questions on one parks department equipment purchase?

Yeah, I'd like to ask a question. Okay. cool piece of equipment, Bruce, I have to admit. It looks very, very cool. I'd love to be in one of those and use it. We could arrange that.

I have no desire because I am terrified of heights.

How many times a year do we use something like that?

So we rent two lifts every year to put up Christmas lights for a month. And we get the month rental for you.

Okay, so as I was looking around.

And then there's probably three other times a year when we're, okay, hey, this will be worth it for us to go through the process of renting this and going and picking it up and bringing it and doing the job and taking it all back and getting it back in time before we get charged the next, right? So it's usually, in addition to that month that we rent the two, is three other times. But if we had this, there's probably six to 10, maybe 20 other times when we really could use one if we had one, but it's not worth the time or the money to go through the rental process to drive up to Layton to hook it up to a truck and get it from the Home Depot back here, get the job done and get it back hooked up and back up to Layton to drop it off.

And it could alleviate some workers' comp claims, frankly. We could have used it on the 4th of July. If you remember on the backstop, there was this lost children sign. Sergeant Brown was able to get the sign up but couldn't really get the sign down.

If we had this... Oh, yeah, the Parks Department could have rented it to the Police Department, brought in some more revenue.

I mean, if you have one here, although it's going to generate some cost savings, if you have it here, it will definitely help out and will be a useful one.

Based on the 20, you said maybe 20 times, I mean, just guesstimate, like, what is the annual cost to rent if you're able to, you know, all things aside, what is the cost of rent annually? Can you, like, just sort of ballpark?

Yeah, we're spending... We're probably spending $10,000, at the most $10,000, between $5,000 and $10,000 in rental.

During the budget meeting, we'd say we get our money back in five years, I think.

I was going to say, it sounds like five to six years.

Yeah, in our budget meeting.

So, for example, the Public Works has a forklift, and they've welded together a man basket that you can put on the forks of the forklift, and the forklift can raise you up 15, 20 feet.

I'd do that, too.

I've gotten very familiar with driving the forklift up over the overpass and down to Smoot Park to have one guy in the forklift controlling the up and down while another guy's in the basket trying to get the light bulb out of the tennis court lights. You know, we have right now one of our... Anyway, there's dozens of different applications where we're making do with a lesser piece of equipment or we just aren't doing it at all because it's just not worth the time and the money to go rent it. This will really... And I should say we've already gone through all this in the budget process. We've already got the budget authority to buy this. I'm not asking your approval of spending the money. I'm just asking your approval to spend it at Wheeler Cat, which is where they have the state contract on this piece of equipment.

Well, you have to rent another piece of equipment. in conjunction with buying this one during the season that you had to.

Yes. Yes. So this essentially will do away with the second one. We'll still need to rent one that does more than what this can do a lot, but it can't do it all.

Will this help with putting the flags up on our main street?

I don't think so.

Public Works is quite right. Yeah.

Public Works is using that forklift, I think, right now while they do that.

I've seen them. That's why I wondered if they could use this.

This is something you set it up, get it all situated, then you use it, bring it back down. Make sure that you're going to share nicely, Bruce. It's not super mobile. Oh, yeah. I got Haley working on a rental fee schedule right now.

Great. Okay. Do we have any other questions on number one?

I'll make a motion.

Wait, we can do them both together, unless we have a controversy on number two.

Okay.

Thanks, Bruce. Are public works vehicle purchases? Do we have any questions on any of those? If not, I'd look for a motion on all of the summary action. Okay.

I'll make a motion that we approve the purchase of the et 500 J tow aerial lift for the parks department from Wheeler cat in the amount of fifty nine thousand two hundred and twenty dollars Also that we I'll make a motion that we approve the public works vehicle purchases outlined in staff's report from Rush Truck Center a cabin chassis for ten wheel dump truck and the amount of one hundred seventy eight thousand eighty four dollars and fifteen cents and A cabin chassis for a bobtail dump truck, $136,080.17. From Viking Clives, a roll-off body salter and plow equipment, $229,250. From Williamson Godwin, bobtail does more, body and plows equipment. Y'all can see it. $162,318.00. And from Wheeler, an asphalt roller in the amount of $58,900. Second.

Okay, we'll go ahead and vote. Councilman Hayman?

Aye.

Aye.

Aye. Aye.

Councilman Bigger?

Aye.

That is also a unanimous vote. So we hope Public Works, you should be having some shiny new equipment down there. we'll move on to minutes we have a minutes uh approval we're looking for the closed session on june 2nd closed section on june 16th the work session on june july 7th and the council city council meeting on july 7th does anybody have any changes or comments on those meetings?

