City Council - Regular Meeting

Yeah, I don't think you can spend too much time, even those that are actually at the council. Amen.

Amen.

Okay, welcome to our council meeting today, our pre-council meeting at 4.30 here in the Lehigh City Council Chambers. Currently, we have Council Member Stallings, Council Member Freeman, Council Member Lockhart that creates a quorum, and we welcome all of you who are here with us today. We'll start with opening comment. That'll be given by myself, and then we'll go on to item number two. Our Father in heaven, we are grateful for the state, grateful for the opportunity we have to pause and to thank thee for the many blessings we enjoy. We're thankful for this city and the opportunities we have to serve and to help and bless the lives of the residents that live here. We're thankful for the rain that's fallen and pray that that would continue to bless our land with moisture that we may receive the needs that we need at this time and that we might be able to use those in a wise manner we pray for our first responders and also the employees that work here that they may be washed over and protected that their families may be mindful of their time that they might have the blessings they need as they serve we asked you to be with us this afternoon that we may be able to have clear minds and clear thoughts as we Think about the direction our city goes that we might do so in a manner that would be pleasing unto thee We're thankful again for all that we have and ask for thy blessings today and do so in the name of Jesus Christ. Amen Okay, we'll start with item 2 2.1 the heavy rescue discussion from the Lehigh fire departments I

Good afternoon, Mayor and Council. Thanks for giving me a few seconds. What this discussion is around is the heavy rescue that we asked for in the budget. We had a lot of discussion about it. There was a lot of positive comments. I personally didn't hear any negative comments, so I'm taking that as a bonus. But because it wouldn't be paid for in this budget year, it was denied. on paper, but what we were looking for was did council actually want us to move forward with that?

Did I put that right, Jason?

That's essentially what we were looking for is did you actually want us to move forward with purchasing that heavy rescue that we wouldn't get for two or three years, or was that on pause?

I, Mr. Mayor, may I? Yes, please. I think I had talked to Dean about possible impact fees, being able to pay for this. Did you happen to ever find that out?

Sorry, I knew I was going to call you up here.

Yeah, they've included that in the study. Now, realize with an impact fee, they have to look at it and say, it's not like it all can be paid with impact fees. A portion could, because they have to look at it and say how much of this can be used relative to new growth. Yeah, so it's not gonna Not a hundred percent. Yeah, it impacted it. Okay, but but like chief was saying I Think in the original budget it was in there, but there's nothing really to put in the budget because there's no dollars for several years so it's probably just that discussion, but so I made a long answer for a short question, but It's in there. It doesn't have a huge impact just because They have to allocate it out

Okay. So some of the impact fees can be used to pay for this.

Yes.

So from my opinion and perspective, that's the information I was waiting on. I wanted to know if we could use some of the impact fees to help pay for it. I'm supportive of it and just wanted more information on how to finance it. So anyway, that's where I stand.

Thank you.

I just assumed we were going forward with it, just because there is a long lead time, correct? Yes. Like if we get it going now, then we would get it in a few years or that sort of thing?

Yeah, we think, well, I haven't engaged the manufacturers too much because once you do, then they just won't leave you alone. But what we're hearing is still two to three years out from signing the contract, really. So even if I ordered it today, we'd have to do some design work and stuff like that. And then once we finish that, we'd sign the contract two to three years from then.

Yeah, and I agree with both Emily and Michelle. I was supportive of it. I thought that it was in the works, I guess, and I had actually even reached out to the county to see if they could help facilitate some of that. We're still hopeful. That was my understanding, and I was kind of waiting also for more information about impact fees.

Yeah, we're still hopeful on that, right, Jason? We're talking with Commissioner Beltran about that.

so hopefully that can work out and offset some of those costs other questions so chief just one question i have if we go ahead with this do we have to put upon order i'm assuming we have to put some kind of a financial number down to hold that we don't we just order okay

No, there is a benefit to paying for it when you order it. They give you a little bit of a discount. I'm not sure that that's worth it. That's a discussion we'd have to have with finance. But the nice thing about not is... We can pull the order at any time because there's so much demand, they can just sell it. So they don't mind it. If in two years we go, whoa, things have gone sideways, we say we're out, somebody else would buy it.

But at least now we're on a list, correct? So once we order it, we are on a list that's constantly moving. Yep, we get in the build order.

Correct, okay.

Yeah, when we talked about it before, I thought that was awesome. Let's get in line. And things change in two years. You can always pull out. But I think it was smart to get our name on the list. Okay.

I hear you. I'll get moving.

Any other questions for Chief Kraft? Okay. I think we're good there.

Thanks, Mayor.

Thank you.

Thanks.

Okay, item 2.2, discussion of downtown facilities master plan as currently designed. Jason, I know you're taking this one.

I wonder if I need to go down there to project.

With this one, council, as Jason prepares, I know this is a bit of a presentation, so let's get through the presentation. Write down your questions, and we'll go. Let's get through the presentation as he goes. So be mindful of your questions as you go. If you need a pen, I've got an extra.

I really don't.

Do you? I do. Do you? I do.

I know you do. Oh, my God. Alright. Let's see. Oh, is that it? There we go. Okay. So council, again, we've talked about this a little bit in the past. This is a plan. We passed this back in 2020. It's obviously subject to change as the council sees fit. So I'll just go through the plan as it's written. I don't have strong feelings one way or the other. If you do, certainly we can look at this. But if there's areas that are of more interest than others, certainly we can slow down and talk about it. But I'll go kind of quick through this. But this is the area that we looked at downtown. You can see a lot of those blue structures. Those are all city-owned structures at the time. And then these are additional structures. One's the train depot up on State Street, and then the arts building over on Center Street. And we kind of studied Lehigh and what we were about and things like that. So this is kind of the 30,000 foot view of the city campus plan as we kind of drew it out. And this is basically a glorified bubble map. The shapes of the buildings and things like that, don't pay too much attention to that. But really, you can see here, but that's City Hall that we're in right now. the old city hall, fire station. This is the current parking lot that's in front of this building. The long-term plan was for it to be some sort of plaza that the public could gather in, hold public events, things like that, with a stage on the opposite end of that plaza of the city hall. And then to the west of that, a library slash arts building. Again, not knowing what it looks like or what the exact footprint will be, that's just really a space holder. However, well, and this will go into it. Let's see. Yeah, so again, these are all just very conceptual ideas of what it could be. We don't have any architectural plans or engineering drawings done by any means on any of these parts of the plan. But it's meant to be walkable. It's meant to be very pedestrian friendly to get people to and fro from the different facilities. Let's see we did a rough square footage study on what we might need in 2040 Again these can be fluid somewhat, but these are these this is what we've been working towards We did a employment or employee study at the time on how many Personnel we need in each department again a rough estimate as best as we could figure out by build out and architectural style they wanted two distinct building types in the commercial center and then the primary civic building so they wanted this one to stand out a little bit more than the rest the rest were meant to kind of look like the police station next door and things like that so

All right, so we talked about that.

Oh, so here's of note. So we did contemplate a large parking structure to help support downtown. Not only the Civic Campus, but also Main Street. So you can see that represented with that blue parking structure here. Again, we assumed that it would be on the Legacy Center's current parking lot. We would go probably three stories there perhaps, two to three stories there to allow for more parking. It's important to note, I think we talk about it here, but it's important to note that we wouldn't be able to do the plaza phase until we address the parking. So the parking structure domino would need to fall before we could move forward with taking this parking out. We've also talked about potentially having a parking structure here. Again, it's all pretty fluid. I think of note to the council. I think there were some questions what to do with that piece of property That's directly south of this building leading out onto Main Street again. This is a concept we talked about do we want a drive-through where people could access from Main Street and maybe drop things off or or frequent the businesses on either side and this this property we also talked about maybe we close it and it's a pedestrian only path so again no firm decision there but again just some concepts there that we could play upon so any questions so far anything I'm not addressing that you would like to know please

Mayor, so how many cars will fit in the parking structure? Is that three levels, four levels?

We don't know until we design it and how big, but yeah.

And then I'd have a question about the plaza. What do you imagine being in the plaza? Is it like farmer's markets or things like that?

Yeah, kind of all of the above, city celebrations, things like that. I mean, it's a decent size. So yeah, concerts, smaller concerts perhaps. Maybe the barbecue that's over in Wines could be here instead. So things like that, about that size.

OK, thanks.

Jason, just a quick question.

So if the library is going to be moved out of City Hall, what are you going to do with the first and second floor where the library is now? Are you expecting them to?

Yeah, so the thought is when the existing City Hall outlives its useful life that it would come down and either be turned into more parking or we could repurpose that lot for something else um and then yeah those those departments would then move over to where the library occupies in this building so yeah that was kind of a long-term plan and then the courts sorry i failed to mention that the courts is is designed to be added on to the current police station um there's there's doorways and hallways stubbed in to allow that to happen seamlessly so that was the plan there so would the parking structure provide parking for all of this the police station the courts it's it's meant to provide parking for um i would say this area not necessarily the police and the courts because that's that's kind of a walk um But again, if there's parking here on the backside where the existing city hall is, that could probably provide parking for the courts. This would probably be more meant for the Legacy Center, the library, the museum, and then Main Street.

Okay, we can ask questions, all right. Please, yeah. So how does it work with fire access if you're doing kind of like these narrowing things here on Center Street? Does fire need access down to Main Street? Anyways, just wondering about that and if it's a good location for Station 81.

So Chief and I have talked about this. I mean, and Chief, you can chime in at any point, but I don't think we had a problem with... 81 being anywhere along this block or even on the back side of this block emptying on to first or Center or Second north. I think we just didn't want it to empty out on the main street. Am I getting that right? Okay Didn't want what sorry, we don't want it to empty out onto Main Street so But yeah, we do have some flexibility as to where we can put it

So any thoughts on the, would you keep the Literacy Center and the Historic Society where they're at, or leave that?

This plan indicates that the Literacy Center would move to where the Art Center is. I wonder if we show it here. No, maybe not. It would move up to where the current Art Center is on Center Street, up by Lehigh Elementary. and then the Arts Council would co-occupy that new building with the library.

And what about the Historic Society?

We had talked about different options, but we don't necessarily have a permanent solution for them. They could stay where they're at, I suppose.

So what did you say is dependent on the parking structure exactly?

The what of the parking structure?

What is dependent on the parking structure? I mean, so far you've built City Hall. Yeah. And there's a Legacy Center and there's the public, you know. So what is dependent on that?

Really funding. That would be at what point does the council feel like, hey, this is a funding priority and we want to move forward. So...

But in the meantime, we have basically the space here that's the public plaza, the library slash arts building, and that other parking lot that's parking. Because I don't know how much it costs, but I just remember Thanksgiving Point saying for a multi-level parking was in the hundreds of millions of dollars.

I don't know how much one this size would cost, but they are expensive. They are expensive.

My Kim, I know those my understanding is like 30 to $40,000 a stall for said to Brad, I think that's the number I've heard in the past is around 20 or 30 to 40,000 per stall. So per stall.

And right now we have wines park that takes the place of kind of this public Plaza idea. Okay. Okay.

And again, I mean, if we wanted that parking or that plaza to stay parking, I mean, that's certainly an option. It could save us from having to build structured parking. I think part of the thought process was that structured parking would also help service a revitalized Main Street, kind of like Provo. And you know, they're Center Street. They have some city parking structures tucked behind Center Street there. those ones are pay I mean I know we're going to talk about parking so yeah but yeah and certainly we could look at that here too I mean everything is on the table but but I guess I would say this I would strongly recommend that we don't move forward with a library Arts building and a Plaza without addressing parking because that would just exacerbate things so if if there's no appetite for a parking structure then we probably would need to pivot on some of these other things

That's a long walk from the parking structure to the library. People think this is a long walk.

They need their steps, just like I do.

I guess. Steps with little kids don't challenge.

So again, I don't think we need to necessarily redesign this here. That wasn't my intention anyway. Clearly, there's decisions that need to be made. And if we want to spend some money to revitalize this, I don't think that would be a bad idea to reflect more of this council's priorities and goals. But what I don't think we should do is kind of throw things against the wall and see what sticks. I think we should have some help there.

Mayor Mayer. I like the plan. I have some thoughts on it, maybe some suggestions, but I think the thing that concerns me the most is maybe timeline and order of operations, which buildings next and at what point are we doing it. I think that slide is in here. Can we talk through what your guys' vision was for that?

Yeah, sure. My apologies, I don't have these.

I think it's at the end.

Is it at the end?

Yeah, right.

Steve has it memorized.

Yeah, it says the phases.

Oh. Oh, yeah. It walks us through it. OK. So we are here, I guess, right? Am I right? We just built the city hall. So the next step in this plan is to build a court, build the courts right there north of the police station. And frankly, simultaneously, we could redo 81. I don't think it's one and then the other. But it would be difficult to displace the court while we try and just do 81. We would need a place for them to be. So that would be my only thought there. If it was just the fire station chief and I talked about different ways that we could make them, put them up in a temporary facility, that wouldn't be the problem. But a court is a little bit more, they have more stringent security standards and rules and things like that. So yeah, please.

Could we contract with the county and use some of their space or a different city's space? Like, is there options of where we could temporarily house the court while we were doing it?

Yeah, we certainly could do that. I mean, we could get private office space here in Lehigh also. I mean, all of those would be on the table, certainly. I have some ideas on how we could maybe accelerate this structure, but... If we're looking for a short-term fix, yeah, we could look at that certainly.

Any questions or comments, anything?

So looking at this for me, I think just what you were saying, the number one would be the court. That's kind of the hinge that's stopping everything. And then to be able to do the fire station. Those two things I don't think are going to impact anything else. They're kind of where they are, where they need to be. The courts need to be there. I know that's already planned that way. And that makes the most sense that they can just be able to travel back and forth between the two buildings. So I am less inclined to spend any money towards doing any kind of design concept or something like this where there's no appetite to start building other buildings or structures or anything like that. And what's going to happen when this does come forward in eight, 10 years, a new council, they're going to scrap everything we do. And they're just going to spend more money again and redo the whole thing again. I love looking at it and kind of having a game plan for it. But as far as the two most important pieces, I don't see that changing with anything that we do.

And again, the thought with the court being tied into the police station is we save money on not having to build multiple holding cells and that, what is the term? Secure. Secure areas, yeah. Certainly it doesn't have to be that way, but that was the thought process there, to not have to duplicate those.

Mayor, if I may. So do we have to have a court?

We do not have to have a court.

What does it look like for cities who don't have a justice court?

Ryan, you want to answer that? I think they would just have to go to another city to have their cases. Yeah, or Utah County.

Utah County down in Provo. You'd have to have an interlocal agreement with another city, or we could have the county cover our justice court cases.

What does that kind of cost? What's it like versus having your own and not having your own? Do cities without a justice court save money?

I don't know. Yeah, we can look at that for sure. I know American Fork approached us about contracting with us to do their court for them. And we gave them our price tag, and they decided that they didn't want to do that. So I guess in their math, their calculus that they ran, it didn't save them money.

You eliminate costs of personnel, of all the court personnel. most of my office personnel, because a lot of them are dedicated to prosecution.

