City Council - Regular Meeting

since we're a little behind. Our first item on our agenda is a discussion on the River to Range Trail from Design Workshop. You guys want to come up? And for the record, the River to Range Trail is a trail at the point that will connect both with the Jordan River and ultimately Port of Rockwell in Draper. Go ahead, sir.

Thank you. Well, thanks for having me tonight. I'm Chris Geddes with Design Workshop. Good to see many of you again. We were here. A year and a half ago or so for stationary planning. So the River to Range Trail is the idea of this is the purpose is to connect the city from the Port of Rockwell Trail to the Jordan River Parkway. Obviously we have some important infrastructural elements that have prevented that from happening to date. So this project really looks at what are the opportunities to do that. What is feasible? What are the core opportunities that we can connect to? And then importantly, how do we support future funding and implementation as opportunities arise? The project study area is basically from 123rd South to 146th South, and then Porter Rock Whale Trail to the Jordan River Parkway. You can see the outline in your map. It includes a lot of your core residential areas. It includes the emerging point development at Vista Station. So there's a lot going on. And the opportunity to really help connect the city east to west is something that's been really important to staff. So from a process standpoint, the first thing we did was we came and we actually walked on the ground, looked at opportunities, used aerial views just to identify what potential locations could be for a trail connection. We walked with city staff. We had the opportunity to go up and down the corridor, really primarily identifying what parks and areas and existing trails we could connect from, and then where were the real feasible opportunities to actually cross I-15 and the railroad tracks. From there, we went into a pretty detailed analysis about cost and benefit and the number of Draper residents that the potential trail connections could serve. And from that, we shortlisted it to four different opportunities, which I'll talk through here in just a minute. I want to point out that this does not designate a preferred trail connection. There are a lot of unknowns. There are a lot of heavy infrastructure projects that are planned in the future. There's the point development that is occurring as we speak. So what we wanted to do is provide options so that as opportunities for partnerships, opportunities for funding came up, you can respond to those in a way that makes sense for the city. So opportunities and constraints, really there are opportunities to connect to existing trail corridors really throughout both east and west Draper. So really thinking about where are those opportunities, specifically off street connections. What we try to do in this plan was avoid putting bikes next to vehicles. So in most cases here we do completely avoid those bike vehicle interfaces with a few exceptions. lots of coordination with regional partners, UDOT, UTA, WFRC is here today, POMSLA, which is the point development group, really trying to leverage the opportunity that is there, but also make sure that we're thinking about your existing residents and what makes sense for them from a kind of geographic standpoint. The Vista Station area plan was considered in here. You'll see that. And if you don't know, there is also an I-15 northbound study being done by UDOT today that is looking to expand the width of the highway north of Bangor through the study area. That's something to consider in the future. So we talked about I-15. We talked about the rail track. Spangler Highway is obviously a constraint. Topography, especially on the southeast side of the site, as you head up on the point itself and go to the Port of Rockwell Trail, can be a challenge. There's a big grid change there. And thinking about existing land uses and development patterns. So what we learned through the study, there are really limited crossing opportunities at I-15 in particular. Again, we went up and down the corridor to see what the opportunities could be. And we really landed on four, three and a half, if you will, real opportunities to cross the highway. and connect to existing trail systems. Again, existing infrastructure, important to really leverage that. We've looked a lot at drainage easements and city-owned properties to consider where trails might be appropriate. And then, excuse me, implementation's gonna be critical. This can be a phased approach, but it's obviously those big ticket pieces of crossing a highway or crossing the tracks that really require us to think long-term about how we implement the full trail system. So the shortlisted quarter options, again, 123 south on the north there, 146 on the south. We had six options to begin with. We really pared it down to three or four, which one is a 1A and 1B. So I'll go through each of those individually. Option 1, northern option A, which is 2.1, this crosses I-15 from the Corner Canyon Creek trail easement, watershed easement, and the Smithfields Park on the east side of the highway. It jumps over the highway with a new pedestrian bike bridge, basically just south of Ikea, and then connects again with the Corner Canyon Creek drainage way and connecting under the train tracks. to Vista Station Boulevard and to the Jordan River Parkway. This one is the most direct centrally located trail connection as we think about the geography of this city. It connects those established neighborhoods and Vista Station. Really good, strong rail connectivity here because it does have great access to the station there. Considerations here, I-15, again, that expansion, they're going to widen it. The plan is to widen it, so we have to really think about where that bridge lands and who's going to pay for it. It is an opportunity to potentially align funding with the UDOT project, so the city doesn't have to put the bill for that, but that's a conversation that needs to be had. Again, easement needs were along these drainage corridors, so the city would have to require some pedestrian access easements through there. The second one is very similar. It just actually takes the same Canyon Creek corridor, but shifts the pedestrian infrastructure slightly to the south, right up against Bangor Highway. This is, again, it has very similar strengths to the previous one. The biggest challenge here is it's the most complex project. In order to make this happen, you not only have to bridge over I-15, but you also have to tunnel under the two ramps on either side of I-15. So two tunnels, one ramp. Again, it catches Corner Creek Canyon and on over to Vista Station and the Jordan River Parkway. Again, this is the highest one that we found. The third corridor here is what we're calling the central corridor. This runs directly into the point development. The point has a riveter range open space that runs continuously through the site, basically along the alignment of the white line as you see there. So this connects Weeden Farm Regional Park to the point via the East Jordan Canal. This is the one area or the one of these options that doesn't require an overhead crossing of I-15 because there's an existing canal that goes under the highway. There's some complexity in how do you acquire property and depth to get a trail system to go under there, but again, it doesn't require the construction of grade separated bridge. We say timing is dependent on development phasing within the point. That's true. The point will pay for the trails within their property, so that's not on the city. But making sure that you're coordinated with POMSA to think about when that happens in the case that this is a preferred direction. Heading to the west in this case, this does connect across Bangor Highway with a new pedestrian bridge and then goes under the railroad tracks, which would then connect to the Jordan River Parkway on the far northwest there. So this, again, would require a new bridge over Bangor, but not one over I-15. And then the last one is actually what the Point has been subtly proposing. It's not necessarily in their plans, but this integrates with the Riveter Range vision from the Point project. It leverages, again, that development within the Point. The consideration here is that If the tracks land comes in, it could be built in association with the tracks corridor. So they'll be building, obviously, a bridge over the highway for that project. tie into that in this case. The toughest part of this one is, again, that grade difference from the Porter Rock Whale Trail down to the Furnage Road along I-15. It's about 80 to 100 feet in a pretty short distance, so that's a lot of switchbacking in order to make sure that you have a comfortable ride for users of all types. And so the comparisons here again, the northern to provide that direct and central regional connection with great access to transit. They do both require, you know, new pedestrian bridges, in some cases, some tunneling. But again, centrally located as we're thinking about where the existing population is today and the access between existing neighborhoods and and the station. It seems like a good, strong opportunity. The central integrates with the point. There's going to be a lot of energy obviously happening there, so getting people into this new mixed-use district may be a good opportunity. Again, whether you go under I-15 or over is up to you, but there are options there. I will say that it's important from city parks staff to make sure that the north-south connection over Bangor should probably be included in any future trail connection you try to make, because they're building, you know, a large system of trails within the point of the mountain that we should be able to connect to the Georgia River Parkway. And we can't really go directly west of The point, because that is a different city that we're talking about and some really challenging access issues there. So key takeaways. We've identified, you know, four different opportunities for corridor connections. We do not recommend a preferred alignment because we want this to be flexible as opportunities come up. phased implementation is important. And again, this plan provides a framework for future engineering grant applications, regional coordination, phased implementation. There are a number of things that could impact this. Utah's plans, excuse me, the point plans, the Utah Trail Network is providing funding for Trail Connections. So there really are opportunities to make this happen over time and in partnership with other jurisdictions. With that, I will stop the presentation and open it up for questions.

Any questions?

Is there a timeframe associated with this, like goals about when we would want this to be completed?

I would ask, maybe Rhett, do you have a response to that?

No, there's no timeline. No funding or anything. It was just a study to see what would be the best crossing opportunities to connect Draper over the freeway.

So on the funding, ultimately, who will be the revenue source for this?

I think it will likely be a number of different parties. The state, the city in some cases. The city will likely have to foot the bill for all the infrastructure that gets to a crossing of another property of I-15. of the tracks so at-grade facilities would would likely be funded by the city but i would assume that if you can couple this if you can couple a bridge project or an underpass project with a highway project with you know other with the utah trails network other other sources of funding that there is an opportunity to reduce the overall cost to the city on it

Because I'm imagining some of these as being very, very, very expensive.

We did price them out. The least expensive one is the first one that I presented, the one that lands over Ikea. That's about $7 million, all costs included. Seventy? Seven, seven. Seven. Seven million. The highest cost is the one just south of that that includes the two. The two tunnels and the bridge, and that's about 15 million, roughly around 15 million. The one that goes under the highway is again between 7 and 8 million. So that's the order of magnitude that we are looking at today.

And what percentage of this do you think the city would be responsible for?

I don't have that answer for you, but we do have a cost in the plan of what would be at grade improvements within the city open space drainage areas network. We can pull that out for you and get that answer to you.

Mr. Mayor, do you know if the point is planning to have funding for this project?

Yeah, I mean, the plan is this is all part of the point project, but nobody's really identified funding yet.

That's a lot of funding to be identified.

I have a question, though. With that funding, that first option that you're talking about, the one furthest north, are you saying is it feasible with the UDOT's project where they're going to be widening the freeway there, is it feasible that we could tie this in with that project and maybe get some funding with UDOT to do that bridge at the same time of the widening?

I would highly recommend that you negotiate with them to get that done.

Because that seems to me that'd be the best

timing to do that while they're widening it and are they widening the bridge yeah yeah and have we spoken with them about that possibility we have not but we agree with councilman Lowry that now would be the great time to get with UDOT and at least let them know of some desires and plans that we would like to do

Because here's what I envision. If that's $7 million and then the one by the point $7 million, but if you did the one at Bangor, it's like with the two tunnels, you're talking you could do both of those at the same price of just doing the one with the two tunnels. So ideally, it would almost be nice to have two accesses. Especially that far apart. I mean if you really think down the line you're gonna want more than one access I Think we really should find a way to see if we could get funding for that to get included with you dot on that I Don't know what the steps are mayor, but I work on it I'm going to a meeting tomorrow Do we know when that bridge is expected to be expanded I

It's not the bridge necessarily. It's the entire highway north-south. So they're going to expand into the frontage road area.

Right.

So it'll widen the width or the length of a future pedestrian bridge.

I think UDOT has started the property acquisition phase of that project.

So will they reconstruct the entire bridge? Yes.

Probably. We're talking about the Bangor cross. I don't think so. Jen, I don't know. Jen, if you have anything to add to this.

Excuse me. We've just seen a preliminary plan showing what properties UDOT is going to have to acquire for their project. We have not seen any actual design drawings. From my understanding, it will... So the collector road that runs from, what, 106 to 215 on Bangor, or on I-15, that will be expanded down. So it will go from Bangor all the way to 215. There will be that collector road to the side of I-15.

That's going to be big.

So I would imagine there's work that they have to do on the bridges themselves, but as far as redoing the entire bridge, I don't know.

Well, because the bridge would have to span a wider gap then, so I would think they would have to redo the bridge, right? Maybe. I'm not Scott.

I don't know. When I get to my point meeting, I'll get with them, figure out how we're looking at planning accesses now. These guys don't know what the points plan is, or neither does the point yet.

But my point is, with that widening project, now would be the time to do that. It would be a lot more cost-effective and efficient now.

I'll bring it up tomorrow. Any other questions? If not, thank you. Appreciate it. Next, we have our discussion on solid waste. John and Scott, who's doing it?