Yes. On the closed minute session of June 2nd, there's a paragraph there where I'm identified as making some comments. I would like to add five words to that where it says, and could undermine the diocese's institutional integrity and sets an inappropriate precedent.

Can I? Yeah, I was like, wait. So we can't disclose what we were talking about in the closed session.

Unless we're in a closed session.

So I think my recommendation would be to table the closed session minutes. And if you could submit those requested changes to staff, and we'll put them in the next council meeting packet. So confidentially, so that you can see them. And if those five words are acceptable, we'll put them in there. Okay.

Okay. So we'll table the, is it the June 2nd? Yeah. Closed meeting minutes. So we will see if we've got.

Okay, I'll make that motion to table that.

Okay.

And then I got a second on that. The proposed changes in red line in the packet for the next meeting.

Okay.

Is that just for the June 2nd meeting that you're making that motion? Yes.

The June 2nd closed session.

Yeah, the June 2nd closed session. I just am wondering so I know what we're voting on.

Right. So do I have a second on tabling that?

I'll second that.

Okay. And then we'll go ahead and look for a motion to approve.

Yeah, vote on that first motion.

Oh, sorry about that. So we'll vote on tabling the minutes from June 2nd closed meeting.

That isn't something that is within the authority of the... Okay, now we'll look for a motion to accept the minutes for June 16th closed session July 7th work session and July 7th City Council I'm sorry, but I have I have a

in addition to the city council meeting on July 7th, on page 3 of 3, line 27, where the mayor is giving his report, I would like to insert the words, and found, and the state auditor's inquiry was concluded. Thank you.

No violation of the statute was found.

Can you say that? I didn't understand quite what you meant.

Say that again.

Okay. Near the end of the mayor's report. Okay. I don't have the whole thing in front of me. I've written this down here. Okay. But it says there are some words ahead of this and then it says found. This is line 27. Found. And then he says found and the inquiry was concluded. I want to insert the words and the state auditor's inquiry was concluded.

That's fine. Okay. Does anybody have a problem with that? No. Nope. Okay. So do you want to amend your motion?

I'll make a motion. Well, I can just amend the motion to include the state auditor's inquiry on line 27 of page three of the minutes from Tuesday, July 7th.

Okay. Did we have a second on that?

Second.

Okay. Do you need a second on the amendment and a second on the motion?

No, just on the motion.

And just to be clear, we're approving all the other three sets of minutes with the suggested change? Yes. Okay, got it.

Okay. Okay. Councilman Hayman?

Aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Aye. Aye.

Okay, moving right along. We are going to move on to the financial report, but it's only a monthly report right now. And so unless you have any questions for Nate, it was in your packet. Does anybody have anything they need to talk to Nate about tonight? If not, I think next month we'll have the quarterly.

Yes.

okay um and then we'll move on to our council report and it is councilman banger he had a lot of excitement last month

Yeah. Okay. Two committees. The Citizens Council Corps. First of all, that's our emergency preparedness group. We did not meet the 1st of July because of all that goes on with the 4th of July. But we... All the plans are in process, and Louisa is heading up things from our city's perspective for the emergency fair in September. And I think you're aware of that. Just really encourage everybody's support and participation and promotion of that, which will be in September. With respect to Centerville Dual Creek irrigation, there was the election held for new board members. Two new board members were elected, and they have not as of yet met in a meeting of the board. Talked with... three of the four members yesterday, as recent as yesterday. There's been some hesitation to do that, but I think that the newly elected board members have agreed that they need to push forward with that so they can get their other two members of the board appointed and move forward. So there is some uncertainty at the moment with the makeup of the board of the irrigation district. We need to be aware of that and keep in touch. That should be transpiring very soon. And then with respect to reporting on the meters, I've talked with Robert Burns, and the meters, he's a bit vague, I'll be honest. But he says about 1,000 meters have been installed of 2,300 that totally need to be done in the city. And so we're nearing half. And that's good, and a lot of money's been being outlaid for that. The report is that there should be enough equipment and supplies available to conclude and to wrap up the entirety of the city with new meters by the end of the year. And the company who has been... installing the meters, pulled off to do another project, and the closest, which is a bit frustrating to me as well, that Robert identifies they will be back is in August. Now, in pushing him a little bit harder to try to find out so we might know when we can expect to have the city in some turmoil again for water shutoffs with irrigation water under our drought conditions, he said that he thinks it'll be the second week of August. but there's no guarantees. We did talk extensively about better communication with our citizens when that process re-begins. He identified that he will have the contractor put notices on the door This time they will be taped on the doors so that they're less likely to be blown away or discarded or missed by residences. And the last time they did a very large blanket flyer that didn't even pertain to many of the residences in those areas when they put their flyer out. This time they're committed to do a smaller section that they will in fact be working on and have the notice go on the door soon before the meters will be installed and there will be a shutoff in that area. And he said he's committed to work with the contractor on better communication. We all know there was frustration in the city by many residents of some poor communication and some challenges with understanding when it would be shut off, when it might be back on, those kinds of things. They're aware of that, and hopefully that improves substantially with the second go-around of the meter installs. Any questions on the irrigation?

