Planning Commission - Regular Meeting

134th. Yep. You ready? Okay, we'll go ahead and get started. Um, and it looks like Angie will lead us in the pledge of allegiance or Lauren. Is Lauren back? Thank you, Lauren. I pledge algiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

All right, it looks like we have a full quorum. And are there any conflicts of interest? All right. Um, approval of minutes for August 20th and September 3rd. I'll make a motion to approve item 3.4. I'll second. All in favor? I.

Right. Um item 4.1, review and consider a conditional use permit amendment to remove restaurant, fast food, and add daycare, preschool. Pause for looking for the clicker. All righty. So, we are looking at a conditional use amendment. Um, this came probably around a month or so ago um to change to some additional uses. So, we're going to be switching it up a little bit again. So, we are off of 134th. This is a little closer of where we're looking. So, next to that, Walgreens just to orient anybody. So, this is the previous approval. You can see there are personal services um on the right side and then the coffee shop and prep kitchen mainly on the left side. Um this is the area that will be changing to a daycare. Um, so this is kind of what we're looking at now overall. Um, so we will be keeping uh personal instruction and care services within this building. And then um the other side will be daycare. So we discussed this a little bit in the work meeting. Engineering doesn't have any concerns. zoning was concerned about parking to begin with, but we went back through that previous study that came in with the initial conditional use change application and then that 10% buffer um

along with those 51 stalls will allow for the necessary parking to still be within the 74 stalls in that parking lot. So we recommend approval and that is um with a condition of the applicants agreeing to other agencies such as preschool licensing and things like that. You have any questions? We do have the applicant here as well. I don't have any. Did the applicant want to add anything? This is a project we want to open a month.

Will you state your name? Sorry.

Oh, hi. Sorry. Yeah. My name is Judy Morsia and um we are Genevini Montesari Learning Center and we are willing to open a preschool with extra care. So, we will open from 7 a.m. to 6 pm. Um but our drop off time is from 7 to 8:30. So parents will um they won't come at the same time all and we also will have um three stalls um like separated for those uh drop off and pickup time. Um after the drop off and pickup time they are going to go back to regular use. Um so yes um I think it won't be a issue the parking um lot because it used to be a daycare before and it were 140 kids um licensed um and we are just going to have half of the building. So we are going to have around 65 to 70 kids maximum. Um and yes this is what I have to say. Any questions? Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Okay. Do we have any Do we have a discussion or a motion? I just think we need to say that no no employees should park on 134th. That's the only thing I would say. I guess that's the recommendation. Huh? Recommendation. I was going to put it as a second requirement for that. I guess can we require that do that on a public road? I'm saying no employee parking. I don't know why we can't say that. We've said that for daycarees inside homes.

I I would think it'd be difficult to enforce um unless you knew registration of the cars of the employees. Um it's a like we mentioned before, it's a public road, so it's we usually allow that for public parking. In a neighborhood where you're doing a home occupation, I think we have a little more teeth there. additional use in a commercial area. I don't know that we um requite parking like a dedicated parking spots for the employees.

I don't know that that's what I want to do. No. I just noticed open parking. It was I don't mind the open parking. I just last time

that daycare started doing that and that was the that to me is a huge safety concern. talked about potentially which is a rule of guarantee that we might see for example. Um my concern with regulating that is uh for conditional uses we can stop anything that will create a negative externality where that parking is allowed if it is employees or if just anybody parks on that street. It is available still even if you require Yeah. It's more

park. So it's not going to mitigate that negative externality. So I don't know that we can do it's more the way the striping is in that spot. It makes it taper right there. So, it's more of a safety concern. That That's all I'm trying to say. So, but that's a city issue. So, that's fine. I'm ready to make a motion. I would like to move to approve item 4.1 with staff's one recommendation. Second. A motion by Adam and a second by Heather. Um, Andy, yes. Daryl, yes. Adam, yes. Heather, yes. Jackson, yes. Brody, yes.

That passes unanimously. Um, item 4.2, review and consider a conditional use permit to retrofit and expand a major utility known as Jordan Valley Water Conservancy District.

Okay, good evening. Um, this is for uh our partners that provide all of our water for us, Jordan Valley Water, uh, located kind of the southeastern part of the city. I drive on Mountain View every day and I see this see their facility every day. So, this is kind of a closeup of their site map. Um, and I'll go over some of their proposals here. Uh, by and large, what they're proposing to do is take their existing facilities. They're not adding anything different or new. They're just creating new facilities for those processes to expand their capacity. uh this won't like uh as we mentioned in our meeting before they're not proposing to bring any more employees or any more people to their site again just expanding and making their site more efficient and um safer and uh yeah so the the buildings that they're proposing to add are in red so they have the the pack building um chlorine building costic soda building and then the backwash tank um I'm not exactly sure what any of these buildings do, but the applicant is here and I'm sure he can go into detail of what all of those provide. So, in terms of um st of findings, uh this is in the A143 zone. So, it's a residential zone and just based off of the the staff report and the zone and for for conditional use, all of the buildings are essentially comp compliant with uh the standards of the zone. Um, we didn't feel like there's any extenduating circumstances to require anything any mitigating uh changes to the to the site or to the use. Um there is the backwash tank that I think it is 49 feet tall in um in the residential areas. We

typically only require a height of of 35 ft or allow a height of 35 ft. But because it is a silo or a public infrastructure facility, it is exempt from our height requirements. So that being said, all of them do comply with the ordinances. Um, one of the provisions that we've talked through with them and I just uh spoke with the applicant here before the meeting just in terms of their landscaping from the public rideway currently um it's all done in gravel as you can see here. The top one is from Mountain View and then this bottom one is from the entrance off of 3200 West. Um they're uh they're hoping to keep it just the same as it is now, just the gravel. BU are recommending that these spaces in green be landscaped just to a minimum landscape 50% live growth coverage. Uh so that being said um we do recommend approval and these are our two requirements as we've mentioned in our in our propos in our presentation. So if there's any questions I can answer I'd be glad to. Otherwise the applicant is here and can address more detailed questions you might have. Why was the landscaping never required in the first place?

So, this is a conditional use that they they originally built the site and you know before we were there before it was years years ago. So, this is our this is our first crack at you know doing a a conditional use on the site. So, where there's an impact we're recommending a betterment and improvement up to meet current standard. Okay, that was that was all I have. Anything else? Okay, thank you. Does the applicant want to come forward?

So, my name is David Mlan. I'm an employee of Jordan Valley Water Conservancy District and we operate the Jordan Valley Water Treatment Plant at 15305 South 3200 West. So we have been at that address since about 1971 making water um well treating water primarily from the um from the Provo River and then delivering it to our member agencies of which Haramman City is one of our member agencies. So you benefit directly from our treatment plant. Um the treatment plant is being expanded as part of this application to treat an additional 70 million gallons a day, which is about 40% of our capacity to um handle the growing needs of water in the southwest part of the valley. Um Clint, we we appreciate working with the planning commission and the building commission. We've we've um started a couple years ago telling telling the city staff of our intentions. The purpose of this water is or this expansion is to bring additional water in from Strawberry Reservoir area um into our into our plant. So, I understand that there's there's comments on the landscaping. We've been landscaping on our site just kind of incrementally. As you know, Jordan Valley Water is is a leader in um water-wise landscaping and local scapes. So, if you'd like to see additional landscaping on our frontage, I'm sure we can we can provide that. We've just been doing it on an incremental basis. And our staff just threw some gravel down to make it look nicer than than the rock or than the the weeds that were there before. But we can bring water in if

that's if that's uh a requirement. So once again, I'd just like to say I appreciate working with the staff and appreciate the relationship which we have with the city. Any questions for me? Oh, you wanted to know did you want to know what the new buildings do? Yeah. Yeah.

