City Council - Regular Meeting

Okay, good evening everybody. Welcome to our city council meetings for Wednesday, March 11th. We've got a packed agenda tonight, so we're going to get going with our pledge of allegiance first. We'll have that by Ryan Campbell. Ryan. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

That's why you stayed, Ryan. Thank you. Okay. We'll go to item 4.2, city council comments and recognitions. Anything from council tonight?

I just want to say thanks for an amazing lunchon to help celebrate our tenure uh employees. It was impressive. All five of us were there as well to uh have uh shake hands with our amazing employees that have been here 5, 10, 15, and 25 years or 20 years, I guess. Anything else? I will say shout out to everybody from staff that was involved in the legislative session, watching it, heading up to LPC, watching bills, everything. Thought we had a very good session as a city. Um, passed the bill, the leg, some legislation we wanted to see, and then I'll come back to the other, but yeah, so very good session. So, thank you for everybody involved. Okay, at this point we'll go on to public comment. Audience members may bring any item within the city's purview to the city council's attention. Comments will be limited to two minutes. State law prohibits the council from acting on items that do not appear on the agenda. Public comments for this meeting will also be conducted electronically. Any person interested in addressing the council may submit a comment by emailing recorder@hairman.gov or by visiting herman.gov/aggendas GV/aggendas and minutes where there is a link to fill out an online public comment form. Your statement will be incorporated into the public record. So, at this point, we'll open for public comment. Okay, seeing none, we'll move on to our council reports. We'll start tonight with uh Jared.

Doing my part to keep it short. Nothing tonight. Okay, Teddy. Uh I'm just saying nothing to report. Okay, Matt. I do not have anything to report. You guys are all lying. Tara, nothing to report. Oh, pressure on uh Oh, pressure's on. I will report on something. I emailed council, but just by way of public um um consumption. Is that the word we use?

We will report that we were um successfully awarded $50 million for some infrastructure in the west end of the city. Um that's going to just be a huge benefit to um Herman Boulevard, Bakus Highway, the Olympia Boulevard, and even helps with the main street through that and the High Country

and High Country that weird intersection out there. So it's going to be massive for the city out of I mean there was 80 million up for grabs, 70 million up for grabs and we got 50 million of it. So we'll take it. It is tied to and there is tied to a affordability comp component within it where there's 20,000 per unit. So now they have to build 20 500 units minimum right now that are below um the average something AMI or something like that. I can't remember but anyways it's going to be great for the area. So thank you for everybody that helped with that. Okay we'll move on to reports and presentations tonight. We'll start with our uh 2025 review of the South Valley Chamber. We welcome them tonight. Uh we'll start with Jay. Welcome Jay and team.

Thank you. Thank you. I appreciate that. Do I have a clicker or a magic screen? Here we go. Thank you. And thank you for letting us come and give a report 2025. Some of you are at our state of the chamber. We've changed this just a little bit so that it won't be all repetitive, but some of it will. Um, we're excited. Um, what's and we've kind of better together is what our 2026 theme is. For the last three years, it's been better now and but now we feel like now that we're really kind of uh coming together as a footprint of the South Valley Chamber, better together serves as well. I'm uh I want to introduce this our staff. I I get a lot of credit sometimes for the things that we're doing and the great work that's happening, but we have a great staff and many of them follow me around or they're asked to come with me tonight. So, if those that are we got four of them here, I'm going to start on the far. Dana is our membership services. Diana is our me Dana Miriam is our marketing director. Diana is our business coordinator. and Jamie is our vice president managing director and Corey is on vacation. We do let that happen occasionally and Barbie is out with some minor surgery today and Missy and Zorum are not able to be with us tonight. Our executive committee uh is um they're they're my go-to, but they're also um they help me sleep at night along with members of our board. You can see the members of our board. Uh great board and great interaction and great they help us to make sure that we're doing providing good tools and good events. We appreciate Councilman Hodgees serving with us and he's um been active and participated with us and we