Yeah, so maybe I should make a strong disclaimer. I am not advocating to eliminate staff or the Justice Court in any way, shape, or form. I'm asking questions to learn and understand.

Yeah, the second half would be, but the Justice Court also generates revenue based on fines and stuff like that. So I don't know where the numbers come out, but it would be both.

We also get money from the AOC to have a Justice Court. Yeah, we would have to do a more in-depth analysis, but yeah. It can be done because it is done by other cities.

And where I'm trying to get to is if we spend millions of dollars on a court, our residents are going to want to know why did you do that? And so I'm asking questions that I think a lot of residents would be asking. Why do we have one? Why don't we contract with the county? What's the value add? You know, all those things so that we can justify... spending millions on infrastructure and capital projects.

I think it's a service to the community. It would be the simple answer. People don't have to travel far to address a speeding ticket or other cases that they may be involved with. But maybe that's less of a priority. Maybe saving money on a building is a higher priority.

That's not what I'm saying.

Sure, I'm just pontificating.

Jason, do you know what American Cork did? They didn't go with us, but did they go with the county? They went with the county.

Yeah, they went with the county. They went with the county.

That would be good to know. Because it seemed like during the budget that it was almost a net positive to have our own core system. So to be able to just weigh the two. Otherwise, we're going to pay for service versus we can recoup more than the cost. So that would be interesting to know.

Yeah. I think that's a great point. I think what we would also need to account for in that analysis would be the debt service on a new building. So yeah, we could do that pretty easily.

If I could just say one other thing. I mean, obviously, this is a much broader discussion. But some of the things that you'd want to consider if you went with the county is both your residents and your officers would then have to go down to the Utah County Justice Court to have their cases heard. So again, there's a lot of that discussion. But that's kind of an important thing if we look into that.

We're going to have staff start looking at that right away. help you guys make a more informed decision that way. I get it. These are big decisions.

So my thoughts on this right now, yeah, definitely know the cost, but it seems like the court and the fire station are the priorities. How soon we do that, you know, I don't know. But I don't like this current plan. There's a lot of empty space, and that will end up costing us a lot to have to build the parking structure. I also kind of worry, you know, Main Street, there's, we don't want a ton, there's backed up traffic, we don't want a ton of traffic on there. So I don't know, I don't like the cost of the parking structure, I don't like the empty space, and the Are you referring to the plaza as the empty space? The plaza. What did I call it? The walking, I don't know. Yeah, the walking plaza. I would say no on that. I mean, I think somebody mentioned we have Wines Park to do things. Let's utilize what we have. Yeah. I'm not opposed to redoing a plan. And futures councils can have an option if they want to do this one. You know, they could. Or, you know, the Sorry, in my mind, more fiscally responsible option. I don't mind providing that. And so, yeah, I'm open to that down the road. But I appreciate you presenting this to us. Sure.

Can you keep going?

Oh. but we can keep talking about it yeah he was done sorry yeah well i just want to see the next phases sort of you know let's see this evolution yeah yeah yeah for sure so um the court in 81 then the next phase would be to take down well potentially look at um Building the parking structure with the idea that the library and the art center would be built across the street. And then once that's built, then the city hall annex could go away. It could become more parking, or it could become a different building, whatever the case may be. Oops. Yeah. So that's kind of the last phase. And once that's done, then the literacy center down here The Literacy Center down here would move up to the Arts Center on Main Street, and then this building could be sold or repurposed or what have you. So those are kind of the last dominoes.

And I think when I was reviewing it, there's a senior center actually moves. I could be wrong. But I don't know if we talked about looking at redoing the Legacy Center, but I believe that's... something that this council at least is interested in. So I don't know where that would fit, but I think that it might be in here.

Yeah, we've talked about studying that, and I think that would be a great first step is to explore what that would look like, whether we rebuild this or we move it to another site or what the case may be. Some cities, we've talked about maybe making a separate one. Some cities have multiple rec centers, or they do one big one like Provo did. So there's pros and cons to both. But I think that would be worth a study, putting some money towards that, looking at that.

Yeah, because that could change things here also. For sure. For sure.

Yeah.

Jason, with this one where you've got the 79 stalls next to the library and arts center, and if we didn't do the parking structure, that could also be parking. So the plan could, in this, setup right there without the structure but keeping and just not having the plaza that could be almost like an addendum of like this is more conservative we're not doing a structure we're not doing a plaza but we're going to have more parking plus the annexed uh place or you know when the building goes down that would be more parking as well i think things like that where it's like we can make I'm just really hesitant to invest money in something that I feel a future council is going to do what we're doing now. They're going to scrutinize it and have concerns with it, but I do think it's worth looking at some of these things and the suggestions and putting it that way. I guess I'm just more hesitant unless we're ready to start putting money at it. That's when I feel like is the time to start pursuing a study better, kind of like with the city hall and these other changes that have happened. But, yeah, the Legacy Center, I think, too.

Like, there's kind of things on here that are probably more important to study than doing... And to that point, I mean, if we're like, hey, a parking structure is a non-starter, then, yeah, that plaza can't... That parking lot right there cannot go away. We can't function without it. But, I mean, if we wanted to hold an event there, we could close it for parking and hold an event in a parking lot. I mean, people do things like that all the time, so... The plaza is certainly not As critical as some of the other elements in this plan. It was just meant to kind of tie everything together I think and and draw people downtown But again if it's cost prohibitive then I Won't lose any sleep over it.

So What's missing from this plan?

The children's Justice Court or Children's Center? It's kind of been talked about.

They talked about maybe renting some space from us, either here or there.

Oh, CJC in Lehigh?

Yeah. We've had those discussions, but nothing concrete. Nothing concrete. parking is always one we'll have that discussion parking is always kind of top of mind for us whether it's structured parking or not because um yeah it's it's critical the more the more people we bring to downtown the more we're going to need to address parking so yeah I guess like parks and facilities wouldn't be here right because they've got another spot I guess I was just trying to go through all the departments in my mind and think who's missing who's not here is there

a purpose needed that hasn't been addressed.

Yeah, I don't know, Steve. I don't know if you've thought about that at all. I think we're good.

Because, like, power, water.

Power has their own public works. We'll have their sites.

Parks has their own.

We have our own. Everybody else is represented on this site. The only other one is the Historic Society, which, frankly, could be tied into the library's building. It's a little small.

And again, asking another sensitive question, not taking a position in any way, shape, or form. Why are we building buildings for nonprofit entities to be housed in? Why do we own and maintain facilities for entities that are not for Lehigh?

That's a fair question. I think the short answer is because we've always done it. But that's not a great answer. But it's a more philosophical thing.

And they used to be, some of them used to be departments, right? Part of the city. So I know other cities like Springville, the city runs that under the city, you know. So it's, again, it's what you want, right?

Yeah, exactly.

So Steve, while you're up here, can you refresh my memory? We did allocate money to study the Legacy Center. That included the fire station as well, correct or no?

No, the fire station would have been separate realistically. I think how that ended up was you want to redo the plan and figure out what we're going to do, if I remember right. So the Legacy Center was for its own facility, its own operations.

I think that was more recreation as a whole.

Yeah, we included the outdoor pool. Yeah, that's right.

We did talk about putting money towards looking at it, right?

So we have money for renovation of this current building that we were talking about putting towards some of it. We did go out and give bids to look at redoing this plan or updating and making sure that we were correct. That's probably the easier way to say it.

For the art center? library combo, would that include a theater or?

Potentially, yeah. I think that's what we envisioned.

So really everything that you see is, they did a bubble chart. So we went through and we talked to staff and we talked to other cities and we went really in depth and say what you need by 2026, or 2060. Huge obscure numbers that aren't going to change. We know things change. But that's the best way we can do it. So that's what these blue things are representing right now that aren't actual buildings. If you look and see what this building looks like on here, it's completely different than what we actually built. And that was due to the fact that we needed the space and the space fit inside of the footprint of what we did here.

So I'm in favor of redoing it at some point because I think that all master plans should be looked at at some point. I think that I need more information. I think we can independently look at the Legacy Center and recreation as a whole, personally. I don't think that that is dependent on this plan. And we also can We'll see what happens with the court. I think we need some more information there, obviously, from all the questions that the council has given. So for me, that's where I'm at. I just think it's a good information-gathering period. I don't think that I want to jump in and do any sort of redo now, but we can definitely look at and get some more information about some of these things and do some of them independent of the master plan.

And my eyes aren't that good, but I really do think that phase two is the court and fire station, just exactly what we're talking about. And so we do have a little bit of time, even if we say that this is our interim. We understand that it has to be changed.

i think like just i know we're kind of like throwing out ideas i love the idea of the museum the historical society all of that being close together it starts to fill like a city you're going to go visit and see the museums and history like it brings people downtown so i i would be one that would want to try and get those type of organizations close together. I love to walk across the street from the Historical Society to the museum. I almost feel like they, in a lot of ways, they should be tied together. You go into the museum and there's a lot of historical pieces there that you kind of, so I would love the idea of trying to incorporate that more together. And then it really starts to come together with the purpose of it. And it also ties into the, you know, why do we have these outside organizations, nonprofits being part of this whole community area, but I'd love to see that all coordinate together. But that, that starts, I start to see that vision coming together and like what, what the purpose is of, of this rather than how we have everything kind of all over the place right now. So if you bring the arts council, historical society, the museums there, that all starts to come together. And then you, then I kind of feel like it's bringing in the restaurants, it's bringing in retail. People are going to come and start. This is a place to visit rather than pass through.

And I would just add, I absolutely want to see the Legacy Center and Station 81 addressed soon. And I recognize the bottleneck to that is the court. And so for me, those three things are a top priority. Funding, timeline, all of that, I recognize we don't have all the information. But I would support efforts to move forward on those three things.

Any other comments? Great. Thank you. Thank you. OK. Item 2.3, parking code presentation and discussion. Co-present. Just remember that microphone.

Yeah. Oh, yeah.

about twenty minutes worth of PowerPoint slides. We want to walk you through between standard commercial and mixed use. I think most of you are pretty familiar, but we'll just quickly walk you through that. And then we'll get into, we've started doing our own parking study, and we've got some preliminary data that we'll share, you know, what is available in this downtown area, and we'll kind of talk about where the downtown is when we're talking about downtown. And then Mike will really dive into some short-term, medium-term, and long-term strategies that we feel like we could start to implement to address parking downtown. So anyways, with that, there's about 45 slides. We're going to move rapid fire. I mean, if you have something burning, bring it up. But otherwise, whatever time we have left, we can discuss in great depth later. the rest of it, however long you guys want to stay. Because I think this is the last item on the work session, right? Or the pre-council, sorry. Okay.

So we're good. Just know that we're going to have a closed session. So you should be fine. So go ahead. You've got at least 45, 50, 55 minutes. Okay.

Yeah, we want to make sure we...

allow a robust discussion okay so I'll start out by just introducing I don't know Mike if you had any other introductory one thing I was gonna say is pretty much everything dealing with planning is so interwoven and complex just keep in mind when you're looking at this presentation how this interacts with all other policies and the way and ultimately like what Heather is getting after is the vision of the city or the vision for the downtown So think about, I guess, how all of this complexity kind of interweaves with each other.

So anyways, this is an interesting picture. Maybe you've seen this one before, but yeah, that's a familiar building on Main Street. I think this was about 1920, so the automobile had only been around for at least mass-produced autos since 1908, so about... 12 years, still got the hitching posts. Somebody's got a bike they're riding in this one. Kind of interesting. OK, so for standard commercial zones, so if this is in a new commercial area zone, heavy commercial, commercial, light industrial, there's nothing that's ever been built there before. This is how we handle parking. I think, again, I won't spend a lot of time on this. But as a couple of examples, if somebody builds a restaurant It's one stall for each two and a half seats in their seating area plus a half a space per employee on their largest shift. So it's just a formula. What's your building size? What's your seating area? How many employees? Boom, that's what your parking is. And then retail stores, it's just one stall for each 300 square feet. And these come from the Institute of Transportation Engineers. They have a parking generation system table, and a lot of it's just, you know, some of it's based on historical use, but some of it is literally just kind of, you know, oh, that sounds about right. But there's always these anomalies, right? You'll get a Swig or In-N-Out burger, and they just blow this thing up. We've seen that in our own town.

It's like In-N-Out and Chick-fil-A versus, like, Burger King. Every time I see Burger King, it's like one car. Or Taco Bell, or, yeah.

So, anyways, this is kind of what that looks like. Here's Smith's. You know, you've got the giant retail store, some of these other restaurant and retail stores, smaller stores. This is the parking that it generated, the required parking. And, you know, some days, Black Friday, definitely this gets more full, but this is pretty typical. You'll see about 50%, 60% utilization here.

We'll get into the trade-offs a little later in the presentation, too.

Yeah. OK. Now we compare that to our historic. And I've got a map on the next slide that will show you exactly where those are located. So we have a totally different policy. In this case, instead of this formula that we just cut and dried, this is how the code described it. This is right out of the code. I've just put it in bullet points to make it easier to digest. There's no minimum parking requirements. our policy is to maintain all of the existing uses that don't meet the parking requirements and encourage additional uses so um yeah we don't want to stagnate and just pause everything because of parking at least that's that's what our current code talks about and then the zoning administrator depending on who is the reviewing body they would make that determination whether it's the zoning administrator the drc or the planning commission and and they can be guided by that table that table oath 090 is one i just showed you that says you know this many for each square foot or whatever but it's all case by case so here's the two areas that we're talking about the We have the Historic Commerce District, which is the two green areas, which covers all from the roundabout all the way to Central Bank. And then you've got the little piece up on State Street where Osmond Design and some of those older historic buildings are. The mixed use zone is the purple. So you've got a lot of State Street and Main Street. So those are those two areas that the code identifies that the parking is not set and defined. It's case by case. So here's a classic example. This is Main Street looking east. Yeah, a lot of these buildings are very old, were built before cars were invented. If you go to the next slide, all of the buildings in this photo right here have zero parking. So if we required parking, and we'll get into a little bit of those trade-offs in a minute. But yeah, just to illustrate, these are all 1890s, early 1900s. So yeah, that's what we're dealing with. We're trying to make the best with what we have. So yeah, let's keep going. So yeah, this is kind of a summary. Why do we treat these two areas, all of the commercial versus these special areas? Yeah, they were designed to encourage redevelopment and reuse of older buildings. We recognize that this downtown area, we have to have multiple parking sources. This is a great segue from the discussion we just had about our own city campus and the parking structure. There's some on-street parking that normally we wouldn't really provide the type of parking like we do on Main Street for other areas. But yeah, we want to encourage. We don't want to stagnate, like I said, or freeze everything. And it also, I think, assumes that there's It's a different experience. It is historic. And there's an expectation that instead of just pulling right up to the restaurant you want to go to and park out front, you might have to park and walk a little bit. So let's keep going. Oh, OK. I know this, and I don't want to go too far down any rabbit holes, but this is a very prominent example that we've had recently. You've got Porch Coffee. This building, when it was approved, it's in the mixed-use zone, so there was no minimum. They provided as much as they could with that angled parking. I think now, and I don't know, I think it's stabilized a little bit because each business now has signage and some identified parking. So you've got this new coffee shop that came in. But kind of here's one way to think of it is if you click on the next one. So if you say there was, you know, they have, I think, three or four stalls that are kind of, you know, their stalls. But if you had to park around the corner behind the armory, which is all, you know, that's a public street or even on this angled parking by the pool. and walk into that store, it's 338, 339 feet. Now, if you compare that, if you're at Walmart and you park midway out, two thirds of the way out, which this is a pretty common day when I go there, or say you wanna park by a shady tree or whatever, Exact same distance. So I think people have a mindset. You know, I think if you ask most people, they'd say, well, I'm parking closer to the front door here because, but the other one you have to walk around, but it's the same distance.