Okay. So, um that was a question. So, the powdered activated carbon that is a storage building. Um you might know powdered activated carbon as briquettes. We ground them up and make them powder instead of briquettes. So with in water treatment um activated carbon is able to remove any taste and odors or benzene that might be in the water from a from a a just from normally occurring algaee or from an accident. So we need to have that on site to be available. We don't use it all the time, but a few weeks a year we we use the powdered activated carbon. We have an existing system, but this is a an expansion to our system. The chlorine, the chlorine is used as a disinfectant for for water um to to provide initial disinfecting but also to provide a residual in the in the distribution system so the water remains of high quality when when when it's at the tap or delivered to the city. So that's the second building. The third building is a pH adjustment building. We do that with a costic soda. We currently don't have that, but we've done some studies for recommend recommendations for stabilizing our our distribution system, and they recommend that we have a slightly higher pH than what is naturally occurring. So this this um this costic system the pH adjustment will be able to allow us to raise the pH and um improve the water quality and the distribution system. Um we also okay so we talked about chlorine we talked about costic we talked about pyro activated carbon those are those are what we are recommending.

What pH do you raise it to? What is what what pH do you raise it to? So currently we're somewhere around 7.8 to 8.0 normally and recommendations that we've received from some studies we've completed want us to be 8.4 to 8.5. So we're adding a half a pH unit. You won't even notice it. Okay. Question. If I know residents have talked about the hardness of the water. Does this change any of that? No. Are there any plans to help it? the water the water hardness coming out of the um of the Provo River, not to

bore you with engineering, but the hardness coming out of the Provo River is not that high, but the hardness coming out of your your wells might be. So, you you blend. The majority of our problem is our own water, not Jordan Valley's wells. Yeah. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. Yeah. This project does not provide any any hardness removal or or dissolve solids or dissolve salt removal. Are there any things that are added back into the water after it goes through these processes? Um added back in. We used to we used to feed fluoride

and starting in May the legislature said we didn't need to do that anymore. So we we turned off our system for fluoride. We do have some other chemicals. We have some um polymers that we use. We have a primary disinfectant of a chlorine d chlorine dioxide system. We also use um polyaluminum chloride for um a coagulant. None of that is changing. Our system will stay the same. the chlorine system. We're just moving out of the building for safety reasons and to um and to provide additional capacity. The powdered activated carbon we already have. It's just additional capacity. The costic is new, but none of the other chemicals change. So, you won't see a a change of water quality associated with with this project.

Cool. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. No, thank you. Thank you. All right. Is there a discussion or a motion? Seeing there's no I think no problem with these points. I Yeah. Okay. Yeah. I'll go ahead and make a motion. Uh go ahead and make a motion to approve item 4.2 with staff's two recommendations. I'll second that. All right. So, we have a motion by Andy and a second by Jackson. Andy, yes. Daryl, yes. Adam, yes. Heather, yes. Jackson, yes. Brody, yes. So, that passes unanimously. Okay.

All right. Um, procedure for a public hearing. The purpose of the public comment policy is to allow citizens to address items on the agenda. Citizens requesting to address the commission will be asked to complete a written comment form and present it to the deputy city recorder. In general, the chair will allow an individual three minutes and a spokesperson five minutes. And this policy applies to all public hearings. So item 5.1, review and consider a recommendation to amend chapter 10. All right. So this ordinance has been in the works uh for quite some time now. Uh it's been difficult to nail down just because of state regulations have changed every year. So we felt like we got it to a spot that was good to go and then things would change. And so we're finally back. Uh I think we're ready to go with this light latest version, but this is to amend our our um landscaping ordinance. Uh we've talked about this as a commission, but um there's a lot of benefits to to landscaping um environmental, economic, social, and and health values. Um, you as I flip through these sites, you can kind of determine in your mind which of the sites would you prefer to be in. Uh, I think by and large whenever we're in a a landscaped area that's but that's well done. I think it's, you know, it's certainly more enjoyable. Uh, it's really good for the environment. There's a lot of cooling effects uh that it provides a lot of beautifification. Uh, a lot of amenity, you know, you know, recreational opportunities, those kinds of things. So, with this ordinance, we're just trying to uh accomplish improved landscaped areas, including in increasing the clarity of our current ordinance, uh maintaining our our state law compliance, and then maintaining our compliance with the folks you just heard from with Jordan Valley Water.

One of the things that's been confusing in our ordinance is the 50% live growth coverage. Um, a lot of people have thought, well, I'll just come in and I'll concrete half of my yard and then grass half of my yard. So, if 100% is grass and 50 and well, 50% is grass and 50% is is uh concrete, then I'm good to go. And so, we wanted to just make sure that this was a little more clear. So in an in any area where there is landscaping um we tried to delineate that by you know a curb cut or a change in mulch change in ground cover but any kind of planting bed or or delineated area in a landscape would require to have that 50% life growth coverage.

Can can the mulch be gravel? Yeah, the mulch can be gravel, bark, whatever. Well, you know, on the private property, it can be anything that they determine they want to use. Got in the public right away, it's a little bit different, but fair. Yeah.

Uh, in our discussion last time, we we mentioned artificial turf and um, you know, as as we thought through it as a staff, there may be some provisions to allow it where we have done it in the past and where it makes sense. Um so these are some of the requirements that we would recommend um in allowing artificial turf. Um making sure that it's still water permeable. We don't want to have restripe, you know, striped material or reused material or something that looks torn or has obvious seams, something that doesn't look that's wellmaintained. Um we would in the previous version we had allowed it for playing fields which we still recommend. Uh and then both residential and commercial, it would not if we did allow it, it would not count towards their landscape total. Um it and then a couple of other things we added since the staff report is not allowing it directly adjacent to live turf. Um and then including it as some kind of amenity area. So calling out on the on a landscape plan the reason that you're putting artificial turf there. um instead of just I don't want to plant life growth coverage, right? And then a minimum pile height of an inch and a half. So in a residential area, the way that this could break down. So later in the or in our discussion here, I'll kind of go over this a little bit more, but in the front yard area, if you exclude the driveway, um the remaining front yard uh landscape or the landscaped area, you can have 50% 15% of that as like as as an additional hardcape. So you could that would count towards a sidewalk or for a front patio or something like that. uh it's not intended to extend the driveway or you know something in that nature or to allow another driveway in the front yard. So in this site for example um you have a total of,040

square feet for the that front yard landscaped area. 15% of that is 156. The existing sidewalk is about 30 square feet. So that gives you 126 square feet that you could do turf or some some other kind of non-live growth coverage area. So that's where we would allow, you know, that's kind of the the size of the site um that we would allow that artificial turf to take place in. So Clint, in relationship to like the 220.09 square feet right there, if they wanted to widen that to make an RV pad right there, so that's technically the driveway. Is that included in the driveway now or not? That that's where I'm just

Yeah, it would be included in their driveway. So then we can now subtract that completely is what I'm trying to understand. So I guess so we should maybe clarify that it could be so I think in in the way that we've stated it that it could be used for a driveway for uh legal parking. So if they wanted to extend it for example more in in front of their home that's not a really that's not a legal parking area because gotcha. If they went the other direction correct but but on the right side making it so it's just pad no problem there. Right. Right. If they extended their driveway that way, that would just uh reduce the amount of live growth coverage they have in their front yard. So, and I'm fine with that. I just wanted to make sure. Yeah. You know, in the example, this is a three-car garage as it is now. So,

yeah.

And I'll I'll have a few more examples to look at as well. So, in terms of exceptions, uh we currently have a waiver of strict compliance. Um, a few more exceptions we recommend is just providing for more innovative ideas in landscaping, similar to what we did with our our C2 zone, uh, in terms of building finishes, things that maybe we haven't seen or haven't been introduced to or that are, you know, it's just difficult to address every good option in an ordinance. Um, so this would, you know, this would allow that type of provision to take place. Um, anything that's not single family or duplex would come before the commission in terms of a of a waiver of strict compliance. Um, but we would not allow still not allow large plain gravel areas. You know, something uh on the top as you can see where you have different colorations, different patterns, something that still keeps it aesthetically interesting could be something that could be considered. Um and then that bottom area where you have a large large area in our in the ordinance we're stating that nothing more than you know more no more than 100 square feet can be non non-landscaped have not have any live growth coverage in it. Um again including this front yard a minimum front yard coverage uh so so that we don't get massive driveways you still get that 50% live growth coverage in the front yard. Uh, and again, this is these are some examples. So, you can kind of see through each of these examples. The first is a smaller lot, about 4,000 square feet, moving to 8,000, moving to 14,000 square feet. And just to kind of give you an idea of what those areas might look like in terms of the overall site plan, each of these have a has a threec car, well, except for the 4200 feet, uh, they are have they do the larger ones have three-car garages already. So, you can kind of get a feel of what that that non-live growth coverage area might be. And it might not always be situated like this. It could be situated anywhere on that property.