I've been voted to give a preview or a kind of a preliminary why we're here and what we're talking about. So as we went through the private street, change, we also began looking at what the costs are for us to provide solid waste services to the residents. As we began to look at that, we decided that it would be in our best interest to issue an RFP to see what qualified bidders might be out there and what their costs would be also to provide those services. So Scott and Robert and I have worked very diligently to try to say this is what our costs would look like. And then what happened was we got four qualified bidders and we went through those bids and determined who would be the best provider, which also happened to be the cheapest provider. And so what we're bringing to you today is information about what that change could look like. It's certainly your choice on which option you would like to do. So in the slide you see, current pricing is really where we are today. So currently, to have a garbage can and a recycle bin, so base is one of each, is $15. Now, if you had an extra garbage can, that cost is $10 additional for that extra can. So a total combined price, if you have both, so two garbage cans and one recycling can, of $25. Now, 60% of the residents are in that category. The others are in the They just have the base rate. So as you're looking at this, think 40% just have the $15 and 60% have the $25 cost. So we went through it. We said, what can the city do and what's our cost going to be to be able to provide this same service moving forward? As we looked at that, our costs are $25 for a base rate. So for one of each can. and then we would look to raise the additional can rate to $15. So in that instance, someone with a base can would be paying 25, just base cans would be paying $25, but with one additional can would be paying $40. The private contractor, who is the low bidder, came in with a base price. Their actual price is shown in the table below, and it's $9.22. Just so you're aware, we will still need to provide some services to be able to operate this. The disposal service does not do billing or some of those things. So in-house, we will continue to do the billing for the garbage. We're going to have one employee to be able to track the cans and different things like that. So there are some in-house costs that we will still bear. And so... As we looked at those that ups the rate from the 922 that they said for the base rate to the $19 shown in the green. So that's for a base. service again one can one recycling and one garbage can would be nineteen dollars and then they would be billing ten dollars and fifty cents while they're billing 922 with a slight uh additional rate for uh administrative costs raising that to ten dollars and fifty cents so that's kind of where we're at the difference again and the difference that we're showing here is what the rate would be if the city continues to provide the service versus with the private contractor so if we continue to provide the service we would raise our rate to 25 versus the 19 so that's the six dollar difference that you're seeing in the slide um and then with the the same with the additional can 15 versus the 10 50 so the 450 uh difference and the net together 40 versus the 29 50. so i think that's my piece of this as far as the dollars go um but If you have questions about that, feel free to ask me. And then Scott can kind of talk a little bit about ACE and the private, because ACE is the current, the private contractor that would be being used here.

So, questions? John, how do you figure the, I think it's $9.78 is the admin cost that we're figuring. Do we feel that that's going to be adequate to cover the admin cost?

The biggest piece that we are bearing is we are actually still going to cover the... Now I'm drawing a blank on tipping fees. I'm drawing a blank on what the fees were. So there's a tipping fee associated and the city is still going to be covering those tipping fees. Now that 978 difference, we've gone through the numbers and all of us believe that that 978 will keep us above broke. It's more than break even. Yes, it's more than break even.

And if we were to go with the new city pricing and just stay how we are, how does that new city pricing put us as far as being profitable?

What we tried to do is make those an even scale, and so that's what we did. So the price that you're seeing here provides an even scale for each of those scenarios, which provides us with enough to hopefully continue at the same rate for a couple of years so that we aren't going to have to raise rates again next year. I'm not going to make any promises, but we've looked at that and tried to say, okay, what would it look like? And then knowing that tipping fees are continuing to increase, how do we price that sufficient this year to carry us for a couple of years? And that's what we've tried to do and tried to make those two scenarios equal so that you can really have a clear picture of what we're looking at and comparing. Thank you.

Can you talk about some of the additional costs that are associated with us providing the service that are not part of the overhead costs, such as maintenance of the vehicles, those kinds of things, and how that will differ if we choose to go with the private contractor?

So we currently have, I think they said, 12 garbage trucks. And so if we continue to provide the service, we will continue to, you know, replenish our fleet and continue to provide that service. We have a mechanic who works almost entirely on fleet, on solid waste vehicles. So there are definitely costs that the city bears that we believe will go down if we move to a private provider. I'm trying to think what other ones we're talking about.

Well, the other big one is by the fact that we maintain the 12 or 13 vehicles that we have, when we build our new public works facility, which we need to do, if we stay with our own garbage service, we have to accommodate those 13 vehicles and their mechanic and the regular maintenance in that facility, which raises the cost of that facility pretty significantly. The main the main issue for us really is. We have to if we do it ourselves, we have to carry the whole thing. We have to have all the vehicles in a spare. We have to have all the drivers, everybody on staff ready to do it every day, whereas the private contractor might have a vehicle down. They have another one they can bring in from another. Neighboring contract or put a driver on you know that one gets sick.

They got another driver that can handle it They definitely see in economies of scale That allows them to have their costs be much lower.

I personally think getting rid of The storage and maintenance of the vehicles is going to be much more significant over time Then if we try to maintain our own system an idea of what kind of savings that will be roughly I don't think so. We don't really know for sure yet. We're going to get money for the trucks.

The price of a garbage truck itself is about $450,000.

But all that money can go into helping build the current new public works facility. I mean, over the years, look, I was on the council when we switched to doing it ourselves, so I'll take some ownership of it because I voted to do it. But in those days, the economy and the way it was, it worked out. We made money from doing it. We were ahead of the game, but... What's gotten to us is like everything else, the cost of these machines. They're high maintenance. They're difficult to, we don't buy them at bulk like a big operator can buy them at a much cheaper rate. We pay almost retail for them. They break down a lot. We have to keep the staff and drivers, and I think the costs have beaten us. We're out of the business. We aren't big enough to do it. at the same scale that ACE can do it at. ACE's vehicles are nice. They're new. They're well-maintained. They follow the law with respect to load out, right, Robert? They make sure they're not overweight. The other thing to keep in mind, too, is tipping fees are going to go up probably a buck every year for a while. Ultimately, there's six years left on the landfill. At the end of the landfill, they're going to build another transfer station on the west side, so tipping fees are going to go up to cover that facility, and then everything gets trucked south, 100-mile round trip. So garbage is going to get more expensive. We've been fortunate. We have not raised our garbage rates one time in the entire time we've done it. Probably to our own sugar end.

Yeah, but we've operated in the red the last couple of years too. All except for about last year, over 25.

Any other questions?

How do we pass or how do we handle liability? Does ACE then take on liability?

So ACE will be the service provider. So they will provide the insurance for the drivers and the trucks. So that will be passed off to them.

Okay. And what about any increases in gasoline prices?

So right now our rate is set for the current year, and then the contract, I believe, has escalators each year to be able to allow them to cover some of those anticipated increased costs. Most of those escalators, and I believe it's the same in this, are based on the consumer price index, so as the consumer price index rises.

Yeah, it's akin to the Consumer Price Index, but it's a specialized index that deals with these types of operations.

The only other question that I have, and maybe Scott will address this, but, you know, we have some valued staff that have been operating this equipment and things. What kind of assurance do we have that ACE will – Interview and they have the the need for these employees because I hopefully we could just make a transfer those employees

Yeah, I mean, unfortunately, we can't make any decisions for ACE. In fact, we haven't been able to even talk to them about that. I can say in 2023, we considered going out with an RFP for different reasons, not because we thought we were losing money, but because of the liability issues that we were seeing. What we ended up doing was we really – went to our division, the solid waste division, and we talked to all of the employees there and completely changed the culture successfully. The people that we have now are amazing, and they want to be there. It's really unfortunate that we can't get these numbers to better align. It's truly unfortunate, and it makes a difficult decision. But I just want to mention that because they have worked hard and their efforts have paid off. It's just that ACE has such a huge advantage in the economy of scale because They don't have to have as many drivers. We fill everything to a significant detail. When someone goes sick or if we're running thin, which we would have to do even to hit these numbers, we need to stay at eight employees instead of ten, which is where we've been. But we also don't have the private streets. So I think we're fine that way. every time you know if you get someone that's sick and another one that's on vacation or one or two and it just really we end up without options and we start having to pull from other divisions which in the past we've had to do we haven't had to do that for the for quite a while actually but it's really difficult but i can say that um i i've worked with these guys i've talked to them and This is really a difficult thing for them and for us. They've worked hard. So I can't remember what your question was specifically, but... Just about the existing employees.

Will they have opportunities to apply for working with ACE?

They will. There are opportunities out there. And ACE has expressed interest in our employees, partly because they know the area, they know the routes. Um, in the next session, we'll go over some of the history just to share a little bit with you. Uh, well, what, one of the things that ACE is going to do is they're going to keep all the routes and schedules the same if we go with them. So either way, that part's not changing, right? So the residents, uh, aren't going to know really much difference either way we go. We've provided a very good service. I mean, honestly, solid waste is probably one of our most complimented divisions in public works, which is really nice to have that. So difficult time. Yeah. Yeah.

It is. Thanks.

Well, it's important to note they've done such a good job for almost the entire time their service level has been able to, and such excellent work, that it's been a place where we've been able to do better. It's not their fault that everything, every vehicle, everything has gone up in price. I mean, they've certainly done the yeoman's work for us, and I hope that they will get opportunity there and can continue to work. But they've certainly done amazing work for us and are grateful for all the years of service because they did a good job for, it's been 10 years now at least, I think. About 16 years, yeah.

16 years, yeah. And the amazing thing, honestly, is we started out with these same numbers 16 years ago. Now, amazing isn't always amazing, because if we would have been raising the rates, maybe we would be in a different situation. But this is a hard pill to swallow, I know. And I know it's, I've sat down with these employees multiple times since we put out the RFP, and it's, You know, they want to stay. They truly love working for Draper, and it's an amazing place to work, and they recognize that. So just a shout-out to them. One of them is here. Joey.

Thank you.

We do appreciate them and we have lost a couple since the RFP went out and another one's retiring early. We're getting down there to where it's pretty thin in August. We have to keep this service going at least through the time if we transition at least to that long and if We don't transition and we have to have staff to continue. So this is an important step.

Any other questions for Scott?

We will go over more of the history in the next session just to get that on the record and any public that may show up. I think you all understand a lot of it. So we've had a lot of discussions in the past.

Well, all I can say is when we went to it ourselves, it made sense at the time, and it proved to be a well-run venture for up until the costs have gotten to us.

So, I mean, it's... And that really took us by surprise. If we would have known we were going to be in this situation, we certainly would have combined the RFPs at the same time last year. I mean, it's a pain to go through this, and we just didn't know until... Finance brought it to our attention. And even then, it's been a lot of number crunching. It's taken a lot to get us all on the same page to where this is leveled out and we're all comfortable with this pricing.

One other quick question on the dumpster rental service. Is that the fee that we'll be able to still provide for the residents to rent the dumpster? Or is that for just the city?

That's the fee that will be charged to the city. The city will still run the program, and that's the fee that would be charged to... to the city by ACE. So in order to capture what it actually costs to take that weight of that dumpster to the landfill, they would cover that cost and they would come pick it up and drop it off and all of that. But we would have to include another $30, $40 on top of that, which really is, it's more of the, average range, I would say, out there. Our costs are really, we're not covering our costs with the fees we're charging right now. And then the facilities really is just all of the city facilities, all our buildings, parks especially. So that's a monthly fee that we would be charged that's also rolled into all these other fees that you see. So we do feel comfortable with these numbers. That was one of the questions. We really have put a lot of work into this. It's been a grueling process, and we're finally at that comfort level, but even though it's not a comfortable decision for you to make.

Thank you, Scott. Next, don't leave. I think you're up again for CIP. Oh, no, Parks. No, Scott. Major Roads CIP is next.

