City Council - Regular Meeting

But it's exhausting. I'm I'm just done. So what you're saying is you're fresh, ready to I'm honory. All my all my give a damn is gone. So I I'm honoring. So if I'm being a little mean, Andrea, just poke me and be like, "Hey, stop." So okay, not the face. The jaw is still broken. But the arm the arm is fair game. I I'll take it. I paid a lot of money for this broken jaw. Let's not let's not mess it up. It's not finished yet. It's kind of I'm going to try it again.

My buddy uh came up to me. I was talking I haven't seen him since before the surgery. He walked up and he looked at me. He goes, "Are you chewing?" I'm like, "What?" He's like, "You better not be." No, I don't use tobacco, but because I don't move these lips yet. Yeah. You thought that I had a lot in tell that's the way you talk make him fill up.

Okay, it's six o'clock so we'll call this meeting to order. The first item on our agenda is public comment. Uh not seeing a lot of public. Is there anyone in the public that wants to make a public comment? Okay, seeing none, I will move us on uh to item C, discussion and review of draft of interlocal cooperation agreement with Leighton City for emergency dispatch services. You've all had a chance to look this over in the packet. Are there any questions or discussion points that you'd like to bring up? We we've kind of known this is happening, so I don't want to go too deep. If you don't have questions and you feel like you know it very well, is there negotiation room? There's really not.

Okay. Well, then I don't have any discussion up. I I mean I will tell you that another mayor brought up the subject of we should band together and and uh demand better conditions and they said you don't have to come. So I would say that that means there's not a lot of room. We're missing leverage and or other options. Yeah. Missing any other option. They can just say no. I mean would would our police and fire department be okay with cannon strings or three-wave radio? Like I'm just kidding. Yeah. We just don't have many other options. Pictures, smoke pages, smoke, smoke communication, right? Smoke signals. Fire guys would like that.

All right. So, anybody have any particular points otherwise we will seems how this is not much of a discussion. I'm just going to put it on the next agenda for a vote. Uh item D is discussion and consideration of interlocal cooperation agreement with Davis County to conduct the community development block grant the CDB CDBG uh program for fiscal years FY27 28 and 29. I'm glad we're doing this multiple years so we don't have to do it every year because CDBG is always something that's a little tricky to say. Um but we the the nice part about this grant is that we can be a part of it through them and it doesn't have all the administrative costs uh in the county. Um Leighton does it independently of the county and they while they have full protection that only their citizens get part of their grant, there's a lot of administrative expenses that kind of eat up that advantage. So I am grateful that we can just, you know, be part of the counties, which is what most of the county is doing. Any questions on this? Doesn't really cost us anything, but it can help people who use it. Okay, seeing none, I will move that on and put that on the consent agenda. Uh, now we go into the planning items. Item E1, application for zone change for property located at 3000 West and 1700 South, A1 to general commercial. Noah, is there anything in particular that was not in the packet that we need to share?

Any council? No. Okay. No. Anything anybody has any questions on about what was in the packet? Anybody want to put forward their opinion on whether we should do this or not? I think we should do this. We've been Yeah. working towards this for a while. Yeah, we have. I think the location's prime. I mean, yeah, this has kind of already been done by other actions. So, right.

All right. Seeing not much objection to that, I will put this on the consent agenda for our May business meeting. Item number two, discussion, consideration, and recommendation to planning commission regarding amendments to section 10.45 45 of the Syracuse Municipal Code pertaining to sign and light regulations. This is uh coming down based on the same property. Uh the primary concern is they want to make sure that it the sign ends up sufficiently high above the freeway overpass that it can be seen appropriately. That makes a lot of sense. I think the question really comes down to we don't want anything that's just crazy like you know 100 feet in the air. But, uh, does this make sense to you, council? Do you want to modify this any? Um,

they're proposing a 50 foot height and the you'll see in the packet. Our ordinance only allows 25. So, that's the biggest thing. I think there is some wisdom in having a height limitation in the city for signage. If you drive around, sometimes the signs can get a little crazy if if the city's not watching them. I mean, we it's a we want businesses to have signage, but um in the right context and in this context, it's right next to a freeway. So, they're arguing that, you know, perhaps uh we could allow a little bit taller sign within a certain number of distance to a freeway.