Right. So that whole not widening, we really just mean not widening the driveway in front of the home side. Correct. Okay. And we could clarify that as the ordinance. I think it's small. I just curious. That makes sense. So the green part is where you'd have to have plants. No, the green part is where you could do non-life growth coverage. So you could do artificial turf in that area. Uh, you could do, you know, maybe a gravel area or like a walkway, something like that. That's your percentage of the big You could do, you could do showing you the percent. Really, that's what you're trying to show, right? The percent of

It's just a percentage of that front yard area. That could be um non-life growth coverage. So, it could be hardcape or, you know, the turf that we talked about, something along those along that line. It's true. It just does. It seems kind of uh small. A little too small. Yeah. If if you were trying to do the artificial grass rather than because I'm all about plants and having those plants where you have that green like for this center example.

Like if that was all plants and such and then there was more towards the front um in the park strip. I don't know. I've seen some really good artificial turf yards recently in the front. Yes. Cool. Yeah. Around in Haramman. Um I have a few in my neighbors. Can can you provide those addresses? Oh, absolutely.

Just just a question and I know this wouldn't be on most of our lots, but say the bigger lots, the 14,000 square feet. A lot of the times on the bigger lots sometimes people like to put in like more like almost like a turnaround driveway so they don't have to back straight into the road and I was just curious are we prohibiting that completely now? No, that would still be allowed. Okay. Just just curious like in the case of I know not every lot could actually achieve that but in the case of this one I was just curious. Yeah, it would still allow those those double. So in in reality, the one that you're lay laying right here is well above the green area of landscaping. Say that again.

The in all of these Uhhuh. we're way higher. Our live growth is already higher than our percentages just,

right? So I mean in all of these examples, uh they're they're below that 15% non-live growth coverage area, right? So yeah, and I just I threw I I looked at a lot of sites, a lot of homes, and you know, I came up with 15% as just kind of a a good measure across all sites. You know, you look at looking at each of these yards, I think that, you know, in each of those areas, it you know, that 15% is kind of it's a it's a good amount, but it's not too much where it's, you know, where it becomes more blight, but something that you people could do something creative in or utilize artificial turf.

Just for point of reference, um we've been looking at some of this uh biorass that USU has developed that is a low water solution. And if you're using artificial turf actively, you know, in our summer months, you're probably needing to cool that turf down with some water. And they've done a study that shows that if you have to do that um I think what was it 120 days a year you're applying kind of that typical water for cooling effect on artificial turf. You'll actually consume more water than the USU biographs. Now who's going to use their front yard that way?

Yeah. 120 days out of the year. They won't. Right. But it's just interesting how we think of these artificial turfs as oh it's it's a no water solution. But if you're going to play on it, you're going to probably need to cool it down in those summer months, which means you're going to have to apply some water to it. I have a small putting green in my backyard and uh the day I laid it, I was in shorts and I burned my knees from just doing it. So it they are right. It does get really hot and that was just doing the cutting around it that day. This provision would only be for visible front yard areas, right? If people wanted to do more in their backyard, this ordinance would not restrict that.

On on that turf topic, you put prohibiting directly adjacent to live turf. Can you explain why? Um, just in terms of aesthetics, I think it would look um out of place, not natural. So I So I mean if you wanted to do it I mean doing like a a curb or something like that you know some kind of concrete curb or some other kind of barrier to the reason why I ask is I I think about we had that commercial a commercial development come with the idea of hey toying with the idea of maybe I'll put a putting green in that detention area right

but if you put that like let's say towards the bottom of the detention area and then you have the live grass growing around it as almost like the chipping area onto it. That wouldn't that wouldn't work. So, you would have to like ring it with with curbing or something or and it wouldn't have to be like a raised curb. It the the curb could be flush, right? Flush. And remember, we still have the exception uh the waiver of strict compliance. So, for those situations, here's a general standard. Gotcha. But we have a method to address those kind of one-off situations. Gotcha. because I could see where the majority of the time that does make sense, but I can also see where those exceptions may come in. So, that makes sense.

One thing that I'm I guess kind of with Heather on this is uh where we're putting artificial turf with hardcapes and is that too restricted? Is like like 25% seems reasonable versus 15 for like someone to come in and say, "Hey, we're doing something water-wise." And this is the typical coverage for grass. I I was thinking when you when he when Clint added the artificial turf being higher pile. Yeah. That's different than the turf we all know. Yeah. Like the putting green turf.

Like the putting green turf is what everybody's trying to avoid. Yeah. And and so I wonder if maybe that's where we if if it's a certain height pile, you know, it's two inches nice lush Yeah. grass because that's a lot different because I have some of that also in my putting green and you can tell the diff like Yeah. It it and it doesn't get as hot as the thinner thin where it's like Yeah. the putting green sides where it gets real real hot. So, I was just curious if maybe in those areas we figure out a way to allow more of the nice kind of turf, but I think we're already requiring that, right? You already said it has to be an inch and a half. Inch and a half.

That's already a recommendation right now. Did Jordan water conservation? Do they have an opinion on artificial turf? Um, we didn't. So, we spoke a lot on this when we first started the ordinance revision about a year and a half ago

and we've we looked at a lot of different studies and um in terms of you know if you talk about water usage and sustainability artificial turf by and large is not very sustainable and it does use an a lot of water to produce and then when you're done with it I mean it doesn't last you know you I can have my grass for a hundred years and just have to mow it but with artificial turf you're probably going to have to replace it, you know, maybe 20 years, 15 years at a time. And then that all goes into the waste is plastic and then sits in the landfill for who knows how long before it, you know, I mean, it doesn't biodegrade over time. It's going to be there for a while. So, if if you'd like him to comment on it, I don't know if you have an opinion.

I'm really not a landscape guy. We have experts on that and I know we have our own that we want to follow, but I'm not one. So, uh, just to give kind of an example, um, my front yard that is, uh, that could be green is about 18 feet long and about six feet deep. No, maybe it's 10 feet deep. Not not a big yard at all for the front yard. So, if I wanted to do turf in my front yard,

I literally could only do like a twoft square

little section of turf. Does that make sense to kind of restrict especially the small lots where using turf actually makes sense? Um, you know, does that does that put an overly large restriction on on those smaller sites? And that's for your I guess that's for you to decide on. Um you know thinking about it just kind of on my feet here. I mean the smaller uh the smaller the yard the less you know water impact you're going to have. So allowing there to be like a larger land a larger area is going to create a you know just a more of a heat a heat source or a heat pad in that in that you know in that property and I don't know you know if the benefits would outweigh the the allowance to play to play devil's advocate on that point. You do it but then so does your neighbor and so is the other neighbor. So is the other neighbor. And in when you're in a neighborhood that's already tightly compact like that, you create a massive heat zone with that turf in the summer.

Not not as far as I'm saying a heat zone not not that it's going to impact like everybody out there. I'm saying like just for kids walking down the street that like that's a really hot area to be walking down the street. And it's just I don't I don't think it makes that big of a difference because you've got your driveways that are 22 feet wide. You've got your street that's right there. So, your small little 15 foot by 10 foot front yard is not going to decrease the temperature of that that walkway in any way, shape, I think it will. I think you're I think that's proven the point because you already have the other heat zones there. Anything that that is that can help in that area. Not to mention, I mean, it's

like saying like in a parking lot by putting those small little three foot wide islands that that increases the temperature of the parking lot. It doesn't. So, I mean, honestly, I'm speaking from experience. It's hot when you walk across it. I have never in my entire five years of owning that area been close enough to go, "Wow, I can feel the heat coming from it." Yes, you can't walk across it barefoot. That's where it's hot. But it's not like you're like, "Holy cow, I'm standing next to a lava flow here." Like, so again, I'm only going off my experience that I actually have.