All right. A lot of this is we've covered a lot of these projects, so I'm going to go fast on most of them, but there are a few things that we need to talk about. Zone 4 sidewalks were substantially complete on this. As you know, we had some hiccups with trees. And I think we have a really good solution, resolution to that that's worked tremendously, honestly, with this neighborhood that we had the issue with. There's other cities that are looking at what we did because they're fighting the same battles. So interestingly enough, the Timoney neighborhood, if I understand correctly, there was only two people that signed that agreement. liability form the rest of them we took their trees out and so even though they all wanted a half of them more than half wanted them and they came out in force when it came down to them taking the liability only two were willing to sign that form so i don't know 100 if those are accurate numbers but it's pretty close uh 700 1700 east storm drain that's basically done so The Bangor intersection improvements, this project is associated sort of with the development that's going to happen over here, but in advance of that. This is being done with the funds that we received from the state. It's the widening of 138th and the widening of Bangor with some turnpockets into this development. Estimated completion is in August of this year.

Have you had any feedback from UDOT yet on their portion?

I have not, and it's frustrating because they've committed to doing it multiple times. I've heard them commit, but there's... they've committed to me i i don't know if they've committed to you but they've committed to a lot of people uh they just haven't funded it and i don't know what what's going to get them to do that but we're probably going to have to get our lobbyists back involved in

So I met with our lobbyist, Greg Curtis, and Senator Colomore last week to help Senator Colomore understand the need for not only the project that would take a dedicated turn lane onto Bangor, but to also solve the problem westbound over the freeway, which is a disaster right now. Yeah. Yeah. And so Senator Colmore understood and Greg Curtis obviously understands and they're working with UDOT officials to impress upon them the importance of these projects to create a better traffic flow in this area. And I think Mayor Walker was meeting with UDOT too, so...

Isn't some of this the timing on the light, too? It is, without question. That has to get fixed. Like, it is so backed up.

Yeah. I think without having talked to you, you know, I travel through this intersection every day, and I think they're prioritizing moving eastbound traffic on Bangor because, as you're well aware, that backs up to 650 West, you know, during rush hour. So they prioritize the signalization of that intersection. two movements versus one movement westbound for every time the lights change.

But that's not working because it's backing up our side of Bangor to where it starts going up the hill now.

Exactly. And I made that really clear to Senator Colvin. He understands. It looks like there might be width for another lane already in place.

There is. It's not a difficult fix. They've known it for a long time. My discussions have been like, yeah, we're going to get started right on it, and then it just fizzles. And I've had several of those conversations.

I mean, even if we just started with the lights so it was equal, it would really help us out.

The problem is that you get backups on the I-15 from the on-ramp onto Bangor, so like northbound. So they prioritize those. So the key is getting the most volume through the short-duration light. By adding a lane, you... you get 50% more traffic through that same time width, and it really will help. It's necessary. They're going to do it. I'm sure of that. We just need some pressure to get the timing.

That needs to be just an urgent priority. I don't think I'm going to be able to get into this new development the way it's stacking right now.

See, Tasha, I misunderstood too on this. I thought that when we were looking at the rezoning of that, that the state had gotten some funding. Was that funding arranged for the project we're doing? I was thinking it included the UDOT, but that's totally separate. Yeah, it's separate.

In this area, if we don't get the overpass fixed.

I think it's just going to get worse. It's already, you know, what, a D or an F, and it's going to get worse if we don't get that overpassed.

It has to get fixed before that project opens.

And if it's not funded yet, I mean, that even delays it even more.

If it is, they haven't told us. And that doesn't mean that it's not funded. I just don't, I'm not aware of it. You're not aware of it. Because literally, the last conversations I had, it was like they were going to get it. It was a high priority. They were going to get on it and just have it.

But have we looked at what's going to happen when we open this lane and then everyone has to turn, you have to turn right on 150th because it doesn't go straight. So people are going to need to merge on Bangor that's already bumper to bumper.

So that lane is actually always going to be a right turn only. What will open up is this hatch lane right here. because and that will continue so you'll have three lanes that continue across 150 east and you'll have another turn lane that will in addition to those three that will be the on-ramp onto i-15 so the three lanes that go through here will continue and go all the way across i-15 and there is already the width on I-15, across I-15, and on the other side of I-15 for that lane. There's just a little bit more width that's needed here.

Okay, so this lane that we're creating will always be right turn only after 150th, so you can't go straight on that?

Correct, but you will have three lanes that do go through. Just having that alone will help eliminate some congestion, right?

Yeah, if we can get the choke point resolved across I-15.

But we're going to stripe it so that when this lane opens, there's only two lanes that are going across. Because there's not a third lane there.

So this is a temporary striping until that gets done. Our pump station, three upgrades. We're almost finished with that project. I believe there's a shutdown that is scheduled for next week, the week of July 13th. It's a one-day shutdown. So we will be noticing that. It's only... I say this... This is probably about the fourth time that we've scheduled this shutdown, so hopefully it'll go through. Hopefully we'll get all the parts in that we need, but we only want to do one, so we've put everything off, and this should be the final one to get it all done.

No, this is an emergency shutdown.

Oh, sorry.

We'll get us two more pumps, but then the final shutdown will be...

I was wrong. Okay. We have had a very difficult time getting the parts that we need, and I misunderstood earlier today. So what I just said, erase that part. This is only a one-day shutdown for this emergency situation to get the pumps in there, but we'll still have to have the other shutdown when the other parts come in, so. um so our pavement maintenance is going well they're actually getting pretty close to being done with the slurry seals and that's always very nice usually we're much later in the season when that happens and we've had a lot less complaints this year than than typical so that's been good i know there's still been some but Again, usually it just takes a few months and people then appreciate what we just did.

I know in my area, Scott, where it was done, it just happened yesterday and today. There are individuals that went right through the cones and have totally messed up the road. It's incredible. Some delivery people and landscapers. It's very frustrating.

We deal with this every year, and unfortunately, people ruin their cars. I mean, they do dangerous stuff sometimes. Yeah, and these aren't the residents. It's people that have come in to, yeah. All right, Pioneer Road 700 East to 1300 East. This is going to be our big project this year. And you may have heard a few things. We've worked with everyone. Everyone's satisfied with the parking situation except this person on the corner. They're not keeping as many parking spots as they wanted. But we can't provide more due to the site visibility issues and providing the access to their actual property here and to this lane. So it just kind of is what it is. We're actually squeezing in a couple here that's not shown on this drawing. We've squeezed in as much as we can, so just wanted to let you know that. The other ones we've already talked to, and they're pretty much resolved. A lot of these projects are just waiting for Draper Days to get over with, and then they'll start in earnest. 146, a Minuteman intersection. Again, this is one that's ready to start right after Draper Days. This will provide the dual upturns and hopefully be done by the end of September. 700 West Sidewalk. There may be some people coming to our next meeting. Complaining about the narrowing of the road and it's not really there's only one area where we narrowed the road and it's this area right here where we had significant utilities. And there's plenty of road width that we could just gently push the road to one side and then bring it back. So it's not really a narrowing of the road per se. We're just avoiding some very costly utilities and property acquisitions by pushing it down in that area. Otherwise, the curb and gutter is going to sit where the existing asphalt is right now. So the gutter pan is going to equal the asphalt that's there. It's really not narrowing. This is going to resolve a lot of the drainage issues that we have in this area as well as provide a continuous sidewalk along the west side of 700 West all the way from 123rd to 114th South. And the sidewalk gap project, we have two this year. The Manfield Way, we're going to have that finished. This is right by Draper Elementary. And it'll be finished before school starts. We're about ready to get started probably right after Draper days. And then Canyon Point Road, that's across the dam up in Hidden Canyon Estates. That'll be done this year as well. The parking lot expansion, this is here at Draper City Hall, and we're adding about 32 stalls and starting that in August. Suncrest detention pond, we're actually eliminating that pond, just taking the storm drain down. This will go to our regional pond and eliminate the need for that pond. And then Suncrest PRV replacements. This is part of our water infrastructure that's in critical need of repair because of a lot of things, actually. So this will replace two of the three. The third one will be replaced when we replace the water line in Suncrest Drive, which is Hopefully going to be done in the next few years. We've received a grant for that work from the EPA, so that'll get done. And then loan peak widening. This is not this year. This is next year. This is going to be a very big project and very much needed. If you recall, this is what the road does right now. It does this almost 90 degree turn and connects 123rd down to 12650. That's going to be widened and then straightened. The alignment will be straightened. And next year also, 700 East, 114 South, dual left turns. This is a project that we're doing with Sandy, Sandy City. So this will be next year. And... Fort Street, Pioneer, we were hoping to do this next year, but with all the property acquisitions that's going to be needed, it's probably going to be pushed out to summer of 2028. We're also, we've got some serious drainage issues that we've got to find detention areas for. And that's the end. Do you have any questions?

Any questions? Thank you, sir. We're at your next Parks CIP update.

Thank you, Mayor and Council. Just want to share with you an update on projects that Parks and Rec Department's been working on. This is usually trying to remind you on completed projects. We completed this one last month. It was pretty minor, but it's got rave reviews from the neighborhoods. If you're familiar, this is the Cranberry neighborhood. And we just put this nice trail connection, which allows all the neighbors that live in the area to access the Porter Rockwell Trail from the neighborhood without having to go all the way around or over to 114. So that's in, it's done, and being used. So current projects we have going on right now, obviously Jensen Farm Park. Phase three is basically completed. Some few minor things we're working on, but our biggest last step was I put a mural up on the big concrete wall, which looks really nice. We've got to do some safety things on the concrete wall, but that's about it. So we're planning on the 21st, which will be two weeks from tonight, to have not only the completion of Phase 3, but the grand opening of the whole park, Phase 1, Phase 2, and Phase 3. To me, it's awesome to think from... When we cold-called Randy Bowler and asked him if he'd sell us some property instead of put 200 homes to now we're finishing phase three, it's awesome to see government working. And this park's been very well received by all the neighbors around 7th West. They're very excited. So we'll have a good grand opening in two weeks, pictures and ribbon-cutting for you guys. And our staff's going to plan some games and activities for the neighborhood and stuff as well. That one is finished. This one we're really excited about. We have finished our RFP selection process. We have awarded the project to Lyndon Jones. We have our kickoff meeting with them coming up next week. So this will be a great project to eliminate the at-grade crossing here on at the bridge at Pioneer and Wayne's World. So you'll be able to access the trail the whole way over the UTA bridge without having to get off the trail. It'll be a paved trail all the way. We're also adding this new leg, which will allow good access from the east side. We're going to re-landscape this piece. So it's going to be a nice-looking project, and it'll really serve our city well to complete the trail. And that should be done here within a few months.

When's that one going to be done?

by the end of summer. Phoebe Brown, phase two, I've left it in here. We don't have a lot of movement about a month or so ago. We met in this room with a lot of the residents. I know our city attorney's had some correspondence back and forth with them or their attorney, but right now we're just waiting on direction, how or when to move forward. So there's not a lot of update on this one.

When you say direction from the city council,

Yeah, that's what I was going to ask. Yeah, is there any direction from us you're waiting on? Well, I think we're waiting to know how to proceed with the legalities.

So right now, just to give you an update, we did meet with the homeowners. And their biggest concern, their biggest stated concern is safety. And so just with regard to the safety issues, as I went through and looked at our stats, we've only had two claims in the past 10 years on a trail. So we had one involving a mountain bike and we had one involving trees doing damage to a fence. We did not pay out on the mountain bike accident. We did pay out on the tree fence damage. So the amount of damages that the city's paid just in the past 10 years for trails is about $5,000. So we know that from a safety perspective, We're actually not incurring a lot of risk. And so one of the things that we have discussed with the homeowners, and I think that they are currently discussing, contemplating, would just be if they would be willing to work with us if we agree to indemnify them to a certain degree on any... you know accidents that might happen on the city trail itself due to you know obviously the city's negligence and so they seem to be considering this I think at this point what we would need to know is are you ready to proceed with this particular section of the trail we do you know have that link still I think to make to combine the whole thing so we can work that out is what I believe so at least at this point

Councilmembers weigh in I thought we already kind of gave this we need to move forward.