I think that we ought to craft the ordinance to specifically be make sure that it has to be next to an overpass so that you couldn't have 50 feet where there is no overpass. I think that that's part of the proposal, but I also think that, you know, really we're just compensating for the height of the freeway, which is 17 18 ft. I'd kind of prefer to just make it 45, but that's I don't think it really the 5T really matters. The point is is that it doesn't go crazy high. One thing I do want to consider for the ordinance though in their design proposal things that they pro they pointed out to us, they used a darker background against the signs which seems to not stick out as much at night where you have the glaring white. So, I would have that you consider whether we could add that in there that if it's an unusually tall sign like above the 25 foot limit that we don't allow for the glaring white background because they tend to fade as well or the stuff that's on it tends to fade as well. Just seems to stand out better. But that's what they proposed and put in their display. So, I like it.

Yeah, I totally good. So, this is just the first look at it. Um, with the land use related ordinance, it's required to go to planning commission and have a public hearing. So, we just wanted to get your input first so we can discuss it at planning commission and then and then they'll forward it back to you, but didn't want to be off base with planning commission's recommendation. Anybody like any of the ideas I put forward or not or want to throw them out? I like having the dark background so it's not like some Yeah. an eyesore. This will be a first. So if we put it in our ordinance, everybody will else will have to follow. Right. Yeah.

I was thinking like are we are we able to amend the ordinance um to make sure that we have it within a certain like so it's specific for the freeway and and so we're not on Analopee Drive all of a sudden where center city center city center is now they're going to put up a 50 foot sign there too. I would suggest that it says a direct in the ordinance we call out directly adjacent to a freeway overpass. That way if your property doesn't abut one of those overpasses wouldn't make sense. Yeah. Yeah.

Because because you're right, you don't want a 50-ft sign where there is no overpass and it's literally 50 feet above. And the overpass where there's on and off ramp too because we do have a few overpasses that there's no access to. But you want the free people freeway to see it. So I I don't have an issue if it's not where there's an exit because you want to get the sign above the freeway. Just if you want them congregated where people get on and off or if you want them distributed all the way along the freeway,

right? They the problem becomes a billboard company coming in and leasing farmland next to the freeway to put billboards up. It's a good point, but we already have an ordinance of Scenic Byway that doesn't allow for billboards. So, you would have to be on the property of your business to have a sign to begin with. So, if you're unfamiliar with that, how that works before they built the West Davis Freeway, they uh asked us all the people who would be along it to sign on to a scenic byway ordinance, which would not allow for billboards uh all along this. The only way that we can have an exception is you can have a sign for your particular business on your property. So we can't control that because that's state law. But um so there's there will be no billboard. It it doesn't apply because of the se scenic byway that we adopted. And just for information, the scenic byway ordinance also goes between our exit on Analopee all the way out to the island because they don't want them there either.

Correct. Yeah.

Yeah. What what is proposed is not considered to be a billboard because it's for their own site like the mayor was saying. Um, and we do have an ordinance that says we don't allow billboards in the city, but and it might be a a self-regulating thing like maybe there's not going to be commercial businesses right there, so it wouldn't necessarily, but it is something to consider. The the one that I'm thinking about that would kind of go against what Noah was asking is and it probably won't apply, but as a description, we have a commercialzoned property off of the bluff on the other side of that overpass, which is not an actual exit. The past councils all assumed it was zoned commercial with the last master plan update because we assumed that it was going to be such a conjunction point and it was such a small lot. Somebody might just put a gas station there. Now we now are going to talk about a different use for that in the future because you do asking about possible housing there. But the point is they would do well to have a sign that says this is where we're at even though you can't get off and use it. right there. You wouldn't be able to see that sign if it didn't go higher than the freeway. So, that's the only thing I don't know that we'll have any of those. We might have the same thing at 2700 where you have an overpass and you've got Pickle Ball Kingdom. They want may want their sign to be high enough that the freeway can see it even though you can't get off there. That's, you know, that that makes sense to me, but it's up to you to consider whether it's a good use or not. say we deal with it if it comes up.