Well, and I just think you're you have to consider too the other elements that turf brings to that area, right? I mean, you're accumulating dust. You're accumulating uh toxins within the within the turf. You're accumulating pet urine and pet feces. That that doesn't just biodegrade into the the turf, right? You you have to clean that stuff off. It's not like real turf.

Actually, the stuff you seed inside of it to make it so it lays down actually has biodegradable stuff in it so that you don't have what you're saying like you have to so when you first put this stuff down, you nail you soil nail it down and then you put basically it's like a sand. It's a specialized sand and on the thicker pile like you're proposing, you have to use a pet safe. It basically absorbs the urine and things like that to make it so it doesn't stink. And so on the thicker stuff, there is more of a real biodegradable piece. The the the question I was gonna ask though is, and I know I'm looking at the backyards, but to me, a front yard that actually has fake turf that still is green is better than when I I'm just looking at this photo, the backyards of some of these homes, that's dirt. And and so

I can't see that on the front. So, I know that because the blue boxes, I can't tell that. So, I'm I'm actually okay with and that that's where I'm trying to say I'm okay with the big thick turf being not counted. Like, who cares? Yeah. Yes. If you're going to put a putting green in the front yard, then maybe that needs to be limited by your green box. But I'm I'm personally thinking, why do we care as long as we define the the the pile and the thickness to be a nicer quality? I'd agree with that. Is that for residential only or what about businesses? Commercial as well. I like it for commercial too personally just cuz

it's like from a maintenance perspective. I I think that's up to debate. I mean, we're we're really not talking about commercial, right? No, I know. I know. The ordinance is for both, right? Yeah, it's for both. So, yeah, these are the conditions that would be for both residential and uh commercial. So, if you wanted if you wanted the artificial turf to count toward landscape, I would have to change the prop the ordinance as proposed. I'm just saying the thicker stuff I'm actually okay with. But the thinner stuff's not even the thinner stuff is the part that I like sayingowed. How do you do know the quality of the thicker stuff that's getting put in? How do you know it's not going to be some homemade? Like

I ordered it off of Teeu and I'm going to install it myself to save money and it's thick. It's an inch and a half. Well, that could be with any landscape landscape materials though.

I mean, there there's a speck you can go do it. I I did a lot of research a couple years ago on it. But there is a lot of that where there is the grass that looks like real grass and then there's the putting green side and so that there is a difference is what I'm trying to say but right now the earrings as written is not allowing the putting green grass. It's only allowing the inch and a half. So if which I agree I don't know I don't know I'm torn. I go back and forth whether I want to include it or not. I think I I personally like the live in the front. I don't I think what's being proposed here for from my my opinion I think it's I like the live as long as it's live is what I'm trying to say and so I that's a good point. Some people don't maintain it. But

you also have to keep in mind that even if you do have turf, it doesn't mean that you don't have other plants and stuff around the turf or integrated with the turf. So a lot of times you have trees that overhang over the turf. I mean it's not just golf course green. And honestly, that's why I put in my golf course is because my big tall trees blocked all the grass and they it died. I could not keep it alive. So, so that that I could see that's what I'm trying to say. I could see some flexibility there. Wanted to give an update. You were asking about Jordan Valley Water.

They apparently they used to allow uh the installation of artificial turf to be eligible for their credit for their um kind of like their flip their strip or their conversion credits. they they don't prohibit artificial turf, but they no longer give an incentive for that. So, you can you can put it in, but they won't give you an incentive for it. Okay? Because they said it's kind of contrary to the larger objectives of the water conservation. um talking about sustainability, the the water runoff and the the the carbons that are washing off of the

the synthetic and then getting into the storm drain and then out to the Great Salt Lake anyway. So, they just said it's kind of contrary to their larger efforts of water. And that's a good segue into the questions that I had, Clint. Uh um I know the us as a commission have made an issue out of this. Are you hearing from the general public out there that they want this option? I think that we heard uh we know I mean driving around here a minute it sounds like and I' I've driven by several uh neighborhoods that have a couple of yards here and there have artificial turf in their front yards. So, it's becoming more popular and you believe the trend will just keep growing that more and more people will utilize this.

I don't know. Um I don't know. I don't know, you know, if the trend is continuing based off of the, you know, the population growth versus the requests that we are getting or seeing. Well, I I can see how um uh over the past few years and through the media, we're we're constantly being bombarded by water conservation and and and the importance of saving that. Um so, if people are swayed by that argument to put this in, um I mean, the the average residents, you're you're showing us three homes here. Is there does Heramman offer some sort of a resource to help them lay this out that makes you know do a a landscape design or something that helps them?

Jordan Water does. Yeah, Jordan Valley Water has that through their their local scapes. You can walk through that, but is there they have an on-site there's a website that you can go to and it kind of helps you lay lay out a site. Our website as well, the Heramman City website has several different brochures with several different layouts for front yard, backyard, park strips, etc.

Perfect. So, Billy Bob Smith says, "Man, I want to do my part and I'm going to save all kinds of water and cut my utility bill and and have something that in his mind is saying is less maintenance." Um, he hops on Herman's site and there's a popup that shows plug in your lot size and do this and do that and it shows I don't know that it's Yeah. Yeah. It's just a pamp general guidelines something that they can something they can read and digest and implement. Okay. Well, those are practical questions that we don't always

hear that part of it here. We we hear the okay well let's adopt this into the code but is it useful and uh can people afford to do this you know in Herman's population and is there a resource for them and what I'm hearing is there's somewhat of a resource

right so so when I look at it let's ignore the turf grass for a second artificial like if you look at the 4200 foot lot you can see they kind of have a patio in the as they end as you enter the home with all the concrete. And I'm okay with that and I think that's a good thing. I I personally would be okay with that being any type of hardcape. I'm just having a hard time with the rest of that grass. That lot is pretty dang tiny to to really some of these residents may not want to own a lawn mower.

And th this isn't that big of a I'm looking at the small one is what I'm trying to say. I was almost wondering could we put on like a max total square footage under no consider can under no consideration can you ever have more than I'm making up a number 400 square feet of artificial grass or o over that I'm just trying to minimize that percentages because I'm like thinking okay if you have an landscape architect that comes in and says hey we're going to do water-wise like make these big plant areas and if you want grass or if you artificial turf you choose.

I I kind of have a hard time uh telling I don't want someone to come to me and say you can't do what you want with your landscaping. Although I get I get there's some environmental issues with artificial turf. Uh some runoff. I just for me it's my personal thought about it is like uh from a maintenance perspective like it might work better for someone that's older um disabled or I've seen I don't know it blows my mind I live in a newer neighborhood and there's just people that just from the get-go don't take care of their yard and it's like why did you choose to buy a quarteracre lot and then not choose to take care of your yard I'd rather see artificial turf in the in instead of weeds.

Well, and that and that's where like even looking at this 4 this 500 foot piece by the time they actually put a lot of plant live plant growth and islands and things like that, even if it was artificial turf, we're now getting into like the 300 square ft. Yeah. Like maybe it's 25%

seems adequate cuz I'm all for live growth and having big beds that have water-wise plants in them and say the rest can be artificial turf and it's 25% of the front yard. I think West Valley adopted this a while ago and I think what they did was they allowed for the turf and it counted towards the minimum of live plant coverage

and I think it was like 30%. So it would be interesting maybe if you guys have any connections at West Valley to see what's kind of come out of that ordinance because they've had it for some time. I wonder if they've had anything. So they counted it toward the thicker stuff. I don't think it was thicker. They just said they allowed the artificial. Yeah, we could certainly reach out to them. So I I have one more question real quick. Um when it comes to residential and established neighborhoods with HOAs, would this code supersede the HOA rules?