Let's go on the trail Absolutely no, I agree.

Yeah, well that's four of the five Okay, there you go Okay This next one's a fairly simple project that we've done to this point mostly in-house if you remember we've got two parks side by side and inauguration park and Sunrise Park, but There was a big fence here with a bunch of Russian olives and junk trees and And we had a lot of safety issues with kids cutting to our fence multiple times a year to get to the nice park. So we've really greened up the grass, worked hard on the irrigation to get it looking nice. And you can see now that it's become one big park so that both neighborhoods, both inauguration and sunrise neighborhoods, have access to the park. So our next step is to... this one we've been doing mostly in-house. You won't see a lot more movement until summer kind of busyness gets down, but later fall, this winter, we'll be finishing that project, but it'll be great to combine that for both neighborhoods of that area of Draper. This one, we, this is, if you remember, this is our current bridge that we were looking at the other day. It's amazing how it's still holding on, but it needs to be replaced. The The channel just keeps getting wider and wider, so we have it under contract with Avid. There was a little bit of a problem this last week with their concrete footings. We first asked them if they wanted to use gabion baskets, and they wanted to use concrete, and then we needed to figure out how they're going to get it engineered and get that much concrete that high up, and they can't figure out that part quite yet. So we're working on the footings, but the bridge is ready to go. We'll have... have done late summer, early fall as well. And this one is about done within the end of the month. It should be done. It's basically an off-ramp off of Rattle and Hum, but it will eliminate a lot of the cross traffic on Eagle Crest, and it'll just provide an easy jump off over to Woods Hollow, and then you can continue on Eagle Crest. So it's just one that... Most of our staff have just done and it's gonna be a great addition to that side of the mountain over there This one we've discussed with you a few times. It's the new trail up by Red Rock climbing area this is one that we're gonna be starting on next week and our our in-house Parks and trails crew will be doing that ourselves Octoon baby is still yet to be scheduled it's going to be funded by corner canyon trails foundation they've agreed to do that but we haven't got a date on them so it'll probably be next year when that one's finished but it does need a good tune up as all the downhill bikes do at time and that was the end of our projects i've got a lot of that are in the early stages but i just kept the ones that we're working on right now but if there's any questions on those i'd be happy to answer them

I've heard from a couple of residents with concerns about wear and tear on the suspension bridge. How often do we have to replace some of those wooden slats going across?

This year is the first year we've had to replace any of those. We had a few wear out and fall off. We actually contacted Wadsworth to see if we could find out where we got those in 2015 to get some of the same treated lumber. It's not often, but we have had to this year, but we're... 11 years old now.

Yeah, and it's gotten a lot of use.

Oh, every day.

So is it now fully functional? Okay, great.

Okay, thank you.

Any other questions for Rhett? All right, thank you, Rhett. That takes us to council manager issues. Who wants to start?

I have nothing.

Anyone else have... Go ahead. I just have a couple things with the rodeo that we have this weekend, Friday and Saturday. Kelly and David have been amazing in what they've been doing preparing for this. So I appreciate all of their work on it. And Kelly, you can pipe in on any of this as far as the sponsorships and stuff if you want to talk about that real quickly and then...

The sponsorships keep coming in. We just received another, what, six grand, I think, in the last couple days. So we have reached over 100,000 for sponsorships. I think we're about 102, which we only had 88 last year. So those have been really well. Travis in business licensing has done a great job, and we've just reached out to people. uh rodeo sponsors we have some good ones um fred's done a great job too if you go by the arena it's it's really decorated for america 250 we have lots of uh the youth council coming in with a big flag we have horse riders carrying all the flags in it should be really patriotic get our new video board um i'll have the live feed with replay with it um one of the things i didn't see chief eining

here or with Clint, we do want to recognize our police and fire in that grand entry. So if either Chief Smith or whoever will be the top from the fire department, we want you to be available if you can be, and we'll do that with the police department too. And then, Rhett, can we just make sure that that gets power washed? This by Thursday? It's been done. Great. That's a key. Then one other thing I just wanted to ask with the council. We have an individual, Delane and Becky Hutchin, that have been a part of that, planning this rodeo since it started. His name is, he goes by Hutch. I think you guys have heard of him. Hutch is getting up. He's up in his 80s. His health isn't great. I'd really like to be able to recognize him while he knows he can be recognized. And I've thought about maybe if you want your approval, if we could have them maybe be named as like the Grand Marshals of the rodeo. And we could recognize them, have them come out and ride them or drive them around similar mare like you do with the Draper Royalty. If the council approves of that, I'd like to suggest that. I think that's awesome.

Sounds good to me.

Okay. Kelly and I can coordinate that with David. And that's all that I have with the rodeo.

Are you going to put him, like, in a monster truck, or what are you going to do?

Figure out what you want him to do.

Put him in a covered wagon?

Yeah. That's what we got to figure out. It might be two Dodge Tundras driving them and the royalty around, so we'll figure it out.

Mm-hmm. Well, thanks, Fred, for pitching in and upgrading a lot of cool stuff. That video board is going to be awesome.

The city staff has been amazing on it, so thank you.

All right. And, Bren, do you have a name?

No.

Mike, you said no. Tasha?

I am continuing to have concerns about the 8404000 phone number. It's just not functional. I get at least two to three messages from residents a week who've called it and are just on hold for half an hour with no response. I don't know what we're doing about that. It's an ongoing issue, but it has to be addressed. People are so frustrated with it. Can anyone speak to this?

I think Chief Ferguson is finding a microphone.

I can I can update you a little bit on that. I've talked with Ivan Whitaker over at Beck 911. They are so short staffed right now that there are times they just cannot answer that phone. He again reminded me that in an emergency, please encourage people to call 911, but they're just swamped and struggling to find dispatchers 911 dispatchers for the entire Valley. patching our channel, Draper PD with Murray PD, South Salt Lake PD, so that they have one dispatcher covering both cities at a time sometimes. And so we're doing what we can to work with them. During the daytime hours, we have taken our tree. Correct me if I'm wrong, Jake. You may know about this. And we are patching through numbers from that night into our records department. And they are answering those calls. But that's only during the day, Monday through Friday. 8 to 5.

I think it's still happening during the day. I don't know what to do about this. Can we have Draper, can we send these calls to Draper staff? Is that what you're saying is happening right now?

From 8 to 5 Monday through Friday, they're coming into the police records department.

And someone's for sure answering that phone?

Well, as they can, but yes, it's much better than VEC. I mean, there may be times when somebody's not available in records to answer the call, but we hope that it would remedy that.

Okay, but this is kind of not sustainable, right? Like, we're patching together a make it work right now. What is the long-term plan for the VEC number?

The long-term plan with VEC, they're implementing AI into their system. It's quite expensive. They're bringing it in. They've tested it out of Phoenix PD and some other larger metropolitan areas. They're hoping that that's going to offset up to about 100,000 calls per year that are coming in there that will free up dispatchers so they can come back to answering non-emergency calls. In the meantime, other chiefs that I've talked to are doing exactly what we're doing. They're patching them through into their office staff during the day.

Mr. Parker, is there any way we can temporarily put some staff onto this line that we're running into the city so that at least if they call here during the daylight hours, someone answers the phone?

Chief Ferguson, I can talk about that and come up with a plan.

did you want to say something yeah and i will check first thing in the morning and see how many calls we have been receiving but to my knowledge they have been going through monday through friday okay i i don't know if this is the right thing but i would wonder if it's possible to create our own number for that that we run as a city that we could message out until vec has us under control because people get really frustrated with us I mean, and it's not necessarily urgent stuff like the ducklings that fell down the storm drain, but we also don't really want residents driving to the fire stations to ask for help with problems. Like, I just think we need to be doing better by our Draper residents when it's such a simple thing to have someone answer the phone. Like, I do think maybe we need to just say to people, we know VEC is not able to meet the capacity of calls right now. If you need help during the daytime hours, don't call 840-4000. Call the city staff, and we'll get you to the correct department.

Yeah, we can look into that. I'll report back to you.

Anything else? Yeah, anything else?

Are we paying into VEC? Are we paying for this?

Through the nose to be paying for VEC. Oh, yes, we are paying. Through the nose would be inaccurate.

Okay, so we're paying for a non-functional service that hasn't been functioning for, I would say, six months at this point.

That's probably conservative.

Okay, so I really think this is a serious problem. I've brought it up multiple times. It's not getting any better. If anything, it's getting worse. At some point, can we pull out a VEC and staff our own phone lines? I think we have to find a different answer.

That ain't the answer.

We can't do that.

But we also can't not answer the telephone.

We're answering the 911 calls. That's what matters the most. I mean, look, it's definitely a problem, but you can't solve every problem. I mean, I don't know how you solve this problem.

I'm not sure that I have any perfect answers either, but I think we need to do something about it, or at least message back-to-back very firmly that they need to be hiring more staff.

Okay. Having run a dispatch center before, I assure you he's doing everything he can. It is a very difficult job to fill. They have a turnover rate. They have a failure rate in training alone of over 60%. It's a difficult job to train people to do. And when they do get them, it's shift work. A lot of them are single parents. They wash out a lot. It's very few dispatchers in the state of Utah that make it to retirement. So he's doing what he can. We're doing what we can to support him as chiefs, fire and police. And I'm very aware of this problem. I'll start working on it tomorrow and see if there's any other solutions that we can come up with for our citizens.

Okay. Do we have an idea of the volume of non-emergency calls that are made daily? I mean, do we have an idea how big it is?

I've got those stats in a report I can pull off my computer.

I would like to have a report. At the next study session, can we actually go over this and what the number of daily calls, where they actually, like are people calling the 8404000 number when they should be calling a different department? Like maybe we need to communicate with residents who you call for what.

I don't want to create a culture where we just call 911.

No, I really don't want to do that either.

That will overwhelm the system completely. It is something that I have talked in length with Mr. Whitaker about, the director of BEC, and other chiefs.

Yeah, I'd be really curious to know what those calls actually are.

I don't know if there's a way to track. number of calls that our citizens are putting in that are not being answered. The only way I could track are the ones that are being received.

Okay, but I want to know the ones that are being answered, are they all police calls? Like are they calling the right number?

That's a good question. I don't know the answer to. I can find out.

Because maybe we can redirect some of those calls with better communication.

Does anybody else have any other accounts? We have a few minutes. We'll take a break until we start at 7. All right, we'll get underway. Call our city council meeting to order. We're going to start like we do often with the Pledge of Allegiance. It will be offered this evening by Council Member Fred Lowry. Please rise. Thank you, Fred. Takes us to item number three on our agenda, which is an opportunity for general public comment. We have. We have three items on our agenda that are public hearings. Item 5A, 5B, and 5C. If you're here for one of those items, we ask that you wait to make your public comment when I call those items for public hearing. But if you have a general public comment and you would like to make one, we'll do those now. Is there anyone that would like to make a general public comment? Hold on a second. Let me give you our rules in case you're unfamiliar. To the right of me is a clock. It said at three minutes. Everybody gets three minutes. You don't have to take them all, but you can, but you don't get more than three minutes. So that's the way our rules work. Please give us your name and address when you start your comments. I'll start the timer. It's an opportunity to make comments, not a question and answer, period, with the council. So you can make a comment. We'll listen. We don't allow displays of signs or applause or any of those type of things in our public comments. So I'll take those in order that want to go. Sir, would you have to go first? Give us your name and address. Go ahead.