Okay. And I would be okay with it or give everybody the same opportunity if it's if you want to sign and it's not visible because of an overpass regardless of exit. I'm okay with that. Yeah. Yeah. I guess that's good input to get from you guys. If you wanted to craft this very narrowly, like you know, if you are located on Analopee Drive, exit only, you know, we could draw a pretty we could circle it in where it's pretty much only valid for this one property and then if somebody else wants it, then you can address it in. But

we're talking about overpasses really. We're talking I think there's five, six if you count the trail at Jensen. Yeah. But uh probably only three of them would have commercial zoning. Yeah. Next to them anyway. So we are just kind of whatever we do applies to those three. That's why I'm open to it. I I'm almost sure Pickle Ball Kingdom's going to want to do similar when they see what goes here. And it doesn't make any sense for me to say you can't. Right. I do I do like how in their nighttime illumination they have it dark. And I think I think having some wordage in there about light pollution because I I do think that that's probably the greater concern than having a sign, right? This

or dark sky. Yeah. Yeah. City. Yeah.

All right. Well, um it seems like we've got enough support to at least move this on to planning commission and then it'll circle back to us and we can decide what they've said about it. So, thank you. Uh the next item is discussion and consideration of proposed ordinance requiring recycling at multifamily housing developments. I put this on because I was recently uh in a budget session with the the waste management uh group and they said that they lose a huge chunk of recycling at multifamily dwellings because they just simply don't provide it. And um they said if cities would simply require that they also have a dumpster available for recycling on site like they're required to have a mass dumpster um to deal with their waste that we could save. I mean they're estimating 20 to 24% of the landfill could uh in go back to recycled. So I don't know if it's that high or not. It was kind of a number that was thrown out there, but we don't have anything. So, every time we have multifamily and they don't put in a recycling dumpster, which is always they they have never put in I checked and across the county, no one has ever put in a recycling dumpster. And the argument that everybody comes back with is they say, "Well, that eats up a parking stall." That's a parking stall. I kind of think that they could fit that in. Um

I would say the reason they're probably not doing it is because the residents will just put garbage in it once the other ones are full. True. That could be a Yeah, that's probably a legit concern given. Yep. But same concern as a single family though. Yeah. I mean, we have that to monitor each person like I mean, there's no way for us to control that, but we could make a difference if we required them to actually have one, especially since in our waste district, all recyclables can go in the same container. You don't have to sort by kind or type. It just all goes to one place and gets sorted at the sorting plant, the MURF,

for people that aren't Well, I guess everybody's in the recycling program in the city. and say other people could use it. Yeah. Yeah. No, you can't control who dumps in a recycling dumpster.

And this is kind of like a it's a it's a land use planning kind of issue. If we want to control the the type of dumpster we require at site plan, we can certainly require all new apartment complexes in the future to leave room for it. Um, but if it's outside of kind of like a planning land use arena, it's more on the utility side of things with their account management who we require to have a camp because right now in our ordinance in the I forget the chapter, it's in I have it in the report, but for utilities, they they have an exemption for commercial and multif family. So that would be an amendment to a different part of the ordinance that isn't necessarily a land use item

or utilities type of bill. I I have to tell you, I think it makes sense to have one stall converted to a recycling dumpster. I mean, that just doesn't seem to be that big of an impact. And it does seem to have an impact on the landfill. What's the cost to have it picked up? Um, I don't know because it's in our contract here, so I don't know what it would be for them. who handles might be further. Yeah, it's just a private private hauler. Yeah, we don't pick up the for the trash or the

Yeah, they would have to have somebody pick it up. It's their own private contract. However, I do know for a fact that all of the haulers in Davis County and Weber County will pick up both for one contract. It's not a separate bill. It's one contract. So you can hire Robinson, uh, WM or ACE are the ones around here. And there is one more, I'm trying to remember the name in Weber County Republic that doesn't do here, but they do Weber County. All of them also do recycling, but the burden we're putting on them is the space and then the cost of getting it picked up an additional cost.