No. HOA whatever govern that HOA governs would supersede city code. Okay, you can ask more questions. I'll be I'm almost done. So, um another some of the other revisions we did just in in terms of our uh buffer revisions. So, in a landscaped area that's well in an area that's between residential and commercial, we have a 15 foot um landscape buffer. Currently, it's 20 20 ft on center for evergreen trees. And we're recommending to reduce that to 15 feet, provide a little bit better coverage and and buffer to the adjacent neighborhood. Um, something that we've been also including on our plans already is when the planning commission adopts a an or a landscape plan, those any change to that landscape plan because um nothing is more frustrating for us to go out onto a site, do a final zoning inspection and see that the landscape plan has not been followed even a little bit, right? Sometimes it's totally different. So any changes to that landscape plan need to come before we need to be approved by the landscape architect and then city staff as well to maintain um you know at least consistency of what was provided at time of planning commission and this would be except for single family and duplexes. I don't they're not required to plan to provide plans with landscape architect stamps. Um there's also provision in the state ordinance that we are adopting into our ordinance uh to um to protect future homeowners. So for example, if a homeowner if a if a contractor or developer builds a home and doesn't install any landscaping, they are they will be required to provide some kind of notice or evidence to the future homeowner that we are not land we're not in installing the

landscaping. this is the landscaping requirements and this is your cost that you will incur. Um so the landscape the front yard landscaping has to be installed within six months. You know given that there's a seasonal um flexibility there as well but um just so that homeowner knows that in addition to purchasing the home, they now are responsible for that front yard landscaping, which is sad. I don't know. That's one thing I really liked. Yeah.

Yeah. Um then parking lot landscaping. We currently require 25 square foot um tree or we allow a 25 foot tree island. We're trying to get away from that. So we're increasing that. Hoping that they'll look for different alternatives to include landscaping in a in a parking lot and then requiring two trees per island. So if you have a a an island that's longer than one stall to provide a tree on each end of that. Is there is there a restriction on like how many stalls that kick this off?

How many? Uh yeah. So well so in a parking lot that has more than 12 stalls in it um you're required for and that's where it gets kind of complicated. But for if you have a parking lot that has more than 12 stalls for every 10 stalls you're required to have one tree island. So, if you have 12 stalls, you're going to have to have one tree island in there somewhere to break that up. But if you have like 50 parking stalls, then for every 10 stalls in that parking lot, you'll have to have a um an island. That makes sense. It makes sense. I'm just I know that's current standard. That's Yeah. Yeah. It's just hard because parking is expensive. Yeah.

That's actually more And we've seen some that's more developer friendly than other cities. I've seen a lot of them where it's every seven stalls you have to instead of every, you know, instead of 10. Yeah. Okay. Good. Yeah. Have you guys seen the cars at um WCO where they drive over and get stuck in the where a tree should be in their parking lot? Cuz it's too small. Yeah. They're tiny. Yeah. Windco. They're they're tiny. They're really tiny. The baby ones. Yep.

Yeah. Um, so just in a followup as well from the last time we met in our work session meetings, um, going through House Bill 368, there are um, some provisions that allow a city to hold up a a CFO for uh, residential or non-residential, but only in instances where they're required to put in public uh, landscaping in a public ride of way. So, in a park strip or something similar to that nature. So that we've adopted that into the ordinance as well. So in terms of considerations, um we're just looking at the overall objectives of the or of the of the city. Uh is it harmonious with with what's already happening in the city which where we already have water efficient design standards adopted? We feel like this is just continuing in that direction and you know are there adverse effects of the proposed ordinance. Is this going to harm anybody? Um this is from our general plan just talks about encouraging property owners to uh provide you know beautifification to the city uh being harmonious with it with a natural with a natural environment. Uh for that reason we do recommend the ordinance proposed um as it is but if there's any changes as we've discussed you're welcome to make that in a motion. Um, if you do make a motion today, I would just recommend that you include um, all the staff's current proposals uh, shown in the presentation today moving forward. So, if there any other questions about the ordinance that I can address right now?

Thank you. Okay, great. Okay, so I think there's a public hearing, so we'll go ahead and open that at this time. And seeing no one here, motion to close. So moved. Second. Motion by Adam, a second by Heather. All in favor? I. All right. And then um discussion or motion.

I think my biggest thing is I feel like the people that put in artificial turf are trying to, you know, use landscaping plan and going above and beyond. It's not like artificial turf is a lot more expensive than just putting in grass. So, I mean, I'm with Heather. The ones that I've seen look like there's a plan, just not I'm putting an artificial turf because I don't want any maintenance or grass. It's like I like what we have as far as 50% of live growth. I think that does a lot. And then what I've looked at with the Jordan Valley Water Conservancy, their water-wise um different design plans is like, you know, it's a small part of of of the front yard, like 25% that's actually a green space.

Yep. Um I feel the same way, Brody. Um I think it gives people more options. I highly doubt we're going to have a whole street of people doing artificial turf. Um, but I think it's important to have those options for people, but obviously we don't want it to be just one big piece of turf and no live plants. We definitely want to see um a combination of both of those things. I'd agree, Heather. Um, it's kind of ironic though. We live in a desert and we're trying to make it look like a oasis.

Yeah. I mean, I guess my second point is just the percentage almost prohibits or it doesn't make sense to just do that 15%. Like to me, it seems like it would be hard for a landscape architect to say you only get this percentage to do artificial turf and it looks like other yards. It's like here's your strip of of artificial turf that complies with what what the city allows. Does that make sense? It's like we're almost like pushing a percentage that doesn't match what other people are doing when it comes to grass. I totally agree with both of you, but I think we still have to be careful on what we mean by the turf. I know what you guys are visualizing, but I think we have to Oh, absolutely. Define that.

No, I think the I think the pile height is very important cuz it's like Yeah. I don't want it to look like a putting green in their front yard. So, are you proposing? I mean, it's already what's being proposed is already an inch and a half. So, I don't think we need that. No, as long as we maintain that, you guys are okay. I think it's just like 25% versus So, it's more we're talking about the percentage of or allowing then

this artificial turf to be a part of the live growth area, not excluded. Let's say you have an AR landscape architect comes in, does a nice nice design for your front yard that has a big planting areas and water wise plants and it's like, okay, instead of grass, I'd rather do artificial turf. Like, I feel like that still makes sense to me if you don't want to mow it and maintain it and all those other things. So, that's still an option. It's not like, oh, sorry, you can't. That's not possible. But we don't want to have a large area of it all being we don't want% do we try and come up with some percentage

you know say if if we want to allow artificial turf in this planning area do we say okay you you're allowed 25% of that to be artificial turf or 50% or 75 whatever it is I think we ought to give some guidance on what that needs to be so that they know I think looking at some examples would be helpful just to know what the percentages of grass for like local scape is if it's grass or artificial turf. I don't know what the percentages. That's why I'm like stuck on, you know, is it 50% or is it 25 once you Well, the 15% is already 15% of that is is not is is allowed to be non

and could be included in the artificial turf. So, I think my thought is if we're going to go down this road and and allow it as a part of the natural area or the live growth area, maybe it's a 25% because I don't want to get too much of personally I don't want a lot of artificial turf. I don't want it to be the whole thing. I agree. I think we need to split out artificial turf by itself and have a max for currently local scapes. Um, the maximum you can do for for turf uh is 35% in your front yard. Okay. Or for who does that? Sorry. local scapes for for live for for grass. Yeah, we can do live grass 35% maximum. I'm okay with that. That's what Yeah, that's what we have. Yep. Current ordinance.

I feel like that's a good balance between live other materials and possibly turf or grass. Well, in most turf turf applications, at least for residential, you don't have the turf just taking up the entire yard. Yeah. because that that first three feet, you know, next to the building itself wouldn't be turf. Yeah. It's going to be mulch or rocks or whatever for drainage. Yeah. Um and so yeah, I mean I could see a percentage. Um but I just 15% is just

Yeah. Like 35%. I'm I'm thinking of it in my head. Okay. 50% live growth. Some other materials like rock or mulch. And then if if you want to do the rest grass or turf, the rock or the mulch is a part of that 15% already being designated. I think what we're talking about is what are we going to allow the artificial turf? What percentage of the live growth are we going to allow the artificial turf to be because you have 50% live growth, 15% hardcape, and then could have 35% be artificial turf. I mean, I made my opinion clear, but I I am venomly opposed to classifying artificial turf as live growth because that to me sounds

I'm not classifying as live growth. I'm just saying as being applied to the live growth area, what we're saying%, but we've because I I I agree. We don't want to go too crazy with the 15% of non-live growth, right? Yeah%. I think that I think you leave that alone. It is. Yeah. So that leaves you 85% remaining. Of that 85% I I would recommend maybe 35% of that be allowed to be turf maximum. Yeah. That's I feel comfortable with that if if we want to go down that road. Works for me. Say the percentage.