Anyways. Sometimes there's perception issues. People see things one way, but in reality there may not be any extra walk. yeah okay let's keep going so mike is now going to talk about yeah this preliminary findings of our parking capacity study all right okay and uh i know i love talking about bikes a lot of times but i also love talking about parking so this would be exciting so everything in red here is parking in this nine block area of downtown we could obviously expand the Study if we wanted to but we focused on the nine blocks because it includes the historic core and the city campus and the Legacy Center So everything in red is either on street parking or the bigger blocks are like the off street parking lots So in the downtown we have a total of 1144 Public parking spaces including the on street parking and then 288 private parking spaces and that's everything in the red there total parking in this nine block area is 1432 stalls Now I want to look at like the daily averages so these are colored based on the average use this is parking data from June 2nd of this year and Every hour of the day we'd go out and fly the drone and get all the footage and then we'd count up all the cars That are parked there. So this is the average use for this day We have a couple more days of footage that we'd like to analyze and continue doing that going in the future as well So green is lowest orange you're getting a little more and then red is the highest and Yep, yep. So the average use of public parking is 388, and the average use of private is 53. So average use throughout the day is about 441 parking cars parked in those parking spots. So if you look at 1,400 stalls, on average 441 of them are being used. so that's where some of the perception maybe comes around parking because people can't park right by the front door of the legacy center maybe they feel like there's a parking problem so there's a higher demand around the legacy generally is what we're seeing in the study and that's pretty evident when we go to oh i do want to highlight main street in front of businesses has an average use of 32 percent um just those on street parking stalls there And then the busiest lot is that senior center lot, which has 86% average use. And the legacy center throughout the day is 66% average use. So this is throughout the day. The green line is the total use. The orange is all the public parking, and the private parking is on the bottom there. This is all unused parking in the downtown. Now, what this gets after, there's kind of a proximity issue here. You know, there's a lot of demand basically for the Legacy Center, and especially that senior center lot gets most used. There have been a couple times where that one was completely full. The Legacy Center lot tends to at least have 10, 15 stalls at the busiest times available. In the world of parking, the ideal is 85% usage of parking because there's still some available for people to use, and they're not sitting and circling the whole time and creating more traffic issues. But it's not such a waste of space taking up too much parking. This is just an interesting map. Every hour of the day, we would put dots wherever there was a car parked, and you can see kind of a heat map. So if you see more faint dots, that's where there's less people using it over time. And the darker the dot is where they're getting used more often. Now, if that caveat, like the apartments, for example, some of the cars never moved. They just stayed in the spot all day long. So the dot's going to show darker in that case. So this is the peak hour for the day. It's 11 AM is the busiest time. The total use of public was 484, private 52, and a total of 536. So 37% of the total parking in the downtown was being utilized. But again, you can see the demand around the legacy centers where it gets to be the most. I do always like to note there are other parking happening in the downtown that we tend to observe. So there's other trips. There's a lot of undocumented biking and walking trips. I like to just throw that out there. Now just to kind of sum it up. There is more capacity than demand, but what we need is demand management. So that's what we get to with parking all over the place. There are management strategies. There's no silver bullet, one solution. I like to talk in terms of strategies. There's different things we can do to help. I don't think there's ever a silver bullet with some of these planning things, whether it's traffic parking or anything like that. We have, like Kim said, short, medium, and long-term strategies. And this is by no means all-inclusive. These are just some that we threw down on the slide show. I always encourage you to think about what's the big picture? What do we want the outcomes to be? What kind of place should the downtown be in our parking strategies to follow that? And then also, what are the externalities of our decisions? Parking policies, also land use policy, transportation, air quality, safety, city budget policy. Like what I was saying earlier, everything is weaved together. So when you make a policy about parking, it affects all of these things. So some of the potential short-term strategies, for example, one could be along Main Street. We want to limit the parking, focus on providing parking for the businesses, for the customers that are coming and going. So if we do shorter-term parking, like we've done that on Center Street over here by the museum, there's like 15-minute parking. I think that's anticipated to be just like drop-off type parking. So you could do the same thing on Main Street to help manage that a little bit. There's parts of Center Street that we could probably eliminate some of the red curbs since one of the crosswalks was moved. So we could pick up a couple spots. We can even just use some paint like we've done on some other streets and we can actually increase capacity if we want to on some of the side streets. That's one thing that could be done. Send that temporary crosswalk improvements because the idea and actually I'll get to them when the slides here in a second But trying to connect the different parking lots to the locations people are trying to get to One thing we did see is the senior center a lot the ad a stalls were often full So my recommendation would be looking at a couple more ad a stalls there if there's signs out there that say senior parking only but that's not a easy to enforce but if it's a da parking which does show there's pretty high demand for it even a couple more stalls at least and you can see where it goes from there can give people some options because when it comes to parking those who really do need to be closer the building you want to make sure they have that ability a guy like me I can walk a block and even if I grumble about it it's good for me This is just an example down by the literacy center where we just striped some parking spots. So instead of parallel parking, you do angled or perpendicular parking. That really increases your capacity. And you're actually taking advantage of the amount of asphalt that's down there. Some of the medium-term strategies could be things like better street crossings, some traffic calming, make it a little more pedestrianized so people don't have this mental barrier of streets to cross to get to different locations. Some things could even be creating more interest in that legacy center plaza. And more permanent parking capacity increases on the side streets, but you do it with more curves like we've done on the north side of the old city hall here. The idea of parking management is, especially with the talks of new office buildings and things coming to Main Street, employees should be parking a little farther away from their offices versus customer parking should be closer to where you know the businesses are so that's where that parking management it could be charging for parking that's maybe on the long-term solutions could be just the time parking there is enforcement that has to go with that But there's some of those things that you can utilize to help enforce or reinforce employees not parking right where you should have more turnover for businesses. And then more intuitive walkway from Center Street to Legacy Center, for example. And one thing I like to show with this is not just tackling parking, but some of these strategies can be multifaceted. Maybe at the same time, I hate saying killing multiple birds with one stone, because I don't like to throw stones at birds. But you can kind of do that thing. You can reduce asphalt and the urban heat island effect, increase greenery, traffic calming, safer streets, shorter crossing distances, and improved character and beautification of the downtown. So if we can try to do all of this at once, even better. So an example is 200 North there. This used to all just be asphalt where the red is there. But now we've added greenery. We've increased the parking supply. It's not the most traffic-culling street, but it provides an element of that. Something else that it does is this is where the street used to be, but it self-enforces parking away from the intersection, so it's safer. And then even shorter crossing distances, so it's a shorter crossing there, which is safer for pedestrians. And even here in this mid-block crossing, that used to be the roadway, but now we have our crosswalk and planter areas there. So we're increasing parking supply, but also reducing the amount of asphalt, increasing greenery, making it a nicer place, a safer place. So that's where I like to look at. We're interweaving these strategies together. We're not just addressing parking. We're also making downtown nicer, more green. then yeah the shorter distance there this is just to show 200 north is what it was what it is now when those trees grow up you can have more shade and more trees you have like that along the roadway the more it's shown to help even slow vehicle speeds down now these are some possibilities on other streets i haven't totally finished my drawings but this was something i was drawing on autocad you know you could just add these little islands in different places and put striping and you can put trees in all those islands and you can have more parking. So again, you can do the same strategy that we did on 200 North here and do it in other areas. It's obviously a little more expensive than just putting striping down, but this can help contribute to those other things we'd like to see. One thing that I did want to mention is you have the parking lot right here, which currently is very underutilized. But the crossing here is a little better because it kind of pops out on the one side, but vehicle traffic still goes pretty fast on the street here, on Center Street. So I know if I had kids, it would make me a little nervous to cross it. But the more we can make a better crossing here, perhaps, you know, you're right there by the door of the Legacy Center, perhaps it'll invite people together. This is an example. You can see the Legacy Center parking. This is actually our last council meeting. While I was listening to the other presentations, I threw this picture in here. The parking lot at the time of the Legacy Center, you can see it's pretty full, but look how empty this parking lot is here. But if you can make a visual and a safer better connection to the Lexi Center perhaps this parking lot would see more use Kind of similar what Kim did going through the end of this parking lots 425 feet 425 feet gets you into this other parking lot as well, so distance wise can be similar obviously a lot of the parking over there is a little closer, but there's A lot of parking happening here none over here. We're getting complaints that there's not enough parking, but really you know I data shows there's a lot of parking but how do we use it how do we get people to use the other parking as well there's an idea here's the legacy center plaza what if we made a better crossing and maybe you have a trail or something along the roadway that could be in the longer term plan and continue that walk away that we've built with the city hall here so you can see continuing it straight across and better connecting towards the legacy center and again like i said this is more midterm this isn't something you do right away because it has more cost to it but there are these elements that you can add to it all right long-term solutions things that we can look at is traffic circulation plan for downtown right now we get a lot of that regional cut through traffic is that something we do or don't want if it isn't something we want then you really want to look at circulation that can help with uh Especially those main street spots, people don't like getting in and out of those because there's so much traffic going through. But if the traffic volumes were lower, people would be a little more comfortable with that. And it helps make it a little bit more of a walkable place. I know we talked about the public parking structure. The one thing I would say on that Does come at a high cost and to me the level investment needs some kind of a return with it So a parking structure could be combined with kind of a public-private Development for example I've seen cities do that say you have a parking structure and you wrap it with either some businesses or a few apartments or something like that that can help contribute towards the cost of that. But in my opinion, we're not nearly to the level of demand that we need to structure today. We still have a lot of available parking. There's a lot of these other management strategies. I think kind of as we're going along with our downtown, the future is something that we can always look into but at least today i think we've got ways to go before we see that kind of demand if you ever charge for parking you want to do goldilocks pricing you make it too expensive and people won't use it it's too cheap right now it's mostly wild west out there people can park wherever they want so some cost to parking in those high demand areas will naturally push people that don't want to pay it to park a little farther away and those who are okay paying it will park closer still And then one thing we can continually do is keep updating this parking study that we've done. That's something that we as staff can continue to do. And then implement the vision. At least our current plan says it identifies downtown as a vibrant heart of the community. And then obviously improving the bike ped network, giving other options and mobility to get to downtown. That can also really help with reducing parking demand. With all that being said, let's ask what the trade-offs are. Oh, there you go.

Come on up.

We've got a couple slides for you here.

Thank you, Mike, Kim. So cost of constructing a new parking structure, it's about $40,000 per stall. So let's say a 300-stall parking structure, you're about $12 million. Mike did comment that there is public-private partnerships that we could probably enter into. I've talked with a couple of developers that would be interested in looking at some type of multifamily housing attached to a parking structure. over by the Legacy Center. So there would be some opportunities to take a look at that type of a structure, or the city could look at utilizing it itself. The other thing that we've talked about, the vibrant downtown with users, businesses that come and stay versus stagnation of area, development stalls are knocking down buildings for parking. Do you have that thing?

Yeah. After a couple slides here, I'll pull it up.

All right. And then minimum parking requirements create a barrier to entry for local businesses to start up, lends more to corporate businesses that tend to exceed requirements anyway. So I think we'll lead into we had the council had also asked about lease parking. We currently do have a lease parking agreement with Parker Brown for the We call it the Porter's Place or this building here on the corner. It's for 30 stalls. We have utilized the parking here in this area for that as well as utilizing the overflow parking lot on the other side of the Legacy Center as the overflow if this parking lot ever goes away or becomes twofold. So it allows them multiple areas to utilize the parking. We currently only charge them $7,500 a year for that lease rate. So again, if the council decided to do something further, we could take a look at what that lease rate might look like. Parker Brown is looking at another building. over on 200 West and Main Street. That will require another lease parking agreement, if the city is willing to take a look at that, as well as some other development along Main Street. Right now, we're probably looking at anywhere between 40 and 50 parking stalls that will be required under a lease agreement to do development that's currently being proposed in the downtown area.

Is that in addition to the 30? No, that includes the 30.

That would be 30 for Parker Brown. We have about 11 that are being asked for for another development that's, what's that like, the address, the two-story that they're looking at, the skinny building. yeah it's uh right next to the studio yes the old mark wilson architect yeah yeah yep mid block over here uh and then uh we did have a proposed uh hotel complex going over here that might need that might need one stall um so and then we've got some other additionals that are being looked at in the downtown area So again, that's one option we could take a look at to help the businesses in the downtown area. Without parking, we force people to park outside of the area and walk in. That's not a bad idea, but the flip side of the coin is if we're also going to require parking of the businesses, then we probably need to be willing to work with them in some form or fashion to help with the parking.

Can you explain a little bit more about leased parking? Is there a timeline on that contract? Is it indefinite?

It's just an annual contract renewal unless they either vacate because they've got additional parking already secured or the city has to work with them on finding additional parking because we're doing away with parking structure. So it's just an annual renewal contract.

Okay. But if the city doesn't renew, then they're in trouble?

Yes, they would be okay, but then the flip side the coin is the building's already built What do you shut them down because you don't have parking or? You see the trade-off yeah?

I'm just saying if we had a lot of businesses, and they need a lot of these parking and you know what yeah anyways just Correct yeah, that's the trade-offs.

Yeah, no no and I agree. I agree council Councilman Freeman. It's the trade-off is If we go down this path, we still have to continue to provide those stalls in some form or fashion or work with the development community to say, how do we continue to provide those parking stalls? And again, that's why I think per all of this, Mike's really kind of tried to take a look at it and say, well, okay, if we need to look at additional outside of the area, what could we put in or install that would help with some of that as well? So come on, Mike. Let's see.