really appreciate that. So what we do, we connect, we educate, we advocate and maybe the most important is the very last and more. And so just let me just quickly kind of touch um a little bit on each one of those. Um in uh 2025 we celebrated 18 ribbon cutings in Haramman. Um and I believe that that's probably the most in any one of our cities. And with what's going on in the southwest part of the valley, it's that's going to continue the way we've started 2026. We gota, you know, we're gonna have to sharpen some scissors and get more ribbon from both the chamber and the city. But we um we're we we think that that's important for these small business owners that are open these. It's a big day and I get asked all the time, why do you show up? You got a lot of things to do because it's a big day and we want them to know that they've got the support and we appreciate many of you being there when you can and and mayor has been a great support as well. connect. We um I'd like to address that under the our kind of our banner of committees. We have an ambassador committee that really they are our infrastructure out in the comm the community. They're our eyes and ears and they're they show up to ribbon cutings. They show up to other events. They they represent us. They've recently have divided up in subcommittees and so that they'll get more done and have more to participate. We have really strengthened our government affairs and public policy committee. We have 25 U members serving on that led by two great um people with Steven Foxley from vice president of government affairs for regents Blue Cross Blue Shield and Kelsey Berg who was formerly with Senator Romney's office, vice president of government affairs for Larry Miller and most recently now director of government relations for the Utah Olympic Organizing Committee. those two have

really um tutored me because that is a that is a a world that I'm not familiar with but I've become and even uh spent a couple of days up there with mayor this this last year um we have a small business committee we have 38 people ser members uh serving up they give us really good direction on helping us plan uh some of our events some tools they're helping us with u recently helped us with going through some applications for what we call our Shark Tank. I'll talk about in a minute. But, uh, well, they help us with our business boot camps, what kind of programs, what kind of instruction needs that small businesses looking for. And they also are kind of an outreach for us as well. Our tourism committee, we have 35. A lot of them are hotel years, but a lot of them are also come from the sports world from Real as well as the Real Campus out this way. Um also um the Mammoth and the uh the sports entertainment group Ryan Smith sports entertainment group but a lot of hotel years and a lot of restaurants and outlet community and um what we're doing with bringing uh youth groups, youth sports groups to the South Valley and it's going to get even more pressure because the Salt Palace is is shutting down here in the year. And so we what we bring to the Mountain America Expo Expo Center and with teams and we're always looking for more and more fields and I some of you know Zorum Dean who's kind of a part-time with our staff but full-time with sports you uh sports salt lake. Um that's a really big impact on Sports Salt Lake or for the tourism and as you get hotels that are coming on uh there's going to be some there's some ideas that will come back with another program for some funding for some more

tourism because of those hotels are coming on. Um our women in business um is off the charts. Um Jamie leads that for us and we have 24 women serve in 2025 we had 24 serving on that committee and they plan programs that are just top-notch and I'll touch on those committee those meetings in a minute but uh then we have 24 junior whips and those are high school girls from all the high schools in both the Jordan and Canyons uh school districts and they participate with our women in business and they do job shadowing They do mentoring. They come to the every one of the lunches and then they do a service project or two um before and then in April, which I can't believe is just next month, um we'll be graduating them and and have a a nice program and we'll give them $1,000 to a college or university of their choice. But it's it's more than I mean that's $1,000, you know, it it helps I guess, but um what they get from going and being mentored and rubbing shoulders with these women is more than the thousand scholarship and it it's just fun to see them participate. Under the category of educate, we have several programs. We have Leadership South Valley. A number of your administrative staff has has gone through with Leadership South Valley. It's something that um I wish I had had the advantage of going through in my midcareer because you're learning from the leaders whether it's in transportation or government or law enforcement or banking or health and nursing. We we we load them in some vans and we take them and they get to go hands-on. this last week they were in hospitals and they were at a nursing facility where they we watched the uh the I don't they call them robot they're not robot uh patients but they're they're actually patients that were run by computers and one of them can

actually give birth. Um my wife said that'd be great if I could use a robot. Um, but then we also have the business accelerator which we call our our mini MBA. And when small businesses go through that 10-week program, it's every other week. And they they learn basic principles that they've already been in business for a couple years and now this gives them some tools to kind of sharpen the saw and to be able to grow and to be able to do some things. Maybe number of them go out of there and they have the confidence to hire. they go out, they now, you know, some of them don't have really good professional financial statements, but they learn how to do that. They don't have a marketing plan, but they learn how to do that. And so, this has been a great um it's kind of one of the hallmarks of the South Valley Chamber, our everyday entrepreneur that we we work with Salt Lake Community College on is for someone who thinks they want to be an entrepreneur, someone who thinks they want to start a business. And so we enroll them for like $400 or $500 in this program. It's a 10-week program. And um some of our successes are that by week four or five, they call timeout. They said, "I'm I'm not ready." But and somebody say, "Well, why do you think that's a success?" Because they didn't waste thousands of dollars printing brochures and making banners or building a prototype. because they thought it was good doesn't mean that it the world or or the environment is ready for it. And they they realize that halfway through. A lot of them will go through and they launch and they they start a good successful little small business. Our boot camps are uh instructional. They're basically a a twohour event, half hour for lunch and uh our instructure instructors will do it for a half hour and then they have a different advisor or instructors and they'll actually go down in the class