So right now he's got 15%. Right. Can be non-live growth area. Right. Is that what I was seeing? But if we went down this if we went the direction that you were going in or that you I I and I was proposing Yeah. I would just we would just remove that 15% non-live growth coverage area and just say something in regards that the 35% turf allowance can be is allowed to be artificial turf that absorbs the other than the 15% that that could be Yeah. And then I'd probably And then I would just include, you know,

to prevent like large patios and stuff, I'd probably just say that I'd reduce that 15% down to like maybe 10 or 5%. Concrete for concrete that's not walkways and stuff for concrete. Well, for concrete including like sidewalks or front patios. Gotcha. So you'd have 10% say let's just say 10% that's non-live growth. That would be for patios, sidewalk, something like that. And then you would have a 35% area that's turf that you could use for either live growth or you could do for artificial turf. And the remainder is plants. And then 50% live growth. 50% live growth coverage.

So that would be what? 35 that could be grass. The 50% like regular gr it could be grass. It could grass it for the grass. The turf area would be either artificial turf or turf turf, grass turf. So there's no way you will ever be able to have more than 35% grass in Haramman in the future. That's already what's on the books. I I know, but I know that's what we say, but that's not what we've done. What you see is what I would say. Your front yard, it's all grass. No, the 50% is a minimum. It's not a maximum. So you could have a 100% turf, not air turf, but real turf. No grass. Yes, you can.

They're saying 35% in your front yard. You're restricted in your front yard only 35% um grass. Can you go flip back to the little schematic? I just want to make sure we're clear on this real quick. That's the new That's the new ordinance. The new That's the new one. Not when we build our homes. I just want to make sure I grass. Yeah, that one. So, you're saying right now, let's ignore the little blue boxes on the Let's ignore the RV pads. Ignore all the boxes. So, we're just going to say of the 400 500 square feet, front yard,

front yard, you could have right now 100 square feet of patio. We're going to call that concrete just to make it easier. And then you could have about 200 square feet of grass only in that yard. I'm ignoring artificial turf. Period. That's all you can have. 35% of the 35% of 500, whatever that is. Grass turf would be what? 35% of 500, whatever that comes out to be. I'm going have to look. I am not a math person. I I I get that we're saying 35% but that is not what we see historically in Aramman.

Oh, so our ordinance has changed uh what four years ago. So this would be a lot of the new development should be following these these guidelines times.35 how much? So only 175 square ft of the of the 500 of the 500 grass is grass is grass. So that's going to be on a fairly small parcel 400. So on this on this 4,000 ft lot um the total front lard landscaping is 655 square feet.

So 655 35% of that 655 could be turf. But but I so I just took the number. You know how it says 21.02 feet wide. He's just taking the one square that's 500 square feet. Just say that's the only one being applied here. Just the 500. This is where I'm struggling with it in my mind. If I easier math, if I did 35% of the 498 square ft, which is 175, and then I just to try and figure out how how wide that box would be just so everybody could see it. If I divide it by 21 feet, it means that there's only eight feet of grass the entire walkway. Yep. Yep. Yep.

So that this house we're looking at right now is not compliant with the new ordinance. Correct. That's correct. Yep. None of these are. Well, I don't know. Maybe. I'm just saying like unless Well, no. Even I think the 35% is a tad low. That is a tad low. I'm not saying we should go to 50, but it seems a tad. What about 50% live? Are you saying tad low for turf or for grass? Cuz we're not changing the grass. The 35% just to be clear, 35% is regulated by Jordan Valley Water and that's who we have our contract with. So these are ordinances that we have to maintain to stay in compliance with Jordan Valley Water.

Cow. Wait, I thought with local scapes too, you can't have part like any pieces of grass under 10 feet too. It has to be a minimum of eight feet wide. Okay. So in this case, you'd have an 8 foot strip. Well, you could have some configuration. Yeah, you can make it some fancy patch 10 by 20 like I'm just saying that's a lot smaller. Yeah, it's like it's like St. Georgeish is what what I can It's ending up with a lot more rock and plants, which is fine. I'm just Yeah. So in that more Phoenix,

but that's the front yard. backyard. You could have 100% grass. Yeah, true. Right. Do what you want. Your back. That's all we regulate is front yard. Yeah, that's Yeah, we're only regul. So, what about houses that are old like everyone that sits up here or grandfather because I can almost guarantee that. So, you're everybody that's I mean, if you have a lot of grass in your front yard now, you're grandfathered in, right? That's you complied with the ordinance when you built we built the home. So, if you revised your landscape, then you'd be required to to change. I mean, you could put in planters or whatever and you could decrease your grass, but you couldn't increase your grass, basically. Pretty much. Okay. Wow. This is This is a lot smaller than I thought.

The only the only way that we're going to catch that is on a neighbor complaint. So, if you know, if you increase your grass, I'm pretty sure the city is not going to come around and police that. We don't have the manpower nor the desire to do that. So, that's crazy. If your neighbor says, "Hey, my neighbor just put in a thousand square feet more of grass." and maybe we'd come out and do something about it, but likely not. Likely not. Yeah. So, when you expand putting green in the front yard, can we go which won't happen. Don't worry. Can we go back a few slides that showed the examples of some of the that go There you go. So, that top one, the bottom one's not allowed. All right.

Right. The bottom one's not allowed because it has an area that's larger than 100 square feet without any live growth coverage in it. The one above is counted. So, You could do the top and fill your whole front yard, right, without any there's not a a minimum requirement for that grass, right? No, there's a maximum. It's 30. You could do this whole front yard looking like the top zerocape. The zerocape has this zero. So then again, you could come back and say the white rock in here growth coverage. Well, except for yeah, the the zeroscape you have to have at least 50% growth coverage of the canopy, right? So the top one doesn't necessarily have

well maybe you got some more dense plantings on the left side, you know, type thing maybe. But yeah, I just want to make sure. But then but then 35% of that could be artificial turf. Can you go for go back to the width again? I'm looking at the big lot. Just curious. I think it was 300 square feet. It's got lots of grass. 46 and a half. You're going to the big yard. Are you going to I'm just trying to figure out there the 2,000 roughly 19. So So if you I'm again I'm only looking at the left side of the box. So I'm ignoring I'm looking at the 18,96 square ft. If you do 35% of that 663

based off the width of the 46 1/2 ft, you can only have a 14 12 foot a 14 and 12 foot strip of grass. 14 and 12 foot of the 40 of the 46 and a half of the well of the Yeah. So what I'm I'm just trying to say that massive Yeah. It's massive like flower beds and other I'm just saying even if that was all turf not grass to me that's not that big. So the fact that we're at 35% already Yeah. I lean on it. So I guess that's why that's why Clinton was saying just allow it up to the maximum 35% that we have for the grass

to allow the turf and you've already required the the higher quality turf right with the inch and a half pad. So y which to me is not that big and the front yard that's fine. Correct. I'm just saying our view of normal lots is going to change drastically. So therefore, the idea of bringing in more artificial probably makes sense is is what my point in trying to say that is. Okay. Sounds like a motion to me. I have one more thing. Yeah. No, go ahead. Sorry. Um, so one of the other concerns I had was on mulch in the park strip and I know that you had mentioned that there were issues with it getting into

the drains and such. So, I think that when we're planting new trees, you need to have mulch around it because when you have rocks around it, it's going to produce a lot of heat and it's going to be harder for those trees to thrive. Um, so I personally don't like the eliminating wood mulch in the park strips. So, that is current ordinance right now. That's been that way for like since 2017. Um the inch and a half rock standard came from it's an engineering standard

to ensure that you know stuff as it comes into your park strip if you you know get a big raintorm it's going to wash out a lot of that the wood and stuff and goes into the gutters and down the drain system and storm drains and becomes problematic. But um this is your ordinance so you would like to change it. I I agree with you, Heather, is in reality, I've seen where the mulch is needed. Mhm. Especially around trees to get I was going to say we ought to we ought to clarify that then just have it for around trees because I agree we we don't want a lot of mulch getting into their storm system. Yeah. But I agree also that we need to have opportunity for mulch. I just planted new trees because mine finally died after 20 years. But I'm not going to put, you know,

