City Council - Regular Meeting

And we will start with an opening comment by Councilmember Harrison.

Our dear Father in Heaven, we are grateful to gather together today to think about the things of the city and how we can work hard and collaborate in order to make the best decisions for the residents. We are grateful for our staff and for public safety officers and ask for a blessing upon them as they take care of the residents and serve our neighbors. We are grateful for all the blessings we have in this great country and for all the liberties that we have. And we say this in the name of Jesus Christ. Amen.

Thank you. All right, we'll start with our administrative report. Can you hear me? Cameron? Yeah. Got that.

So I'll invite Steve.

I got to connect.

Oh, Steve is trying to connect. So what we'd like to do today is talk through a potential for a book drop. So we want to have a discussion about some ideas that Steve has brought up or come up with. And then we have Christy here also to talk about the impact as far as staffing goes, what we would expect that would take to do a book drop. Christy, if you want to come forward first. Steve has some slides. I am going to just bring my computer up there.

So as far as staffing goes, we looked at other, in trying to find another library that had an exterior book drop that needed to be cleared, we looked at Provo Library. So we were able to look at their amount and, According to what they do, they have said that they empty their book drop five times a day, and that it takes two people to do it. Sorry.

No, please keep going.

I'm sorry. So five times a day, six days a week is 30 trips. Each trip takes two people. It takes them approximately an hour and a half to go out, exchange the bins, bring the bins in, clear all that out, get them all checked in and ready as though they had gone through the automatic book drop that we currently have. So that added up is 90 hours per week that we would need additional staffing for Our mid-range for a library page is 1273 and so yearly that would be four thousand six hundred eighty hours times the 1273 it's fifty nine thousand five hundred seventy six forty So that's kind of the impact staffing wise For that yes Mayor Pro Tem

Part-time or full-time? Part-time. Okay, so no benefits. No. Okay.

My only question would be, so you're saying this is to get it to the stage it would be as if they had collected it from inside. So it's not like taking into account the less time that would be used when people do a drop box inside that would use it outside. Is there any calculation with that? Is there any kind of reduction of hours on the other side because they're now using the outside book?

So my estimate is that if we provide the exterior book drop, a drive-up book drop, that probably about 85% to 90% of our books will all go through that. In many ways, that totally wastes our automatic book check-in system that we just got too new, an exterior and an interior. Because if it's all going through that, we now have to manually hand-do all of this. That's a lot of what those hours are, is going out, manually grabbing those, pulling them in, and then hand by hand just checking in all of those books.

Would they be able to feed it through the automatic system, like bring the bin in and run it through the drop?

So the question would be, there isn't a point to it. Because could we walk it up and then throw it through? Yes, we could do it. But then we have to go to the other side and pick it back up out of that bin and then just sort it. We might as well just stand at a counter. and hand do it and sort it as we go. Okay. But, yes, it kind of totally wipes out the use for the automatic check-ins that we do have. Okay.

So what about using some of the existing staffing you have and consolidating some desks? And, you know, since there's two desks on the second floor, have you considered moving some of the automatic, you know, check-outs out to the, lobby area. And I mean, I was here on a night where there was a sign on a desk that said, go to the children's section. You know, if you have questions or something from the young adults. Yeah. And so I know that you've, you have done that before.

Yeah. We do close down a desk if we don't have the staff to cover it. And we just refer them to the other desks. We could move those automatic in side and put like one of the exterior ones and put it up on the second floor. But here again, to what point, if 90% go through the outside drive-up book drop, Who's going to be bringing it in to put it through?

Yeah. I'm just saying, I don't know. Again, to Heather's point, I don't know if we need three desks staffed. It seems to me the young adult area is typically children's. It's mostly intermediate books, which is a lot of children's books. And that they could go to the children's desk on that floor. And so maybe some staff could be shuffled around to help facilitate. I know we were talking about the phone, drive-up phone thing. And that, to me, would be way more disruptive to someone's workflow than just having a set schedule where they're emptying a Dropbox certain times a day.

It's debatable. I don't know. We do actually have a lot of business that gets done at that young adult desk because it has intermediate young adult and the media items, the music, the DVDs, our read-along books, our Spanish collection, all that. is on that side. And so when we have to go down because we just don't have the staffing to do it, that is the desk that we shut down. But it actually, if somebody's there, they're always being asked for help and helping the patrons. So will some of the pages, hours, yes, be used towards this? Yes. But it's going to significantly increase the amount of work that they have to do. And so.

just looking at you know Provo and what they've had to do yeah now granted I happen to Provo and their drop boxes it depends on what the logistics are but it's a little bit far farther away from the building and their population is 120 percent of ours so I would I would think that we would not have as much of demand as Provo because we don't have as large a population but they will have double the amount of book drops and we don't we would get one

double book drop.

Chris, you go to the next screen. It shows what that book drop is.

Let me go on to the next part of it, and then maybe that will answer and help with some of the questions. I'm going to hand that back to Cameron. Thanks, Cameron. So as soon as this pulls up, if this pulls up, Sorry, I don't know why I'm having so many problems with this today. So this is what we would put in for our hook drops. It would just be a double station. I think what Christy's saying is there's four down in Provo currently. And the issue is the capacity on it. We have room where we've kind of picked it out where we could potentially do three of these at most. Four would be pushing it, and we'd have to change locations. If we were to do that, then again, it's four of the carts. And so it's not a single person in and out. It would be three people in and out if they were going to get them all at once or three separate trips. So I think that's potentially part of the issue.

Yeah, and where they have two book drops, they can let it stay a little bit longer. If you look at the slide, the capacity is only 560, and that's if it's totally full. We frequently have days where we have 2,000 to 3,000 items returned in the day. We can't let it go too long without emptying, and we actually won't be able to look in unless we somehow purchase and get IT to create cameras in there. We have no way of knowing how many books or how few books there are. So we just need to have a set schedule that we can go in and check each time. We'll sometimes be heavier duty and we have to go more often, yes. And then there will be other times that maybe we don't have to go quite as much.

Do you have a map of where you're going to put this in the parking lot?

So this is kind of what, when we first started talking about this, we talked about signs. There were other issues being brought up at the same time of the ADA ramp. I went and talked to an architectural firm, said how much would it cost us to be able to put the ADA ramp in with this, add an exterior door so that we're not tracking all of these carts through, making trails when it's wet, hitting walls from the pages, pushing these books back in, and having damage to the new building. And the price tag is extremely high and I think that we can get it done cheaper than that. But what they're quoting is about a million dollars to 750,000, 750 million to put the ADA ramp in and a door, repurpose that workflow room so that she would have enough room to be able to bring all these books in, go through the scanner, do that kind of thing like we're talking about. Yes, there are other alternatives, but that's the initial verbal quote that I'm getting. I'm guessing it'll be closer to $500 realistically if I put it out to bid. But it's an extensive cost for what we're looking at. And so you can see the ramp. The book drops itself would be right out here. We do have to change traffic patterns. We're going to lose some parking. We're going to have to move the ADA. into this parking lot solely due to the fact that that's going to have to be a swing in and swing out so that We're not impeding traffic so It's not as easy as just putting it in there if we were to put it out here of course we can do a different solution But then again, we're tracking everything through the building unless we go up one of these ramps or do something like that

There is the way that you can go in on the backside.

If we go through the backside, that's really the one that I'm most worried about is that long hallway with all the walls and the doors and everything. I think that everything's going to get beat with the, I mean, because they're about as big as this pedestal pushing those carts through. And when they get 200 books in them, they're quite heavy. So having the pages push those through, they will. Anything else?

Any other questions?

Have you looked into having the scanner technology put on these? Would that be possible?

I did contact Circe Dynex and asked them about it and Envisionware, and they have said that they do not have this technology. They're not able to do it. In order to do it, they would have to have significant, you know, they're going to have to have power and everything else to those boxes, but that they've They've never done that to an exterior drive-up book drop. They're concerned about water getting in and, you know.

Are you considering putting a lock or some kind of signage on it for it to be closed on the holidays or weekends?

We certainly could, but rarely do exterior book drops have that on there. You can make it so that there's a padlock that you can lock the actual mouth of the drop box. And we could do that, but it just may be that. I don't know. Currently, our Sundays, we don't have a significant amount of items coming through the exterior book drop. I don't know if that would change. My guess is that that would change. But I think it would be doable to not do Sundays. My concern would be holidays, that we'd just have to have people in on holidays, have a couple assigned.

And Steve, for this ramp, and this is just an alternative to the current ramp,

Correct. This is alternative. This is all hypothetical at this point. So realistically, this is one of the major complaints that we've had with the building is ADA access. How do we get into the building? We're working on signage to point them to the actual ADA ramp, of course. everything takes time. I mean, we ordered those signs two weeks ago and they got installed this morning for the book drop areas. Everything takes time. And so that's part of it is we just did the walkthrough with landscape today and now we can go ahead and put those in and do what we need to do. But yeah, that's why I was pointing it in this direction is that would help suffice. You see it. It's very visible. It's up front. Same issue that we have over at Broadbent with the Broad bent room where the ADA ramp's not very visible. It's all the way around the side. Something that we should have learned on that building, and we didn't.

I mean, did you ever look into that? Because I know that's something that I've heard.

It'll happen before the budget. It will get done. Waiting for a slow minute for our street department to help me pour it. Okay.

We've got the lines at Wines Park, so I'm super excited for the Sunday concert. So I'll take parking lines.

I'm ready to move that concert any time.

Christy, I did have a question, too. Did you look at American Fork? Because they have a... two-level library as well. But their checkout, I think Rachel brought this up, that they have a consolidated checkout station in the library, not on each floor. They also have an exterior book drop that's kind of far away. So have you, and I think this might have been what she was referring to, that instead of three different checkout stations, maybe just have one centrally located one and use those employees to help with the book drop instead?

So American Fork actually does have three desks. Usually they're considered reference desks, not checkout desks, because mostly what we're doing at those desks, like the young adult desk, is a reference. It's helping people find what they need, all that. We do very little checking out at that desk. The other two are where the majority of checkout and quite frankly most of our patrons, about 90% of our checkouts are done through the self-check. That's why we have so many self-checks because that does happen there. And the vast majority of what we do at the desks is reference. Is there something that you have a concern about those desks? They aren't check-in areas. We don't have any patrons turning in items there.

If you don't mind if I interject. So I think what they're suggesting is if we didn't staff those desks, instead of increasing the budget for employees, we could just use current employees. to collect the books. But what I'm hearing you say is that if that were to happen, it might just lower our standard for serving patrons. And so the question then becomes, what standard do we want our employees available to answer questions for at each one of those areas? Or are we willing to sacrifice some of that standard in order to have them go out and collect books? Does that sound right?

Yeah, and lower standards, it might improve in other ways. Sure. Accessibility and dropping off books, and that might be a question for residents to find out which they value higher, having somebody conveniently on each separate little library section to talk to you or...

Yeah, and I don't mean that to be derogatory. I just mean I think it sounds like Christy has a certain expectation or standard for what she wants to have available inside the library, and it's just shifting those employees to a different responsibility, maybe shifting that standard to a different place, like what you're saying.

Yeah, and there are two different classifications on those jobs as well. Pages are paid a different wage than what clerks are. And if we're expecting all of them to do all the same thing, then I think we need to make our pages clerks and pay them more because I don't think it'll go well if we take our clerks and say we're going to make you a page and so then we have to pay you less. That doesn't make sense. Or then our pages turn around and say, but they're doing, We get only paid this much and they're doing the same thing we're doing. So we do have some concerns there with we've got different classifications. Could the clerks do some of that and help with that? I'm sure they could. Here again, are we messing with job descriptions and classifications? And then it does lower the level of service that we're able to give. Our patrons do like having someone there at the desk that they can say, hey, where do I find this? And that's a lot of what we do. We're directing them. We're giving them recommendations. We're helping them with whatever they need.