Yeah, some of the parking concerns. Let's see. I think we kind of just talked about this. But parking needs to be managed no matter what develops or goes into the existing buildings. Actually, I think these next two bullets were not supposed to be on this slide. Got mixed up. Anyway, this just says mixture of uses helps with offsetting peak periods. So sharing parking. Sharing is caring. So sharing parking between businesses is nicer than having separate parking lots everywhere. And then mixed use can significantly reduce vehicle miles traveled. There's a study done at the University of Utah up to 30% to 50% vehicle miles traveled reduced in mixed use areas. So that basically shows there's less driving happening because you have destinations closer together. I think you were kind of touching on this, Marlin, but looking at parking as a shared district resource versus requiring every single site to have their own parking lot. And we'll get to the trade-offs right here to kind of show what that would mean. Yeah, Marlin, you talked about the leasing spaces, municipal parking lots and off-street spaces. We just want to keep monitoring those use and demand, and we can adjust our strategies as we go along. So now I want to talk about the trade-offs, the vision, and the future viability of the place. On the left, obviously, I love our main street. The right, I lived by a camera like this. Murray when I first got married, and this happened too. I couldn't find a picture of it, unfortunately. But it looked kind of like this for a little while, but now it's getting redeveloped. The place on the left, in my opinion, stands the test of time a lot better than the place on the right. These buildings on the right purposely are built to only last about 30 years or so, whereas the left is built to last a long time and incrementally renew itself over time. So these are just kind of some examples of some of these businesses were required to add the parking that our typical code requires. So Domino's Pizza right there would have required about 22 parking stalls. Pioneer Party would have required 14. Lehigh Bakery there would have required 19 stalls, according to our code. So that's like... Just another visual example, Porter's Place here, for all their uses would have required 52 total stalls, and that's what the parking lot would have looked like next to it. So you could see, you know, do you want this for your downtown, or do you want to meet the parking standard and have parking lot addresses where the question of what is the place we're trying to create. But if we had to put that parking lot not that we would have actually done this but say we force them to meet the requirement you have a parking lot there and We wouldn't have the opportunity for the studio the jewelry store office spaces the chiropractor the bakery So there's all these small local businesses that take advantage of these spaces because the barrier to entry is low They don't all have big parking lots that required to be built to start a business and And then we ask the question of downtown. Should it be a place that's easy to park? Should it be a place with character, vibrancy, centered community? I would say it's not black or white. There's kind of a balance to it all. But obviously, it's for you all to decide, ultimately, in the vision. When you look back to this map of the downtown, the total downtown area is about 73 acres. About 22% of that is the parking areas themselves. This doesn't count the streets, just the parking areas. So of all the land in the downtown, about 22% of it's devoted just to storage of cars. Now, if you look at some of the places that have had to meet our code requirements, this block, for example, in Thanksgiving Point, of those areas that have been developed, 64% of the land is parking. So this is actually more of a commercial zone. This is a parking zone with some commercial uses in it. So if you look at the... area where all the restaurants and the gas station are at. It's like 56% parking, so you're averaging around 60% of the use of land. So that's where it also comes down to city budget. And a lot of these spaces don't come anywhere near utilizing all that parking, but we require so much of it. And in some of these cases, the businesses themselves chose to do more parking than even what our code required. But you can see it's regularly not used. So that's basically watering down our commercial zone, where instead of having uses that bring activity to the area, bringing tax dollars to the city. Again, there's a balance. We wouldn't want to get rid of all the parking, have zero parking, because that's a problem, too. But this just kind of poses the question, what are the trade-offs? What's that balance that we need to strike? And then the idea in a downtown setting, this is Park City, actually where I grew up. I was a naughty teenager here sometimes, but sorry. But not that naughty. The idea in Park City is they do have a parking structure. They have a lot of vitality there. They have a lot of business that obviously justifies the investment in the parking structure up there. But you know there's limited parking on Main Street But most people are parking off in the parking structure rather than parking right in the middle of it all And they choose and sorry it's not a very good image, but I just cut it up from Google They've even been taking away parking on their Main Street to put in these restaurant spaces So they're adding to the businesses their parking structures to have plenty of capacity so the idea is when you get enough vitality and enough activity people are more willing to walk more to their destinations versus More of a running an errand. When you run your errands, you don't want to be walking forever. You just want to hurry and go. So that's kind of the ideas. A lot of the downtown areas, some of them go into vibrant places like this that are more a destination rather than just running errands. Anyway, that being said, there's 45 slides for you guys.

Lots of great information. Thank you. Any questions?

Yeah, do you think the design of parking in the area kind of impacts how people use it? Like when you were showing me here this, how people could park here and go to Legacy, I was just trying to think even in the pedestrian walkability because, you know, you're trying to go the shortest distance as a pedestrian, right? Or if you have a stroller or kids or anything like that. Some of me think, I wonder if it's influenced with the landscaping we have, the pedestrian access, I don't know, just things like that.

Signage.

Signage, okay.

There's actually, it was down at ICSC when I was down there with Jason and Marlin. This lady came by and she was like, hey, we've got these temporary art installations you can do and it can draw interest. I'm like, even something like that on a temporary basis could draw attention and maybe show people. One thing to think about is if Center Street wasn't there, again, not that I'm saying it shouldn't be there, but if it just wasn't there and the parking lot was up to that point and it was just landscaping over to the Legacy Center, I would bet, I guess not guarantee that more people would use this parking because that kind of mental barrier is not there, especially when you have kids and things like that. So that's where thinking about street design and making it more of a walkable approach kind of helps tie these places together, especially if we're trying to make a cohesive city campus. Like somehow the design, like you're saying, can help connect them a little better.

Well, and we have this big green strip here. And then we have a wall that kind of basically tells people no, right? When you see a wall. So it just... I would love people to use this, but I would never think of using that from the Legacy Center because I would think, how would I cross that with my kids?

I think those bump outs on the street would really help. Because then you're only crossing, if you went down to 22 feet or 24 feet versus you're crossing almost 40 feet of road, you could cut that in half. So then you just have that much less time that you're exposed to. and stuff, especially with kids.

And if there's a corner access instead of walking to the ADA ramp or something like that, if you are needing that.

And crosswalk signals to help.

feel safe and alert people that people are crossing when it makes a difference one interesting note to that is uh again thinking of other benefits too is we've done a couple of those uh traffic calming tests last year with luke who's our previous traffic engineer and uh we set up basically curve extensions with those posts that everybody loves so much and uh set them up and um Not as good on the east side, but on the west side near Jordan River, it did slow some speeds down in vehicles. But what it did was increase the yield compliance. So it is safer. Drivers more likely to stop for you. But also, it actually reduced delay for both pedestrians and drivers. Because if you're a driver and you're stopping for someone at the crosswalk, you're having to wait longer for them to cross. You're actually slowing your trip down more. As a pedestrian, you wait longer because people aren't always yielding to you. So by doing that, it actually made it less delay for everybody to get to where they want to go.

Thoughts and comments and questions? I don't know.

Yeah, I agree with that idea that if you make it more visual and maybe a raised crosswalk a little bit, you know how they have those? I just got back from a road trip, so I've been looking. I took pictures of bike lanes. I do that now. I don't know. You pay more attention, I guess. But that's one thing I noticed. There's a painted crosswalk. Versus, you know, when it's up and there's lights and it's like, I'm going to that one.

That's where I look at design and how it also affects people psychologically. So a raised crosswalk also tells drivers you're entering pedestrian space versus a typical crosswalk because you're entering car space. It kind of flops a little bit and that helps, I think, with safety.

And talking about the historic downtown, I mean, I get the old buildings and they weren't designed to have parking, right? But when we are tearing them down and building new buildings. That's where I'm like, they could put in some parking. I mean, they've got garages down under the Parker Brown building there. I guess that was one thought I had. And I'm not thinking this is possible, but does it add a ton of expense for people to put, if they want to do an office space, maybe two or three stories, whatever, to put parking on the bottom level? Is that hugely expensive, like prohibitively expensive to?

It can add some costs. So they call that podium. Oh, yeah. Tuck under is if it's a wood structure podium is when you have a full concrete structure on the ground floor for parking. So it depends on how you construct it. There are some trade-offs again to that. Is the whole floor going to be parking? Because then you don't have that street activation. you don't have the window shopping possibilities and stuff like that so some places i've seen maybe do part of the ground level which is partially what porter's place did because they have the garages on the ground floor but then the main street side has the shop space so there's again there's a lot of nuances that you can get into with that but there are possibilities for that kind of a situation and honestly that's not my vision for our historic downtown to me it's it's something unique even for utah you know

Some cities have it. A lot of them don't. We have it. We're one of the oldest cities. And to me, that should be the draw and the attraction, that we don't want a ton of people down here, that we would need a parking structure, I'm thinking. But you talked about managing demand. I just like the idea of the cute little shops and old buildings and that kind of stuff. And I see that work well in some cities. Like I said, just getting back from traveling, we stopped in one city where it didn't work well. I mean, they were very nice old buildings, but they were closed. And one thing I noticed, they had parallel parking on a busy street. And I almost didn't stop because I forgot my parallel parking skills. I had to have my daughter give me tips on how to do that. But another one where they did have just a small on-street parking, but some spots where And I don't think it was publicly maintained, but it was the businesses had a big, not big, a nice shared parking area that you can park and then you can get out and walk around, you know, to the area. So it's, again, this is one thing I'm noticing now, right, paying attention to because it's something I would like to see for our downtown area. And, yeah, I... I don't see the parking structure with the mixed use around it. To me, that would kill what I would like to see the area be. The other thing, a lot of times the cities where it is more walkable, you still have to park. And it's incredibly expensive to park there, $40, $50 a day or something. And then the concern I have is, are we When we limit parking, are we limiting the potential business? If we don't require the parking, what is that going to do for the business? And I feel really bad. I mean, I know it's their property and they can build it, but losing that little parking space next to Lehigh Bakery and Pioneer Copy, what's going to happen to those other buildings? Those are concerns I have. I'll probably go back and look at your slides to kind of digest it some more, but there's some good ideas there. I think we do need to be careful when we show are the potential parking, because I'm looking at that map, and some of it, well, that's for city employees, or that's specifically for the Veterans Building, you know, or the Senior Center. Rachel and I got to visit with some of the seniors, and that's one of their concerns is that it's always full so they don't get to park there or they should so um and it's older folks that you know it's more difficult so if there's something we could do there to preserve that space for those people who need it most that would be good but anyway good good thoughts there and yeah definitely go back and look through them and i was going to say any feedback you ever have don't you know feel free to always email us we're here as your staff and

What I'm always going to point to is what's the vision for the city, because that's really what's going to drive what our strategies need to be. If we want to grow too much, then there's going to be things. If we don't want it to be stagnant, we're going to want to see some economic development downtown.

And access drives that. Again, just traveling and seeing the differences. So I think it needs to be thought out carefully. And some of the things that we've heard from residents that about parking issues or the business owners, it could really hurt businesses. And it causes a lot of contention between neighbors there. So thank you for your presentation. It's something we definitely need to work on and look into.

Hey, Mary. I have three questions. Is that OK? OK. So did you say that we need a traffic circulation plan for downtown, or we have one, or that's a recommendation in the future?

That's just something that could be looked into in the future. We have our transportation master plan. But a traffic circulation plan asks some different questions. Say, where do we want the traffic to go? Where do we not want it to go? And then you can do traffic controls or circulation in a way that upholds those goals you're after. Right now, our transportation plan just says, here's the demand. Here's how much capacity we're going to need here or there. But it's all based on the regional model.

OK, thank you. And then it looks like you said that in the Stark area, parking requirements are reviewed case by case by the Planning Commission. Is that right, what I understand?

Yeah, it just depends on what level of approval a project requires. Some of them only go to DRC, and so it would be handled there. If it's a conditional use, then it would go to Planning Commission.

Okay.

Just depending on our approval process.

Okay. And then I've had some businesses express to me that the city has a responsibility for the parking requirements. As in, let's say a really popular business moves in, and they take... all the parking in the area. And like, kind of to Michelle's point, then those existing businesses feel shafted or like, what happened to our two parking spots that are now taken? And some of them, some business owners have even said to me, well, this is on the city. This is like a liability for a city. This is sort of thing. And I don't know if this is kind of more a legal question, but to me, I mean, I haven't said, you know, I don't know what the answer is because We approve the business. We approve the zoning. We approve the use. We don't have parking requirements. And so then how do you balance that with the impact that it has on the surrounding area? That's a question that I have, because I've had that brought up to me multiple times. And I'm too new at this to know what you have to say.

far as liability goes I don't know if there's like liability on the city for the success of business there's actually cities out there they're now just completely removing their parking standards and just letting the market dictate not I'm not that I'm saying we're gonna do that here but yeah I don't think there's something that holds its liable it doesn't mean we shouldn't care about trying to make it work for everybody yeah

I was so blown away at how much capacity there is out there. Now, is it front door of each business? No. But we're not even hitting 50% of current inventory. And I think I'm interested to see if Mike can take what he was showing, where we already have these wide streets and we could add, I think we can add a lot of new parking that would help offset you know, the demand in some of those high-use areas.

Well, for example, the little CAD drawing I pulled up where the trees popped up from the top view. was second west right where that new like office building was proposed so you can actually increase the parking quite a bit so maybe like that's where business like a new building like that's coming and say hey maybe you need to contribute and help to establish more this parking on the street help put the planter areas and the trees and whatever needs to be done that could be part of the development process and that would be probably specific to downtown the downtown historic area

I mean, I would like to see that because it's not necessarily demanding parking, but it's kind of demanding a way to increase the parking we have, like in a nice... It contributes in multiple ways. If you're having landscaping and you're having traffic calming measures, how do we, and I don't know since you're the code guys, how do we put that in place? That is a concern for me because I would love to see more businesses come, but I do think that there are some hesitations just with the parking issues. that they perceive, whether they're there or not. Perceptions.

Perceptions, truth for everybody. But maybe as part of our parking study, we still have more data to analyze. That was just one, was it one day's worth of data?

Yeah, that was just one day. We had more days for analyzing. So that's when Kim said this is preliminary. It gives an idea of the use, but is every day like that? Is this a higher use day? Is it a lower use day? We have more days that we're doing, and that's where I think, in my opinion, is that we just need to continually monitor this. Also, when we find out six months from now, especially even if it's a localized area, like, wow, this area just is going crazy now with parking. Maybe a new business comes in. Do we need to modify our strategies? What things do we need to do? But I think there is a lot of opportunity with new development coming in to have them help. Like with Second West, for example, maybe it could help.

But those improvements in there to get more of that capacity but if we can somehow estimate you you as a city we already on street right away we could increase the supply by X number of stalls in this same you know that same area would be interesting to see how many more stalls we we have at our disposal even if it was just paint which is John that can be a very short term. you know, one week, and you go out with the striping.

Which I was hoping, I have an AutoCAD drawing come together showing that, which was a little bit, I was hoping to have a number for you for today, but I don't have that quite yet. And Brad better take a look at my drawings. Make sure they're in your ears.

I know they were nervous when we did the angled on-street on First East, because this does move a lot of traffic because it hits the signal at State. But I think it's been working OK. Every once in a while, I use those stalls periodically. And when you back out, you just have to be looking. But it seems to function. And I don't know, maybe you're correct.

I think the one thing that we do worry sometimes is we see people backing into those stalls. I don't know if you've noticed that. They sometimes back into the stalls from the other direction, which pulls them out directly into traffic. It's kind of interesting.

But you'll be tracking kind of the peak demand sort of thing too? Yeah. I think it would be good just to keep monitoring that, especially in the downtown.

Sorry, quick question to follow up on that. So do we need to put in code where if there is redevelopment and they're going to, okay, we're looking at the Parker Brown one, the parking lot thing, where they could help, we could require them to help pay for it? fix, you know, redoing the road where it needs to be, because there's not even a sidewalk there, right? It's even a... Do we need to codify that somehow to get them to help pay for that? Because I believe that was part of the parking they were looking at, right?