Councilman Bangerter, would you mind just clarifying? I am a little concerned about only one thing that you said. You mentioned that they have to have the meters installed by the end of the year. My understanding from the Division of Water Resources, they reached out to me probably right about the time you came on and the transition was made, but there was a lot of concern that the money had to be spent possibly by the end of October. So I'm a little worried about a contractor not showing up until the second week of August and we're way under half, like we're under half. So I'm happy to reach out to Shalane at Division of Water Resources and ask her if that in fact is, Correct, but I think we lose our funding in October because it is going back to the federal government by the end of the year and the state will take it and use it somewhere else.

That's a viable concern, and if you could do that, Councilmember Hurst, I think that would be appreciated because I am concerned about a little bit of disarray that we're in with the board.

And I did pass that along to Robert. He does know that, but maybe I'm not remembering. It could be the first of October, the end of October. I'm not sure now what the exact date was, but...

The other thing I would suggest is on those papers that there is a telephone number to call if and when they're made meter blows and Had three meters on my one block Blow up within the next week and a half and I know there was at least two going up 100 north So there is a lot of meters that are blowing after they're put in and people are calling me panicking because they don't know what to do Because dual Creek doesn't really give out I mean they give out their Leon Nielsen telephone number which there's nobody even there at night and on the weekends so I would suggest that there's a number to call if the meter has a problem and

I will mention that to Robert. That's a good point.

Also, one more thing. I did have a neighbor that reached out to me that was really frustrated. The contractor left quite a bit of dirt in the gutter, and they called the number, and they were told that they would have to work with the contractor to get that removed. The residents don't have a contract with the contractor. That has to be done through Jewel Creek.

Drew's happy to help out with that.

So it's great We talked about that at our last meeting and I and that that was relayed to mr. Burns So we'll move on to the mayor's report

me being the mayor pro tem, the only thing I have is yesterday I met with the fire board. I want to thank the other five mayors from North Salt Lake, Bountiful, Woods Cross, and West Bountiful, and we all agreed to ban the fireworks. between for the 24th between the 22nd and the 25th the fire danger was so high at the time there was a fire and Roy they'd sent six firemen to the hospital with heat problems and so we just felt like for many different reasons that we needed to have the ban go through the 25th so we have voted that and it should be We had to put through to the forester, the state forester, and get permission from them, and we're still waiting for... We've received confirmation, so it's now being posted on the socials right now during this meeting.

Excellent. Chief Larson posted South Davis Fire. I do want to share that ultimately Chief Larson's strong reasoning, despite what's going on outside, was in 20 days, even since the 4th of July, we have seen no precipitation, low humidity... Increased temperatures so the fire risk was greater than the 4th of July and so that was his recommendation Not knowing exactly you can't predict when it's gonna rain. I mean Ultimately, I think even if you get some rain now, it still doesn't kind of undo It may not still So ultimately we've had a lot of people commend and appreciate during this time. Our resources are, we're not sending any crews out right now. With some of the wildfires coming down, we're keeping our resources here. But there are just other things that are happening, whether it's a rollover accident, whether it's small fires or anyway. So that was Chief Larson's recommendation is continue in all five. Four mayors and mayor pro tem agreed to continue to stand united in the banning in these five cities.

That was great. And then we'll. Turn it over to Brant for the city manager's report.

That's my report. Firework ban. So it's South Davis Fire has posted. Chief, I believe, has already forwarded the message on our Facebook, our socials. Haley is working on posting it. Tomorrow we'll probably put together our own unique post, probably, Chief. Just, again, affirming. And then we also have signs up. The signs are back up. The mean signs, Council Member Bangor, are back up. We'll look at it. We'll look at better language next year. Those were good thoughts.

Unless anybody has a reason for a closed meeting tonight, we'll look for a motion to adjourn.

So moved. Second.

All in favor? Aye.