Do you think that this could be a position that's even lower than a page, that what you needed, which was basically come in, scan the books, but then you also wanted them, they would be doing, I guess, the other part of it, too, of putting them away. But I'm trying to think about the process of getting it to where you would have it for the automatic book drop is... There's something where it's, I don't know, where it could be like a part-time position. I'm almost thinking like crossing guard kind of level positions where we have somebody come in and do shorter hours. I don't know.

Well, at this point, I'd say most of our pages are paid about $10.90 an hour. I don't know that we can go much lower than that. I mean, I feel like it's criminal to pay them that. They do a lot more work. It's our hardest physical job that we have in the library. They do a lot of work for that.

So really what this job would be right in line with what pages are doing now anyways. It's what they do. They check books in, they sort them, they get them out back on the shelf.

And it is a big job.

Anything else? Any comments or more questions?

Well, you can figure out staffing. I come to the library very often incognito, and I do notice that there aren't very many people asking questions at the desk whenever I'm there, if any. So however you want to rearrange, work out your staffing for that, yeah, I know you can do it. I'm sure that we can support some staffing, but I'm not sure if we need to do it the full amount right away when we're not sure what's going to happen with the use of the Dropbox. So that's where I'm at.

I support the purchase price of the two boxes. I think I would like, if you have time, to go walk where you're going to put them so I can at least visualize it and see it. And then I think this is something our residents really want, and I'm going to stand in support of that. And so the support that you need from a staffing level, I'm happy to get behind, I think, to Councilmember Freeman's point, maybe we start with one additional and then slowly add someone on if we see the demand rising. Because I don't think we'll immediately go to Provo levels, but if I'm wrong, I'll eat my words and support you guys there. But I know our residents really want this, and so I'm happy to support the solution that delivers that for our residents.

I think the big part, though, is it's a two-person job, right? So are you talking about, like, we need to bring two people on to be able to do it, or...

Yeah, if that's what it takes, I'll support that. Yeah.

Sorry, one other question. That's okay. I just want to see the – Yeah. Have you – and I don't know. I know there was a lot of talk at the beginning of wanting the book drop. Has that still been consistent, like as far as comments made? Are people still – Asking about it, wanting it. You were saying that the ADA access seems to be a much higher priority?

This just kills two birds with one stone. That's why I even proposed this. To do the ramp with where this book drop is. My concern with putting the book drop in the back of the building is truly, honestly, this building is the only building that we have that we don't constantly have issues with our doors. And it's because it's brand new. I'll talk later on. But we have roughly 36,000 visits to the Legacy Center every day. That's visits, door open, door close. Then you start pushing books in a huge cart through that. Even if it's only six, seven times a day, we are going to get damage. And that's what really worries me about it. We intentionally did not put a book drop on this building. I mean, this isn't something that we went and said, okay, yeah, we just don't want to do it. We spent weeks deciding, can we? How do we do this? The library staff fought for it. They wanted it. We have to have this. We have to have this. And we intentionally said, okay, it's not worth the cost. It's not worth the price that it's going to be. It's not worth the security risk. We understood that there was going to be kickback from the residents. We knew that there was going to be kickback from the residents. The problem is now, I don't think that our current council saw that hard work that we did on it. And you're getting just the resident side of it. So the solution is similar to this. I mean, if I show you this, well, I don't have it on this sheet. But anyway, I'll show you as an example on the sheet. So pretend that this is the other side of the building. Sorry. Now I'm negative.

Steve, you want a mouse?

Yeah. Well, I have one. And by no means do I mean that negative at all. Just so you guys know, it is kind of the background. So pretend this is the other side of the building. Just flipped, we have a study room right here. We talked about, okay, what if we put the book drop right outside there and put an elevator up to it? We also have a door with stairs for an emergency access there. What if we put a ramp there that they could push them up? All of those options, the study room, that takes out a huge chunk of everything inside of the library to be able to use that room as a sorting room. The stairs are too steep to get our egress out for ADA or to push up a cart or a ramp in there. We talked about how do we do it out in the parking lot here. And then you have the rumble strips from all the ADA. You've got all the concrete joints. And so everything that we push through there is going to be more wear and tear not only on the carts but on the wheels, which bring into the building, which bring into the tile, which bring into our cleaning staff, which bring into all of it. And so that's why I ended up on that ramp with the door into its own private room. So we keep the mess in there, and it's done all through where it's supposed to be done. Anyways, it's a huge cost. I understand it's a huge cost. But again, it does help with two issues in the long run. So if we were going to do it, I feel like that's the safest way not only for security of the building, which is an extensive cost, that we've already put forward to keep everybody that is in here safe. And I don't think we want to degrade that just due to we want to have convenience for a book drop, if that makes sense.

So can you show us the next slide where your assistant suggested?

So, yeah, let me show you where I kind of have it placed now that I have a mouse. And I'm still going to do the exact same thing. So this island over here on the corner where we have that planter, we would take out part of that, bring the curb in on that angle to be able to create our in and out. So it could be accessed this way only or turned in from going south. Be able to use the three-book book drop right here, and then that would tie directly onto that ramp where they could go straight up into their sorting room. which is right off this landing right here.

I'm not sure I can fully get behind the ramp, just the cost. It's a huge cost.

I totally agree.

That's a lot. But if we don't do that ramp, you're saying the other option is to go from the far north side of the building, so bring them through that long hallway.

Bring them through that long hallway, yep.

I'm more inclined to get behind the ramp because it serves our residents. And that's what I've been concerned about having access.

And like I said, the engineering costs, it's an architectural engineering estimate that I've gotten. That was from three different firms. It went from $750,000 to $1.2 million. I totally believe we can get it done cheaper than that. But until I know that's the direction you want to head, I can't give you a harder number because I haven't solicited anybody to go, hey, come on, help me out here. And I'm happy to do that. I just need to know that direction. And I think it would be better off for our library staff to be able to go right into it. It is going to squeeze them in that room, frankly. Right now we've got two desks in there. Those are going to have to consolidate it down to a large room with a single desk that's in an open area that everybody else is going to come in. So when they are working at that desk, it's going to be harder for them to actually do their job because they're going to have all the pages in there scanning books and doing whatever they're doing. which I know that is a large concern. So, I mean, this isn't a great solution, but hence again, we went down every other avenue. We talked about tunnels. We talked about conveyor belts. We've talked about everything that you can imagine under the sun to be able to get these books inside and do it safely. So...

Well, thank you for explaining it. To me, it looks like a good solution. You know, of course, I want to go right with the flow. But since the drivers are going to be the ones doing it, it makes sense you have to go this way.

I think it's so easy. Just, oh, yeah, just put a box out there. But once you get down into the weeds of it, it's like, oh, okay, hold on. How do we actually make this work?

So when we were brainstorming this, we were talking about having to change the crosswalk.

So the crosswalk right now is, it's actually just south of it a little bit anyway. So I don't think we'll have to change the crosswalk. The mid-block crossing was always supposed to go away. The mid-block one, yeah. Okay. But this one where it's lined up, I don't believe that we'd have to change that.

Okay.

Maybe I'd have to get with our traffic engineer. Like I said, this is 100% me throwing it on a piece of paper saying this is how I would do it. Okay.

For the ramp, I know you've received a lot of questions on the ramp. Is it mostly because they can't find it, or is it because of the design?

It's so far away is the problem. It's all the way up in the back corner of that alcove. And so it really is. It's a hard... Something we should have caught up from.

When you have ADA parking, when you have on this side and you have the ramp on that side.

Yeah, exactly. Well, and we do have ADA stalls out here. It's not painted because that wasn't part of their contract. Okay. It's getting painted now. We are going to correct it. It's just everything's in due time. So, yeah. It's government. It's really hard to get things done.

Have you thought about putting the ramp out to that parking lot?

I think the visual effect on that would be awful.

The visual? Yeah.

I have thought about it. I did brainstorm it. I can't find a good corner to pull it off of that's actually easy access to the doors to be able to do that and make it look right. Yeah, it's a harder one. You kind of want to... They're a long parallel... And so if I was going to do that, I'd want to redo the landscape and build it up to it. And that's going to be a lot more.

So, Steve, just this street that you're showing here, that's First East, right?

Yeah, that's this side of the building. So this is, we're sitting basically right here.

Okay.

So we would lose some of the... Yeah, the plants on this side, we probably would just leave a hole on the backside of it and line it up with the concrete. It's going to be our cheapest bet. And I have utilities inside of that. We have conduits and such. So I don't necessarily want to bury that, the depth of the ramps. So we would probably just bring it off and do handrails on both sides, and we're going to have to clean out debris and weeds and leaves and everything that can blow down in that for the foreseeable future. But we'll have handrails on both sides and a hole on this one side and plant some hostas in it or something.

Could you fill it up with dirt?

I don't want to fill it up because we have the utility underneath it that I don't want to bury any deeper than it already is if we have to get into it.

But we would lose some of our ADA parking on that side.

Yeah, but we'll add more out here when we paint. Anything that we lose, we will add more to. It will be a net zero on that.

I think I kind of lean toward having I mean, I know it's a lot of door openings, but just personally, for what it's worth, I would rather leave the ramp as is, not put in an additional ramp, just simply because of the cost. But then have the ADA parking closer to the existing ramp, and then have the books come in through the north door. That's just my, I think that's probably the most cost-effective way.

It is absolutely the most cost-effective. Long-term, it's going to be a lot more wear on the building, but cost-wise up front, I don't disagree at all.

Is there any place to do this kind of drop over on this side by the ramp so that they would come into the parking lot and do a drop?

The problem is that they would be tracking through the lobby any way that they do that.

Who would be tracking through it? The books. Oh, the books would help, but yeah.

Not that that can't be solved. I will say that it will be more cleaning on our end. Right now we have two people cleaning this building, and it is a tough job.

So if it was coming up that ramp and the parking was there, the ADA was there, we could still add the door without having to do this second ramp, right?

Yes, but then we have a lot more corners on the outside that they're going to have to try and maneuver.

Yeah, I'm a little concerned getting those carts down that ramp and through without just banging everything up.

The way that this ramp works, it's long enough that we can do a straight shot We do have to level off halfway through for a resting area on a ramp. And so the resting areas over here, what they did is a zigzag. So they go up, then they have the level off, and then they go up, and then they have a level off. And so it's a lot longer here. And so we just added two more corners, and then they're going to have to go around the corner, down the whole front of the building, around a corner, and then around a corner again to be able to do that. Again, we're talking about maneuvering the cart. This isn't really technical. It's just when they get to be hundreds of pounds, it's going to be an issue. We get some of those 15-year-old kids out there trying to push them. That really is a, yeah.

If we had to replace the north door, how much does that cost?

Yeah. That's a really loaded question. Right now, so one door downstairs is $46,000 for a single-man door that we're still waiting on to get replaced. That's an interior door. So I would say those are double doors. There's four of them, $100,000.

Okay, so I'm just taking 1.2 million, dividing it by 100,000, and we could replace the door 12 times and still be totally fine, right? I hear you on the door wear and tear, but I don't think we're going to replace the door 12 times any time soon.

I don't either. Like I said, this was to kill two birds with one stone. This was not just thinking about book drop, but also thinking about the ADA access and some of the comments that I've gotten personally.

Yeah, no, it's fair.

No, I totally agree. And I agree with James. This is not the cheapest solution to solve this problem. I don't disagree with that.

And as far as pushing it and having these pages push the carts, just something that came to my mind when you go to Costco and you see them using the auto, you know, the dollies, but they're powered. I wonder if there's a solution. It might be a few thousand dollars, but it might be a solution that at least doesn't make it such a physical job, right? So I'd be open to that as well if it helps. I can help work with you sometimes.