My name is Ken Davis. My address is 3379 East Daneborg Circle. Mayor Walker, council members, thank you for the courtesy of a few minutes this evening. I have the privilege of being here with my two children. My better three quarters is away on work, so I'm Mr. Dad. I live in Cottonwood Heights with my wife, Katie, and I am the Republican nominee for Salt Lake County District Attorney. Tonight, I'm here to listen. A short word on why I'm qualified to do that. I spent the last two decades leading teams in difficult environments. I did two deployments to Iraq, was an infantry officer, a Ranger tab, a Bronze Star, and came home to continue my public service. I came home, went to law school, I clerked for a federal judge, and went from there to the United States Department of Justice, and served most recently as a deputy district attorney here in Salt Lake County from 2017 to 2021, where I built the cybercrime unit from the ground up. Today, I lead cybersecurity and serve as corporal counsel for Woodbury Corporation, and I serve on two Utah Supreme Court advisory committees, including the Rules of Professional Conduct. I share that not as a resume, but to make a point. Leadership, as you all are the most acutely aware, is showing up where the work is being done and listening to the people who are doing it. That's what I'm trying to do tonight. Over the last few weeks, I've been visiting city councils from across the valley, from Harriman to West Jordan, Taylorsville, Sandy, to Knight Draper, because the district attorney is a county-wide office, and its work touches every one of those rooms. So... That's what I want to keep doing, regardless of whether or not I win in November. That's why I'm here tonight. The DA's office, like I said, is a countywide office. When your officers refer a case, the outcome and the impact land here in Draper. When a domestic violence victim calls 911, what happens next is partly on the district attorney's office. Drapers should not have to wait for a press conference to find out what's happening in one of its cases, to happening in an officer-involved shooting, the fentanyl and meth stolen cars moving up and down the Wasatch Corridor, or the 20% of offenders who are making up the majority of it. So I'd like to open a direct line. I'd like to sit down, meet with your chief, meet with any council member who'd ask. I'd be happy to attend a town hall if you're willing to have me. Answer any questions that you may have. Tell me what Draper needs from the next district attorney. I'll take it seriously. I'm an easy guy to find, and I welcome you all to do so. Mayor, council members, thank you for your time.

Thank you. Who would like to be next?

Mayor Walker and Draper City Council, thank you for allowing me to speak. My name is Kathleen Anderson. My address is 1923 Atkin Avenue in Salt Lake City. I'm here on a matter of just a personal point of privilege. My husband and I, we wanted to recognize and thank soon-to-be U.S. Army Major Mike Green for his service and his recent eight-month deployment. We wanted to say thank you. welcome back home, and to just present you with a couple gifts, if that's okay. So a hero for a hero, some candy, and then Rob's most prized possession, you're going to get a 787 American Airline trading card. So thank you, Mike.

Thank you so much, Kathleen and Rob.

I thank you. Go ahead, sir.

Hello, my name is Jim Stites. I'm at 13122 Vista Station, number 427. And I just want to briefly provide a semi-outsiders perspective on our water situation since I recently moved here earlier this year. I had lived in South Jordan during the late 90s and then up at Utah State in Logan into the early aughts. At that time, Utah was already notorious for having the second highest water consumption per capita in the country. Over the subsequent 20 years, I continued to pay attention to what's happening here, and I thought surely with all the grim news coming out of Utah and the apocalyptic headlines about the future of the Great Salt Lake, surely the good people of Utah would have come to their senses by now and would have come to appreciate the gravity of their situation. But when I got here, I was stunned. I continue to be stunned at what I see. We've still got green lawns everywhere. We've still got all these little bumpers and medians in the retail parking lots with delicate European flower beds, and half of that water goes straight onto the pavement. It makes me wonder, do we still not understand what's going on? Are we not taking this seriously? Do we not appreciate that we are in grave danger of handing our children in ecological wastelands, including the collapse of the Western bird migration as the brine shrimp and the brine flies die? Turning the Great Salt Lake Valley into a toxic dust cloud as all that lake bed gets lofted up into the atmosphere. The loss of what few wetlands remain along the Great Salt Lake. Do we just not get it? Are we not taking it seriously? I will sidebar this just briefly by saying because I don't understand how much of the water jurisdiction as an issue is under control of the city versus the regional water utility versus the state engineer, I'm not in a position to say you should do thus and so, pass this and that ordinance, but it is apparent to me that We still are under the grave misimpression that we have all the water in the world. We don't. I see no reason why we should be continuing to permit this uniform carpet of green bluegrass lawns just because we have this peculiar attachment to an outdated aesthetic that passed its expiration date a long time ago. There are some places that surely if grass is appropriate, the kids need their soccer field, fine. If the adults insist on playing golf, fine. I hope they're paying decently for it. But we're still acting like we just don't understand where we live. And I would hope you would take that perspective into consideration whenever you're setting water policy.

Thank you. All right. I have a card. I think it's Chris Hill. Is that right? Chris, I'm going to let you come up and give a general public comment. Come on up. We don't do comments on action items, but you wanted to talk. I'll give you a chance to make a public comment if you want. Go ahead and give us your name and address, if you would, sir.

Sure. Thank you, Mayor. Thank you, Council, and thank you, city officials. My name is Chris Hill. I live at 5183 North Luke Street in Eagle Mountain. Honestly, I'm here tonight because I bid on the recent RFP for the solid waste and recycling contract. And admittedly, a good choice, as I did my research. Ace is a great company, and I have nothing bad to say at all, but we're a new company. And what I've been challenged with consistently is, how's a new company to start a service when we're not considered for the service? So I would just hope that, you know, going forward, you consider the fact that there are a lot of really good companies. An example, in my case, Prior Military Veteran, 30 years in the solid waste industry with Republic and other companies. We're trying to start a new company here locally, and this is a great opportunity for us to have done that with a great city and an opportunity for us to partner with you and contribute to the community as well as to find a home here, build our facility, and run our routes out of here. So just a little disappointment on my part because I'm trying to bid contracts And I'm not being considered because we don't have the experience. I've got 30 years of experience, more experience than most of the leaders here in the industry. But I can't be considered because I don't have any routes. So I would just hope that in the future you consider that there's opportunities out there for people. And rather than just leave it to those that exist, the larger companies that have been here a long time, prime in case or case in point, Ace started with one truck, I'm sure. And at some point they grew to what they are. Great company, again. I have nothing bad to say, but I just hope in the future you'd offer opportunities for those like us to have an opportunity to bid and serve you as well. Thank you.

Thank you. Is there anybody else that can make a general public comment?

Oh, Tyler Ashby, 1116 East, 132nd South. For 20 years, I've been told the same thing by coworkers, bosses, mentors, investors. Tyler, you are going to catch more flies with honey than vinegar. My response is always the same. Flies are born in shit, and I'm here to disrupt. You wouldn't hire me if you didn't need me, and I wouldn't be here if the status quo was acceptable. I am a disruptor. It is what I do. It is my business. It is how I approach life. I actively look for truth and justice, and I am not afraid of the consequences, and I do not believe I am above the consequences. John Lewis said, get in trouble, good trouble, necessary trouble. You will see that when the truth comes out from 2021, I did everything quietly except spend $20,000 that I did not have. I have that money now. And then I got noisy. In my past attendance to the city council, I have stayed until the end of the meeting out of respect for the body and what you do. Have a good night.

General public comments. I'm going to move to item number four, which item number 4A, which is an opportunity for the council to approve consent items. Item 4A is approval of the June 2nd, 2026 and the June 9th, 2026 city council meeting minutes. Item 4B is approval of resolution 2634. It's a resolution of the Draper City Council acting as the governing body of the Traverse Ridge Special Service District, certifying a tax rate for the 2027 taxable year. Council members.

Mr. Mayor, I'd like to make a motion to approve the consent calendar.

Motion by Ms. Lowry to approve items 4A and B. Is there a second?

I'll second.

Second by Ms. Johnson. Any further discussion? Hearing none, Tasha, how do you vote? Yes. Brynn?

Yes.

Fred? Yes. Mike? Yes. Items approved unanimously, four to zero of council members present. That takes us to item number five. Item number 5A is a public hearing item. It is ordinance number 1726. It's an ordinance of the Draper City Council amending the text of titles 9 and 17 of the Draper City Municipal Code related to corner lots.

Exciting business.

And we'll have a staff report by Mr. Todd Taylor. Go ahead, sir. Thank you.

So these proposed Texas amendments are in response to unclear text related to corner lots and the setbacks for those lots. Specifically, this is for lots and parcels that are abutting a private road and which have no access to that private road. Previously, before we realized that the text was unclear, we were treating these lots as interior lots, but since we discovered that text was unclear, we have been determining them to be corner lots, which changed the setbacks. We've also proposed some other changes just to improve the clarity of that. So I just wanted to give an example. This is a parcel that's on 4th Street. You can see it here in about 2012 when it was in a little bit more rural setting with no development to the south. Then a development came into the south and they placed the Sainsbury Court just to the south of the parcel. This parcel does not have access to Sainsbury Court. It is owned by all of the lots within the subdivision and still gets its access off of Fort Street. More recently, that house was removed. And you can see here just that the Sainsbury-Simmons subdivision to the south. So again, this lot was previously identified as an interior lot. Currently, it would be treated as a corner lot. And this text amendment is meant to clarify the text so that we can, again, determine it to be an interior lot since it has no access to Sainsbury Court. So what we've done is gone into the definitions and added sort of an exemption for not counting that private road as a road for the purposes of determining what a corner lot is. We brought in new definition for public right-of-way or private street and public street. These were actually brought in from our subdivision code so that they'd all be in one place. We just made some modifications to clarify setback measurements. removed the unclear text, and then we are referencing the previous definitions in our subdivision ordinance to reference into our zoning code now. On June 25th, the Planning Commission heard this item and forwarded a positive recommendation with a vote of three to zero, and that concludes my presentation, and I'm available if you have any questions.

Questions for Todd? All right, no questions. Thank you, Todd. This is a public hearing, ordinance number 1726. Is there anyone from the public that would like to address the council on this item? All right, seeing no public comment, I'll close the public hearing and bring it back to the council.

Mr. Mayor?

Yes, sir.

I'll make a motion that we adopt Ordinance 1726, amending the text of Title IX and 17 of the Draper Code related to corner lots.

I have a motion by Mr. Green to adopt Ordinance 1726. Is there a second?

I'll second.

I'll second by Ms. Lowry. Any further discussion? Mike, how do you vote? Yes. Natasha? Yes. Brynn? Yes. Fred? Yes. Items approved, four to zero of council members present. Item 5B is next. It is a public hearing as well as Ordinance Number 1727. It's an ordinance of Draper City adopting text amendments to Section 9-31-040, of Draper City Municipal Code regarding standards for the creation of detached accessory dwelling units. We'll have the staff report by our own Mr. Todd Draper. Go ahead, sir.