I think it would be good to have some clarification in the code. So right now it's not super clear one way or the other. It just says there is no minimum standard, but this parking standard should guide the amount of parking required, so it's kind of a gray area. So I think there's maybe enough to stand on and say, hey, look, can't build a building without any parking taking away some parking you need to help offset that so I think we might have some leg to stand on with existing code but I think a clarification that probably would be good

Any other questions? I will say this parking lot, watching out my window, this parking lot has technically only been open for about a week and a half, maybe two weeks since they moved all the landscape stuff. So that's very, very, very new to incoming people. So we'll kind of see how it gels a little bit. Yeah. Anyway, thank you. OK, no problem. Thank you. OK, item four, administrative report. Jason.

The only thing I had, Mayor, is we have our annual UAMPS conference up in Logan this year. We have the mayor and a couple of council members planning on attending that. So we were proposing that we cancel the council meeting that's scheduled for that Tuesday of that week, as we'll have many of our council members absent. We checked with our senior staff today, and we didn't see that as being a problem. We weren't planning on having a heavy agenda that night anyway, so...

Great. I think we'll go with that. If for some reason something comes up, we can also add one, correct? So for now, we'll move forward. I believe that's August 28th? 25th. So Tuesday, August 25th at this point in time, then we'll be canceled. We'll kind of proceed with if there's something in need, we'll hold one in need. Anything else, Jason? Nope, that's it. Okay, council reports. Any reports from the council?

I don't have anything to report, but thank you.

Mayor, I had the opportunity to be involved in a countywide event this past weekend and just wanted to share that... It went well given the weather and the west side of Lehigh, Saratoga Springs, and Eagle Mountain. We'll have another opportunity soon to participate in that event. So just wanted to share and thank you for your support for that event.

Great. Thank you. Any other events going on or anything other to report on?

Okay. We have another historical marker unveiling. That's Wednesday, August 5th at 7 p.m. The People's Co-op, and the address is 151 East State Street. And I believe one of our council members is speaking, but I didn't pull up the schedule. James? Okay, I better remind him.

He's not here, so he is speaking.

Yeah, there you go. He is now, right? It was mine. It was like that. That's what you get when you miss a meeting. You get to speak. And we are having the Heritage Days coming up on August 29th, and Mayor, I'm putting you on the spot because I didn't send you an email yet, but they would like you to speak at that when we honor the honorees, and I can get you more information on that. We had on Saturday, the day after Pioneer Day, we had our kind of a soft opening of the Southern Railroad depot, train depot, Um, and it's, I stopped by, I think you all got invitations. I don't know if you were at a chance and probably a busy weekend, but I did get to stop by and honestly I was blown away. They did an amazing job. Um, they, they didn't have many artifacts, but they put up props and they had activities for the kids. They had a little telegram and the Morse code and a letter writing station and a luggage station and they got to punch tickets. And, um, And I stopped by there, and they had a guest book, and I kind of went through to see, and we're estimating of those who signed in, there was 250 people that showed up that day. So it was a great turnout, and the kids were having fun. And I did look at, you know, they wrote where they are from. We had people from other cities. We had people from other states. We had one person from Canada, which I'm sure they didn't just come down for that, but they came, so. I think they just did a really good job. And Steve's here, but Steve Marchbanks helped with that a lot. So appreciate his help there. But we're going to try to do, we're planning on another opening also on Heritage Days, August 29th. Yeah, so I think it'll be a good event. And we're looking towards having it open more permanently on a more regular basis.

I am around August 29, so if you'll give me the information, I'd be happy to participate. Thank you. Anything else? Great. I will take a motion to move into a closed session.

So moved.

I have a motion from Council Member Freeman. I have a second.

Do I need to say the whole thing? Yeah. OK. I move to enter into closed session for allowed under the Open and Public Meetings Act to discuss exchange lease for sale of real property pending or reasonably imminent litigation or the character competence or physical or mental health of an individual or any other lawful purpose have a second second second from councilmember Newell all any questions all in favor say aye okay that's unanimous we'll now go to closed session

So we welcome all those who joined us in the gallery today. We appreciate that you're here. We will go ahead and start. If you would please stand, and we will recite the Pledge of Allegiance. We'll be led by Councilmember Lockhart. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, Thank you. Thank you, Council Member Lockhart. Okay, our first item, item 2.1. This is an awesome 2.1, our introduction of Miss Lehigh Brooklyn Ward. Come on up. And welcome. Welcome.

Hello. Hi. Thank you all for having me here today. I really appreciate you giving me the chance to honestly just come up and thank you. Thank you guys for the support of the Miss America opportunity and the opportunity that you give young women to become Miss Lehigh. I was really grateful that this opportunity worked out for me this year and that the hard work I put in to prepare for this pageant would come to fruition, and then I'm able to serve the Lehigh City. So I'm very grateful. Again, my name is Brooklyn Ward. I grew up here in Lehigh. I've lived here since about 2007. I graduated from Lehigh High School. I'm a proud pioneer. And I recently graduated with my undergraduate degree in dietetics from Utah State University. So I'm back in Lehigh, and I'm really happy to be. I will be going into my master's degree through Utah State University in just a couple of weeks. My orientation is next week, and I'm very excited. But scholarship organizations like this really help women like me to pursue higher education and even a graduate degree like I'm pursuing now. So I'm very excited to start that, but also I'm very excited to engage in my community service initiative, which is also related to my major. It's called Nourish and Strengthen, and it's about nutrition education and bringing nutrition education into our community. So I'm excited to pair what I've been working so hard studying for in college with my community service initiative and with this special title that I get to wear. So I'm very excited. I'm excited to work with you and put me to work if you want to reach out. I've had so much fun already this summer with city events. We opened the new Lehigh Smiths, which is awesome. I love a grocery store. And we've been able to go to parades and represent Lehigh City really well. So I'm really just, again, thanking you all for the support that you've given this organization and just myself already in the first couple of months that I've been able to serve Lehigh. Thank you, and yeah, I'm really appreciative of you guys. So, thank you.

Awesome. Thank you, Brooklyn. Any questions for Ms. Lehi? I don't think she came ready to answer questions.

Well, I can't.

You can put me on the spot whenever.

But again, thank you again, and yeah, please reach out. I'm here to support you all, and I'm really grateful for what you do for our city.

Thank you, Brooklyn. Okay, item number three is citizen input. So we will open it up. A couple of rules here is we would invite whoever has comments to make on items that are not on the agenda. So if there's an item not on the agenda that you'd like to make a comment about, we would invite you up to the microphone. Please state your name, and you'll have three minutes to make your comment. The three minutes will appear on the... on the projector above, so you'll see that. If you get to the three minutes, not a big issue. If you see three, go to zero, finish your comments, and we appreciate that. So with that said, it's 7.04, and we'll open the mic for public comment. Okay, it's 7.04. We will close public comment.

And we'll go to item number four, the consent agenda.

Any questions on the consent agenda? If there's no questions, I'm happy to accept the motion.

Mr. Mayor, I move that we approve the consent agenda as presented.

So I have a motion from Council Member Newell.

No minutes, just the purchase orders.

And strike 4.1.

So part of your motion is to strike item 4.1, correct?

Yes, because there's no minutes. Second.

I have a second from Councilmember Lockhart. Any questions on that motion? We'll start with you, Councilmember Newell.

Yes.

Council Member Stallings.

Yes.

Council Member Freeman.

Yes.

Council Member Lockhart.

Yes.

Great. Thank you. Okay, item five, 5.1, public hearing for fiscal year 2027, executive municipal officers compensation increases. This is a public hearing. So with that, again, the public has the opportunity to come up and speak. So I will open the public hearing at 7.06. And we will close that public hearing then at 7.06 with no comment. So thank you for that. We'll now go to item 5.2, the public safety impact fee enactment. Before we go to the public hearing, Dean will invite you to come up and go through that. And after they're done, we'll open up for a public hearing.

All right, I'll take just a second and introduce our consultant here, Ryan Smith with Zions Public Finance. So we've been working on this and, you know, we've been trying to get all of our impact fees updated. State wants us to get them updated more regularly and it's probably to our benefit to do that as well. and I that's not it I'm sorry I just he emailed me the presentation and I and I need

Oh, that was it.

Okay. Yeah, that'd be great.

Yeah. So, and we talked about this a little bit a couple weeks ago. Ryan can answer any questions you have, and he has presentation. We'll let him do it.

Thank you. Yeah, I'm Ryan with Zions Public Finance. Just going to do a really brief overview of the impact fee analysis we conducted over the past months and answer any questions you might have. So we'll start with the brief overview. What is an impact fee? It's a one-time charge to new development to pay for, in this case, public safety facilities, including fire stations, police facilities. It only covers system improvements, so it's not anything specific to one development, but citywide improvements. In order to charge an impact fee, you have to have the IFFP and IFFA in place and passed. We did the IFFP and IFFA. The IFFP goes over existing service levels, so in the case of public safety, that's facility space square footage divided by the calls for service then proposed so any new construction planned and then projected calls for service in the future based on trends in population growth We estimate any growth in calls for service to determine if there's any excess capacity in the existing facilities. And then we worked with the police and fire departments to look at their plans for new facilities, what those cost, and how it impacts consumption of excess capacity. Then we get into impact fee analysis. The main component of this analysis is the proportionate share analysis, which is basically centered around the principle that new development should pay for its fair share of that of the public safety facilities, existing development should pay for its fair share. So we make credits for any future bond payments, interest that's apportioned to either existing or future development. So our basis for the growth projections is MAG's population projections. And from there, we look at the ratio of existing non-residential development, multifamily development, and have it scale up as population grows. Now with that, so we'll start with police, calls for service also grow. So there's going to be about 4,700 additional calls for police service by 2034. And so because of that, since there's no planned facilities for police, the level of service is going to go down from about one square foot per call down to 0.9 square foot per call by 2034. Based on that service level, we're able to see how much excess capacity there is in the existing facility, look at the costs that were paid for the police facility, and end up at a cost per call about $390. That's a starting point. We then have to make credits, as I mentioned, in the proportionate share analysis. We make credits for bond payments, future bond payments that existing development will pay its fair share for. And then also, there's an impact fee fund balance. We created that over the 14 years through 2034. So that gives you, we do an NPV of that to account for the time value of money. And so by 2034, you can see the maximum cost that's allowed to be charged under code grows. The city council can elect to charge less than that, but this is the maximum cost per call. So that's one side of the analysis. We have to go from cost per call and then compare that with calls per unit. So to determine calls per unit, we take call data provided by dispatch for police and fire. We pinpoint those calls on a map and see what calls are coming from residential, multifamily, or non-residential. So commercial, industrial, as well as schools would be non-residential. So these are actual calls per unit based on 2025 data. And so then multiplying these maximum costs per call that you see in the bottom right column, times cost per unit, we end up at the maximum fee that's allowed to be charged under state code for police. For fire, the process is almost exactly the same. The difference is that for fire, non-residential development can be charged for fire apparatus. So fire engines, ladder trucks that cost in excess of $500,000. So that's one additional component. The rest of the calculations are pretty similar in terms of how the math works. There's no impact fee fund balance. We didn't do that. But we did look at the two bonds, the proportionate share of interest cost to existing development, and just a portion of the bond that was to fire. So nothing that was paying for City Hall or anything like that. And then for the fire vehicles, so to clarify, It looks like, I could see how you could read this as perhaps there's, what, 11 vehicles? There's really just five existing vehicles, five replacement vehicles, and one additional vehicle. So you can see in the third column, capacity year, fire engines are typically 20-year lifespan. Some of these don't go 20 years because they're going to be replaced. And so we only looked at the years that the vehicle's in service to determine the cost per call. So same process here, we take calls per unit for FHIR. Those are actual 2025 call data. Multiply that by the cost per call and end up with calls, excuse me, maximum fee per unit. And again, that changes over time as more of the existing bonds get paid off. So together, police and fire, this is an overview of what developments could be charged, different types of development could be charged each year. And again, the city council can charge less than that, but this is the maximum that would be allowed under state code based on the required analysis in the IFA. That's pretty much it, but I'm happy to go deeper on any of those or answer any questions. If not, I'll...

give that time back any questions I just I have one just out of curiosity why is it non-residentially that can go towards the apparatus or the vehicles it's kind of a

I don't know the specifics of the story of how that happened. It is a requirement under, not a requirement, but it's allowed under state code. My impression is that the rationale was that these large vehicles, right, fire vehicles didn't used to cost $500,000 or a million dollars or a million and a half dollars. And so as that started to become a thing, ladder trucks, it was really driven by non-residential development, multi-story development. that required ladder trucks. And so that's when that was added into the state code. Now you see residential developments that are, you know, taller and they would warrant a ladder truck, but the code has not been updated to allow for that to be charged to residential.

Okay.

I was just wondering. Thank you. So when you're doing your analysis, if you could go back to the square footage one. I noticed that both in police and fire, you used the square footage. Was it this one? Yeah. Help me understand why this is the approach you're taking. Why are these the variables you're looking at to determine this?

So to determine the level of service, yeah, it's a good question. I mean, for different impact fees, we look at different things. So for parks, it could be park acres. So the main reason, though, I think to get at your question is that these are paying for capital costs. So it's not paying for the impact of hiring officers or hiring firefighters. It's paying for the capital facilities. So just the most basic unit to understand that is square feet. Also, I want to note that the cost of the facilities is a factor in here as well, because we're looking at cost per square foot. So it's not just square footage, it's also the cost to build those square feet are included as well.

Yeah, and is it state code that forces you down this route, like the requirements for what you can use impact fees for? Is that what sends you down this analysis path, or...?

It's the basis of it. State code doesn't prescribe specifically, okay, for a public safety fire, you're going to look at, you know, they don't spell it out how to do the analysis. But over years, we've done this and it kind of has evolved. And this is an approach that has evolved. Stood the test of time, and we've worked with dozens and dozens of communities, and sometimes these do face pushback from developers, and they've withstood that as well. So I think the rationale is it starts with state code, but then it ultimately is this way because it's just been proven over time.

Yeah. Okay. Thank you. That's really helpful. Appreciate that.

I noticed that you said this is calculated based on not having proposed increases in square footage for public safety. Is that right?

So for police, we have 44,000 existing square feet. And so capacity of your current facility is 2034. So nothing planned through 2034 for police and then for fire.

fire it was just the apparatuses is that what it is 58 yeah it's just the only additions are uh that were included in this were the additional okay apparatus and replacements yeah okay so we were just talking about um you know a possibility of doing redoing station 81 and just looking based on the master plan it was an increase of 7 000 square foot 7 000 square feet there I know I kind of mentioned that to Dean as replacing Station 81, and he had said if we're not increasing the square footage, then it doesn't increase. But if we increase the square footage, like if that's projected, then that would change the calculations, is that all?

Yeah, so it depends if it's replacing or adding, right? So even though replacing comes with costs, the level of service, so this kind of ties into what you were asking, the level of service stays the same because the level of service is square feet per call. The cost per call has the cost of the facilities included, but the square foot per call.

Mm-hmm.

just looks at square feet. So the level of service would stay the same even though costs, there would be money spent to replace it.