What I'm hearing, though, is let's pretend it's bad weather and not a sunny day and you're pushing in carts with mud or snow or water. That's the issue going through the building instead of to an interior room that's just for sorting, right?

and basically what I'm seeing is in the winter months I'm going to have a dedicated staff person mopping that hallway constantly because any time that they do it they're going to track ice melt they're going to track water all the way up and down the whole lobby I can't have that inside of a public building without having wet floor signs out, and we don't want wet floor signs out for one of them in the current quarter. So, I mean, any way we look at this, we're going to add some labor costs. If it's not pages, it's going to be janitorial. If it's not janitorial, it's going to be something. And, I mean, it's fair. We can find a solution. That's not the issue. It's...

Those big rugs?

Well, if you have patrons walking in and out, I mean, they won't have the dolly, the water, whatever, snow from the dolly. But you have people walking in and out in that kind of weather, too. So they'll track. Oh, it's still track. Don't get me wrong.

We're still going to have to mop it and clean it and do some of that. I'm not saying that we don't. This is just going to add six or seven, eight more trips every time. Maybe.

Or... You know you have less people coming in and out just dropping off books Maybe you know same some I don't know I have a walk-off area for them to walk in on your hearts won't get clean on that right the carts are What's the problem so where the oh sorry go ahead the vast majority of what?

Has happened in the past and what I can almost guarantee will happen is that every patron will go through the drive-up book drop they were drop all their box or put their books is in those boxes and then they'll pull into the parking lot and they'll walk in and

Well, I think especially with the children's section on the second floor. That's what I've noticed myself, because that's where I go. And I go right up there. And then I realize I have books in my hand that I have to turn in. And we have to go back down and turn them in, because there is not a way to turn them in upstairs. So I can see that happening for a lot of moms who have a lot of kids and a stroller that's probably equal in size to one of those dollies. And a double stroller and all of that stuff. So yeah.

So could we look at a cost for adding a door and try to use the other ramp? Sure.

I'm happy to do that. I'm working as fast as I can. Let me go that way. So I will try and get a more reasonable cost on it and bring it back to you guys and let you see what it is. We do have the signs out there for right now. What else would you like to see done?

a week should have called in and asked us to either bring out the goals or some different stuff.

And how is that on staff? That is a three or four week. It's probably not.

It's not too burdensome of that number. Sometimes it takes a few minutes for them to get enough staff, not busy so that they can run out and do it. But at those numbers, it's not a problem. If it gets too many people, then yeah, it will become a problem.

That's true.

When people are calling, are the clerks going or the pages going? When people are calling, are the clerks or pages going out? The clerks are going out.

I don't want a 15-year-old walking out into who knows what to a car.

I think that solution solves a problem for maybe folks that have disabilities or mobility issues. If you're a busy mom with three kids or whatever in your car, they probably don't want to wait three, four, five minutes. They'll probably just run in, right, and bring the books. Okay.

Okay. So any more questions or comments? Do you want more information or are you ready to give direction?

thoughts here on that can I just clarify the direction you want me to investigate this farther with the ramp and the door and the remodel of that room to see if that what a cost would be to finalize that yeah and then at that point we can make a decision on where and how we put the book drops is that correct also looking into the electric motorized yeah and also automating the book drops yeah

Yeah, I think just explore all the options that bring the cost down as much as possible I am NOT loving the million-dollar price like I can't do that.

As I said, I truly believe it'll be closer to $500,000 but even that That's a lot of money not disagree, but Yes.

Let me see what I can come up with. Yeah, if it maybe was a little bit more broad of a scope of whatever. And then I don't know how the rest of the council feels, but I'd love to walk it with one of you when you have time at your convenience, whatever works for you guys.

Set up an appointment.

I'm happy to. Yeah, I just want to be able to see it. Thank you.

Yeah, absolutely.

Does that sound good? The rest of the council in that direction? And Christy, sometime when you're available, I would like to go see the rooms and what your people do just to get a better, yeah, how much space you have.

I could.

That's my daughter's dream is to work in the library, so she might volunteer. I don't know.

Okay. Thank you. Appreciate it.

Is that all for the administrative report? Yes. Thank you. Okay, we'll turn to the discussion items, 3.1, Steinway piano policy and fees discussion.

All right. Well, good afternoon, council. Just a brief introduction. My name is Ben Maxfield. I'm a management analyst. I'm pretty new here at the city, but I've loved my time here with Lehigh so far. Today we're going to be talking about the piano that we've got downstairs. We've got a beautiful piano. And we want to make sure that it is taken care of as well as as accessible as possible to the public. So we've put together some revised potential fees for this as well as a policy that we'd like some feedback on. So just as a quick overview of what this policy is going to cover, kind of the big points. is that in general, the piano will be available for all to use, to come in and use for free. The idea is that there's going to be a QR code right there by the piano that residents can come in and scan, and they can book times to play the piano. There will be a set of policy or agreement that the residents will agree to when they click this. And then they'll be able to play in a walk-in format. We've also simplified the piano fees to a base recital fee and a moving fee. So these are the new proposed fees that we have. We're looking at a $25 per hour recital reservation, regardless of if it is in the main lobby or in the community room, as well as a $45 flat fee for moving the piano into the community room. Keeping in mind that the piano will still be available for non-recital purposes, It will be free during public hours. And there will be additional costs for renting the rooms as well to be taken into account. So this is what we've got for the policy. I'll just run through these really quick. And if you have any questions, feel free to stop me. The first is that the piano is available for free public use during normal Civic Center operating hours. Individuals wishing to reserve the piano may use the online portal to schedule their playing times. And then this, what I was mentioning before, the QR code linking to the reservation portal should be made readily available in the Civic Center lobby near the piano. Free public use reservations may be made in 30-minute increments. Recitals may be scheduled for evenings and on weekends. And then back to the fees, recital reservations will cost $25 per hour, and an additional $45 moving and labor charge will be required for recital reservations in a city community room. Moving on, kind of just some general maintenance policies in order to maintain the quality of the piano. Piano players must have clean hands. No food or drink should be near the piano and no items should be placed on the piano. No unsupervised young children should be near the piano. Piano players should maintain an appropriate volume, style and duration while using the piano to maintain a respectful tone in the lobby. The piano may not be moved, altered or used with external equipment without explicit permission given by the facilities manager. City staff may restrict or end piano use if this policy is not followed, and users are responsible for exercising reasonable care while using the piano. Any damage resulting from misuse, negligence, or violation of this policy may result in the assessment of repair or replacement costs to the party responsible. And this is just some policy for the maintenance of the piano. It's quick. We've got all cleaning, tuning, and service will be coordinated by the facilities manager. This includes moving the piano. Unauthorized piano maintenance is strictly prohibited. The piano will be tuned at least quarterly and additionally as needed following relocation or prior to scheduled performances. And during non-working hours and when not in use in a community room, the piano should remain covered. So that's what we've got. Again, going back to our proposed fees here, these fees are largely to cover the cost of things like maintenance, tuning, and kind of set-up, take-down that will be a cost for staff when setting up these recitals.

If they choose to leave the piano where it is and have a piano recital, are chairs in the lobby area included?

Yes, yeah.

And how many are we going to put that in the policy so they know you get 50 chairs or 60 chairs or whatever it is?

Yeah, we certainly could. We could add a number of chairs there.

Okay. And then if they need additional chairs, there's a setup fee of some kind, I'm assuming?

Yeah, we could definitely do something like that.

Can you explain the fees for the community room that would be in addition to these if someone decides to do that?

Yeah, so the community room fees, which were discussed at a previous and passed at a previous council meeting, I've got listed here for residents. Well, they range between $150 and $400. per hour. So residents on weekdays would be $150, non-residents on weekdays would be $200, residents on weekends are $300, and non-residents on weekends are $400.

Per hour?

Per hour, yeah. So those have been, that was approved prior, so if that is something we want to look at again, we could, I assume we could rework those as well.

And that's for that entire space downstairs? That would be for the community room downstairs. That entire, okay. I'm just trying to reconcile how you can have an appropriate volume style and duration if you're having a recital in the lobby. That's just something. I don't know. That's kind of vague to me.

Were you saying recitals were only available on the weekends and evenings?

That's the plan right now, yes.

So maybe it's OK.

I mean, the library's open until what, 8?

So there is some question about what kind of impact having somebody just reserve the piano and come play during business hours could have on like the info center, for example. So I think those kinds of things will have to kind of play it by ear, see how difficult it is to hear through the glass during those moments and maybe decide if we need to make some adjustments to when that piano is available. But talking with Christy about any potential impact on the library with somebody playing, she felt like that's something they could work around. So I think the info center is maybe more of a concern. But yeah, it's probably something we're going to have to investigate as we go along.

I do have a question about the recitals in the lobby. If they have chairs, I mean, it's a big lobby, but is that going to impede access or be a... Fire code issue? No? Are we going to limit how many chairs they could put up?

Yeah. I mean, we would be within compliance. We'd make sure that it's not impeding or anything. Certainly would probably not be able to fit as many chairs in the lobby as you would in in the community rooms would be a smaller event.

I know our event staff has looked into that. They have reached out to our fire marshal to make sure that would be appropriate and the number of chairs. I don't know what the number is off the top of my head.

So maybe we could find out that number and just make sure they know it's limited.

Yeah, we'll include that in the reservation platform that they use.

I think if it does become kind of a nuisance in the main lobby, I think down the road, if that's the case, we could permanently relocate it to a community room. So I'm thinking for people using it for free, reserving through the QR code, it's probably going to be folks that are practicing the piano, want to keep up their skills that don't have a piano at home, potentially. And maybe it would be moved less if it is in a community room. But I guess we'll just have to see if the info center can handle the noise.

Yeah, absolutely. If it was in the community room full time, it would just definitely be Different set up here, different pieces.

I do love the QR code idea where they can scan it and schedule it. And I've just known kids who don't have pianos in their homes and use keyboards. To be able to play on something like that would be very special for them, I think.

Yeah, it's a beautiful piano. We want it to be as accessible as possible.

Is there an online way to reserve like is there gonna be a link on yeah?

Yeah, we can also do that so you can be you know from home You can check the schedule and say okay. I can come in in an hour and play So yeah, there will be a way to do that as well perfect

Something that we talked about before was that this piano didn't really need to be tuned except twice a year. I don't know if you remember. I remember Heather saying that, and I also said that because, yeah. So it does say that it says the piano will be tuned at least quarterly, but I do not think that's necessary from what we've done. I don't know who said that. said that this needs to happen, but I think that we discussed that previously.

I think it's the more you move it, the more it goes out of tune.

So that's if you move it to a different environment. Since we're in the same humidity-ish temperature and we're not moving floors, we're not going outside, when you take an instrument outside, that's when it changes.

So I actually asked people that brought it here and was part of that conversation about They basically said if you're moving it, so we actually have a car getting installed on it tomorrow, but their concern is the bumps that you'll be going over the transition, things of that nature. They highly suggest it more than quarterly, depending on the usage. So that's kind of why we connected back to the quarterly with that. So yes, you're right. It's all in the same environment and all of that. They weren't worried about it. It's going through the different things and transition and friction on the legs.

Yeah, so I would think just with the prices we have for the community rooms and all of that, I mean, I know that this was given as a donation and the idea is it's for the community, but if there are problems with people playing the piano down there because of noise or whatever, then I would also support just kind of having it located in a place where I guess we don't have to worry about moving it. We don't have to worry about disturbing other departments and finding a way that we can keep that open. So I love looking at it down there. But I don't love that we're just looking at it and it's not being used. So I'm trying to reconcile that.

Yeah, that's my big, I'm excited. Glad that you incorporated all the ideas that you did into this. This is great. I think that you'll find a lot of people come and play it because it is a Steinway. Those who are professional or higher level to want to come play on that. I think we also need to be mindful of honoring the what the donation was for. And a huge part of that was for the community space, the library. It's supposed to be enjoyed. I don't think it was really seen as something where community members could have a place to come and practice as much as it's an art piece, too. So I do think if we can find ways to make sure that we're not impacting the Info Center and other areas, but then it is something that is that we can have people come in and play and it is enjoyed by everybody, that would be the vision of why it was donated to us. So I'd want to be really careful of that too. But I know this is something we're going to have to play by ear and see how it goes and making sure that we don't impact those who are working here and those who are coming to use the library for the quiet that's there and that they can study.