Well, I think it gives a nice block. But I have I didn't realize it, but I Yeah, I do have bark mulch there. I dug up dug up. I'm not gonna have Sorry. So, I'm out of compliance, I guess. But yeah, I dug up around my trees and put in mulch, but I'm not going to put in rock grew better. So, I I think we could add that as a second recommendation as well. So, is that a motion? Is that what I'm hearing? I I'm ready. Get out of here. I mean, as long as we're requiring like a thicker mulch, like I get the pretty thick fake mulch. I also just think it all depends on

Yes. If you're having the curb here and you're putting mulch above here, we got a problem. But if it's the other direction, we don't have as much a problem. So, yeah, you you got to be able to contain the mulch within the park, I think, is the main point that quick followup. Mike talked has talked with the city arborist and he um it is a requirement to provide wood mulch around a new tree. Okay. So that's already allowed. Okay. And I'm not sure to what extent you can do that but Adam that's already allowed so we don't have to change anything. You're no longer a criminal. I'm no longer a criminal. That's I personally just don't think we should care about mulch but I know we don't want in the storm drain but that's a different topic. Okay,

we've kind of danced around this all night. Let's uh let's do it. Yeah, let's make a decision. Can we go to the slide with the recommendations so I could figure out unless Andy's going to do it because I heard him say he's ready. Let's see. So, the I mean I I don't have an overall slide. So, these these uh text in blue are things that I've added since the staff report. Let's go. Sorry, real quick. Go back to the traffic. I think I can do it cuz I think everything on here we agree with, right? Minimum pile height, right? We just add it to You just need to increase the allowance for it to be up to 35% to be the same as the the grass or artificial turf or just in terms of clarification.

For commercial areas, do we want to consider artificial turf as part of their uh required landscaping totals? So if we say a commercial site has to have 15% live growth coverage 15 50 or 15 in a C2 it's 15 oh 15 excuse me 15's Could they use artificial turf in those required landscaped areas to meet the live growth standard? I don't think so. I don't think so. Are we still talking about so allowing it in commercial areas but not but allowing it to go towards their live? Correct. the second one. Yes, I agree.

Yeah, because you got 15%, you got to maintain that live growth. Yeah, if they want to do something else with the other 85% and part of that being turf, go for it. I agree. Did we all agree on the may not be directly adjacent to live turf? Yes, because if if they want a variance to that, they'll again the the uh example that was used is going to be more in a commercial or a large residential. They'll come to us for a variance at that point. We don't want them to do that in commercial. Well, commercial any of them personally. I wouldn't care if I have turf and then she has grass like Oh, you mean an adjacent property. Yeah.

But you could have a curb between you're going to have to delineate it. I don't think they're going to mesh very well. If you if you have artificial turf, you have to have a delineation because otherwise it will fall away. Yeah, it's not going to function. It's not going to function. Yep. All right. You want to do it or you want me to paper? Go for it.

All right. I would like to uh make a recommendation of approval of item 5.1 with all of staff's recommendations and what was presented here with a change to allow the requirement for 35% of turf to be allowed for or of live grass to be um allowed for artificial turf for residential only for residential only. Thank you. I'll second that. Okay. So, we have a motion by Andy, a second by Adam. Brody, yes. Jackson, yes. Heather, yes. Adam, yes. Daryl, yes. And Andy, yes. All right, that passes.

I'm kidding. That was pause for effects. I got it. So,

all right. 5.2. Review and consider recommendation to amend the Herman City general plan. Thank you. And I will just introduce this item. Um, as we talked about in uh a few work meetings, now this is in response to a requirement from the state of Utah encouraging cities to have an element, well, excuse me, requiring cities to have a water conservation element in their general plan. Of course, because we have a current general plan, we're just doing this as an amendment uh as a specific section, but as you'll see or as you've seen in the uh the draft plan in your packet, it is consistent with the formatting and even references back to the general the current general plan as far as its objectives and goals. Um so, I'll go ahead and turn the time over to our consultant who has prepared this this document for your review. Again, this is a public hearing as you know and then you will make a recommendation to the city council on its adoption.

Great. Thanks everybody. Uh great to be here and we'll just do a very quick overview of some highlights of the water use and preservation element. As Michael mentioned, this is a new requirement in Utah State Code. Uh, and each of these plans needs to address four key components. Uh, understanding the effect of your permitted development on water demand in water infrastructure. Um, both existing and future. And then methods for reducing the water demand for existing development as well as for future development. and then considering modifications to how the city uh operates its facilities and parks to support water efficient practices. So the the element overview as Michael mentioned is structured to be very similar to the structure of the the main general plan document. starts off with an introduction uh the plan purpose the element purpose and then goes into some context both the local context of Herman and water use in Herman as well as the regional context and uh some of those regional considerations in the third section talking about planning for the future discussing uh the water supply development patterns and then also what Herman's been doing uh to advance water conservation over the past 10 to 15 years. So there's some success stories in there as well, things that are already in process. Uh in the fourth section, that's the vision, the goals, the objectives, and then uh to make it happen, what are those policies and strategies that heroin can consider implementing um to further these efforts. Uh in the last section of uh 4.3, we've got some principles. how to be water wise in

Heramman, trying to hit on 10 um key things to guide water-wise development uh in Herman. And then some key terms and definitions at the end uh including you know things that might not be common terms for everyday um discussion. And then also just information on specifics about water wise uh and landscaping and and zeroscape which is actually a trademarked term uh by Denver water. So uh some key points Herman's water profile the average water use on a per capita per day uh is 152 gallons. That was back in 2023. Uh as you'll see as we go through this is actually um a fairly uh good uh use compared to some other cities uh as well as the region. So Herman's water sources come from a variety of water sources which is great to have that diversity and sources. Uh there's five wells, there's the springs, uh secondary water, some of that comes from the wellby Jacob Canal. Uh the majority about 75% of the city's water comes from Jordan Valley. Uh right now there's about 15,000 culinary water connections and then about a third of those connections also have a secondary water connection. Uh so just under 20,000 connections total that are managed by Herman City. Herman's part of the Salt Lake region which is one of nine water regions that uh have statewide conservation goals and targets from a baseline of 2015 uh to the year 2065. The Salt Lake region of the nine has the lowest average use right now. Um 210 uh gallons per day. And this is just a comparison of Haramman's local conservation goals uh compared to the regional goals uh from

the baseline and what those goals are in reduction to the year 2030, year 2040, and then that year 2065 goal. So you already said we're at 152. We are already at 152. So we're already Yeah. So right now um ahead of the game. Sometimes those individual years vary quite a bit based on whether uh it's a heavy drought year or not. Uh so sometimes using a 5-year rolling average is a better indication of how the city is progressing. Uh but right now Herman is ahead of the game.

So some of the things that we've highlighted in the plan are those actions that are already being done. So on the city side, there's rain sensors that are installed uh in the the city park sprinkling systems, reduced watering in a lot of those public places and park strips, and then uh annual water audits to understand how much water is being spent at different places. from a land use planning perspective. The city has been making open space acquisitions uh which are helping to support water conservation by retaining those open space areas that typically don't require supplemental irrigation. Uh the water efficiency standards that the city adopted back in 2020 uh I think one of the first communities to actually update those standards. So again, Heramman's been leading the way. Uh and then overall in the general plan, the recommendation for a mix of land uses and development patterns, including uh some of those planned clustered development patterns where uh you have some smaller lot sizes but larger uh usable open spaces. On the community side, there's been people that are taking advantage of the different rebates that are offered either for the landscape programs, the um fixtures, switching to low efficient fixtures um or the smart metering. So, those are things that people in the Herman community have been taking advantage of with the the metering and the rate structure. Uh just raising a higher level of awareness by the community to their water use patterns. Uh and then the city has been facilitating a lot of different education campaigns on social media, the website, uh the ordinance and some of the local scapes. All those things are um helping to communicate to the the community uh the different water saving options that are out there. Uh and another one is that rain barrel program. So getting some some rain barrels at cost to capture uh and use

that on your yard. For the the plan element, it really relates back to that overall mission and vision of planning for stewardship. Uh this element has a relationship to the four key initiatives in the general plan. Growing wisely, optimizing open spaces, maximizing unique fiscal opportunities and enhancing and supporting community and culture. Uh so we have that one overall goal and uh objectives for water use and preservation in the making it happen section. The policies and strategies support one or more of the following of those state uh frameworks. So either reducing water demand for existing development reducing it for future development or they reflect waterized practices by Herman City. And the way we've structured the policies and strategies is into these seven different categories. Uh community character, education and engagement, incentives and recognition, leading by example, regulations and standards, monitoring and measurement, and collaboration. And as you'll see, there's policies in each of those that reflect um strategies to all three of the different uh frameworks from state code. Uh and then there's some where it's just a couple of them or leading by example. That's the city uh demonstrating the different opportunities and strategies for water wise. So, I will leave it here for the the public hearing and then we can come back to questions and discussions.