If they already have the cost, I'm not sure there's an additional cost. I think the burden really is the space. Okay. And then maybe but we don't know for sure because it wasn't in the contract. It wasn't written in that it it's going to be an addition. So we don't really know. And also would there be some kind of fence around it to hide it? Well, that would be in our design standards to the same as a regular dumpster. You'd have to have the same fence. So it might take up more than one. It could include the same fence could be both. for new ones. But if we just ask them to go plop a dumpster out there, I don't know how we I mean that would incur cost to to them and I don't know how we

I'm just not sure how we go back and if they've already built if we can even enforce it. Yeah. Is that even enforceable at all if they've already built? Probably not. Yeah. So, I mean, while I like the idea of telling them lose a parking space at a dumpster, I kind of feel like our only legal opportunity is going forward, not back. I mean, you you might I don't know, Colin, you you might be able to enforce them to take on recycling, but you couldn't require them to put the fence or the wall around it. Correct. And cover it per our design standards, right? Is that what you mean by that? Yep.

Yeah. I think uh we we may have to like work with each apartment complex and say like, "Hey, we want you to have recycling. We're going to require it. Tell us where you're going to put it." And it may end up just in a parking lot somewhere. Because I don't think it makes for me, it doesn't make sense to move forward with it if we're not going to make the other make the old ones do it. Yeah. Because that's that's the majority of the single family home is pre-existing because Yeah. I'm not expecting a lot more multif family. Sorry. What did I The way things are going, the way it's going, I'm not expecting more multifamily, but I just like the idea that it's not too big of a burden to ask them to incorporate it.

So, remind me again, I know you said this, Dave, but what what is it what is it that sparked this conversation again? like what what was the savings good for the envir the fact that all of the recyclables that go to a dumpster in multifamily end up in the landfill right

so you get you can take all of that out now what I've noticed a lot of comments when we rolled out the dumpsters for recycling a lot of people said I fill that one faster than I fill my regular garbage now I think that's kind of balanced out but initially it was kind of a hey yeah almost anything can go in recycle um I think the point is is if you could do a large percentage and I don't have no idea what that really is but it could be for some people half if you could divert half of that away from the landfill that extends the life of the landfill which right now is calculated at 23 years and then our costs double to get rid of garbage. So knowing that it's that short I think it's worth considering.

We we all like the environment. Well, I'm I'm a fan. We're a huge fan of that. I don't understand why it can't be imposed on existing apartments. That's what you're saying. It's just the wall around the dumpster. The wall that hides it our standard. The dumpster itself could be imposed. So we we'd have to be okay with a dumpster open dumpster. An open dump, you know, an unscreened dumpster rather. I got to believe that if they put one in, they're going to want their place to look cleaned up because they're trying to attract renters. But I kind of think that one's self contained. I don't they may not, but if it starts to look trashy, they'll probably want to clean it up. Yeah. And hopefully their parking isn't so tight that one one stall

one stall or two stalls is like a deal breaker. But I I do know that parking is a big issue with multif family and sometimes if they if they're short on parking, they spill into single family neighborhoods and then we get the complaints from them because of parking in front of the house. But will one spot really change that situation? changes changes it for one. Yeah, true.

What you're probably going to get is we're going to start to get complaints that people from the residents walk over to throw their extra recycling in the bin. But we can't be upset about that if it's getting recycling recycled. Yeah, I can tell you that the recycling that is produced by this waste district produces over a million dollars in selling the recycling. I mean, in that it's in the size of the budget, it doesn't do that much, but it is it's worth doing.