Yeah, absolutely.

So basically, if someone's going to have a recital in the community room, they're going to pay at least $100 for one hour, plus $45, plus $25.

Yeah, that'd be correct right now.

Okay. I just am going to say that's probably not really making it accessible to the community, in my opinion. But that's a lot, especially for a piano teacher that charges $15 to $30 a student. And you can maybe have 10 students playing an hour. I'm just saying.

That's, you know, you charge a recital fee, but I'm just talking realistically from someone who... Do you know, so I don't have experience, I don't play piano, but how much are other venues, like if they did a private one, I know my kids would go to Best in Music.

I mean, I have children who participate in recitals, and it'll be like $125, but it'll be for like a four-hour period, right, or a certain... Yeah, it'll be for more than an hour period.

Didn't we look up summer haze when we were talking about it? I thought it was like 50. Do you remember what I said?

Danes wasn't there, and there was summer haze, and there were some other...

music stores that rent out their rooms and that include really nice pianos um yeah i thought that we i we probably texted about it but i talked about it but i can't remember but i think it was somewhere around because i almost felt like i get that we're trying to recoup the cost of the maintenance with it and doing the moving and but for the expense of the community room i almost felt like if you've rented out the community room you should have access to the piano. But maybe there's a moving fee. I don't know if there should be an additional recital fee. Maybe that's more for the lobby.

Yeah, I think the idea with the moving fee was that it will take two people to move it, and they'll be probably on Steve's staff. And so we want to make sure that we're gathering, getting paid for what it's going to cost to move it. We also want to be able to, over time, be able to have that money that will pay for tuning it. I understand. renting the community room, and on top of that, that is quite a bit. And so that's why we're hoping making it available just to use in the lobby could be a great alternative for those people that might not want to move it into a community room, pay that extra fee, because you probably can get 40 to 50 people sitting in the lobby watching, listening to somebody play. But that was the reasoning behind the moving fee, was to make sure that we're Compensated for the staff time and also preparing for the maintenance that's going to be required for that And do we we have insurance costs on it too as well, right? Do you know if there's insurance on this?

Justin just insured Yeah, well, I'm so we pay for that insurance I just I agree with that that I would like to see what a recharge to kind of cover those costs and We might not be as competitive with private places, but I think that's part of this, you know, the draw they bring in customer, you know, advertise their whatever, where they sell pianos or music. So there's other options besides this, and the lobby is a great, you know, and having it on times when the info center is closed. So I'm thinking the clapping might be more disruptive than the piano playing. But yeah, I would like to make sure

charge covers the cost and we did do quite a bit of research on the community space just considering it even as like a reception venue not necessarily for a recital space and so the prices that we determined for that compared to other cities and their types of community rooms that are of a similar quality we feel like we're competitive in those prices as well while being very affordable compared to a private venue that you might rent for a reception So I guess we could do a separate fee for recitals, but the idea of making it available kind of for whatever purpose is kind of how we came up with those fees.

And is the default position going to be the lobby? So if there's a recital at 2 p.m. on Saturday, it'll be moved there at some point prior and then moved back to the lobby? Okay, because I'm thinking, and I don't know, like the reservation system, if it's Info Center that's going to be taking these reservations, if there's back-to-back recitals, Right? Does only one party pay for the moving fee? Right? Because I want it to be literally for the moving fee, right? So if there's three parties that book it on the same day, I don't want them all getting charged 45, if that makes sense.

Or we could... Well, one of the things I talked about, too, is it'd be really cool if we had, you know, once every other month or something like this was a recital day. and that people could then book that day and the moving fee was already covered for them. And then we're not also having to move it a bunch of times because the entire Saturday is going to be back-to-back recitals.

Yeah, that's another option is maybe recitals are less frequent, but on one day we've got three, four all lined up, and so that moving fee can drop down because it's split.

Just so you know, Daymarie Music charges $40 for an hour, but they require a two-hour minimum. So that's for a recital hall.

Yeah, and I think what Councilmember Stallings says was a really good point, that there's a reason they want them in their store, too. I think having the recital in the lobby, I'm definitely concerned about the noise and stuff, but I think it's incredible because, I mean, you could have people sitting on all fours three levels in hearing that recital. So it's a really cool space to have it.

No pressure at all. Yeah, exactly. The mayor can hear your recitals. Yeah. OK, anything else? Any other comments or questions? Thank you, Ben. Appreciate all the time you spent on this. Excuse me. OK, we'll have item 3.2, the NICE health care discussion.

Good afternoon, council members. I'm back to discuss the NICE health care. And last time you guys discussed this, I was not here, but just as a quick review, I believe there are questions about more about NICE health care, the cost, the benefits, how we can continue the benefit for this year, and then look at further options after that. And so we've reviewed the contract, and I also sent this information to you in an email. Hopefully you had a chance to read that. But our current contract with NICE can extend for another 12 months through June of 27 at the same cost, $45 per full-time employee per month. And that was in the budget that you guys approved. And then since then, we also had a meeting with NICE Healthcare. Councilmember Freeman was able to attend that meeting. She was able to ask her questions or share feedback, right? And and we're happy to answer any other questions at this time.

So So David for the so just so I'm clear the when it came before us And Andrew presented. Yeah, that was a renewal to start It was a renewal for 2027, right?

Right. So since I've learned that the contract was signed last year had a maximum of 24 months and So they were looking at renewing that contract for a new 24-month window to start and end in June of 28. Okay. All right. That makes sense.

but my understanding is we don't actually have to renew it right it's just gonna the employees are counting on this benefit because we yeah and so right now though it will just continue until june of 2027. yes the current contract ends june of 27. yeah so we don't have to actually make a decision on it at this time correct you could

So I'm here following up on that contract, number one, and then giving you options. If you want to consider the new contract and extend it another year, you could do that, or another two years, you could do that. If you want to keep it status quo until next year's budget season, you could do that. If you chose that you didn't want to continue with this benefit as of right now, you could inform me and I could give NICE Healthcare the notice that we're ending that contract.

And what's the notice they need? You'd give them notice that it would end at the end of the contract period, or is there like a 30 or 60 day window?

A 30 day window, yeah. So we could go to the end of the contract without any notice. Or if you wanted to end mid-year, then I would have to give them 30 days notice.

But you brought up a good point, or maybe it was Andrew, I can't remember, that the employees choose their health care and those options in April, May-ish period based on the assumption they have that. So the best time to bring this back up would be most likely like February.

Yeah, open enrollment, for administrative reasons, we start that in May. So that's even before the budget's passed, right? So we need a pretty good idea by April, if not sooner next year, whether we want to continue with this or not.

And when do you choose your health care plan, like health insurance and all that?

That's open enrollment. So employees usually have from about May 15th to the end of May to make that.

But I mean, when does the city, when does HR or administration choose we are going to be with PEHP and all of the benefits that come with that?

Yeah. That's also in the springtime. Sorry if I misunderstood your question. We get a renewal from PHP March-ish. And then depending on how that looks, we can negotiate, go out to market, and hopefully we have that decision as part of that April timeframe as well.

Okay.

And I know we didn't... It's hard to define it because you can't prove a negative. But did we ever come closer to the total ROI? Understanding that if someone uses NICE, that we get discounted on PHP. So do we have...

Total ROI on yeah, so in the memo in that last email that I sent last week or so It was my best estimate. There's two main cost savings that I think we should recognize one is the discount from PHP and that was about a $83,000 savings or about a percent on the premiums and then the claims that are not hitting our health care plan because they're going to nice health care and that also saves us because it's cost avoidance. And so that estimated cost, our broker claims it's about $200,000. NICE Healthcare gave a little bit different number, but those two numbers together in that memo in the table show that the total cost savings was well over $275,000 as costing $179,000.

And I want to clarify from my perspective of the meeting. But the claim, that's the claims. That's not necessarily the cost to the city. Because from my understanding, a lot of, we can't, the way people's behavior is with when they have free health care and like on-call whatever versus they're having to, you know, make an appointment and go somewhere, it's going to change. And versus having to hit their health insurance, right? So we might not actually have $205,000 is plain. It's not necessarily what's going to happen to premiums or things like that. So, yeah. The $83,000 is a for sure number. The other one is very variable. Yeah. Yep. Yeah.

Any other questions I can answer?

I have a question. Well, my position is if our employees, our staff, expected this and paid into it, I think we should honor that and keep going with it. But I was kind of concerned about, does the city have a policy about using working time to do telemed or in-office visits, health care visits, or is it I think if they're here, they should be working and take PTO or something. Even if they don't have to go to a doctor's office, if they're having it here, then maybe they should. I know we don't always clock in and clock out. So do we have a policy on that?

I mean, our sick leave policy can be used for medical services. So if they're on-site or they go off-site for medical care, then sick leave would be an appropriate use of that if they're an hourly employee. Yeah.

Yeah, I would just want to make sure that we're careful about working when it's working.

I appreciate that.

Any thoughts or comments?

I just want to point out that in the letter it says this is an alternative to an on-site clinic. So if you think that it's important to have an on-site clinic and that that's a requirement that a city needs to have, that into consideration. I feel like because employees counted on this, this is something that we need to provide as a benefit this year. But I do not think that is something that is necessary going forward, in my opinion.

I just thought of something else.

Can we do option two? Is option two revisit this in February, March? Is that okay? Is that kind of the consensus of the council to do option two?

So I have a question that kind of goes with that. So we could redo it for two years, right? Yes. If we leave it status quo, it'll just run out, and then we can reevaluate next year. Is there a chance that they would raise rates? Do you have concern about that, like, If we don't renew it now for another two years and lock in a really good rate, it could skyrocket.

From my conversations with NICE Healthcare and their executives, they're not looking to raise those rates. I can't guarantee what those rates will be next contract period. If we sign the contract today for two years, that would lock in that same rate for two years.

So it's a chance, but maybe not likely, and might be worth not renewing for two years, so we can dig into it a little deeper, I guess, if you choose to.

Yeah, she said she's not renewing her rates on the Zoom. So I don't know. That's what she said.

Yeah, they have a successful model. They're not looking to raise prices very quickly. I thought it was a good meeting with NICE. They're expanding. They're also starting next year offering insurance plans as well in the state of Utah. So we'll continue to stay apprised of that as well.

OK. So as a council, are we comfortable with not renewing for two years and reevaluating earlier next year, April, February, April?

And I think it's even something to evaluate in February, yeah, before you choose a health plan and all this stuff.

Well before the budget. Well before.

Yeah, that would be my request as part of the budget process because of, I mean, benefits is a big spend, too, a big ask. But for timing of open enrollment and everything, we need a little bit more headroom than middle of June. Okay.

Yeah, for sure. Okay. Thank you.

Thank you.

Okay, item 3.3, Dry Creek Lake paid parking discussion. Steve.

Is it this Saturday that it opens? No. Do you want it to? I thought I heard the 18th or something.

You can jump over the fence.