Go ahead. Thank you. Okay. So, we'll go ahead and open the public hearing and seeing none, we'll um go ahead and close that with a motion. So, moved. Second. So, a motion by Adam and a second by Andy. And all in favor? I Okay. And then thank you. Okay. Now it's time for us to ask you questions. You're done with presentation. That was that was it. All right. Michael said to keep it brief

because you've all read every single page. But um if there's any questions on the content, any of the data, or if there's discussion on any of the recommendations, that's that's what we want to talk about. I know that there's some different images that might be swapped out to reflect better case studies or examples uh that are being done, especially with those success stories. Uh and then just to confirm that most of the the data that we reference whether it's population projections or the water connections are referring to the city's water master plan and water conservation plan for consistency uh in those numbers because sometimes the the data um with population and projections can vary a little bit. Uh but we're just trying to make consistency with the other uh water related plans.

The gallons per day estimate includes all the parks and everything like that. Correct. The total water demand divided by our population is how you got to the gallons per day usage. Yes. Yeah.

We just have a lot of parks. I was just interested in that. do have a lot of parks. And I think that was one of the um the interesting things in the water conservation plan that it broke down uh the water use, the gallons per capita per day for the different land use categories. and that civic uh use in public plazas and parks was one of the the higher uses, but it's also um as far as the amount of space that that takes up overall in Herman, uh it balances out a little bit. And I think that's where one of the the higher uh reduction recommendations was in the parks, plazas, and civic uses category.

Gotcha. So there's that's where there's a lot of room for improvement. Comes back to not having a golf course. Andy, we need a golf course, too. We can do water. Apparently, I was hearing there's some turf that's being developed in a wonderful university, Utah State University that really water-wise. So be a good rough.

I do have a quick question. So this seems to be very similar to what you've presented earlier. Was there any differences from what you presented? Um there's just so there's more detail that we included in the plan element and I think one of the the bigger additions was that that water-wise herman section uh 10 principles uh to guide water-wise development whether it's the land use practices or the landscaping um types of landscaping as well as the landscape maintenance and that's one of the key things in that section about it's usually not the turf itself. There's water-wise turf options out there and turf can be a very durable ground cover. Uh but it's the the watering

practices that are out of out of balance. Um people are overwatering and watering more than they need to. um and understanding the difference between letting those lawns and those turf areas go dormant uh in the high heat months uh and making sure that there's just enough water to protect that crown of the the turf uh and then having it be green in the the cooler months uh off summer. So I have a question. And I don't know, this is more for Herman City. If we've tried to partner with Jordan Valley and doing just classes like here in Herman about water wise, I would personally be interested in something like that. Just

Yeah. Just hosting those classes. Hosting those classes like here so people like residents don't have to go because I've I think I went to one or two where I had to go to West Jordan. Yeah, I think we had them at one point because I came to one at Haramman City. Um, and they also have online classes. Yeah, like that's what I looked into as well cuz I I think for me personally, I care about my grass. I like landscaping a lot. I like taking care of it. I don't want to overwater my lawn. But I think people are shocked how how little amount of water they actually need to put on their lawn versus what they what they do.

Yeah. or even the way you water, right? Like like I know I had the Jordan Valley guys come out one time in the summer interns and like put little like frisbes out everywhere for your yard and they tell you don't water every day, water more infrequent than that so your roots get deeper and then you have to water less. Like it's just it's just general training of that kind of stuff that people don't know. Like I'm always like I have a you know one on my phone where I can just change my water so it's super easy. It's like okay now I'm going to switch it to every three days or five days and I'm doing that but I think a lot of people just set it for every other day. Forget it. Until September, October and don't change it. I think at one point the state had incentives to get smart.

Yeah, there's reimbursements for smart. Yep. Is it still available? I need one. I'm still old. It's lifech changing. You'll save so much money on your water bill because it'll stop it does like a rain delay and you don't water that day. So I can nice looks good to me. But I am diligent by the way in adjusting my time. Even though it's not smart, I do adjust it. Great. Thank you. Thank you.

Okay. So the the water savings that we should realize by 2065, even though our population is forecast to increase by 100,000, our water usage is going down 25% 24%. So that's per capita. Is that per capita or total? Right. That's not It can't be per on the the goals, right? So you have one line going up, the other line coming down. Yeah. Mhm. So is that efficiencies or uh education? What what is all about?

Yeah. So the goals um as far as going down is through those different water conservation practices um and being more efficient but also as development patterns change. So you tend to have um the smaller lots or the mixed use or attached and multif family housing where there's a smaller shared common space instead of the individual yards. So as your population is going up uh the the amount of yard space is not necessarily going up. So the the development patterns are more efficient. Uh so the per capita of that new development tends to be lower than your existing development. Um but there's still um an agreement and arrangement with with Jordan Valley as far as how much water um they will have available at a certain rate uh and then working with future development to either supplement that as needed or bringing in additional water rights or exchanging um water rights if they require more water than what Jordan Valley has budgeted.

I just this is totally just an idea. I don't know cuz I feel like I mean what I see when I think about oh I've used too much water is my water bills higher than I want it to be. You know is there some kind of way for Jordan Valley water to like say hey notification you've used more water than what's average does that you get that from power companies already right? Yeah, it even has it. You can actually sign up for it on our website and it you set your threshold. It will tell you your average water usage and you can set up alerts for it to email email you if you've gone over it. So, it's great because it also can

let you know like, hey, you might have a a drip or something. You'll have to sign up for that. Okay. Thank you. That's cool. And that is a a recent um addition to the conservation strategies that the city has been using is that that customer uh profile and dashboard so that you have essentially real-time access to the water meter uh on your property so that you can see what's going on because I Yeah, usually it's after the fact like oh wait yeah the next um water rate structure Um

and so and then you know of course it's always it's a it's a balance of conserving water but ensuring that the the water department you know is financially sound and has the the resources and the revenue from the water rates to to maintain and provide that water. So it's it's a balancing act. Well, I always personally just have a hard time thinking, you know, I'm watering my lawn with water that I could drink that's treated water. Um, just we live in a prosperous place. That's all I could say. I have fluoride joke jokes for that.

Sounds good. Awesome. I can make a motion. Okay. Thank you. All right. Um, discussion or a motion? I think it's ready to move on to city council. I would like to make a motion to recommend approval uh to city council of item 5.2. I'll second go with Brody on that one. Okay. So, Adam made the motion. Brody second. Um Andy, yes. Daryl, yes. Adam, yes. Heather, yes. Jackson, yes. And Brody,

yes. All right. So, that was unanimous. All right. Um, any commission comments? Nope. All right. Um, future meetings, the next city council meeting will be October 22nd and then the next planning commission meeting will be November 5th. So, we all got the notification, I guess, that the joint meeting was cancelled, right? Supposed to be. Okay. Thank you. clarify that. Okay. And then a motion to adjurnn. So moved. Second. All in favor? Thank you. I don't need the water here. Beehive. Beehive. Yeah. I look like I forgot to turn off my garden.

I'm going to turn it off right now for the rest of the year. Buy that. Just so you can do up before. So just like seriously you want to see. I got my dad hooked on it. I can go look at my dad's cabin right now and go look at his and chill down and off when he's out of town.