All right, thank you. So to start out, this is not a city-initiated text amendment. This came from a resident. We did, as staff, work with them a little bit on some of the language, but this is being proposed by them. So this proposal is essentially to take existing accessory buildings and allow them to be converted into detached accessory dwelling units, or DADUs. If this were approved, it would allow for that as long as that accessory building or structure complies with the setbacks for an accessory building or structure already in the ordinance. This would also require them to meet the height of that accessory structure building for the ordinance, so that is lower than what would be currently allowed for a new detached ADU that was complying with the setbacks for the main home. So with that, this is just kind of the text. Staff did put this together in our typical format with blue being the added language, red being the language taken out, and then what is in black is remaining. Essentially, they create two different categories, one for new ones being built and then one for existing structures. At staff's recommendation, they did add in those structures that existed prior to the enactment of our last change to the accessory dwelling unit standards. And then most of these are the same with, again, like I mentioned, the two different options for compliance with setbacks and height, either meeting those for any other main building in the zoning district or for those meeting the accessory building setbacks. What this will typically be is a 10-foot setback from a property line and up to 25 feet in height to the peak for existing accessory buildings. There is a very low likelihood but small possibility that that could include accessory buildings under 200 square feet, which could be as close as up to the property line. Unlikely, but it could be a possibility. The other changes to the text here really just to make it clear that they can be located in any yard that isn't the front yard. And then this last piece here is actually just the height but it's been incorporated into that earlier piece right there. And apparently my Edits to this slide didn't take as well. It was actually at the June 11th meeting that the Planning Commission did forward a positive recommendation, but that was on a 50 vote not a 30 And if there any other questions, I'd be happy to help answer Go ahead

So we talked about the the setbacks of either over 200 feet or under 200 feet are there only really the the two options that one would be At least 10 feet from you know the the neighboring property or it could be on the property line

Yeah, those are the two options for accessory buildings in our ordinance right now, under 200 square feet. There is an additional piece of that. When I say it could be at the property line, it still has to be 10 feet away from a building or dwelling on a neighboring property. So there is still, if you will, a fire separation. But if there was nothing on that other side of the property line, they could be as close as up to the property line area. But it's very unlikely that someone is going to be able to take a shed or other outbuilding that's under 200 square feet and convert it into an ADU that's a very limited amount of area.

I'll also add to that. Sorry.

Yeah, generally.

I'll also add to that. With those size standards for detached structures, there's also difference in height. So a structure that's under 200 square feet, yes, it can go to the property line, but they're actually limited to 12 feet in height to the peak of the roof, where a structure that's over 200 square feet, they have that 10-foot setback. but they also have additional height from that 12 feet. So they are a little bit larger structures then. So the under 200 square feet is really designed to be a shed structure. So it would be difficult to convert those because of the small area, but also the low ceiling height.

And the current DADU setback is 20 feet. Is that right?

For a rear yard. And then the side yard setback would be based on what zone it goes into. And that could be 10 if it was like an R4, but where most of our residential is kind of in that RA2, RA1 kind of zone, that's going to be a 12-foot setback. The idea being... If you build it to the main building setbacks, it's going to be in the same area you could build a house, part of a house, or expand a house into. And then the height was the same up to the 35 feet, same as a house could be built.

So then what this is doing with this text amendment means that we would then have a variance from what our existing...

ordinance is if someone was to build an exterior adu right now they couldn't build it on a property line they'd have to meet those setbacks yes yeah this would be only for existing outbuildings not somebody couldn't build an outbuilding now and then convert that into to one of these after that maybe only for those buildings existed prior to that date

I have some concern around that because I feel like we deliberately set those setbacks to be what they were for ADUs. And these buildings were not originally intended to be used as housing. And now we're switching their use and changing the setback. And that also brings me to the concern of the surrounding neighbors, would this change be made, would have no opportunity to express dissent with potentially new housing going right up to their fence line because they would be granted this same right as any other. I have a policy concern with this because I feel like we're being asked to change citywide policy for one specific interest.

And that may be a question for the applicant. But they can probably explain better their reasoning for submitting this, but it is allowed in our code that they can propose that amendment to the code, and that's what we've brought here.

Can you clarify?

Yes.

Go ahead.

No, clarify.

Can you clarify if this was, I haven't seen a citizen-initiated text amendment. Did they have the assistance of private legal counsel when they applied for this, or is this something that they brought on their own?

To my knowledge, this is something they brought on their own, but they could better answer than I could if they had any other additional assistance.

But at least, like, in your involvement with them, they have not been represented? Not to my knowledge. Okay, thanks.

I guess my question is, I'm wondering, is why would we allow... existing exterior buildings to have a different setback than what we have established for these exterior adus it would seem we would need we should apply the same standard for new construction and existing ones yeah with this they would still have to comply with building code

for that residential structure just the same. So there may be some additional things that would need to be done. Again, There are other cities that have provisions that allow for some conversion, and I know that the applicants presented some evidence to that effect as well, but that is not something when, as staff, we looked at the ordinance the last time that we took that into account or looked to create this kind of a process. So, again, we're just bringing it to the council for consideration.

I mean, is there another... means that this could be addressed rather than doing a citywide text amendment?

I don't know that there is. I mean, this is a specific instance for this applicant where the building that they have that they would like to convert does not comply with that setback. And so this was what they brought forward as their proposal to remedy that.

And while this might work in that one instance and not pose a problem for their surrounding environment, my concern is that they're asking us to adopt a citywide policy which might pose problems in other areas with other neighbors. Is there any other option in which they could just singularly address this concern, perhaps through a development agreement or something that would only be specific to their one property?

You know, I don't know if I can really answer the development agreement question because that probably depends a little bit on our legal counsel as to whether there would be consideration for the city in that instance.

That would be a concern, certainly.

So I will add, it's Jen again, I will add the applicant did apply for a variance and they were unsuccessful in that application. They could not meet the standards set by the state for a variance on the setback for their proposed ADU. So they did try another avenue unsuccessfully. So they are trying a text amendment. And that's what we've brought before you. We have not discussed a development agreement with them. I think it does come down to what the consideration for the city would be in that instance.

Who reviewed that variance?

So variances go to our appeals and variance officer. So it's a third party attorney that the city contracts with to hear all appeals and variances. And standards for variances are set by the state. And it's essentially, there's like five standards, but essentially it's based on a physical hardship with the property.

But it's just one judge that makes that determination?

Correct, yeah. And it's an ALJ process and the city does have council that represents its interest in that process as well.

Any other questions for Mr. Draper? How's the applicant here? You're welcome to address the council if you want now. You could wait till after public comment and you can have the last word. So come on up, give us your name and address.

I'm Ellen Rohrer. Thanks Mr. Mayor, Council, Planning Commission. That's my husband Bob Rohrer, my son Max Rohrer. Our address is 763 West 11560 South Draper. And the reason why we went this route is because, perhaps not unique to Draper, but unusual in the Salt Lake Valley, is not having a concession for an existing building. a detached ADUC, which would be a conversion of an existing building. And so our approach was, we're not going to be the only people in this situation. And a variance was an approach, but as we looked into it, we thought, well, what is happening in the state of Utah, which has made a very public approach to we want ADUs, we want to have people age in place, that is our intention for our home, but the broader picture is what is available to all of the outbuildings, accessory buildings, barns, shops that would make appropriate living approaches and keeping in mind that there's still a permitting process. It's not going to be a shed turned into a house. It will also comply with the rest of the building code that's been established in Draper. So our approach is that it would be time to address this given the goals and the initiatives of Draper City, as well as Utah, to make some concession for a detached ADU that is all ready to convert an existing building. Because our option would be to tear down a perfectly good building. And ours isn't the only family that would be concerned here. So that's why we decided to take this route with a text amendment. So there are still the rest of the rules are in place in terms of what the building has to meet in terms of code and permitting. It's just an appropriate building that it seems wasteful and against the policy of Draper to have to redo a building that is in code based on its accessory status, but wouldn't be if it's now an ADU. Does that make sense?

but I think we need to bear in mind that it's in code for its use as a garage, not as housing. Right. And you're trying to change the use of the building.

Yes.

And in your case, you may not have a backyard neighbor that's going to be upset by this, but I think there are other cases where this garage or shed may abut directly to the property line, and all of a sudden, your behind neighbor suddenly has another, basically another house right on the property line.

That property right on the property line only exists, that only functions, as I understand it, with a 200-square-foot building, which is not appropriate for an ADU.

But the problem is this is a citywide policy, so you're changing it universally. It's not going to be that we're looking at each case in point, right? Understood. And I cannot say that this is going to work.

Right. It may not, but it also... will be an issue for existing buildings on Draper properties moving forward. And so the other neighborhoods, the other cities, have put something in place that is just like we're proposing. It's not like this is new or clever. It's where we got the idea.

Wait, so Todd, are you saying then any structure that's over 200 square feet has to meet the proper setbacks?

Any structure has to meet the setbacks. There's just a difference for accessory structures when they're over 200 square feet or under 200 square feet.

Yeah, so if they're over 200 square feet, what's the setback for that accessory? It would be 10 feet from the property lines.

instead of the traditional 20 feet? It would depend on the property line specifically. The side yard setback would be different than the rear yard setback. The rear yard would be 20 side yards for most of our residential zones are either 12 or 10. We do have a few of the smaller zones with eight. And then, of course, our multifamily gets down into the 6 feet and 5 feet range.

So anything over the 200 feet of an accessory building would be 10 feet that would be grandfathered in this? Yeah, anything that met that.

Any further questions for the applicant right now? All right, thank you. We'll give you the last word as part of it. This is the public hearing. Is there anyone from the public that would like to address the council on ordinance number 1727? All right, seeing no public comment, I'll close the public hearing and bring it back to the council.

Mr. Mayor, I'd like to move to deny ordinance 1727. I understand what you're asking for, but my concern is the universal application of this and the fact that we had no recourse to other residents and their neighbors. There would be no public hearing moving forward. They would just be approved. We would not be looking at them as an individual situation.

All right, there's a motion to deny ordinance number 1727. Is there a second? I'll second. All right, we have a second by Ms. Johnson. Is there further discussion, council members, on this item?

I would also like to just explore if there are other ways to do this on a more individual basis because I agree with Tasha that it may work in certain situations but not in others. And so that's what my concern is for this overall change.

I would agree with you. That's my concern too because I can see what their need is. and where it's reasonable, but we have to be careful of what the unintended consequence could happen if we do this text amendment.

I share in the same concerns. This is a law of general applicability, and I don't think it's narrowly tailored to the specific problem we're trying to resolve.

All right, any further discussion amongst the council? All right. Seeing none, Josh, how do you vote?

Yes. Bren? Yes.

Mike? Yes.

Fred?

Yes. All right, the item is denied by a vote of four to zero, council members present. Next item on the agenda is item number 5C. It's a public hearing as well, and it's ordinance 1728, 1729, and 1730. Ordinances of Draper City amending the official land use map of Draper City, the official zoning map of Draper City, and approving a development agreement of approximately 1.95 acres located at approximately 762 west, 123 hundred south, known as the Kuahara Nursery Land Use Map and Zoning Map Amendments and the Kuahara Nursery Development Agreement. We'll have a staff report with Mr. Todd Draper. Go ahead, sir.