and be hands-on. We want it to be a workshop and and sales and AI and social marketing are some of the best, but they some of them they need I'm going to raise my hand if somebody will come and show me and walk me through it. I'm, you know, I'm good, but if you if I'm just having to watch and and click and look at a PowerPoint presentation, what did you just say? But so we take them down in and and our last boot camp, we've been used to having 145. Our last boot camp was 30 people, and it was really, really well done. So I know that's 26, but we're talking about 25, but we had four of those and 127 attendees. under the advocate. Uh last year we held some roundts, executive forums. We uh did several meet the candidates and we held one here. We tracked 20 plus bills last legislative session in 2025 and a few more this year. We held what we call an in then where Robert Spenlov presented on the big beautiful bill. We had the Wasatch Front Regional Council come and present their transportation plan. It was just kind of an open to all businesses and and people that are interested. Wasn't just to chamber members. And then we held a legislative review with Senator Filmore and Representative Elison grow. Um we held lots of events and some of you probably heard me say that at our events we want people to go away from our events whether it's a lunch, a women in business or one of our connects or one of our fun events. Um, we want them to go away saying, "I met someone. I learned something. I'm better because I went." Not just to go have a lunch and put your business in a business card in a a bowl and draw out for two tickets to a movie. Um, those days are gone. And we want we want people to actually feel like they got something by taking time

out of their life and away from their business or away from their family if if that's the case. So we had seven connect afterhour events and uh we had over 606 attendees let our let's do lunch events we had five and that's the let's do lunch we have instructors or panels that's something where it's informative where the connect after hours is something that the committee said look we would just like to have an event where we can come after work get to know each other and mi mix and mingle and we've had them at fun places and we'll continue next this month we have one and we're going to be at Topgolf. Um last month we were at um the Mammoth practice facility. We were the first group to go in and have a public tour. So there's that's still worth your time even though there wasn't any kind of informative lecture or or instruction. Our meet the members is becoming one of our best attended and and favorite events. We invite the members to come and get to know each other and then 15 members have the chance pre they have to register for it and it's so popular we're already um registering into uh June of this year. Uh they get to present u and we had one today and we listened to 15 businesses give their two-minute pitch on and you know they're pleased they're they're happy with what they're doing and they want to tell other people. And then as I mentioned our women in business are knocking home runs. uh we had ton events and as you can tell if you take 10 into 1275 that we're over 100 at average 100 attendees and they're just doing well in getting good program and and obviously they're coming back and they feel that it's worth their time. So that's meeting our mission. Um and then the and more we held three golf tournaments with over 430 attendees. We held our Titan awards. Many of you were attended that. We had

650 plus attendees where we also honored a small business of the year. And we had our Shark Tank um event which we hold at the aquarium in front of the Shark Tank where 10 students present their business or their business or their product to a panel of sharks, a panel of judges and um at the end of the night we award them with the first, second and third place prizes. Uh we give away $9,500. Brandon Fugal is one of our judges and he may or may not sometimes bring a little extra cash and give some to fourth, fifth, sixth, and seventh. But um because he, you know, his heart, he just says, "This is so good." I would encourage you to come. It's coming, it's coming up on March 18th, and uh it's at the aquarium. It's only 15 Oops. Only 15 bucks. But you'll go, regardless of what you hear and see on the news, you'll go away saying, "Our next generation is going to be okay. These kids are really sharp." And so I encourage you to to come check us out. 2026. So that was about 2025. 2026, um, we're going to be focused. We're going to be strategic, and we're going to be purpose driven. And with that, we're going to we're going to focus on service and community impact. We want our our committees to be able to do more service projects. We want to help teach them more about giving back. I learned that in my 35 year career from the master of giving back to the community, Gail Miller. And I just think that more we can teach that to our businesses and more we can actually help them lead out will be better. We're going to focus on business growth and economic development. We're going to one of our focuses that from our board and our executive committee is is retention. uh we've done a we've grown a lot in the last two three years and now we need to make sure that we keep that me those members and and engage them. The best way we can keep them is by having them engaged and feeling like the chamber is a place