It it eats up some costs. I know that we're putting in some improvements for the the drop off point the at the landfill for safety that are all paid for out of recycling income. Would the district pay for their fencing increase? You know, any cost? I highly doubt it, but I would be willing to ask if we had the ordinance something. I I'm just thinking I mean we we made recycling mandatory for all of the single family dwelling um residents. So it's it should be done

and if everybody's going to help participate in extending the life of the landfill and reducing our well I guess they are paying their own costs but at least extending the life of the landfill. I I mean I don't see a real negative here. I I could say it's not a hot issue for me, but it's not one that I would oppose. I I would agree. It's not like on my this is going to change the world, but it's one little step that I don't see how it harms anybody. It It seems to help. It's all I think about every day.

All right. So, what I'm going to do is would this require if we were to create an ordinance, this would have to go through planning commission or not? Especially if it's an amendment to our utility. All right. So, what I'm going to do is I'm going to instruct staff to put a proposed ordinance together. We will read that on the next business meeting. If you like it, we'll go forward. Cool.

Okay. But it will be a discussion because we don't have an official ordinance yet. The next one is discussion considering the potential amendment to commercial development as standards. Uh remind me which one this is so I don't have the packet open because I remember what they all are. But um this this um in relation to recent planning commission item where they kind of argued that the site is this the extra land or is this the entrance way? This is the

extra land. Okay. So, I asked for this because I was at planning commission and we had a proposal come in and the proposal suggested that they take a less than an acre parcel and take up almost twothirds of that parcel with a business which is probably the smallest possible commercial business you can find in the the plat or the portfolio of what those businesses are. and said they'll just leave that other less than a third lot for future business. But we know that there's no real future business that fits on that little bit of space. So, I got to thinking about it and and I'm explaining how this came about so you'll understand where the logic is. I got to thinking about it and I thought, well, we have an ordinance in our city that if you move into a neighborhood and and everybody moves in, you know, at different times, but you don't take care of uh in improving your yard in some way. We don't tell them how, but they have to improve the land and not just leave it a a weed pit, then you are in violation of code. So, my suggestion is we treat businesses the same. If you're going to leave a parcel that probably will never sell, you should be forced to improve that property over so many years so that we don't end up 20 years down the road and it's just wild still because it's not even a big enough lot. Now, I will use an example. When I brought this up, Noah brought to my attention that this exact thing happened when Jack in the Box came in. If you notice over to the west side, there is a large gravel area that uh was more than they needed, but it really wasn't big enough for another business. So, they chose to landscape it in in a way that's lowmaintenance, but at least looks finished. And I drove by there this week to see get my thoughts on it and I thought this really does improve their

business that it looks nice and doesn't look like it's up against a piece of land that everybody will go, "Man, when will they clean that up?" Cuz it would just become wild weeds. So, I'm suggesting that we have we treat businesses just like we do residents. And that is after so many years, you have to have cleaned up the land next to you if you own it.

Yeah. in there if you look. So, it really becomes a debate about what what is what is a site, you know, and this particular developer was arguing that the site is the limit of disturbance on what they're doing as a parcel. And people leave um pads all the time, but usually they're on their own property. And so a simple fix could be to just define a a you know a site as extending to the property boundary so that you can't leave part of a property boundary. The other thing that we could consider and for obvious reasons is that um a minimum a minimum commercial size lot because there is no business. Gone are the days where you can just stick a photo mat or a snow shack on a little corner and it works. Um I mean really snowshack is about the only thing you could fit on this parcel of land. So I think that if we force them to consider anything less than an acre has to be included in the commercial plot because you can't get halfacre businesses. I mean a coffee shop uses a little more than half an acre in everybody's case and that's the smallest thing you can find out there. There's I can't think of a single business that uses less than that. One one thing I was thinking about is in the Arlo project they have the first floor commercial and then condominiumized those. And so each commercial pad

is way less than a even a quarter acre. It's you know 1,500 square ft but the entire site is is bigger is yeah like and they're sharing the parking. See, that's where this if this business says they need this much for parking, there's not enough to leave the other business with parking. So, you'd have to be a non-parked business, which is almost impossible in an area like that. So, how is this going to impact if we've got uh a much larger commercial development where it's still one parcel, but they're like, "We're going to develop it in phases." I guess if we give them a certain amount of time to improve it.