Okay, but yes, we are so close to opening this, it's not funny. That is a great question on when do we want to open this. Currently right now, I don't know if you guys can see it better than that, but... It's really, really nice and pretty and green. And it has a great big island right out in the center of it. And there's not a lot of water in it. But all of that being said, we are to the point where we're getting really, really close. We're waiting on signage. We've got that ordered. And I believe it comes the end of the month. As soon as that signage is ready, installed, we're ready. Everything is operational. But what brings us here tonight is we talked previously about charging for parking for this. So the primary function, of course, I was asked by our water department to put this in here, so here it is. debris, sediment basin, and flood management. Above and beyond that, we get to use it as a recreation facility. Anything that we use or anything that we have installed with the recreation facility, we have to maintain as a recreation facility. Sean has done a fantastic job organizing meetings with other entities that are involved with this, making sure that everybody knows that we're getting close and it's going to happen. That being said, it's to the point now where we want to decide, do we want to put parking, or do we want to charge for parking? And the issues that we have with it, excuse me, sorry. So the challenges, of course, you know, we've gone out to different places. different surrounding reservoirs, Springville, Harriman, Spanish Fork, the high volume of visitors on weekends is really the biggest issue. And then making sure that the visitors that you have there are the visitors that you want there is another issue. So you don't want people up there just causing issues, having it a place because they can go there and do whatever they would like to do. We wanted a nice recreation facility for all and to be able to keep it that way. Springville is a great example with Bartholomew Pond. Bartholomew Pond gets overran to the point where it was overcrowding all of the surface streets leading up into it, around it, through it, and creating havoc throughout everything that they did. So what we have learned from them is if we're going to charge for parking, we need to do it up front. And the tool that they use for it is they started out lower, and then they raised their prices to the point where they got the people there that they wanted or the amount of people that they were comfortable with. So we're talking about a destination or a regional facility. The only regional facility that we have operational right now is Family Park. This is our operating amount of visits that we had to Family Park in the month of June. So we had roughly 47,000 people that had a cell phone signal at Family Park in June. These are real numbers. We've got a software that we can track this. We know what it is. So you think about that, 47,000 people in one month. So let's go back and say, OK, outside visitors. So we're talking people that don't live within Lehigh City. We have roughly 58% of people that do not live within 84043 visiting Family Park. Go to our ponds now. Let's just talk about Tibble Fork, Dry Creek, Harriman, Highland Glen, and Manila Pond. So roughly, all of those, the average is about 27,000 visitors to each one of those ponds in a month. So if we take that down and we break it down a little bit more, this is per month. So the average for Springville is 19, average for Harriman's 12, Highland Glen's 32, Tibble Fork is 32-ish. We are bigger than Tibble Fork, but we do have our challenges. We're not up in the mountains. It's not going to be a nice, cozy, shaded area. This is strictly a beach area. Not only that, it's got a hillside. So the reason I'm showing you all of this is we needed to try and find an average of where we think we're going to be on our visitors. So the benefit to coming to Tibble Dry Creek Lake is close. Instead of going all the way up to Temple Fork, it's there. You don't have to go. Temple Fork is still charged for parking if you park anywhere up the canyon, but you can drive through for free. Unless you're like some people I know and just go park up there and hope for the best. So addressing the concerns, like I said, rather than waiting to say, okay, yeah, we want to impose parking because we're getting overran. The only places that we can really get overran is the main road coming into it and Smith's parking lot. But then we have neighboring communities, Highland, that has neighborhoods backing up into it. And in the development and design of all of this, we had great length discussions with them saying, okay, We understand you may X, Y, Z. We put up a fence in between to be able to help sustain some of that. But anyway, where there's a will, there's a way. If people are going to park up there, they're going to get down there. And so why we feel like we wanted to bring this up to you is so that we don't get into those situations, so that we can have the mechanism in place to start helping cope with the problem. So we've talked to a few different parking entities. There's one in the state that stands out the most that has done this for, is it just, which? Both Harriman and Bartholomew Pond, the same parking entity, is used for them. They're the ones that we felt is the best for the situation that we're doing. We haven't really started any contract or anything like that, just kind of really starting high level, see what they would like or how it would work. So it's a 70-30 split so that they would patrol, they would monitor. Anything inside of the parking lot itself is under their insurance. So if there's an accident, it goes through them. If there's things like that. It goes through that entity. It's cashless. It's a QR code. They put up there in charge of all of their signs to install them, keep them up to date, make sure everything's good that way. It's a 24-hour surveillance. They'll drive through at certain times every day, just making rounds all the way through, making sure people are doing what they're supposed to be doing in there as far as parking goes, not necessarily monitoring the site, just the parking. They suggested that we put the fee at $20 a car. I think that's way extreme. I don't agree with that. I think that if we do this, we should start closer to the $5 range to $10 range, just where we would actually have room to grow, see if it's actually going to be used, whatever we need to do that way. So everything from here on out, you'll see that we did this off of a $10 fee. So Springville, just on Saturdays. So the month of June on Saturdays, they have 306 cars a day there. This is just off the five months that we feel like this is actually going to be utilized heavily, that we would have the parking enforced up there. And so after you go through it, if you say there's four people going there in a car, per day, they're charging $15 a car. That's 1,225 visitors a day. Fees collected per day is about $4,500. To the city, that's $3,215. The parking service gets $1,317. In a month, the city's reimbursement would be $96,000. And in the five-month season, it's almost $500,000 that Springfield City is. And this is our estimate. Don't get me wrong. This is, we took the AI tool that we have that tracks how many people are there. We didn't call and get their records. This is just our best, you know, we said four people in a car. So this is a lot of us, our information, putting it in there. So this is not strictly exactly what they're doing by any means. This is our best guess. So if we bring that into us, we would say we're estimating about 27,000 people. So we're a little lower than what Highland Glen and Tybalt Fork are, but we're right in the same realm. We're about 5,000 people less a month is what we're estimating. 30 days in a month, four people per car, $10 fee. 215 cars a day. We have a 200-car parking lot up there as part of the agreement. In a day, that would be $2,250. The city's portion would be $1,575. The parking service would get $675 of that to a grand total of that five-month season of $236,000 to be able to help with the maintenance costs, the person, however we do that. That's the highlights. We can do any kind of term that we would like to do. If we want to do it for the full 12 months, we can do it for a full 12 months. If we want to do it however the restraint is that we would like to be able to do. We do get to have utility passes for our construction vehicles, for maintenance vehicles, for that type of thing. So if we have a car up there or a city vehicle up there, they're not going to come and try and tow it if we have a pass in the window saying that they're allowed, which we would have to distribute, of course. I think I've kind of gone over the key benefits. It helps prevent the neighborhood over parking because the issue that Bartholomew Pond had is they basically, everybody knew it was free. And so they would head down there and instead of saying, oh, it's full, we're going to leave, and leave, they just find somewhere to park. If they would go up front saying you understand that you are going to get charged to park in here, they get there, it becomes the habit of we want to go to this place, not we're going to go there. You know what I mean? It's not just show up because it's where you can. It's a destination at that point instead of just a place to be and an event that's an easy, free thing. Part of the issue that we have looked at, though, is in our agreements, we do have to provide free access and free fishing through the different partners. How this works is the site itself is free. So if they want to go drop somebody off, it's absolutely free. They can do it. But to park in the facility, it would cost the amount. And so we've worked with the two people that we have contracts with, and both of them are under the agreement that it's fine to be able to do this. Okay. Liability concerns. So Scott's out of town. Do you want to talk about this or do you want me to just kind of reverberate and you can correct me if I'm wrong?

I can talk about it. Yeah. I'm the killjoy guy tonight on this one. But there's an act out there called the Landowners Liability Act. So if either a private or a government entity makes their land open to the public but does not charge a fee, then there's a pretty high level of liability protection for that. The city basically doesn't have a duty of care that has to do with proving a claim of negligence. to keep the land safe or to warn people of a dangerous condition, that kind of thing. So it's kind of like the Cadillac version of limited liability. Now, if we charge, then that goes away. But it doesn't mean that we're still subject to any and all claims. So even if we don't have limited liability under the Landowners Liability Act, we still have governmental immunity. So that basically comes down to whether the government or the What the government is involved in is considered a governmental function or a proprietary function by the courts. That's been a longstanding kind of historical distinction between whether we have the protections of the Governmental Immunity Act or we don't. Well, what a court looks to when they're trying to distinguish between those two is basically, is this something that the private sector, are we competing with the private sector? Are we getting, you know, are we making a profit? Are we getting some special economic benefit or pecuniary benefit in engaging in this? So, you know, let's say like a swimming pool. Well, you know, I guess that's maybe not the best because there aren't a lot of private swimming pools. A rec center, a golf course, you know, if the city wanted to have a bowling alley or something like that. Those are all more traditionally served by the private sector. And so that's more likely for a court to look at that and say, well, that's not a traditional governmental function. That's a proprietary function. So we're not going to give you liability protections under the Utah Governmental Immunity Act. For this kind of a function, it seems pretty solid that the courts would find that this is a governmental function. So we'd still have the protections of the Utah Governmental Immunity Act. Even if we didn't, which again, I don't think is likely, a plaintiff still has to prove the elements of negligence. It doesn't mean if we don't have the Landowners Liability Act protections, we don't have the Governmental Immunity Act protections, that we're just going to have to start writing checks. An injured plaintiff would still have to prove the elements of the claim of negligence, that we failed somehow in our duty to keep the premises safe or to warn of a dangerous condition. and that that was the negligence doctrine is called causation right that our failure to do that was the actual cause of the injury that's been suffered by a plaintiff so that's a i mean that's a factor to consider you know do you want the cadillac version the toyota camry version the no version, I guess, of just being relegated to defending a negligence claim, which we do a lot in other situations. But by charging, we do kind of give up the Cadillac version of limited liability. So that's a factor to consider in the way that we operate this facility.

So I guess at that point, is there any questions that we can answer? And kind of what I'm looking for is kind of a head nod just to, do you want me to pursue this? Do you want to back out? I'm happy to do whatever at this point.

I guess let me add, if that's the direction of the council, I would contact Springville City. I have a good relationship with theirs. We have a lot of work to do. Find out what went into their decision. Was it more than... Obviously, they must have done a balancing and thought, hey, the capacity of this thing is just overwhelming us, so we better charge. Did they consider giving up the protections under the Landowner Liability Act? Not that we have to do the same thing, but at least see what went into their analysis of charging for parking.

Sorry, I want to add a little context also for new council members. had this discussion like when we first talked about improvements here, and I may be wrong, but we talked about the cost of toilet paper just because of all the visitors, right?

Well, that's why I put, honestly, that's really why I put the frequency of people going there. Yeah. I mean, you get 40, the Legacy Center, I think they send it, I sent it today, and I think it was 39,000 people open the door every day. So if the same person goes in four times, that's four times. It's like 39,000 visitors. We're talking about the amount of people that we have at our rec center going up to this facility to a four-stall restroom.

So, yeah, so I guess my point was that it's more than – Two four-stall restrooms, excuse me, eight stalls. It's more than just maintaining, you know, the number of people who go there, but there's cost involved, right, and replenishing the supplies in the restrooms and the maintenance costs and the park staff and stuff. So it's – again, I guess with the piano, I'd like to try to recoup our costs as best we can. So – My question, I guess, for Ryan then is if you talked about more liability as you earn a profit. So if we put the money back into just maintaining the park or the supplies, is that considered a profit?

Yeah, no, we should be fine. If we're just covering our costs, and it doesn't have to be dollar for dollar, right? But if the majority, I don't know what percentage, but if most of the money is just going to operate, going back into its operation, we'd be okay.

And really what we're thinking on that is we're probably going to have similar staffing to what we do at Family Park and have seasonals up there, keeping it all weekend long operational and safe, clean. The presence helps out so much that it's, yeah, at least for the four or five months in the year that it's heavily used. Other than that, of course, we'll just check on it.

Okay. I'm sorry. I just wanted to make that clear because I know. No, no, thank you. Thank you. That's great. Kasha Hartburn, the toilet paper will go through there.

But any questions or comments from the council? Yeah, I have a question. How many stalls does Springville have? We have 200, you said. How does that compare to what they have?

It's actually in here, I believe. Is it? No, it's not in here. But it's not as big as ours. It's not even close to what ours is. Okay, so this is a good number. We have a lot bigger, but Daybreak's is bigger than ours as well, and they still do the same.

160 stalls. Okay.

So 40 less than what we do, but still, they're dramatically smaller than we are as well, if we have water in it.

I think part of that price point, I think you're right in having the price, keeping it low enough, because I think if you're getting up closer to that 15, I'd park at Smith's. I'll take a couple minutes to walk down. So it's got to be enough that it means it's convenient enough that I'm like, yeah, I'll do it.