All right. Thank you. This, as you mentioned, is the Kuahara Nursery Development located here from the vicinity map. on 123rd south kind of as you're headed out towards uh riverton uh the site is the nursery uh portion of uh kuahara uh not there thriller park and whatnot that is is back this direction this is the aerial map where you'll see the greenhouses The land use is currently commercial office and service, and it is zone CO1, which is professional office. The application before you tonight, or applications, are to change this to a residential multifamily, the RM2 zone, and then the land use map. Also to that high density residential similar to what you'll see here to the east so both of those the development agreement is for a site plan that would divide this in a little bit different fashion than down to individual lots of lot and yard this would be individual lots that just have the pad or the footprint of the home on them they are proposed to do 21 so the development agreement contemplates this will be one more than what we typically allow on on kind of single access there with all those and a private street so it goes to 21 instead of 20. whoops these are elevation drawings that were submitted The development agreement does not indicate that they would do this exact design, but this is an example of a design that could be done. As far as the zone comparison is concerned, just kind of the different uses here, there's just a limited selection of what's kind of allowed there now. If we had schools, churches, banks, bars, convenience store, funeral home office, preschool, or recycling collection station, the proposed zone would have four single family dwellings as they're proposing the 4,000 square foot minimum lot size. with allowed uses being things like agricultural, school, single-family, two-family, multi-family dwellings, cemeteries, or commercial uses would only be in historic buildings, which isn't the case here. One thing to note, the density that they're proposing is within the allowable density of the RM2. However, with the RM2, we do have that 4,000 square foot minimum lot size. They are looking for Reduction where these footprints would be only about 800 square feet apiece The net area after you take out the roads essentially create with the 21 lots The balance is about two thousand nine hundred fifty square feet per per lot so it is looking for a little bit of a reduction or an increased density of single-family homes Benefits of the city listed in the development agreement, the right-of-way dedication and owner occupancy requirement that they're willing to do of up to 70% of the units that they would do through their private CC&Rs. Again, some of these benefits to the developer would be looking at the land use and zoning changes, that gross density, the building pad layout for the lots, that reduced lot size, and the reduced setbacks. There are minor reduced setbacks, mostly to the rear of the buildings. Sides and front would mirror what we would typically require. They are asking for a modified private road cross section. They're looking to reduce the parking stall width within the garages where those pads are only 20 feet wide. The interior of the garage will only be about 18 and a half feet wide and wouldn't comply with our ordinance that requires the interior to be 20 feet wide. And then they would be, like I mentioned earlier, allowed to develop the one additional unit. Um, city staff didn't identify some concerns with this, uh, mainly with that, uh, the fact that the dedication of the right-of-way is a standard regardless, uh, of whether they did a development agreement or not. Uh, there are some concerns about the number of single-family home, single-family units proposed versus what would typically be allowed in the RM2. And then there was some concerns with legal that this agreement may not have adequate consideration, which could render the agreement void. The Planning Commission did hear this at their June 25th meeting, and they did forward positive recommendations on all three applications to the City Council on unanimous 3-0 votes. And then just a few site photos. This is looking northward into the property from the... southwest corner, a little bit closer up of kind of the shop and some of the buildings in there, and the greenhouse is a nursery. You can see the other multifamily development to the east. And then this is just looking again to the east, up 123rd, and then again to the west there. And then just another photo from the southeast corner looking towards the north there. And if there are any other questions, I'd be happy to answer them. I did forward the public comment that was received today.

Questions for Mr. Draper?

Can you go back to the request about the right of way? The access for this?

This one or?

No, you can go back to that. You can go back to the map.

This one?

Yeah, or the design. Just showing how with the development agreement, what's the, these would be, there would be two access points?

There would be a single access point here from 123rd in. This is a UDOT road, so we don't entirely know what UDOT will require as far as design of that access. Right now, currently, you can turn left out of there into the center turn lane in that location, and even down to this location, so that may still be a possibility. They would have to look at that for visibility.

And then from an access standpoint for emergency vehicles, You've got one means of aggress in here. And with these modified road widths.

Well, I can answer a little bit on the road width. They would still be within our code as far as the road width. What they're looking to do is actually modify and not put sidewalks on all of them. where we would typically require that here, but they do have a community walk trail along the perimeter, and there would be a little bit of a difference here. They would provide some additional guest parking, so that is technically a modification from our standard.

What about for emergency access?

I would think that Fire Marshal Buckley's probably reviewed this already, correct?

Yeah.

And has his stamp of approval?

I don't think he raised any concerns at this level with it. It looks to meet most of what we're looking for as far as access.

Can you speak to the current zone?

Current zone is professional office, so the current use doesn't conform to that per se. I don't know if Jennifer has any more historical background on that, but I do not.

I don't. The farm's been there a long time. That's what I know. So my guess is the nursery itself predates the zoning that's currently on the property, but the current zoning would allow, it's designed more for office type uses.

So I just made a list of some of the variances that they're asking for. Reduce lot size, reduce setbacks, reduce interior parking dimensions, no sidewalks. Those seem to be fairly significant asks, in my opinion.

I, too, share that concern about the number of requests for deviations.

I will mention it doesn't have no sidewalks. They are proposing this main walk through the development and then connecting ones from the community trail.

Can you speak to those driveway lengths?

Driveway lengths don't look like they're developmentally standard as well. They look like they do not have full length driveways either.

The driveways they have indicated would be the 20 foot. So the driveways would match. There is no entry on this side. They are calling this the front, even though it's the driveway. And then the rear is where the front door would be out towards these community trails. So as you just go to the elevation, you'll see it would just be garage on the one side and then the entry door would be on the other side.

Looks like a parking nightmare for guests.

Any other questions for Mr. Draper? Is the applicant here?

I believe they are.

I'd like to address the council. Come on up. Give us your name and address.

Good evening, Council. My name is Austin Richards, and I work with Alpine Homes as the applicant here. We're located at 11814.

Pull that mic down a little bit to your face. Thank you.

Is that better? It's located at 11814 South Election Road. Just a little bit of context on this property and really what we're trying to accomplish with it. We're trying to create a little bit more of an entry-level home, something that's more attainable in Draper, which is obviously a challenge, and doing it. And we're trying to use the development agreement as kind of a way to provide the guidelines that we can move this forward, and trying to thoughtfully create what that home would look like and how they would walk and move and go around the subdivision. With no sidewalks? Right, with the sidewalks and the guest parking located more centrally in the community.

But getting there, there's no sidewalk to get there. So that doesn't seem contrary to your statement.

Along the perimeter of the community. I mean, it's along the perimeter and through the center. So still trying to get people to be able to get in and out of the homes. In addition to that... You know we felt like you know this proposal would also allow some kind of a reduction in Scale versus what the existing RMT zoning was on the other side and create kind of a single-family transition Between the multi-family, but then create you know for sale single-family homes You know in between that and the existing communities on the other side, so That's what we were trying to go for

know we've we've built a similar type of product like this in other cities and i feel like this could be a great fit so i'm happy to take any any further questions my primary question is generally speaking when a land use decision is made the current zoning is presumed correct so i need to know what fact geographic limitation or situation requires and says the current existing zone is not correct and why I should overcome that presumption?

Sure. I mean, I think it was someone pointed out just previously that the current use isn't in full conformance with the exact zone that it has, which is...

The current use was not the question, sir. I asked you why is the current use... not correct for development, not its current entitlement, not its current non-commercial use.

I think it's, we feel like the separation from existing commercial properties is the biggest driver for us. The other commercial properties are located up the hill and around the corner. In our meetings with UDOT thus far, they're requiring that median to be extended all the way through us. There is no access to any commercial properties on the other side of the road. So this would be its own island of future uses like schools and daycares or whatever else, where what we felt like is we would kind of complete the residential portion of this part of the city.

Anybody else have any questions for the applicant? All right, thank you, sir. We'll give you the last word after a public comment if needed. This is a public hearing. It's ordinance number 1728, 1729, and 1730. Is there anyone here that would like to address the council on this item? You all must just be bored wanting to sit in a city council meeting. All right. I don't see any public comment on these items, so I'll close the public hearing and bring us back to the council.

One of the concerns I have is that the staff wanted to see the expansion of the garage so that it met our standard of 20 feet. And I think that's a real concern that I have, not just for this project, but for other projects that have come forward. When we've granted a variance for that, for driveway lanes or garages, it's been a property that's close to transit, so like our station area plans. But this doesn't, to me, seem like it's going to be a... property that's going to be able to utilize public transportation. And so I think having adequate parking is really important. So that's a big concern that I have for this proposed development.

Yeah, I understand the sidewalk concept because it appears the sidewalks are going around to walk around where the front doors are of all of the townhomes. So I get that concept of the sidewalks. I'm concerned about the density of this. The reason why there isn't enough parking is because it's so dense. And then, I mean, we would even agree to one additional unit than what we would even allow in this zone. I'm hesitant to zone away from a commercial zone also.

And we also have questionable access. This is already a really difficult traffic area. We have cars going very quickly, and then you're talking about adding a considerable number of vehicles.

That's all the more why I think the density of it is too much for me.

I agree, and I really question if this is the appropriate use for the parcel.

Yeah, I don't see a reason to deviate from the existing entitlement.

Is there a motion?

Mr. Mayor, I'd like to make a motion to deny ordinances 1728, 1729, and 1730.

All right, we have a motion by Ms. Lowry to deny ordinances 1728, 29, and 30. Is there a second?

I'll second.

Second by Ms. Johnson. Any further discussion? All right, Ms. Lowry, how do you vote?

Yes.

Ms. Johnson? Yes. Mr. Green? Yes. Mr. Lowry? Yes. Item is denied by motion of 4-0, by vote of 4-0, by council members present. That takes us to item number 5D. It's the last item on our agenda. It's an action item. It's resolution number 2635. It's a resolution approving an agreement with Ace Recycling and Disposal, Inc. for residential solid waste and recyclable material collection services on public streets in Draper City. Mr. Cooley is up. Go ahead, sir.

Thank you, Mayor and Council. I wanted to just kind of let you know why we're approaching this in this manner. Normally this would be a longer drawn-out process, but due to the sensitive nature of deciding the fate of a whole division within Public Works and the employees therein, we needed to take care of this one way or the other the same night that we presented it to you earlier in the study session. So before I just kind of recap our discussion earlier, I've asked Robert Markle to just give a brief history of the solid waste division, why, you know, where it's come from and why we're here tonight. So if you could do that.

Thank you. So in 2009, 2010, The city decided that they were being overcharged by private contractors and decided to look at providing that service in house. And so we started, I think, roughly in 2010. At that time, we set the rate to $15 per month for the base service of garbage and recycling. So over the next 10 years plus, we operated under a skeleton crew. This led to some safety concerns, some risk liability issues for the city. With that smaller crew, the division at times was underperforming, had frequent accidents. Over some of those years, we had disgruntled and unsafe drivers, chronic understaffing, poor management practices, compliance issues. And we made a real effort in maybe about three or four years ago to try to change that culture. In doing so, we improved the safety and our compliance issues, but that required hiring and retaining better drivers. As a result, they come with higher wages. Compliance with the standards and combined with safer operations has also increased the workload for our fleet division. keeping these trucks safe. They're super heavy on maintenance. They're used more than any other piece of equipment in the city. It's 40-plus hours a week. There's a lot of ins and outs on these machines, so it takes a lot of mechanic time to keep them running. Like I said, we had the same rate for 16 years. As you guys are all aware, in those 16 years, tipping fees have gone up, equipment has gone up, wages have gone up. maintenance and fuel prices have increased. So that kind of leads us to where we are today where with these rates we are not able to break even. So that's why we've gotten to this point where we're exploring other options.