Yeah, just looking at that kind of general rough draft there of a possible new station, it said increase of approximately 7,000 square foot. And I don't know if there was some increase in personnel associated with that or not, but I don't know if that would change things at all. Yeah. I just wanted to point that out. Any questions, how that will work? Yeah, I might just address that a little bit.

So these studies, they're based on a lot of numbers, a lot of estimates. It would not be a problem for us. Let's say it's a year from now, and we know what we're going to do and go forth and to have them come and update this study or something like that. So I guess my recommendation is right now we don't have concrete plans to build anything, so maybe we do this, and then if that changes,

we can update the study yeah yeah so so where is it so yes to charge the fees you have to have it in place and I believe you do have impact fees in place but I'm guessing they're not I'm guessing they're not this high so Even though plans may change, kind of looking at this now just allows you to get those fees in place and charged, and then we can update it later and update the cost accordingly.

Once it's solidified, yeah, okay.

Any other questions? okay thank you this is a public hearing so it is open to the public so we will open the public will open the public hearing at 722 for anyone who would like to speak to this item okay so it's 722 we'll close the public hearing And we'll bring it back to the dais. And we'll talk about item B, which is the consideration of ordinance 33-2026, adopting an impact fee enactment ordinance, impact fee facilities plan, and an impact fee analysis for the provision of public safety facilities within Lehigh City. Are there any other questions the council has on this one?

Mayor, can I ask Dean a question?

Sure.

And I'm just seeking to understand a little bit more the reason why we don't add the analysis of headcount into the impact fee. I recognize we can spend impact fees on capital costs.

Yeah. Well, headcount's related to operations, right? Yeah. So the fact that we're hiring more people, that's not something we can use an impact fee for. I think this study, and if I say something wrong, Ryan can correct me, we're essentially saying we have an X amount of square foot availability for police and fire in buildings right now and it's handling a certain amount of calls and those calls are going to grow so the difference between our calls today and what they're going to be is essentially excess capacity yeah but we don't take the calls the dispatch takes the calls so well we're when they say the calls it's not because of the calls we're taking it's because it calls we're responding to right so if the police have to respond to

it said 40 000 calls yeah i think i'm going back to the budget discussions that we had where we were using calls as a metric to determine head count but then in this impact fee analysis we're saying that those are separate and and the connection is not there so it's and i recognize like we're talking about two different things but they are definitely related and i don't know if there just needs to be more discussion at a state level um but from my perspective It seems like the impact, I might put in a whole new planned subdivision.

You're saying the employees are the impact on the facilities?

Well, I want to be able to, if we're going to add 2,000 more units and we need four more officers because of those units, I want to be able to make sure that, but I don't know.

It all goes back to that money just has to be for new construction related to new growth.

So then I guess it's the property tax paid by those who live in that development that pay for- That would pay for the people. For the employees.

Yeah.

Okay. Sorry, I just had to talk that through and make sure I understood it. Thank you.

I have a question, Mayor. So if we're talking about adopting this ordinance, does it impact- I mean, first of all, I don't know. Maybe I am confused here, but it doesn't look like I actually see an ordinance, and it looks like we're looking at just adopting the maximum impact fee for this. Is that what I understand? It's just the end page? Yeah. The recommendation is...

I think that's what we're proposing. They said their study shows what the maximum we could charge is, and we're proposing that we charge that.

Okay. I just want to clarify. That's what the ordinance would be. Okay.

Any other questions? There's no other questions. I'm happy to entertain a motion.

Mayor?

Yes.

I move that we adopt ordinance number 33-2026, the impact fee enactment ordinance. Impact fee facilities plan and impact fee analysis for the provision of public safety facilities within Lehigh City So I have a first from council member Stallings.

Do I have a second?

Second so the council council member Newell with a second any questions on the motion Just mr. Mayor just understand It's the maximum like what councilman said that you your motion is to adopt the maximum in these reports. I Yeah. Okay.

Correct. So any further questions? So we'll start with you, Council Member Freeman.

Yes.

Council Member Lockhart.

Yes. Council Member Newell. Yes.

Council Member Stallings.

Yes.

Great. Thank you. Item 5.3, consideration of Resolution 2026-44, approving updates to the Lehigh Stormwater Management Plan of 2026. Yes. I know that's us. There you are. How are you?

I'm doing good. Happy to be here. My name is Shelby Brewer, and I am with the Lehigh Public Works Department. I am the stormwater engineer. And I am proposing these updates to our existing stormwater management plan. It's our plan of compliance with the Utah small MS4 permit. That permit expired in May and was reissued with some slight alterations. So I am updating our stormwater management plan to meet the requirements of the renewed permit. The changes were pretty minor. There were some increased requirements for public education and outreach, as well as some changes to our inspection schedule for construction sites. I also made some changes to make it a little bit more concise and remove some redundant information.

Great. Thanks, Shelby. Any questions on this one?

I was looking at the document. It looks like we still need to update that organizational chart, I think, there, because now engineering is under public works and just some other things. But I know you probably pulled that from somewhere. I love how it's, let's see, the MCM 6. It says the city will strive to set an example for others by complying with the same standards. I think you put that in there. Is that where I'm looking at? Yeah. Yeah, and then B, best management practices. And I think it talks about utilizing the residential newsletter to feature stormwater pollution prevention topics. And I think that's a fantastic way. I noticed that in the most recent one. I think it would be great to also try to involve and disseminate information through utilizing the Environmental Sustainability Committee and just social media. Because I know not everyone reads the newsletter and it would be great to take advantage of some of those other mechanisms, but that's probably my only input there. I know you're looking at when you're considering that as BMP4. I don't know if we need to include the events person either, if we're talking about the Beautify Lehigh Month or or something. I'm not sure who. I don't know who runs the Beautify Lehigh Month. You're putting that in there as a way to... Was environmental sustainability instead of events? Okay.

I believe I have the environmental sustainability one listed as the responsible person.

Yeah, yeah, I think you do. So I was wondering about... I mean, they have a committee as well, but I don't know about the events people, if they help with the city events or something. But anyways, just little notes here and there. So...

So thank you for your work on this, Shelby. And thanks for answering some of the questions that I had. And I'm going to second what Rachel said about using social media, because I don't know how many people actually read the newsletter as much as they should, or there's good information in there. But the other thing, along with that, as far as informing the public, I think helping Residents understand why it's so important to you know Keep pollutants out of this stormwater would be very helpful. I think when people understand why they're more motivated to take action on it But one thing I did want to bring up in the the council and ask you this we had a discussion about some of these Mitigations were to retain the water on site, either through evaporation or infiltration or reuse of the water. And I brought this to your attention and Dave Norman's attention, and I appreciate your perspective on it, but it just seems to conflict with what we're hearing from the state about how we need to get the water to Jordan River, Utah Lake, to get it to the Great Salt Lake. So I kind of wanted to ask you, and And you recognize that conflict as well. Would it be helpful as a council, as elected officials, to bring that more to the attention of the state? We need clear direction here. We understand the need to balance keeping pollutants out of our bodies of water. But we also need that water in the Salt Lake. So is there anything we can do as elected officials to help clarify the policies there? Or what are your thoughts on that?

Yeah, I'm aware of the conflicting concerns. So the directive comes from the Utah Department of Environmental Quality Division of Water Quality, and the 80th percentile retention is trying to match existing hydrologic conditions. So when a site isn't developed, you don't get as much stormwater runoff from it. The vegetation holds it on site, and it naturally infiltrates. But after we pave, we've now created an impervious surface, and it's all going to run off. So the 80th percentile is trying to mimic the pre-construction environmental conditions. And so that helps with pollution as well as aquifer recharge. So that's the reasoning behind the Division of Water Quality's requirements in our permit. But with the drought we've had, there are concerns about sending more water to the Great Salt Lake. don't know what communication is going on between the legislature and the Department of Environmental Quality. But I attend the Utah Stormwater Advisory Committee meetings, and we have brought up this concern to DEQ, but they haven't done anything about it yet. So I don't know if speaking with the legislature would accomplish anything. Oh, OK. We could try.

I don't know. OK, well, I Again, I mentioned to you, I think it's a balancing act, but it would be good to have clear policy on how to manage that. But I appreciate your work on all of this. Thank you.

Any other questions? Great. I'm happy to. Is anyone in the audience tonight here to speak on this item? Doesn't look so great. So I'm ready to entertain a motion.

Mr. Mayor, I move that we approve resolution 2026-44, approving updates to the Lehigh stormwater management plan for 2026.

So I have a first from Council Member Newell. Do I have a second?

Mayor, I'll second it if we can change it to recommend approval because the council doesn't approve this one. The public works director does. That's what it says in the document. So if you're good with that, I'll second it. That's the plan, yeah. It says that the public works director approves it.

We recommend to him. It's coming here as kind of a courtesy and to bring awareness to the public. I think that's what it said.

Are you okay with that, Council Member New?

Yes.

Council Member Lockhart then on a second?

Yes.

Any questions?

Just that it says approved and adopted by the City Council on this.

Yeah, there's I think I just need to approve their resolution And I might need to change their language in the resolution to show that it's a recommendation So you would take action on the resolution and maybe just include in your motion to clarify the language if needed in there to Clarify that it's a recommendation because the motion was to approve the resolution approving updates to the so the

It's describing the resolution, not that we're actually approving updates. Okay.

But the resolution is a recommendation?

We're approving the resolution, and the resolution is a recommendation.

Okay. I want to second you and your motion, as long as it's that.

Yes. And I may need to clarify the language in the motion to state what you...

Okay. Do you want me to restate it?

Sure.

Okay. Mr. Mayor, I move that we approve Resolution 2026-44, approving updates to the Lehigh Stormwater Management Plan 2026, which is a recommendation to, who's it go to?

Director of Public Works?

The Director of Public Works.

So I have a new first from Councilmember Newell. Do I have a second? Second. I have a second from Councilmember Lockhart. Any questions on that motion? Great. So we'll start with you, Councilmember Lockhart.

Yes.

Council Member Newell?

Yes.

Council Member Stallings?

Yes.

Council Member Freeman?

Yes.

OK, perfect. Thank you for talking through that. OK, 5.4, consideration of ordinance 34-2026, approval of amendments to the design standards and public improvement specifications manual in chapter 2. Shelby's back.

I am back. So this is updating our design standards to include the 80th percentile requirement that was previously mentioned in our stormwater management plan. It's putting it in our storm drain design standards, as well as allowing for the use of sumps and retention basins, along with their design requirements.

Questions on this? I was just wondering, it looks like there's a few times where it's replacing city council with the city engineer, and I don't always have a problem with that, but I'm kind of curious as to why it was permitted by the city council, and the city council approves it, and now we're taking that away. Do you want to say that, Brad?

Yeah, I think I can probably attempt to answer that. Okay. So the first reference to the replacement of the city council, the city engineers in relation to the measurement or the right-of-way dimensions for the roadways. First of all, I think it's important to keep in mind that these are public right-of-ways only. You know, when we have a private development come through, they are able to approve. You know, they're able to... submit and receive approval on their own cross-sections. So this allows us to make modifications as necessary. Maybe I can just give you one example. For example, we had one situation where we had a street up in Traverse Mountain area where they did not have a sidewalk on one side of the road. So we didn't see a reason to have the parking on that side of the road. So we allowed a slightly narrower cross-section to reduce parking on the one side where we didn't have sidewalk. And so we made a slight modification on that. Again, we're willing to do whatever we need to do, whatever you feel strongly about. That's just one example on the roadway. Generally speaking, otherwise, we follow the Transportation Master Plan, and we're currently in the process of modifying that, as we've mentioned. The other section that was mentioned was in section 15. I'm sorry, page 15, section 2.111, the sewer system. The city council, we're proposing to strike city council and put city engineer and public works director when we're proposing that change in the event that public works and city engineering change. when we would agree that a lift station may be, a sewer lift station may be allowable in the city. So we consult. quite often with public works and generally speaking we do not we would not want a sewer lift station but there are situations when we do and so in this case we're happy to bring it to you if you would like to know but I'm not sure that you would you would have the technical expertise or maybe you wouldn't want to weigh in whether we have a sewer lift station so that that was one where we change yeah what it says engineer and public works director what if you guys disagree If we disagree, then I think we would stick with the option of not having one. Generally speaking, we would... We would need to agree. And generally, Public Works would carry a little bit heavier weight on this sewer lift station because they're the ones maintaining it. And so we work really closely together. Whether engineering feels like we would want one or not really depends on whether Public Works would like to maintain it.

So you're comfortable with the word and instead of or?

We are. Okay. Because we want to be hand in hand as to whether or not we feel like a sewer lift station is good for our city. Okay. I think the last... One was on page 18. This one is specifically related to the storm drainage detention basins that Shelby's referring to. Generally speaking, these requirements talk about the depth of a storm drainage detention basin and... how steep the side slopes are on the detention basin. So the deeper the basin, the shallower the slopes we would like to have them be. So that if we ever had someone get in that basin, if it were deeper, we want them to be able to climb out. And so, again, if you would prefer to weigh in on that one, we're fine either way. But we just felt like that's a decision, as so many other decisions that are already in this manual are. that we feel like that we have the ability to make those decisions. But it's really up to you.

Mr. Mayor, may I? Yes. Are any of those decisions, if they increase cost substantially, like there is a mechanism for the council to see the cost of those decisions, right?

Well, generally these decisions are related to the development of a property. And so, for example, if a subdivision comes in and we require a detention basin, a smaller basin would be a deeper basin. You know, as it gets larger, then we would allow it to be shallower. So, yeah, they do have a... component to the development. But generally, we're not making these decisions based on cost for the developer. They're making those decisions as to how deep they want the basin. We just want to make sure that if they build a basin a certain depth, for example, that it's safe.

OK. OK. Thank you.

And do I understand that the street types, we're talking about that, the footage there, the measurements are kind of standardized by the state recommendations?

Is that what I understand? Well, as was sent to, I think, Michelle in an email, these standards were, we've all, for the longest time, we had a standard 34-foot width roadway. Three or four years ago, the state came down after the developers lobbied with the state and said, you shall not require a roadway any wider than 32 feet. And so we modified our standard. Unfortunately, when we modified the standard, we modified the standard drawings and we missed the section. Okay. So these small changes in the section two really reflect what we've been enforcing for three or four years now.

Okay. Okay. So for the most part, this would just be a standard anyways? It's kind of... Yeah, it's been the standard for that amount of time.

We just miss changing it in Section 2. We don't often change Section 2 of our design standards. So when Shelby came through and wanted to make her changes, we thought that it was an opportune time for us just to tidy up a few items. Okay.

May I make a comment? Yeah. So I did notice that some of the things were taken away from the council to the engineer or whatever staff. And I'm OK with that, because I would defer to you anyway. There's some things I have no clue about. So I appreciate your expertise. I'm good with those changes.

Any other questions? Great. We'll entertain a motion.

Mayor, I will make a motion. I move that we approve ordinance number 34-2026, approval of amendments to the design standards and public improvement specification manual chapter 2.

Okay, so I have a first from Councilmember Stallings, so I have a second. Second. Second from Councilmember Freeman. Any questions on that motion? Okay, we'll start with you, Council Member Newell.

Yes.

Council Member Stallings.