Yeah. Yeah. Like absolutely. Go ahead. Because it is like Costco's leaving something behind, but they have over time they have a plan within three years that all of those will be filled. Okay. When they create they did a commercial subdivision plat and then they they partition those off onto separate lots. Okay. So that's what we would have

those are those separate parcels or Yeah. Okay. And another place that this takes place in our town is over by Warren. There is an undeveloped plot that was subdivided off and it I've received lots of complaints about that over the years of when will the city force it to be cleaned up and really it should be on the land owner to at least keep the weeds down and and it is their it is today it's their responsibility but we have to enforce it. If we told them, look, if you this goes 10 years and you don't do anything, you have to make it green space or something, it at least puts them on notice that you can't just let a lot sit because it does bother people. I I hear I get phone calls every year. It was one of the first phone calls I took when I was a city council member was, "When are you going to force them to clean this up?" The guy even suggested, "I'm going to buy it and mow it myself because I'm sick of looking at it." I said, "Great. That sounds like a great solution."

Till he saw the price. We have code enforcement, you know, we can require them to mow it, but that's a lower standard than it's what landscaping. 12 in. Yeah. Yeah. That's just I don't know why you'd want that next to your business. That's why I think the ordinance is if you leave it long enough, it has to be it has to be improved. So you'd have to if that would give anybody the the situation where if you leave it long enough we can decide what that is 5 years 10 years whatever you have to now improve it because are we going to have to def or do we already have defined what improved is

in our house standard you can uh improve it with zeroscaping grass uh I actually saw somebody put carpet in and it actually met their code, which was crazy because they didn't actually lay the carpet. They bought the leftover Olympic carpet and rolled it out and put stones on the edge. Um I think sh I remember that one. It was down from our house. Yeah, for a while that worked. So it but it was considered improved. It was not left barren and weeds. Yeah. Houses are required to have landscaping. I always forget. It's like within five years, I think.

No, it's even less. I think it's 18 months. They've got to have landscaping. I got quote unquote and it doesn't have to be done. It's not like you can't leave SP stay or stuff to improve the next year and the next year. You have to do something. But that's what I'm saying. Are we I I think we're going to have to define for commercial what improved means. Otherwise, we're going to get creative. Yeah. Yeah. Well, and and with the with the residential recently, we changed it for water wise stuff. remember and we considered whether or not we were okay with fully 100% rock. Yeah.

And I think we said like at least some planned live vegetation. So I guess they can rock the entire thing and just like plop like one little flower in the middle of it and that beats it. Does require some irrigation. Yeah. Plastic. My my concern here is that

when this came up, there clearly was no path to deal with what was clearly going to be a remnant and it's up against a residential property. So, you are now dooming that home to live next to a third of an acre of weeds forever because we don't treat it the same as we do houses. So, that's why my where my head was at. We don't have this crafted as an ordinance yet, but if you're willing, I think we should take a shot at doing something so that we don't leave homeowners or other businesses victim of lack of maintenance.

Well, with with the business that you're talking about in particular, I it sounded like the developer had future intent to try to buy the property next. Yes. To them, which would solve the problem and develop the whole thing. Yeah. and and have more commercial space. Um, but you're saying in the hypothetical world that that house remains a rental property and continues to be a rental property in perpetuity. It never goes on the market to be purchased, then we're doomed with a uh weed patch. Yes. Next to it in perpetuity.