And part of that, and I don't mean this ruder, but I don't want the 16-year-old kids up there unsupervised doing whatever they would like to do up there. That's the price point. We've got to make it so that they're not going to

That's like $2. Yeah.

They're not going to be there, but the families are still very welcome. And you know what I mean? That's really the hard part is we need to control the people that we have visiting somehow. And this is realistically the only way that we can with the avenues that we've been given.

So I'm going to share a little information, then I'll give my perspective. So Tibble is $6 for the day to go up to the canyon. Or in America, the beautiful pass, right? Highland Glen's free. It looks like Springville gives one free parking pass per resident per the for the year they can pick up at Springville City Hall and It looks like the Harriman place Black Ridge Reservoir its parking is free Monday through Friday and It's $15 per vehicle on Saturdays Sundays and designated holidays Typically, it looks like Springville and them they only look and monitor parking about May through October. So it's not all year round and I I don't know. Just looking at that and looking at what we're comparing, because that's what we are doing to try to come to this, I think that $5 is kind of more a price point for what we have. Springville has a snack shack, multiple pavilions. I would like to walk Dry Creek Reservoir, because I haven't. I drive past it every single day and look at it from far. But I haven't been on site myself. I just think with what we have and to the point of starting low, that seems much more reasonable when you can pay $6 to go up American Fork Canyon. You can go to Highland Gun for free. I think there's something to be said about we need to, you know, it's going to go into maintenance. We're going to probably need additional staffing. We're going to need some supplies, things like that, and hopefully some improvements in the future. But I think having to pay even $5 might deter some

people that you're talking about so honestly it was at five dollars ten dollars looks a lot better on paper just looking at all the things so i agree that doesn't hurt my feelings even the smallest because it gives us more room if we need to do something we also can and hopefully it's not that we have to hopefully that is what it is and we enjoy what it is for that but

Well, and it is interesting to see that Springville gives one free pass per resident, or per household.

And honestly, we would love to try and be able to do something like that, but our agreements when we got the grant from the county said that it's a county facility at that point, and everybody in the entire county has to be treated the same, even though we're taking the burden of the maintenance on it. Okay. So that's why we can't.

There's no way to discount for B-high residents.

We have to treat them all the same in the county. Okay. Well, I think it's actually we have to treat them all the same not even in the county I think it's just you know It's the tax and tourism grant that we got it from and so anybody the visits the site is the same thing

So is that, I mean, we're charging for parking, but so in that agreement with the county, is it that anybody can use it for free or that we just have to treat them every the same?

No, that we treat them all equal. That we treat them all equal. So that's the sticking point is I'd love to open this up to our residents for free. Lehigh, you're taking the burden of the maintenance on it. It's yours. Go use it. We can't charge someone else.

And the hard part with that is know if our residents do have to we have to use tax dollars to help pay for this we have Highland just up the hill and there's a parking spot there and a nice trail to walk down I'm like they're just gonna park there and and and we're in conversations with Highland we know they know that we're getting close to open it and if they they had not heard about charging for parking at their Highland Glen and

We'll see what they do. They know now.

Well, it's a nice gift to Highland. I hope they appreciate it. Not that we don't want them there.

No, no, no, no, no, no. I've been there. It's a beautiful park.

Okay, what about, I don't know if anybody would ever do this, but can you take donations, like part of your QR code?

I don't think that we'd want to do it through the same QR code because then that's going to give the parking entity 30%. So if they want to do donations, they should be coming to us directly. I mean, if we want to go down that road. The problem with it, we've tried donations in several different places. We've tried a dog park donation and got a couple hundred dollars that's had there for a really long time, and it's really hard for our finance to account for and figure out and do.

Can I ask a question? So with the contract, with the... parking service there's no flat fee like a monthly like five thousand dollars or you know anything like that okay so it's just a user-based business model where if we had no one parking there there's no penalty to lehigh to pay or anything like that right but i will say the higher the amount that they're going to get the more they're going to monitor so i mean i if i ran the business you know and somebody was giving me

run the light beat making sure that they were taken care of okay okay um and then do we anticipate that this year due to the drought and the water levels that we're going to have a high participation or is that no honestly i'm very hesitant to even open it this year i mean it's gross it it really is i don't know how else to put it It's going to be ready. There's so many people excited. We get comments about it constantly.

Yeah.

And maybe what we do is we open it up just for walking because there's not going to be fish in there. There's not going to be anything in there. But the minute that we open it, that's setting our standard.

Yeah.

And that's really the hard part is if we're going to do it, we should do it when we open, not come back and try and retrofit because... I don't want to set that standard.

Yeah.

That's why we're here tonight, realistically.

Yeah, I understood. And then I'm wondering, is it like a demand model where if it increases demand over the weekends or certain, I don't know, peak days, like we could raise parking? Like, is there an active demand model within the parking pricing?

Honestly, I think they'll do whatever we would like them to do. However we structure it, we can... They're very willing to work with us on how, if we want to say a dollar on the weeks or free on the weekdays, and then we charge on weekends, I'm sure that they'd be open to it. I mean, we'd have to have the conversations. But I'm pretty positive that they're willing to do what we need them to do.

Okay. Awesome. Thank you.

You've talked to them. Is that right? Okay.

The fees have just had to be approved by city council.

So it's very important.

So I'll be back to approve these. I'm OK with five. I really am.

I mean, I can see it from the road. I haven't been there. But I think it's worth $5.

I'm not disagreeing. Like I said, I don't think that I want to open it really this season. But we probably should. We've got a lot of demand.

i do like the peak hours holidays weekends model but i don't i really don't want anything to go above ten dollars per car and and there may even be times like where the traffic's low and we can say it's a free day at the reservoir or something i am i'm just going to remind you that skyridge is very close by and they at lunch time and right after school i mean it's like a like they're everywhere like

I have a kid at Sky Ridge. I love Sky Ridge kids. But they go everywhere in that area, so.

I've had more vandalism at Ivory Ridge than I have at Avalon. Yeah.

So that's a good point, though. I mean, it's not even charging to.

That's what this is for, is to try and help keep the people that we don't want. That's such a hard thing to describe. I mean, we want everybody to come, but we want them to be monitored, and we want them to treat the site with respect. And if they're willing to put the money towards it, they're going to hopefully respect it, right? That's really what I'm trying to illustrate here. It's not that we don't want anybody there. We want them all there. We want them to respect the site when they're there.

Tell me what the monitoring looks like, because that- They drive through and look for

look at license plate numbers and say, okay, yep, you're good.

So they don't do like, oh, those kids are starting a fire.

I'm hoping that, I'm really hoping that if they see activity like that, they would notify us. I don't know if they will or not.

Because in my mind, that's worth charging for and giving them the 30% more than just.

Yes and no, really, because they're going to, they'll, I think they tow the vehicles if they haven't parked or paid. So, I mean, that's what we're paying for is the enforcement of the parking. That's what Bartholomew did to be able to get to the point where they weren't getting vandalized constantly, constantly, constantly, and help with the reduction of the use.

But maybe just somebody going through.

Well, and that's really what I think this money should go towards is our staff, a seasonal staff member up there at least during daylight hours.

Keeping eyes. Keeping it clean.

Monitoring comes second, but keeping the site clean comes first. And the presence is huge. If you have somebody there, they see somebody there, and the person is actually willing to go up and vocalize, hey, do you mind picking up the garbage? Or do you mind, you know, there's this here? It pays off.

And there's no gate, right? There's no toll gate. It's just all QR code?

So it's all QR code. There are gates. The city gates are there. Well, they're not the city gates. They're the dam company's gates. And so the city really wants very little to do with the gates unless there's an emergency. We will have locks on them. But we plan on not operating them at all. But it's just like paid parking in a city, right? Correct.

So you go in, when those gates are open and it's accessible, you go in, it's very obvious, you see the QR code, you pay.

And it's a similar idea where it's just from daylight, like sunrise to...

Yes. It's our park hours. Yep. Yep. Yep.

Any other questions or comments?

Mayor Pro Tem? Yes. I do have one comment and a question. One of the concerns that we have from an engineering standpoint is currently the roadway out in front between the park and Smith is striped just with a roadway shoulder. So, you know, cars that feel like they don't want to pay could technically park there. However, one of the concerns that we do have is the future master plan cross-section for this roadway is to have bike lanes. And so we are concerned about how whatever parking may happen or we may, whatever decision we may make, that we need to be able to be prepared to know that if everyone just moves to parking along the street, at some point in time, At least the current master plan shows that we will be striping that road for bike lanes, which would take away that parking. So anyways, that's just one concern that we do have.

Could we make it no parking at this point? Or could have the signs? Would you?

There are a lot of homes. There are homes that are being built there, too, and private residences. And it's, like, curvy. So there's a lot of, like, I don't envision. I mean, I would see teenagers parking there. But a normal person. I should say a person who has more experience and doesn't want to get sideswiped or park in someone's personal area would probably not.

Look, I'm the only one that's supposed to say stuff like that.

But that raises a point. Do we want cars parked there? Because you know that we will get cars parked.

Yeah, I think that's the concern that we have is that right now there's not as much need to park there. You know, the homes are just being built.

Again, that was the control measure that they used to help get rid of that. They were getting inundated in every surface street because it wasn't charged. As soon as they started charging and raising that rate to the point that it is now... is how they controlled that, because they knew it was a destination. We're going there for this. And basically, I don't know how else to say it other than excluded the people that were just there on a whim. And so if you're not there on a whim, you're not going to pay the fee to go in.

But don't you think charging at the base by the reservoir?

I do, but that gives us the room to grow to wherever we need to be to help them. sustain and fight that issue.

I think it's also something to talk to a traffic engineer about with that street, honestly.

And we've had, I don't know, how many hundreds of complaints about speeding on that road for the last 10 years. True.

And we're in the middle of doing our transportation master plan, so maybe it's the time as we do that to determine whether the design that we currently have on 3200 North is correct. showing bike lanes being striped in the future there.

Well, and you know there is bike lane or bikes throughout everywhere else right there. It's like a spaghetti bowl of bike access. So, I mean, if we took it off the road, it might not be the worst thing in the world.

The Murdoch Canal, true. Yeah.

I would just say one for ADA parking. Is there a way to exempt them from paying the fee? Because it applies equally.

I doubt that it will exempt them. I mean, realistically, just... Where they are disabled doesn't mean that they're not using the facility.

Well, I mean, like you said, using the facility, there's no charge, right? You can walk into it any time, use it. It's just the parking aspect.

So what I don't want to do is... Let me see what other entities have done on that and see if there's a case for that.

I think if within the contract that we have with...

yeah I think if it's if it's allowed then yeah I would well I'm gonna use I'm gonna use my father and as an example here he has an 88 pass and he's very careful walking just because his knee hurt sometimes so I don't want it you know what I mean with somebody that actually necessarily needs it I understand them being for free The ones that don't necessarily need it and they're going to gather 15 kids in the car because they have free parking. That's a different situation. And so I don't know how you would distinguish that necessarily. But let me see if there's a case anywhere else in any of these other. I think it's a small percentage enough.

It is very. I think if you do have ADA permits, then I just wouldn't want to. Prohibit, you know, grandma and grandpa from being able to go there. I agree with that, yeah.

I am worried about the slope on the sand as well for that because, honestly, to get down to the waterfront, you're hiking. So it'll be a nice view, but to get down into the water is going to be challenging.

Okay.

So Ryan, I have a question for you. I might be stretching this, but since we're only charging for parking, does our liability only cover the parking lot?

Yeah, I mean, it says to charge to use the facility. So I mean, you could make the argument that technically, we're just charging for parking. But that's considered, it's broad enough to consider access to the facility. So it doesn't really make a difference. OK, that I try.

You said that if we're just covering our costs, it's almost negligible, which if you cut the price, it costs, let's say it's $5, it'd be $100,000-something, which probably would be eaten up pretty quick with staffing and toilet paper.