Yes.

Council Member Freeman.

Yes.

Council Member Lockhart.

Yes.

Great, thank you. All right, item 5.5, consideration of the preliminary subdivision approval for the Cortese subdivision, an eight-lot residential development located at 1450 West, 1220 North in the R-122 zone. This is continued from July 14th City Council. Before we get to this item, I will take a motion to untable it.

So moved.

Second. OK, we have a motion from Council Member Freeman and a second from Council Member Lockhart. All in favor?

Aye.

OK, so we'll untable that, and then we'll bring that to where we are now. So we'll invite Gro. There he is. Come on up. How are you? I'm good.

Good. Jay Cohn, Grow Development.

I'm the applicant.

As you can see, much better. collaboration tonight with Mr. Peacock and Mrs. Trapp. So we've had a good week of working together on this item based on the feedback from the council and the feedback from the residents that are impacted by our development. And we had some great resolutions that we came up with. And so we were able to kind of finalize the design. Both the impacted parties on the private irrigation ditch are in agreement with what we proposed. And so that was a 20-foot easement with restrictions on building within the easement, as well as the fence line that would be along the easement on our side of the fence, still maintaining that residential versus agricultural border that we have. And so, yeah, we'd like to request the approval tonight of the preliminary plat. If there's any other items that need to be discussed, we're open to that. There was some communication, even today, from staff as well as the property owners and council members. I did speak with Mr. Peacock this afternoon, and we'll honor what we proposed to them, and that's what they've agreed to. But he did say that he'd like to share a quick message, if that's all right, on behalf of

his feedback on the item so we'll hold for just a quick second on that but we'll get to that before we get to that well you know what that's that's good so let's open that up for comment any of those that are here to comment you have three minutes come and state your name you'll have three minutes and then we'll kind of go from there

Yeah, Bart Peacock. I live at 1533 West, 1220 North. So, yes, I thought up until this morning that things were just fine. I had emailed Jake and Traps had emailed Jake, you know, telling him that we're good with it to go. We had agreed on everything, and then this morning an email comes out, kind of threw a wrench in the whole system. But we're willing to work with him. I don't know what perspired, why it come out that way this morning, why they waited until the last minute to address this. I have no idea. There was some statements made by Ryan that I don't appreciate. We have never demanded nothing. Not a thing have we demanded. We've been trying to work with these people and they've been very good to work with. So as a city attorney, I want that noted that we did not demand nothing. I think that's unprofessional. You need to get your facts straight before you make them statements. Makes us look like the bad guys. Kim, I'd like to have you address why you waited until the very last minute. Okay, with that said, got that off my chest. We're willing to work with Grow Development. We've told him tonight we will cut it down to 15 feet instead of the 20. He was very pleased with that. It will help him a lot with especially one of his lots. The 15 feet gives us plenty. Five feet's not going to cut it. I don't know how professional Kim is with the equipment and stuff, but it's not enough to get in there and work on ditches. So I'm not the bad guy here trying to bully my way through, Ryan. Jim, I think when you put out a letter like that, you ought to have some resolution of how to fix it. So we're willing. Still accept it. Plain and simple. Good. They've been great to work with. Gro has been very good to work with. We'll cut it down to 15 feet and that will help them. Everything else still stands. They can't build nothing in that easement. The north end still stands. They are putting a berm there, like should be city ordinance berms. I was glad to see that because I was told on the last development that there wasn't room to put a berm in there. So we didn't get it. So then I had to redo my ditches. So I was pleased to see a berm there. I don't know why Kim didn't force them to put a berm in, but it was in ordinance that it should be. You can tell that I'm not very happy with a couple of people here tonight. I think they overstepped their boundaries. So the proposal is to cut it down to 15 feet, and we'll accept it and let them go on and get this going. Thank you.

Mr. Mayor, can I ask a question? Yes. Mr. Peacock, so that was an email that I sent from the city attorney to a certain number of people. Do you mind sharing who shared that email with you?

I'm sure you can figure it out. Did you say that, though?

I'm not going to address your questions, because this isn't about me and you. I'd just like to know who shared that email with you. You can find out.

OK. Any other comments?

Maybe we haven't looked into defamation.

Or Mr. Peacock, your three minutes are up.

Hi, I'm Denia Trapp. I just wanted to come up and say thank you for your time, and also to Jake and Groh. They've been really great to work with, and we just appreciate this process, and we don't want to get tabled or anything and go forward. Thank you.

Great, thank you. Any other comments? Okay, we'll bring it back to the dais. Any questions?

May I ask a question to the applicant?

Yeah.

Okay, so originally you proposed, I think in the last meeting you proposed a 20-foot placement of this fence. So now you're reducing it to the 15-foot. I'm just wondering if we include that in a motion, how... Best to word that, I guess.

Yeah, great question. We request approval with a condition that you instruct staff at the final review to implement or ensure that a 15-foot easement is built on that side of the property and that the fence must be on the easternly side of that easement within the property, if that makes sense.

Council Member, can I ask a follow-up to your question, just to make sure I understand? Is that OK? I don't want to cut her off, but it's an add-on.

Are you good for a second, Michelle?

I just want to clarify that your request Is it 20 feet easement, but the fence goes at 15, so they could bring the fence down at one point for repairs to get the full 20, or do you want just a 15-foot easement with no ability to bring the fence down for more? Does that make sense?

Yes. So it would be a 15-foot easement, and the fence would be on the 15-foot side of our side of the easement.

Okay. So we are going to eliminate the easement on the east side of the property owner's fence?

Yeah. It would reduce the easement and move the fence in at the same time.

Okay. Thank you. That clarity is helpful. Thank you.

Yeah.

Good question.

I don't know how it works. Is that OK with irrigation to have 15 foot or 20? I mean, I don't know. Just whatever. However, yeah. For me, I think what I was understanding from residents that had the water rights was that they just needed access to get to the head gate. And I was concerned about their safety going through other people's backyards and the other property owners who had you know, them having someone go through their backyard. So if they don't, you know, they don't need as much space to access it, that's, I have no problem with that. Whatever, yeah, we can see with engineering, with all that, it works. Yeah.

Yeah. Can I ask a question? Yes. Sorry, I'm just trying to better understand it because it's hard for me to tell on the map where things are. So where the head gate is placed, how much space would be on each side of that in the easement?

Yeah, good question. Okay. So the new irrigation line, as well as the head gate, will be on our side of the property line. Okay. Because that's where the existing ditch is. uh so it won't encroach or go into the traps property okay uh with the exception of the outlet that goes and serves their their private irrigation line um the box is about a four by four box okay and so uh and it would be at ground level and then there would be the additional 11 feet of space between the new fence and the back of the box

So is the box really close to the property line?

Yeah, it's right on the property line.

And so then you would have like an additional 10 or so feet of there. Okay. And the other thing I was wondering about is does there need to be access from both sides? I'm just trying to think of a way to be able to maximize, because I'm thinking if I were to buy one of these homes, you know, and I have an easement in my backyard with a power line too, and nobody's ever been there, but I know that I'm like looking at space I've bought, but I can't, grow certain things there, I can't place structures there, things like that. So I'm just thinking like how we can still make sure that we best help those who need access to it, but do you need access in both directions to it? So maybe there's a couple of properties that wouldn't need that 15 foot easement.

Yeah. So how we have it written is that the property owners would own and maintain that space. So they can put gates to go in and out of the fence. They still have to maintain the residential and agricultural boundary. But they can go in, maintain it, cut the weeds down, plant little things, you know, that don't have roots that would go into the irrigation pipe. But, yeah, they can beautify it and have it their space. It's just they can't build anything back in there.

And so even though the head gate's on lot six?

Yep.

Do you need access from both lot seven and lot five?

Since the line is impacting all those lots, we're running the easement across the whole western boundary of the property. In the event anything happens where the ditch enters the new pipe, up on the top northwest corner, as well as the main access comes from the main road. So they'll have to walk north up the easement line.

Yeah. Good questions.

Any other questions?

Can I just make a comment? Sure. I just appreciate you once again. I mentioned this before that I appreciate all your work on this and your responsiveness to the residents and helping to protect their rights to that water in the irrigation ditch and We don't see that often, so I really appreciate it and just wanted to thank you for your work there. Thank you.

Appreciate it. Yeah, I also want to do that. And I know I got an updated thing. I mean, what I got an email that said one of the things, one of the inputs from engineering was to install a fence. And the response was, per request from neighbors and city council, we've removed the proposed fence. So I mean, I know we didn't. We encourage them to be able to have access to their water rights. whatever you decided to do with the fence. Like, I appreciate what you decided. And I know there's also some concern about maybe some rubber mulch on one of the properties. And you guys were talking about, you know, cleaning that up too. So I appreciate that and that you guys are going to do that. So, yeah, I think it's great. And you guys have been, I think – It sounds like the traps and the peacocks are going to be able to have access to their water rights, which is important. And your property rights be protected, too.

So I appreciate that.

Thank you.

I know it won't be the last circumstance as these farms continue to get developed and other farms remain. And so hopefully we can set a good example on how to handle it.

Yeah, and I'll just add, I'm a fan of residents telling government what to do and not government telling residents what to do. So I appreciate that the residents came together, worked together, the landowners came up with a solution and brought it to us. I think that's great, and it's important that, yeah, your example be recognized because I love that you guys work together. So thank you for that.

Thank you.

No question, Fred. Yes, Mr. Mayor and Council, if I may. Maybe this is the surveyor in me that makes me look at the plat. So I think we've been asked to make some changes with your comments to the plat and the 15-foot easement. I would also suggest that as... construction plans show that there's a berm on the north side of lots four and five that we also indicate on note eight of the plat that that berm is to be is not to be altered by the owners of those two Lots that's the purpose of the berm we just want to make sure that none of those landowners know that they can't that they can't alter that berm otherwise it doesn't work as function as

Thank you. Any other questions? If not, I'm happy to entertain a motion.

I can take a stab at it, but I think I need Brad's help with the last part. I don't write fast enough. OK. And feel free to help me out. OK. Mayor, I move that we approve the preliminary subdivision sorry that we yes approve the preliminary subdivision of the Cortese subdivision and 18 excuse me a lot residential look development located at 1450 West 1220 north in an r-122 zone with direction to staff to included condition in the final review for a 15-foot easement, and that the fence be located on the western, excuse me, eastern side. And also, help me out here, Brad, for lots four and five.

Yeah, just lots four and five. There should be a note on the plat. Note eight shall include the berm.

Okay. I'll just teach you what he said. And is not to be altered. And not to be altered, yes. Thank you.

Okay, so I have a first from Council Member Stallings. I have a second.

Second.

I have a second from Council Member Newell. Any questions?

I'm just wondering, could we provide a bright line of clarity that the fence would be on the easement line, not the property line for the homeowner? I don't. You said east side, but I just want to provide the bright line that it belongs on the easement line, not the property line. Is that okay?

The 15-foot easement line?

Yeah. Okay. I'll make that change.

You're good with that, Council Member Noem?

Thank you.

Okay, we'll start with you, Council Member Noem.

Yes. Council Member Stallings. Yes. Council Member Freeman.

Yes.

Council Member Lockhart.

Yes. Okay. That is done. Item 5.6, consideration of Ordinance 35-2026, approving a comprehensive development code amendment to Chapter 23, signs, updating requirements, and simplifying the text. And that's Lehigh City. Kim, I believe that's... Oh, no. There you are.

I don't get to come to council very often, so this is kind of fun. Welcome. Yeah, thank you. Give us your name for the record to yeah, I should probably raise this as well Jacob Curtis with the planning department And I recognize it's a lot of pages and a lot of changes so I Don't know if it's easier for me to talk about some of the changes or why we did this or if you just want to spitball questions or if you just want to make a motion I'm game for anything I guess I could just go into a little bit why we did it. It's a little bit in the narrative. But I think there's a couple purposes with this. Part of it is there's just a lot of redundancy within this chapter. And then also anyone, the few of you that have served on the planning commission before, know that conditional uses kind of pervade through this chapter with pylon signs and some of the other different types of signs. And trying to... give the planning commission a little bit more teeth to enforce and not just grant. So with the conditional use, right, you have to approve it with reasonable conditions. But with some of the updates in here, it would be exceptions that give a little bit more discretion. And so we're trying to emphasize to sign companies, you know, builders that we'd like signs that meet our code, not trying to go above and beyond. I think another nice update with this is making it more accessible to the sign companies, to the residents that are trying to do small businesses that are trying to put up signs. Because it is a lot, and it's complicated, and we get so many questions about it. So yeah, I guess that's just a little introduction.

Any questions for Jacob?

Yeah, so I was seeing that. You kind of explained that conditional uses can be kind of messy, right? And I know that some of the training that we've gotten as elected officials is to try to limit conditional uses because it does make it a tricky situation. Basically, if they meet those conditions, even if you don't it might not be what's there might be other some concerns the planning commission's hands are pretty much tied um to to have those things there yeah that's correct okay um yeah so i i appreciate i appreciate that and i was looking i think i asked him for So after I read this, I drove along some of these areas that were talked about adding to. I think a lot of the changes make sense. I'm a little concerned because it looks like we're kind of clumping together in C-section 23.090. Looks like we're clumping together 2100 North, I-15, Mountain View Corridor, and SR-92 as kind of all the same. I think that's, I don't know what page that is, but... Yeah, it's page 14. Okay, yeah. And... In my mind, as someone who drives some of those, I'm not as familiar as driving with Mountain View Corridor, but I don't believe that SR92 should be there and clumped the same way. We actually have residents who live on SR92. The speed limit is lower. It's 55 miles an hour instead of 70 or whatnot. There's school children who cross, as we know. We've talked about that. There's... um it's even kind of you know it's close to traverse mountain where we have a conservation easement and some things going on that to me lend it to be a little bit of a diff different thing than that so i'm concerned that and and that's where a lot of the discussions go with fine commission is it's the developments on sr 92 because there are conflicts there with residents living there right so that's why i don't necessarily want to put a blanket um

put it put it clump it together with this yeah and that makes sense we we did talk about that a little bit and I think it's important to mention this is in the pylon sign section and there's a lot of stipulations into kind of when you can do this you know the size of your property it has to be a hotel gas station or restaurant I think the reason we put those in, and I'm not going to die on the hill that they need to stay in, but there was the Section C, the sign is oriented for freeway viewing, and we were trying to figure out and think through, okay, what is considered a freeway in Lehigh on our Transportation Master Plan, and I think around the same time, the collective, as part of their area plan, had presented a sign, and so we were trying to kind of prepare ourselves for the inevitable questions. Why did they get a sign? What about some of the other businesses along that stretch? But I do agree with you. I don't want to see, you know, large signs going everywhere, but we're trying to think about what's fair and would we consider those freeways moving forward.