It's pretty small. I Right. development claims that they'll have something that will go in there, but may maybe like a small medical office or something, but right development is famous for telling us things that are Well, that would be my followup question is are we able to approach them because we haven't approved that development yet, right? It's just gone through planning commission. Are we able to approach them with a we we would like a plan and not to leave this baron, but we cannot do that without a city ordinance requiring because we have other corporate properties, commercial properties that have land that's being maintained, but it's not developed. Yeah, I can't force them if

and planning commission is actually the land use authority for site plans. So, they're done. They can move to building permit now. Um, so we can't really Their only caveat is the U DOT situation which they have to clear up. But which if you notice at planning commission they argued that they should not have to you see it's in our ordinance that every business has to put a fence between themselves and commercial. And they argued that they don't have to do that here because this little path is not yet commercial. Y and the people who own that property came in and said make them put in the fence

between us because we are a resident and that's commercial land. But they are argue they apparently successfully argued to the planning commission that because it is not yet developed that it's not their responsibility. But when you have an undevelopable site, you're now putting that burden on the homeowner and that's not fair to them. they they shouldn't have to put up a fence to protect against the undeveloped remnant. I can certainly call the developer and say, "Hey, let we're really we're really worried about this. Can we do something?" But I can't really worsen by ordinance. So, we've already missed the boat on this one. This is for future.

Well, no. We It would go after all of them. I believe we if we made an ordinance that would make anybody that has a portion of land that's undeveloped to be improved or going forward because you're when you're developing a piece of property, your rights to the zoning laws vest when you file your application and pay your application fee. So, because this wasn't in effect at the time they did that, we can't go back and say, okay, so like just looking at the ER off of 193 and 2000, there's a lot of weed around that, like just weeds growing wild and desert landscape around that. Now, they mow it. They they keep it not

they do mow theirs which is better than but this would this would require the would this would not require the ER to improve that land around them in a certain time frame in in the site that's already approved it would not going forward as they develop additional property around there it would however we can inform them of the ordinance and in good faith they might do something well no or you know I don't think anybody does anything in good faith then realistic view. Well, it's just there's cost associated with it. So, I they don't have to. I would assume they're not going to. And if they've already made an argument that

and I have talked to the hospital about the development of that area around the ER, and there's a trail that's supposed to someday go between the ER and the highway, but they're not going to develop that until they build the hospital. And that's that they keep saying then well they keep saying in the next couple of years but it's been a couple years well and that's why I think on a if we're going to do something like this moving forward on commercial I think that's why you have to give more time because there's you know if you're trying to acquire a parcel next to it and whatever that could take time or getting funds together to build some other new big development but

well and to to the points that you've made possibly we only do this to remnant parcels that are too small to envision maybe it's minimum parcels because we had this situation over where EOS is now where they had to maintain a detention basin and they at least kept it well groomed the the owner did so that it was manageable and it wasn't a a hindrance to the neighboring property. So maybe it's we say that if it's a minimum under a minimum space, it has to be incorporated. And I and I think that we just look at what's the average size business. If it's zone commercial and you leave something under half an acre, that makes no sense. But a third of an acre, if you leave it for a a home development, that makes a lot of sense. There a lot of people live on less than a third of an acre. But there's no business that has to is required to have parking that can fit there. Yeah, you could craft something that says like remnant or uh narrow strips, leftover pieces have to be incorporated in the landscaping plan and landscaped.

Otherwise, we are going to end up with some weird partials that are just never kept sanders, especially where we've got all those weird all that weird stuff on analopee. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Do that. Yeah. Yeah. And and that is something we if if they're going to clean up most of it, they can't leave just a little piece to the side that can never be cleaned up. We make UD do clean up their weeds, too. I'm just kidding. I I know the answer to this. Just if we're if we're complaining about weeds and partials that you can't do anything with. I mean, you do holds the cake. So, what are your thoughts on this? I've thrown out some ideas. Is it any of them got support or this is not something that we have to do? I think we should do it for sure.

I would be in favor of something that addresses like smaller remnants of a Okay. use language like size and shape of lot depend depending on size and shape or is that too broad? Well, they can I don't think so. I I mean I think we want to address whatever's Yeah, I think the residents want to keep our city beautiful. I mean, that's that's a big difference when you drive through some of our surrounding neighbors too that have weird lots that are just they look abandoned and we don't want and when they property next to a new business to look abandoned. It's when they look abandoned and they're odd shaped like that, they tend to end up being dumping grounds for other people. Camping trailer on it.