And I think there's lots we could do on the back end financially. If we did make more than we thought, we could put it in a fund to fund next year's operations and then reduce the fee or something. We'd make sure that we stayed within that limit so that we didn't lose the liability protection.

So what I'm hearing from the council, tell me if I'm on the right track, is that, yes, pursue this and look at keeping the fee lower to $5 and to cover our costs so that, you know, limit our liability. Okay.

Okay.

Thank you. Thank you. Okay. 3.4. This will be a good one, Brad. We're looking forward to it. Northwest Lehigh Transportation Options Discussion.

Thank you, Mayor Pro Tem and council members. Let's see if I can get connected here. Is there anything I need to do, Tisha, to connect? Oh, there we go, we're on.

Is that a rifle?

What was that?

Were you holding a rifle? Yes, sir.

Yeah, during an elk hunt we were on. With bikes. That's great.

Is that okay? No, it's awesome. I just haven't seen bikes and camo and rifle in the same photo.

No, we used the bikes to get to our location and then. walk in so anyway thank you for your time today let me just kind of jump right into things so this is just a again just a work session item just a discussion on some options that we've been looking at for some Northwest transportation options here in Lehigh as shown in your packet. This is a screenshot of our current transportation master plan in the northwest section of Lehigh. And you'll notice that in particular what I would like to talk about today is this area that's highlighted in yellow. which is the future Mountain View corridor connector freeway. So it's a freeway to freeway connection from the Mountain View corridor to I-15. This project's been on our master plan for many years. However, a few years ago, UDOT did a study on what this transportation corridor would cost to a cost of roughly $3 to $3.5 billion. Just to give you an idea, that type of budgeting, that's pretty much what UDOT's budget is statewide. For one year right operating construction and everything so so when we propose this to you dot They were estimating about a billion and a half of that to be to build the actual roadway and Another billion and a half to build what they call a collector distributor system Which is the type of free dual freeway system that we have a northbound I-15 starting at about 90th South when you want to get onto I-215. If you remember, there's kind of a parallel freeway system. So they were basically saying another billion and a half to build essentially a secondary freeway to handle all the traffic. If I go to the next slide, to handle that 91,000 cars a day, that would be conveyed through that area. So a few things that we did when we proposed this. We were excited about it because essentially it would take traffic from the Eagle Mountain Saratoga area and kind of bypass Lehigh, right? I mean, they're going out and around us on freeway systems, which is, if they're not going to shop in Lehigh, we would like them to just bypass, right? So anyways, after hearing those types of funding numbers from UDOT, we started looking at some other options. One of those options would be to run, let me just go back two more slides. I forgot to point out that notice on this transportation master plan, we show a future interchange right here. This is up by Transwest, or where Transwest was. This corridor was also studied as part of the station area plan that was done in this area, and they showed that this interchange would tie into Traverse Mountain Boulevard. It's probably shown a little bit further south than where it would be placed. But just keep in mind that future interchange as we move forward. So one of the options that we're just calling option one right now would be instead of running freeway to freeway between the Mountain View corridor, we would run between that new future interchange that I just pointed out and Redwood Road. Keeping in mind that when the Mountain View corridor gets fully loaded and it has taken a lot of traffic off of Redwood Road, that Redwood Road, that the Redwood Road volumes reduce significantly. so in essence uh to our modelers and we've had to have we've had to send out of state for these models most of our modelers here in town don't don't do this kind of work it's very significant regional transportation so that's part of the reason it's taken us a while to get these to you but we want to look at this option option one basically we would run from the new future interchange to Redwood Road and one of the things we wanted to point out one of the things we're looking at is two points first of all notice that we've removed Clubhouse Drive from the the equation seeing the difficulty of punching through Clubhouse Drive with the residents and whatnot we've chosen to pull this out as part of all these models and so what we're looking at as we're wanting to get this part of what we're looking at is devout the volumes on Triumph Boulevard what what does it take to get those down as you know and as you've been involved with Thanksgiving Point area plan and We talk about the transportation corridors and the impacts there. We want to know what would it take to get those numbers down. Currently, without any options, it's looking like Triumph Boulevard runs at about 55,000 cars a day, which is really the extent of what maybe a six or seven lane facility could handle. So this was option one. Another option that we had was... to run that same type of a connection from roadwood road over to that new future interchange but to run along the east side of camp williams instead of the north side of camp williams Notice it does pick up more, you know, does generate some more volume. Our expectation is it might draw as much as 42,000 cars a day and that number would drop down the further south we get, you know, to where it's down to 25,000 cars a day on 2700 north. and what it does to Triumph Boulevard is it drops that volume down to about the 47,000 cars a day range. We've been wanting to bring this to you as a council for quite some time, but in waiting for the models, and also we felt like before we did, we needed to talk to Camp Williams. We needed to find out what, if either of these options were supported by them, and we just heard back from them last Monday. so therefore i quickly put it on the agenda um to to for you to to review and um the results from what camp williams come to came to us with is their strong um Their strong opinion is that they much prefer option two versus option one. They didn't really elaborate as to why one option was better than another, but they did indicate that their preferred option was option two. So this option versus running the roadway along the north side of Camp Williams. Just for your information, one action that we believe that Camp Williams will take in the next year or two is they're moving their main entrance to Camp Williams off of railroad road down to a location off of 2700 north they've been to us already shown us their plans they'll be making some significant improvements right here for the safety and monitoring of traffic going in but that is one change that they are looking to make they didn't indicate either way whether they felt like future their existing roadways would tie on to that option two they didn't they were silent on that but simply indicated that they were in support of option two versus option one this next slide just indicates that So I'm just curious if the council has any questions related to this information, anything that I can weigh in on.

Just to clarify, these projected numbers are with 2100 North being fully built out, right? Correct. And Mountain View Corridor being fully built out. Correct. So this wouldn't be day one?

Yeah, these are intended to be full build-out numbers with 2100 North Freeway as a six-lane, full build-out of Mountain View Corridor.

And the 2,000 units in Thanksgiving Point are calculated into this? Yes, they are. Okay.

I should have asked you this earlier. Do you have a slide that shows the volume on these roads if we don't build either option?

I've been asking our traffic engineers for those, because we've been through so many iterations, and that is one thing that I'm still looking for, to find those numbers. Because the freeway to freeway has been in our model for so long, we have to dig way back and find out, for example, what the clubhouse drive volumes were before the freeway to freeway, or what the triumph numbers are. So I don't have those. However, I can tell you that 10 years back when when we went to mag and and we're seeking the money for clubhouse drive um we were then looking to build it as a two lane with a expansion to four lane in the future off of my memory i think it was right up to its capacity of a four lane road so that would be roughly 30 to 35 000 cars a day along clubhouse drive i just can't confirm those exactly but um

And I'm curious, like, how they get dispersed. If we don't have that option, how does it impact all these other roads?

Yeah, I mean, we do have the numbers, the pre-construction and post-construction numbers for each of these options. But just not with the clubhouse drive. And, you know, not without any build. Yeah. Right. Generally, our no-build scenario included the freeway to freeway, so that's the challenge here. Right.

I'll just say I love that the clubhouse drive extension over the golf course was removed, just because I think that would have, especially with the HTRZ coming up, I think that would have just made traffic that much worse. right there between a golf course and I-15. I like option two just simply because instead of the clubhouse drive extension that would have fed directly into the heart of Holbrook Farms and right next to a school, this skirts on the exterior of Holbrook. So I do like that, and I don't know.

Emily's our... Yeah, Council Member, the dotted line, that black dotted line would connect into 3600 West, which would take it right next to the school. So that's the maybe...

Which dotted line are you talking about?

So the black dotted line, that'll go off the yellow and take 8,000 cars next to the elementary school.

Okay, so you're talking, yeah, the planned. So maybe we could... if that's still on the table at some point.

It's really if that roadway were stepped across, our modeler, we asked them to, you know, because we knew that we had some connections, right? There's already a roadway in this area that connects between 3600 and this roadway. So we asked them to estimate how much Connectivity, you know how much connectivity volume they would pull over and so so whether that's exactly 8,000 cars a day on this one or whether it's split between this road and down here I'm not sure nor would I know whether this road would even be stubbed across and

That gray section between the yellow, the black dotted line, and that solid black line, that's all homes. So I worry if we do some connections, those are 25 mile an hour with kids on bikes. Right. Option two gives me a lot of concern. And I don't love that Camp Williams is moving their entrance. That also is going to give a lot of concern to Holbrook, but I can't control the federal government. Anyway, but there are pros and cons to both options.

I think the pro with this, if they're moving their entrance to the south end, if there is no extension on that yellow dotted line, then I could see traffic filtering through Holbrook more coming from the southeast. to Camp Williams traffic specifically, versus if you're commuting from the north to Camp Williams, taking this connector kind of keeps you away from the middle of the neighborhoods. And I think for Holbrook commuters going north, this probably shaves off, I don't know, Emily, if you were, it probably shaves off at least 10 minutes of commuter time versus going to 2100 or looping around on Triumph. Port Rockwell. Yeah.

Yeah, it kind of becomes whatever Camp Williams likes is what we say, yeah, that's great, because I think that they're going to be such a roadblock to anything going through. This does kind of change things where it does facilitate more traffic that is not Lehigh getting around Lehigh. And I think, like with the other offshoot dotted line, that's going to serve Holbrook. Those cars are going to be there one way or another. So it's like to be able to find ways to help facilitate them out easier, because otherwise they have to go somewhere. It's like all those trips have to go on some kind of road. So I do agree with Emily that we need to be careful, but at least it seems like this wouldn't be as much cut through from other cities. It would be their own neighborhood that would need to use that access. And I'd like that it's a quicker way to get those out west around Lehigh rather than through it.

If I can add, anyone who accesses their home from 3600 West will be taking that dotted line. So they would, like Cold Spring Ranch, even down into where James is at, they'll They'll pop off the dotted line and come through Holbrook on 3600 West because that's a five-lane arterial. I think, and this is where we probably just need to spend more time, is these are neighborhoods. The houses come up onto these roads where kids on bikes and things. So I think we just need to explore what that looks like and not build something that would just be very, very thoughtful, right? Because these neighbors in here are expecting... their kids to be able to ride bikes. I don't want to put a five lane through that. Anyway, I think there just needs to be more thought.

These are obviously, um, discussions that are super high level, you know, as far as the 30,000 foot level where we just, we're just looking at regional traffic solutions.

If you go to option one, if you go back one side or I'm sorry, here you go. I think, I mean, this obviously it doesn't touch Holbrook. Um, But it also benefits Saratoga and Eagle Mountain commuters a lot more, I think. And that's a good thing in the sense that they're not going through Lehigh as much. But I just, you know, I'd wonder if option two might benefit Holbrook commuters more. Just because, you know, you look at the dotted line, the connector road. If you look at the existing road, the solid black line of 3600 West, all the traffic's on that road essentially right now, right? So if we added that connector road to the yellow line, proposed road it would it would kind of relieve a lot of the traffic closer to 2100 is my my guess as a expert commuter but that's the position of whole work is like we we don't like the connection points in is going to draw in all that traffic that relief it's giving the domino effect relief outward

brings it all into us. And I will say at the same time, there's obviously multiple perspectives within the neighborhood. There are neighbors who want an additional exit. So yeah, I think maybe we can organize a neighborhood meeting out there. I'm happy to host it in my home and have one or I guess it would have to only be one of you at a time. But we can meet with the neighbors and talk about it.

One additional positive to probably option two versus option one is that if you look at the Thanksgiving Point gardens, they have this single, almost like a big long cul-de-sac going down in the gardens. This option two could possibly assist them if they chose to put stuff across the river and tie in right here. That could be a potential benefit for this option two also. It wouldn't be nearly as easy for them to tie in and go further north to the option one. But obviously, I'm just trying to point out as many of these options as I can.

Hey, Brad. One question. I know we talked about this earlier with imagery. But would it be possible for this road to be parallel to the north-south road? In other words, the existing north-south road. Which road is that? Oh, 2700.