Yeah. Well, and I kind of agree with one of the planning commissioners who feels strongly has some negative feelings against signs because I look and the kind of the stipulation is 25 feet is the height, right? And I can look at, there's like a Smith's marketplace over there that has a 25 foot. So I drove by on a Saturday night looking at the lighting and she's all stuff, 915. They're not lit up over at Smith's. It's 25 feet. Smith's actually isn't lit up. They just have the parking lot lights. And guess what? They're pretty... pretty full they're doing you know and so for the argument i was listening i listened to planning commission and argument that what's going to hurt business if we don't have these giant signs i mean do you really need to have a 40 foot sign on top of a retaining wall and you can already see the business like i'm driving on sr92 I can see where target's going to be. If they just put a giant target on the side of their building, I will know they're there. They don't need to have a 40-foot sign. That is my opinion. And there are residents that are there whose windows are going to be facing there. In my mind, that's a different case than I-15. I don't think it's the same. And I know that I think Emily was on Planning Commission when Target requested the 50-something three-foot sign. And even then, I mean, they probably would have been fine with the 25-foot, honestly. Because these other businesses do completely fine with it. Like, you know, Swiss has been there for over a decade, right?

Yeah.

So I'm just, I don't, I, that's the one thing. I mean, I know we're talking on pylon signs. But I have a hard time, the fact that planning commission has to deal with these difficult situations. And it's almost like their hands are tied. If we put this in code. it's really difficult for them to say no. And we're going to have, it looks like Perry has some lots there where they're going to bring density. They're going to have some homes. So right now, we don't have as many along SR-92 as will potentially be there. So I'm concerned about that. I know that pylon signs are restricted in other cities like I mean, Mike was just talking about Park City, right? We have some other places where, because you have this kind of visual noise, and then you do have this problem with, like, the collective or something like that. I'm not saying they're a problem, but where you have this kind of arms race to, like, well, they got a 40-foot sign, so we should get a 40-foot sign. Oh, we should get that, like, right? And it's kind of this competition instead of saying, hey, this is fine with their 25-foot sign. Can we be like that? So I'm a little concerned. There are still some merging... things there, again, there are school children who cross that road. We're talking about some pedestrian access points, some, you know, can cause light pollution and glare, conflicts with some of our goals of just, yeah, some of that like more low profile visual environment. And so I consider that a little bit, again, like I say, just, I have a hard time with that being included there. Because I know that Planning Commission has expressed difficulty being put in that situation. And it seems specific to SR 92 because of the conflicts between the residents and businesses.

I think we're okay. I feel like my mic's finally working. That's great. Maybe I need to lean forward. But I think we're okay striking those other sections, those other roadways. I think we were just trying to encompass everything that could potentially be a point of concern in the future. But I would say in general, the planning department agrees with everything you just said. So I'm comfortable scratching 2100 North Mountain View corridor and SR 92 because the pylon sign option would still be there if the property is over a certain acreage in other situations so this is just one of the potential options that allows the pylon and i do think the collective situation with the height and the grade we've tried to address that within this chapter as well with number five because i do agree with you sometimes if you're up higher on the hill you maybe don't need quite as much height so yeah well and and what is the benefit of electronic display signs can you explain that to me I am not from a sign company. So take this with a grain of salt from the last seven years I've worked here. The electronic display, it's Like a kid in the candy shop, it's bright, it's colorful, you can see it, and sometimes it's easier to change the display. More advertising potential, they can sometimes, you know. I know there's options for like safety or like city messaging sometimes on the signs as well. So I think that's the biggest justification for it is it catches more attention, but it also can be used on occasion by the city if needed or if we are interested in it.

And it looks like we kind of just have an overlay for that by I-15. Is that what I understand?

Oh, on the – and I guess that's for the billboard electronic display. Yeah, for the billboard. Yeah, at the end of the chapter. And I guess it's the same, but those are also a little bit different with the electronic conversion of the billboards versus like your regular electronic display sign at – you know, like a car dealership. It's a different situation for the review and approval. Like, we don't allow new billboards, but we would allow a conversion to the electronic display.

Okay.

Again, I think that goes back to the being able to switch through what they're advertising.

okay i mean maybe another council member had some other opinions about like i was just kind of specific to sr92 because i remember the council meeting in november or the planning fishing in november and then there's june and there was july and they were all talking about signs for sr92 so i'm not sure i mean 2100 north will be a freeway um we'll probably have similar speed limits and some more visibility things as

i-15 but i think there also are probably apartments there so i i don't know i don't know what other insight other yeah i do think it won't make a big change to just remove those because again if the property is large enough or has enough frontage along uh like a collector or arterial street it can qualify for the pylon sign but But if it's under the acreage or doesn't have that frontage, then we could just say no. We're not required to allow it more places. Again, we were just trying to think through possibilities of what may come forward in the future. But again, more than happy to strike that section.

Yeah, I agree with that. The one concern I have, too, is 2100 north is also on the east side of the freeway and their homes there so yeah we forget that right you think of the big main road um i have a few things and i i appreciate the questions that you've answered so far for me especially about the historical markers because i had a little panic moment then i read the whole thing and i was like they got it because we both deal with that so yes everything's good there thanks for thinking of that um So these are just my suggestions or thoughts. In the beginning, in the first section about the purpose and the intent and objectives, you did take out a reference to public safety and public welfare. And I would like to put that back in there, just because that is a compelling government interest, however you want to word it. But to me, it's Even the light pollution for the residents could be a health issue.

So a little bit in addition to what's already in B, but safety and welfare for residents, okay.

So in the very first paragraph where it's struck out. Yeah, okay. Yeah, so it's more than just maintaining a well-kept community. To me it's a safety issue as well, so.

Yeah, the purpose of the chapter is to balance the need to protect the safety and welfare of the residents, business community, and the traveling public.

Yeah, just how you want to word that.

Yeah, just add that back in. Okay.

Because you make a good point that, you know, we are restricting free speech in a way with this, so we do have to justify it pretty strongly, right?

Yeah, it's kind of interesting we're restricting, well, we're, We are protecting right of free speech. Where is legal when maybe this is a legal question? But I mean, we are guaranteeing the right to free speech and expression with the display of signs. But in a content neutral manner, we are allowed to put in regulations to govern speech. Yeah.

Is that good? Legal? OK.

I'm going to go with yes. That was OK. Yeah. It's kind of a balancing act, though, for sure.

Yeah, yeah. Then the other, and this is a question I'm not quite sure the answer to, but so it's violations, and I appreciate the kind of the structure there where it's notifying, giving people a chance to remove signs and that, but ultimately it could be a Class C misdemeanor. But in state code... And I guess I pay attention to this because someday I'll be putting campaign signs up again, possibly. But if there are political signs that are posted on utility polls, what do you call it? The violation is just an infraction, not a misdemeanor. So I don't know if we could go above. As far as I know, that's...

And that's just on the utility poles.

Well, it's, I mean, they go through.

Because I know we tried to make.

Utility pole, light pole, electric box, traffic control device, or railroad signer signal. That's state code. But I'm just, it's a different level of.

Yeah, infraction. So. I know we were trying to make it so they were. typically exempt, but you're thinking for those ones that are, I guess, considered snipe signs that are on power or electrical equipment, it would just lower what the infraction level is. Okay. I can look into that state code.

Yeah, because I don't know if we could do a higher one than state.

I don't know.

Okay. They're ugly, and I hope nobody does that, but, you know. Let's see. And then just these are minor things, but I think It matters for the public to be aware. You have something about temporary signs for homes for sale. Maybe just include for rent as well. And then for the temporary signs, and this is probably for clarity for residents, under four square feet or under, does that include yard sale signs or

It does not. I think, I'm trying to remember if we put the first cell. Let's see. Why don't we maybe put those in the exempt section, but let me check.

Do you want the section 23.7Q for the, yeah.

I was just seeing if it was in the exemption section already for the yard sale signs. So it looks like actually we don't have the yard sale signs under the exemption. So maybe that would be either we could add it as an exemption or

give more flexibility with the size of the temporary signs whatever you decide or the rest of the council decide I just think it that needs to be clarified because people do put those signs up and yeah

Yeah, because if you're, and I guess I've never gone out and measured for yard sale sign. Sometimes they're big, sometimes they're small. But I guess if they're four square feet or under, they're exempt. But if they're larger, then they should be getting a permit. To be honest, I've never gone out on a Saturday and ripped out a yard sale sign. And I don't think our code compliance officer would. Okay. it might be nice to tighten this up in regard to that.

Some of us care about that and want to know if we should or shouldn't. Yeah.

Do you have a preference on how we word that in? Would you like to see the yard sale signs more protected or less protected, I guess is the question.

My only problem is when they leave them up forever. Yeah.

And then so maybe the nice thing with the temporary sign section is it has the part about how quickly it needs to be taken down. Yeah. maybe we should add a clarifying statement in the temporary sign section that it includes yard sale signs. Okay. Maybe.

Yeah.

I, I'm not sure how my feelings are. I just don't like them forever. They get tattered and they look bad. So, um, okay. And then I, I, I kind of agree, maybe address this more, but I, even with signs i'd like to get away with away from exemptions or exceptions and conditional uses yeah um but i understand you want to balance that with flexibility but again it's you know watching those meetings it's it's painful because it's hard you know you have to approve it but

yeah and i do think that we really have tried to i mean if you look at yeah 23 080 a lot of these signs used to fall under conditional use approval and so we've tried to move most of those to either drc or staff level review if it meets code and so the only signs that would go to planning commission now are if you're asking for something above and beyond what our code allows We are hoping that it incentivizes less or disincentivizes developers sign companies from asking for the larger signs because it feels like when you go to right now if you go to Planning Commission if you have to do a pylon sign conditional use for a 25 foot sign or 75 foot sign you might as well ask for 75 right because even if it gets Did not well wouldn't get denied, but if they talk through it and they decide okay? We have to approve it, but what's the condition? Maybe they settle at 50 So we're hoping with this, you know, some, you'd be surprised, a lot of developers and sign companies don't like going to planning commission. I know. Surprise. So we're hoping that it, you know, gives them that extra nudge to not ask for it if they don't really need it. Because a lot of times I don't think they actually need it. They just want it. And then having really specific situations where the conditional use is still required. And I guess it's not a conditional use. It's an exception. Mm-hmm. That requires approval by the Planning Commission.

So I have a question. So if it's an exception, can they come to City Council and so Planning Commission does have to deal with that?

I guess we could write it that way. We also, the Planning Commission can, I think, kick the can to you as well. So, yeah.

I think it would be even more painful to come to yeah Well, I just think conditionally so they go to Planning Commission. Yeah, and then Planning Commission has to deal with the aches and pains of it and and You know we're supposed to Kind of set the code interpret the code do some land use decisions and we're accountable more I think I were more accountable to residents so to me it might Instead of having a conditional use, to me, it makes sense to have, if they want to make an exception, they can come and ask the council.

And we could update this letter B, and it can make it signs approved by the city council. And I think you'd have several planning commissioners that would throw you a party. So...

just couple more things sorry and I'll let you go so the section 23.0 I know the historic preservation Commission

Reviewing and recommending the murals and signs in the historic district. And then it can be approved or denied. I can't remember who does that. And you know what that's, and this is probably a planning commission thing too, is that the recommendations don't do much. I mean, I appreciate that, that we could give input. But ultimately, is there... you know who and i can't remember whoever makes the final decision is there criteria for that is that a legislative decision administrative decision can they like just say no to something that's to the oh this is to the painted signs or murals on the building facade zoning administrator yeah and this is under the wall sign section so it does have

mural is kind of governed by the size allowances of a wall sign and so i think the idea was if we let the yeah historic preservation always makes us up committee versus commission but if we look it kind of gives it's kind of the same thing with um any remodeling or renovation projects or new products in the downtown it is tough it's like what is the criteria to review i do think in this case it would be a little clearer they could look at it And again, it's a strange one. Are they reviewing the content of the sign and what it looks like? Or are they making sure it has historic character? Yeah. Again, I think the reason we switched this was it felt weird to have the planning commission review it. They're not necessarily experts on historic downtown murals and signs. Some of them may be, but... It felt like maybe it made more sense for that group and then for the zoning administrator, DRC, to look at just the wall sign requirements.

I agree with that. I'm just wondering if it's like a conditional use where you can't really ever say no.

Yeah. Let's see. And this one's not written as a conditional use. I think it's just written as a feedback by the historic preservation committee. and then approval by the zoning administrator.

And maybe that's the best we can do. Yeah. Yeah.

Because wall signs aren't a conditional use ever right now, even in our current code.

Right.

So.

Right. I'm just wondering if it, well, I guess some input is better than nothing.

Yeah. Yeah. I think the, I don't know. think the idea behind that is again they look at this proposal for a mural on the side of the bakery and say the bakery wants to do a giant mural of a donut is that what we'd want or would it be better to have a mural of a cowboy. I don't know. Again, maybe bad examples, but at least would give groups an opportunity to give some recommendation. Again, he doesn't necessarily have to implement it. He probably could do the mural of the donut on the side as long as it meets our wall sign requirements, but yeah. Okay.

And then two more. Just to clarify, prohibited signs include mirrors, but if there's, I know there's a

Like a safety mirror. By the trail, there's that. Yeah, to be able to see around.

Because that's a public safety thing, is that what you said?

And I think that would be covered under the exemptions still with the safety signs, yeah.

Okay, and then?

I thought the mirrors was an interesting thing to have in there, yeah.

Has that ever happened before? I don't know.

Are you aware of any issues with mirrors anywhere? Yeah, I don't know.

Okay, I think that's all. No, one more. The obstructing the Clearview area. Does that, in roundabouts, do you look at that?

Yeah, I think that section's been scratched from here, but we left it in Chapter 12 of the Development Code for the Clearview areas. Because a lot of that goes through Matt Seal, the traffic engineer. So I think that's primarily why we took it out of the sign chapter, because it already exists in other places.

You did a lot of work, and thank you. Thank you.

Yeah. It was a long time coming. I know we've been getting complaints from sign companies, the planning commission, residents, you name it. And hopefully this will be a big change that improves a lot of things. I'm sure at some point we'll maybe have to look at this again, but I guess that's how the code works.

Yep. Thank you. That's all I have. Thanks.

Other questions? Okay, I'm happy to entertain. Oh, go ahead.

Well, I just have questions for the other council members, what they think about including, like, you know, 2100 North, like, I think it's on page 23-15 under pylon signs if they want to, you know, include 2100 North, Mountain View Corridor, or SRX 15.

Yeah, I, of the comments talked about the only, I was down, or I thought those things were great, but the only thing that gave me concern was punting signs to the city council, bringing that to us. We're going to be here until 2, 3 a.m. if we start bringing those kind of items to us. At least that's just been my experience on the planning questions they've I guess we already do that, yeah. And I also think that this is a good opportunity for the Planning Commission to engage on, and they're awesome and do a great job. So of the comments shared this evening, everything I would have agreed to. Just want to maybe keep signs where they're at.

because maybe I'm not as jaded for the Planning Commission. I'm fine taking on that responsibility to deal with the exceptions because I have watched a few of the Planning Commissions. It seems like they've only had a few where it's been kind of a challenge in the last year or two.

I think it would be good, the changes being made here where we're removing some of the condition and adding exceptions and shrinking things down, maybe letting this code play out for a few months or a year and then coming and saying, does the council need to pull this in, would give the Planning Commission opportunity to maybe work in a new process and see how it goes. They do a lot of great things, and I think they're plenty capable, especially with the changes that have been proposed.