where they're getting some value and we're going to strengthen our public policy um and we're going to lead out. We're going to be a leader and we really did that in this last this this last year already the last two and a half months and we'll continue to be a leader in public policy. We also announced at the state of the chamber something new for 2026. We're going to have the small business impact award and we're going to award a small business from each of our seven cities and we'll do that next year at our state of the chamber but this year we're going to do it on May 5th. We're going to We didn't want to wait until next year. And so we'll we're looking forward to some nominations from you and then we'll um we have a panel that will help us select that winner and then on May 5th we'll we'll be inviting you to come and join us for a lunchon where we'll honor uh these seven small business u from each of our cities. So, I've talked a lot about, you know, the benefits that businesses and and and the the community members get, the community businesses within um Haramman, what do they get? But what does Haramman get, you know, by uh by standing behind us and and I like to think about our relationship with you as a partnership and um we think that we're we can we help extend the economic development capacity we have because of the tools that we have and we're providing strengthening uh communication and trust. We have a um Miriam has really ramped up our communication and we we're able to communicate communicate things out to the business community and not only just about the chamber but about what's going on within you know Haramman and what you're developing and things that you're doing. We've shared that we shared that back out advancing shared priorities strengthening the community brand and then finally I like to think of our

relationship as a partnership not a membership. And yes, there are some benefits that we we give back, we know to, you know, the Titan awards and some of the golf and some other benefits, but we really believe that uh South Valley Chamber and Herman, I look at it as a partnership and that we're working unitedly to to strengthen the the community, especially the business community. And as we said, as we started, we'll finish what we believe that uh we're better together. And that is my 2025 report. Mayor Thank you. Love it. Comments from council.

No, I'm I'm excited. I'm glad to be a small part of it. Um and I know that there are so many more advantages that we could take advantage of of events and afterhour things and and more than just a board meeting or meet and greet at an event. So, I appreciate that opportunity and um look forward to an awesome 26. Thank you. just appreciate your partnership and and the synergy that that it creates with uh with our businesses and our community and and you know the community development and the economic development and and when we have good partners that that work together with us, we can we can do great things together. So, thank you very much. Thank you.

I'll say hats off. I know we've talked about this Jay, but thank you for being responsive when we talked about the small business folk. That was I'll say that public that was um that Mayor Hall and I met with with Jay and expressed some concerns about that's what we've really enjoyed about some some other stuff going on out here. So, we really wanted to focus on some small super small local businesses and he responded within a couple of weeks with this concept and I love this small business impact award. It's going to be I love it. So, just thank you for your responsiveness and that collaboration. So, well, thank you. Here's a 2026. Thank you to your team. You guys are all wonderful.

I know I know the only thing that's standing between you and your home is me tonight. So, I hope that was short enough, but it was perfect. He's threatened us already. So, that's why we're short and sweet. We have a short meeting. So, yes. So, thank you, Jay. We appreciate you all being here and thank you for all for what you do. So, okay. Well, with that, we will move on to item nine, consent agenda, and I'll look for a motion. I'll make a motion to approve the consent agenda as written. Got a motion by Teddy. Second. Second by Tara. We'll go Tara. Yes. Matt, yes. Teddy, yes. Jared,

yes. And I'll vote yes. That motion carries. And that does bring us to the close of our meeting tonight. Our future meetings, uh, March 18th is our planning commission meeting. Next Wednesday at 7. Our next city council meeting is the 25th at 7 o'clock as well. Um, coming up events. I haven't seen her advertise this town hall. Have we seen her advertise this town hall for tomorrow?

It is advertised. Okay. We think there's a legislative town hall tomorrow night here with representative Oh, it's in here with repres with representative Perucci. Um, Friends of Herman Charles season opener that is on Friday night. Saturday. That's Saturday night at 6:30 downstairs in the community room. Movie and fundraising opportunity. And then our local scapes class coming up on March 19th here at six o'clock at city hall. Any other events? Anything else? Okay, with that, I will look for a motion to go into close then. So, I need to make a motion to temporarily recess the city council meeting and go into close meeting for the following purposes as provided in Utah State code annotated 52-4-205 for strategy strategy session to discuss the sale of real property. Okay. Motion by Matt.

Second by Teddy. Uh Tara. Yes. Matt. Yes. Teddy, yes. Jared, and I'll vote yes as well. That motion carries. We'll move back into uh Fort Herman. We need Blake, Wendy, Nathan, Todd, Council, Chief Stromberg, Chief Stroberg. Okay. Thank you everybody. Thanks for being here tonight.