Would you have to go back to the area lineage?

Yeah, so if the proposed road came down on the west side of 2700 West and 2700 just stayed like an internal community, almost like a frontage road, I mean, we wouldn't be able to connect the connector road to the yellow line but it could connect still to the frontage road and i think i don't know maybe that would you'd have less signals you wouldn't you wouldn't have cars just going into the neighborhoods just something to consider just off the top maybe i could just go back to the aerial image i don't think i shared that yet correct but i do have it um there we go

Let me just go to this really quickly. We currently do have roadways that tie. Sorry, I was overlooking at Dry Creek. So we are right here.

So it essentially kind of go into where the current driving course.

Currently, this roadway does connect. between 3600 and this future roadway that we're talking about. I think the roadway that's shown on the model is this future roadway right here. I think there's a concern that this would swing around and tie in directly up here. The challenge that we do have, and this is one challenge that Camp Williams did bring up, there is some property, an old railroad property here that's owned by United States of America, that they are very concerned about whether we would ever be able to punch a road across it. So even though our model showed that this road very well could be extended, whether that would happen, I don't know. But we truly do have roadways already that connect those two.

Yeah, and to add context, the Hardman property right here, they've come in with a development proposal that I believe passed maybe a year and a half or two years ago And it's like half acre lots, horse property with town homes in this like kind of near this power substation. And so when we talk about the roads, just know they've got approvals for some of that.

Yeah.

Well, I like all the options. I like it, Brad. Good job. I think you've done a lot of good work. And I know that right now, you have a driving range right down there, right, where the police practice. And there's just some kind of brand new development going in. But it's just kind of an open road down on the south there of Camp Williams. And yeah. Road cars are speeding past there too. There's not any lanes right now. So I like the option it gives us to hook into I-15, future interchange, and also gives some possibilities to things to pinpoint. So I appreciate that.

What would the speed limit be on the yellow road?

You know, we obviously need to review that, but I'm guessing 35.

So you'd come off I-15 at 80, 75, and then come down into 30?

It wouldn't be a freeway to freeway. This would be more of an interchange.

Oh, yeah.

So it's a regular interchange. You'd have to come off of I-15, and then it would be a roadway that runs. So it's either 35 or 40. It would intend to carry 42,000 cars a day. It's a heavy five-lane traffic roadway. It carries a lot of traffic. But our modelers feel, and normally the 35,000 cars a day range is kind of more where we want to be on a five lane. But in this case, with very limited access, they feel like that we can take that much traffic through without expanding to a seven lane roadway. increasing volumes and I mean sorry increasing speeds and there won't be any anything north of the river really it's just gonna be the road yeah we don't think so I mean obviously we don't know how this would may develop in the future there could be an access point but our general thought is it's fairly limited access yeah so I

Appreciate your work on this. And I know one of my concerns was with the Clubhouse Drive extension was bringing traffic through the Holbrook Farms neighborhood. And there's parks there and children in schools. And we kind of want to protect our residential neighborhood. So I do like this, that the main road is on the the border. It's not necessarily through the neighborhood. Yeah, but there is that concern to, will people, even Lehigh residents from the South use 3600 North to access access I-15 versus 2100 North. And it depends. I feel like traffic is like water. It takes the path of least resistance, right? So if it's more cumbersome to drive through a neighborhood and stop at stoplights and just to take that 2100 North freeway, I guess that's the question because we At least I would like to protect the neighborhood. I think this is definitely better than the Clubhouse Drive extension, so thumbs up there. But I appreciate your work.

I think that's what we're asking is, Obviously, I'm not bringing you something for a decision, but as we move forward in the Transportation Master Plan, this is kind of a key component. There's a lot of things to work out, but if you feel kind of more inclined towards the option A, which is the one that Camp Williams supported and honestly would be pertinent or possible for us to condemn property through Camp Williams on the other option. But if you're okay with us moving forward, we'd start that process through our master planning.

Council?

Should I just continue? I just had a few more slides. This was just the, my presentation is kind of two parts. This is the transportation part and the roadway part through Camp Williams. Let me just move on. This one should be quick. So we've talked, as I talked in my presentation, that the One thing we're always watching is the, we were watching the volumes along Triumph Boulevard. This is a photo of Triumph Boulevard looking north from the new interchange, or the new signal we put at 2150 north. So these buildings are in the background are the stacked buildings. So we're looking north. So just moving forward, one thing we looked at in trying to determine whether it makes sense, what could we do to get more traffic through here? And right now it's a four-lane road with a sidewalks on either side. So what we've looked at is the potential of placing, of removing the curb gutter and sidewalk, and we would have to do some wall work also, but to install six 11-foot lanes instead of the four travel lanes through this intersection. Just to give you an idea, and we probably could have added the cars and make it a little bit easier, but this is what we've drawn up that shows six lanes underneath the underpass structure. So where you see what it looks like where we have sidewalk, those would be travel lanes. So we've looked at that, and we feel like we can kind of sneak a six-lane road through there. A couple of things that we would have to do is we would need to limit the speed limit from 35 to 30 miles an hour. And what that does is it allows us to take the clearance, the required clearance between those vehicles that are closest to the abutment. We're allowed to have them closer to the abutment with a slower speed. It's the same type of approach we had to take on Main Street, just right through the downtown area where the speed limit reduces on Main Street so that we can have that, they call it street furniture, the street friction right there through the Main Street area We had to drop the speed limit in Main Street just for that two block section That would be the same type of thing here, and we would propose that we would drop the speed limit from 30 to from 35 to 30 between Ashton and Ashton and 2100 North It also would require us to remove the sidewalks and I'm not sure how many of you have ever been on that sidewalk before. As I took my family on that, I'm not sure what I was thinking. I took my family on it. six or seven years ago one time and that was the last time we we ever did that it's you kind of take your life into your own hands just to give you an idea we've asked we asked mike and his staff to to let us know how many pedestrians or cyclists do use that sidewalk it's actually a little higher than what i had thought and correct me if i'm wrong Oh, where is Mike? Oh, Kim. I believe that number was about 60 users, either bicycle or sidewalk users in a day. That was a count that was taken on a Friday. Again, that's a little higher than what I thought. But in doing this, again, we would propose to remove the curb and gutter and the sidewalk, widen the road, still have curb and gutter, but then just to show you kind of what our feeling is with the sidewalks. I believe Kim and me, maybe I shouldn't be using this, but this is almost, I believe this is one of Mike's future proposed trail maps, just to give you a better context. But My point is, as we look at this, that trail plan does not show any trails through this area. I'm not sure whether Mike and the planning department would consider any sidewalks. The purpose of this map is to show that if you follow the yellow lines, the yellow highlights, these are alternate paths for users to take that are safer than going underneath the underpass. Just as a reminder to each of you, we do have funding, the city secured funding to build, is it called the Front Runner Trail? Mike, I think it is. The Front Runner Station Trail that runs from Front Runner Station to You know, it's the, maybe it's called the Thanksgiving Point Station Trail. But basically it runs a new trail from the Thanksgiving Point Station, the front under station on the north side of the tracks, all the way along the tracks. Crosses across a bridge a new bridge across Triumph Boulevard and then ties in over by 2100 north and then UDOT has as I think you're aware UDOT has already committed to build this pedestrian bridge across the freeway for us. So anyways these yellow highlighted areas show our proposed alternative routes for active transportation users. So that's what I have to present today.

So you're just proposing the six lanes from 2100 to I-15? Yeah, from Ashton Boulevard down to 2100 North.

I think the only concern I have, I think the three lanes each direction makes sense. I think it's just the bottleneck areas. So morning traffic can be rough going north on Triumph. So you would be going from three lanes to two after Ashton. That's just something that, you know, we may solve one problem to cause another problem if it's bottlenecked. And then the interchange of 2100, I know we talked a little bit about that, and it's still just super tight.

But if we can figure out how we can make that work, then... Now, obviously, this is super high level, us looking into this. Maybe to answer your question, northbound, our intention would be that when we hit Ashton... we would likely take that third lane and drop it into a right turn only onto Ashton. So the two left lanes would be straight throughs, and the eastern of those three lanes would turn into a trap right. So it would turn into Ashton. And the same thing southbound. We would trap that one right onto – on the 2100 northwestbound Furnage Road. Now obviously, we may work out other options. This entire property right here, um which is between the subdivision and the 2100 freeway is owned by udot so if we needed to pick up some property from them to put an additional right turn lane we could probably do that i don't know that they have any intentions for that property i think it makes sense going southbound because there's so many people coming southbound and going west on 2100 that it would it would be helpful i think for the morning commute going north even if we have that

Far right lane turning right on Ashton. There's really nobody going in that direction. So I think it would still back up probably to the train tracks as people are merging or trying to merge. So yeah, southbound looks more promising than northbound, I think, for this one. Unless we wanted to... make it three lanes all the way past the movie theater going into the interchange.

Yeah, we obviously would have to run the models in more detail. These models are very large scale. So we didn't run it in depth. Incidentally, we did actually look at, even before UDOT proposed the flex lane proposal on Pioneer Cross when we looked at flex lanes here, because the traffic is directional, as you've mentioned, right? AM traffic is directional northbound. PM is directional southbound. But the problem with running flex lanes in this small of a corridor, it's just too hard to make those transitions. It's just too short of a roadway section. Unlike Pioneer Crossing that's, you know, four miles, six miles long. So that was another option we looked at, but that was a couple years ago before you had even thought about doing, or announced they were doing flex lanes on Pioneer. But anyways, that's the thought.

Can I add just a quick, I know Mike wanted to stay, but I'll just kind of let you know what his thoughts are on this. We always hate to lose, even if it's not the most comfortable sidewalk to be on, especially for pedestrians more than cyclists. Cyclists, it's a lot easier to go around. It's not that long of a distance, but I don't know. We're not saying we're opposed. We would really want to take a look at that. The railroad creates such a big barrier, and this is one of the few points that you can get across. It's similar to I-15. Anyways, we'll want to look at that and just make sure that as much as we can still provide connectivity for pedestrians. For the Cranberry Farms neighborhood, if they want to get over to that other side, it would be quite a big detour. So anyways, just some thoughts. Again, we haven't had a chance to really dive into it. There's lots to work on.

I can say that I know that as part of that new trail that we have funding for, that Mike does show, we do show a connection from the trail down. and he shows this connection from the trail up. So this connection is not too far out of the way, but obviously you do have to come over to here to get around it. We don't disagree, but right now what we're trying to do is try to come up with some transportation solutions to kind of help meet the needs of what you're seeing with the HTRZ. and um you know the the thanksgiving point area plans so anyways and maybe flex lines would i haven't haven't even thought of flex lines on the existing road but it might because it's so short it might actually be easier i don't know yeah we actually talked we we brought that up with our traffic engineers and after they ran the models on it they just felt like there's just not enough room to make the transitions right to move from the south side of 2100 north not having flex lanes to the north side suddenly having an extra lane there that's changing all over plus we have a lot of dual left turn movements in between the frontage roads if you if you review the trigger summary on the htse and the Thanksgiving Point area plane we have a lot of dual left turn scenarios northbound and north and southbound as well as east and westbound. So this intersection between the two furniture roads is not controlled by Lehigh, and it has a lot of left-turn movements. So that was our concern on the transitions for the flex lanes. Well, I appreciate your time. I don't know if you have any other thoughts. Okay.

Thank you. Thank you. Okay. It looks like we have A closed session, so if somebody would like to make a motion for the reasons listed in the agenda.

Mayor Pro Tem, I move that we hold the closed meeting for the purpose of discussing the purchase, exchange, or lease of real property and the character, competence, or physical or mental health of an individual.

Do we also do the, is it also for legal?

Do we have to say that now? Is there anything else we need to add? No, we don't. OK.

I second that.

OK. We have a motion and a second. Any questions to the motion? We don't need to do that, right? OK. All in favor? Aye. Aye. Any opposed? We'll move into a closed session.