So to recap, our current pricing for the base rate, which is one can of solid waste, your typical trash, and one additional or one can of recycling is fifteen dollars and has been for the past sixteen years in order for the city to continue providing this service we would have to charge twenty five dollars for that base rate currently the additional can rate is ten dollars we would have to charge fifteen dollars the cumulative combined price for the current pricing is twenty five versus 40. When we saw these numbers, we decided that we needed to see if there's other options, even though the city 16 years ago decided to go away from private contracting Before we brought this to the council to make that decision to do that, we wanted to see if there were better options. So we did put out a request for proposals. We did get some responses and we analyzed those and the lowest, the highest rated Bidder was also the lowest priced bidder. Their price, and that was Ace Recycling and Disposal, and their price, their prices are shown here below, which is the $9.22 for the base service, $9.22 for an additional mixed cart, and $9.22 for an additional recycling cart per month. With our overhead so when we talk about overhead Draper City will still be maintaining this program always Contracting out would be for the pickup and delivery of the material Draper City will still pay the tipping fees for the material which comes out to about seven hundred thousand dollars a year, so it's a significant fee and and as well as we maintain the carts we provide the carts and we do the billing so it's really the whole operation in coordination with the private contractor so those prices with the overhead included would be would go from 15 to 19 which is six dollars less than if if we provided that service in-house. The additional can rate would go from $10 to $10.50, which is the difference of $4.50 compared to what we would have to charge. That difference, the combined price, would be $29.50 versus $25 for what we do currently. That 1050 is the difference between what we would have to charge and what the private contractor we would charge under that contract. So in a nutshell, that's really what we're looking at here. But. The choice before you is to basically continue with the service that we are currently providing. Either way we'll have to come back with a change to our consolidated fee schedule to accept these new prices, whether it's the city pricing or the private contractor pricing. But we need to keep our services going, at least indefinitely or until the new contractor takes over the collection services. So the resolution... STATES THAT WE PROVIDE THESE MATERIALS. WE'VE EVALUATED EVERYTHING INCLUDING WHETHER IN-HOUSE WOULD BE THE BEST OPTION. WE RECOGNIZE THERE'S A SIGNIFICANT INCREASE IN THE FEE. WE'VE ISSUED THE RFP ACCORDING TO THE LAWS. We've determined that there is a qualified third party provider that would significantly reduce the necessary fee increase for the same collection services. If you go this route, you're deciding that the council finds that this qualified third party will reduce the city's liability exposure demonstrated and it's a prudent use of the public funds. And Draper cities evaluated the proposals which we've already gone through this process according to that we've determined that the highest ranked responsible. Bitter based on the weight of the evaluation criteria and RFP. So. Ace Recycling and Disposal is that contractor. We've negotiated an agreement. It's attached in this resolution as exhibit A, and it sets forth the terms and scope of work and so forth. And the city council has determined that entering into this agreement is in the best interest of its residents to ensure a cost-effective, safe, and reliable waste management services. So essentially, we're asking you to make the decision to pass the resolution and to go with the private contractor or to continue providing these services. Either way, there's going to be an increase in cost, and that's really the decision that's before you tonight.

Scott, can you talk about with the, If we go with this outside contractor, their agreement as far as following the same route schedule that we have and things like that, what changes will there be to any of that to the residents?

Yes, Ace Disposal has assured us through the RFP process that they will maintain our current routes and current schedule. So nobody's schedule will change. Really, there's going to be, there would be very little impact to the residents they wouldn't they won't even notice it's a different color truck garbage cans stay the same and everything everything because it is city run um it's really going to feel a lot the same obviously there's going to be an increase in fee but the increase would be much less with the private hauler.

So if we stay with our current situation in order to be sustainable, we'd be looking at like a 66% rate increase.

I didn't do that math, but I trust that you're correct.

That's kind of what I factored it to be. And then if we go with the, we still have to have a rate increase, but it's more around 20 something percent versus 60%.

That sounds about right. And again, you know, the numbers. These are the numbers that we'll be bringing back. So the difference is the 25 versus 19. Now, about 60% of the residents fall into the category where they have a second can. So over half are looking at- Second cart, Scott. Second cart. Yes, thank you for that correction. So over half, you would be looking at the difference between $29.50 for your combined price versus $40. And that's significant. And we all understand and realize that.

My biggest concern on this... You've done a lot of great work. I still want to go on the record with this. We have some great employees with our collection service and have been amazing. And it's my hope that ACE will allow them to apply and consider them for employment to continue with these routes. That's my big hope.

Yeah. And I appreciate you bringing that up because it is what makes this so difficult for me personally because these, you know, it was only two and a half years ago that we approached the group that we're talking about. Not all of them were here. We made a lot of changes, but we changed the culture because of these people that came in and filled the gap and because of the ones that were here that are here now. And they truly want to work for Draper City. When we broke, you know, when we issued the RFP, we had to tell them what was going on. We didn't want them to find out just. by seeing the RFP come out, so we broke the news to them. It was amazing how much they cared for Draper City and how much they care for each other. It was awesome to see, quite honestly.

We don't see that everywhere in the city, but it was evident Amongst this group just the reduction in claims that we've seen over the last couple years I Think is noticeable.

So yeah and a great job and that's cost that comes with the cost That didn't just happen by accident. We you know it's easy to overload a garbage truck and quite frankly. And we don't do that anymore. And we do go down Suncrest Drive. We don't come down Traverse, just like ACE will have to do if you decide to pass this resolution. There's a lot of things that we did culturally to change the whole atmosphere into a safety-driven focus. And it made a difference.

Yeah, I would just like to reiterate what Fred says. I have one resident in particular who, I know I've shared this with you before, but has sent me videos of herself and her toddler out on the front porch as the garbage cans go by. And the toddler just adores the garbage man. And they always wave and they stop and they talk to the little boy. And you don't see that every day. And I think it's something really special. And I'm sad about this because I think you have some really, really wonderful people.

We do.

Yeah, I agree. I think that one of our greatest resources are people. And I can set my clock to when my garbage is picked up every week. And I think that's something we sometimes take for granted. And so I hope that if this does pass, that you'll please let your staff know how much we appreciate all that they've done to make this service pretty remarkable, in my opinion.

Thank you. And I will definitely pass that along.

If I could maybe add a little color commentary to this whole thing, because I'm the only one up here that was around 16 years ago. And I was an advocate for bringing solid waste in-house. And at the time... When we did the analysis, our then assistant financial director made the case that we could do it better and it could be an enterprise fund, a revenue stream for the city where we could deliver the service at a fair price and still make some money that we could take and then use to enhance other programs and other things in the city. And I guess when she first approached us with it as a council, we were skeptical, but she... She worked it through for us, and then, you know, we took the leap, and frankly, it worked out for about 14 and a half years just perfectly. The employees, of course, make that happen. They have done a tremendous job. But we have been ahead of the cost of delivery. So we were making money as an enterprise fund for the city for about the last 14 and a half years. We have not raised the price one penny in the entire time we've provided the service. which is amazing. But like everything that's happened in the last few years, the cost of delivering everything has increased enormously. And these vehicles primarily have nearly doubled in cost to buy. We only buy 12 or 13 of them. We don't buy them in the hundreds. So we don't get the break. We paid near retail for these vehicles when we buy them. We don't have the ability to... to cover, you know, as easily sick employees or vacationing employees that a bigger company can do. But I do want to say that for, like I say, 14 and a half years, Robert, all of you guys did a great job running this program, especially, and it comes right down to the final driver who, who stops and talks to the little boy. They did great work for us, and they made a really good go of it, and I wish we could, I wish the numbers worked out better that we could, and I guess the answer really is you could decide to just do, continue to do it, but the cost is more. The other consideration that's different now than it was 16 years ago that is a legitimate consideration is as we've grown out of our public works facility and are in absolute need of a new one and are moving forward in that direction, If you keep solid waste, you have to occupy a large portion of that new facility to deal with these vehicles and their maintenance. And that, over time, is even a lot more money and not really factored in to what the real cost would be for us. We can build a smaller building or a building that can accommodate other vehicles and other maintenance, fire vehicles, police vehicles, etc., So that's a consideration that we didn't really have in 16 years ago. We we had not grown our public works facility. We hadn't traded off parts of the land and we weren't leasing part of it like we are now at the time we owned it all. So that's a different environment that we're in. But I do think that, you know, it's an opportunity for for us to. continue to serve our community but not not raise the cost as much as it would cost the other question I have and I just want to be caught because when we did this 16 years ago one of the things we've discovered was that they're there you know I want to make sure we have a way to audit and make sure we know how many carts slash cans everyone has because there was when we switched last time and I'm getting old now my memory could be a little faded but I recollect that we found a whole lot of people who had a whole lot of carts slash cans that they weren't paying for. They'd acquired them in windstorms or had acquired them through the five-finger discount. However they got them, there was one family in particular I remember that had Like 11 of them. And they were only paying for one. And so I want to make sure that as we go forward, we look, we have a way to, you know, check that periodically. Not saying, it happened before, I suppose it could happen again. But anyway, that was one of the things that was interesting. Because we are going to do the billing. We are going to maintain, deliver, and fix repair cans as they need it. The other thing I want to point out for the public is our bid process. We went through the highest rated and lowest bidder. So the selection process was proper. And if you choose to select Ace, you're well within the parameters of the law in our process for selection. an RFP. Lastly, the future of solid waste is more and is going to be a continual cost increase going forward. If we kept it, we're raising rates every year most likely going forward no matter what. We can't sit for 16 years on one rate. The problem with solid waste is in this country we still bury our garbage. And as long as we bury it, we have to find holes to put it in. The hole that we currently use out on the west side of the valley has about four to six years, I guess, theoretically, and it's full. Once it's full, they will build a transfer station on top of that site, just like the one in Sandy that we have now. And then all solid waste will be trucked. over 100 miles round trip. Every single load will go to the new landfill. So unless something happens between now and then where we stop burying garbage or somehow gas gets cheaper because straights open and things like that occur, Everything is going to continue to increase in cost. Tipping fees are going up to cover the end of the landfill and the new transfer station on the west side. So these, although these rates are higher and it is an increase now, be prepared because It's not getting any cheaper. The cost of transportation is only getting more expensive. So I think as you look at this, we had a good run. We had great employees, and I do hope, like Fred said, everybody here agrees that they get an opportunity to continue to work and work in the community. ACE has excellent equipment. They provide excellent service. They already provide private street service. We entered into that contract earlier or later in the year last year. And as I understand it, there hasn't been a single complaint about the service they provide. So I think the citizens can expect the same high level of service and quality solid waste removal. Just a little bit of background on it. I've been around a long time. I know for most of you, you thought it just flew by. But there's some memory into all that.

Thank you, Mayor. I appreciate that. And, you know, it really is a difficult thing to go through this. And I know it's going to mean a lot to hear these words from you for the staff. They do care about their jobs.

I guess another comment, Mr. Mayor, if I understand it right, with the, and Scott, with the equipment that we have, we'll be able to sell that and we can use that money also towards a public works building, correct? So that's another important thing I see in helping us.

How long is our contract for, or this proposed contract for?

It's going to, I don't know the exact length, but it will coincide with the expiration of the private streets contract, which is about four and a half years?

It's four years with two optional renewal periods of three years each, so potentially ten years. Okay.

And I share the sentiment on the gratitude for our employees. Thank you.

I might just add, if I can, Scott and Robert have done a great job managing this, and it is, as Scott indicated, he's garnered trust of the Solid Waste Division and We've implemented an incentive program that has, I guess, incentivized folks to stick around, and the majority are. I think somebody's retiring and one or two others left. But overall, I think Scott's leadership and Robert's leadership, as well as the whole solid waste division, we're happy to incentivize and we are committed to meeting our obligations in that regard because they really have, if this RFP went out and everybody quit, I'd be driving a garbage truck, which someday sounds actually quite nice. So I just add my kudos to Scott and the Solid Waste Division.

Thank you.

I think that incentive program's vital. So I'm glad that you're doing that.

All right, council members, unless there's any further discussion, is there a motion for action on Resolution 2635? Mr. Mayor.

Go ahead. I move that we adopt Resolution 2635 and approve the agreement with H Recycling and Disposal for the residential solid waste and recycled material collections. My rationale is the cost difference is significant, and I think that savings needs to be passed on to our residents at this point.

I have a motion to approve resolution 2635. Is there a second?

I'll second.

Second by Ms. Lowry and motion is by Mr. Green. Is there any further discussion? Thank you, Scott, for your work, and Robert as well, and all of our employees that have served us so well for many years. Mr. Green, how do you vote?

Yes.

Ms. Lowry?

Yes.

Ms. Johnson? Yes. Mr. Lowry? Yes. Items approved four to zero by the council members present. I will acknowledge for the record that Council Member Dolan is absent from the meeting. That takes us to item number six. A motion is by Mr. Green to adjourn. Is there a second?

I'll second.

Second by Ms. Johnson. All in favor of adjourning this meeting, say aye.

Aye.

Are there any opposed? Hearing no opposed, we stand adjourned. Thank you.