That's always nice.

Yeah. And that's why we invested in the linear park to help keep things looking nice. And it's it's a big investment by the city to maintain that thing. And it's not really programmable space, but I know that um lots of cities invest in that sort of thing because that's what you see as you drive through it. Like I was just down in St. George and their roadways are beautiful and they have landscaping and medians and they invest in that. I'm not sure all the financial implications to that, but it's beautiful. I know some cities use RDA funds for that sort of thing, but they those are limited and because the project areas can expire over time, but a lot of communities invest in that in what you see along roadways. And you know, to this business's point, it's probably more likely that they would get use out of it by being forced to put some picnic tables on the other side and and grass or cement then let it sit as weeds for 20 years. I mean,

well, their business model is a drive-thru. If we're being realistic, but it's not really even walk up. It is city center, so you could get a handful of walkups or I don't know if you would very often, but it at least looks nicer. Even if they just planted grass or even if they just zeroscaped it like they did at Jack in the Box, they just threw gravel on it. Yeah. And they keep the weeds down. And it does look a lot nicer than having a pile of weeds there. you should look at that one and consider what that would look like if that were just a weed patch because it's big enough for something but it's not big enough for a business and so

well and that's the result of the same ordinance but different developers arguing different things and this very thing did come up with the site plan review with Jack in the Box and we said no that's the site you got to finish it yeah we got to you got to at least have some something for we suppression but a different developer argues different things and they said, "Well, this isn't part of our site. This is future development area." And I think that we should define that what a future development area can be because if it's under the size of any logical business, it's not.

Yeah. The the red text in the packet would would help the at least make sure that you have to consider all as one site developed in the same time. if if they didn't want to take care of it, they could do a subdivision and then it's on a separate piece of property left over for future, but they're still required to mow it take care of it. I I'm I'm not opposed to how it's written right here without, you know, defining what lot boundaries size and shape means, you know. Just keep it lot boundaries. Yeah. But I do think it's important

because we grow at such a quick pace that if we don't look at things like this right now, you know, we're not going to be where we want to be in five and 10 years. I think we'd probably have to more narrowly define it and put size put something with size and shape.

Okay. Any other thoughts? I just I just always lean strongly towards private property rights and not having government overreach telling people what to do on their private property is kind of my default position. But I I definitely as a resident I definitely see and agree that like I mean I don't like driving by the ER the way it looks. It's it's annoying but it doesn't like ruin my day. But but then that's just the one that comes to an example in my mind. So if you were a neighbor of this property, would you be happy? Would you would it change your mind if you were I am a neighbor to commercial property? No, this particular

I I know. I know. But I'm saying even the commercial property that I neighbor their their trees are invasive and they invade my yard and u it's obnoxious. But I don't know now that I'm on city council that I want to write a rule that says they can't have Well, there's already a rule for that. It's already an ordinance. So you you you could pursue that off. Well, sh it is an ordinance. I like that. Trimmed up and it's important. It's it's not excessive. This is not excessive. Yeah. That that's that's just my only thing is I But you bring up a good point like a developer unfortunately they're going to do the least amount necessary. But and it won't apply retroactively. No, it won't.

So whomever is buying the lot, they understand what they're getting into. So you have the right to abide by what you're purchasing. I just don't want to see this continue to happen or it will a lot especially on analopee. Analopee is is risky, right? UD dot is auctioning a bunch of land and and they're odd shapes and sizes, right? Though that's where we have to do something if we want it look finished. I think with that, mayor, I think uh I would be on board for sure. I think that that's what we're elected to do is to be good stewards of the city and this is what people be

be doing. That's my opinion, I guess. But I am pretty conservative about government overreach. So, okay. All right. Well, we will move forward and discuss this again. Um, if anybody has any particular revisions, please uh make them known before our next meeting. The next one is discussion to consider potential amendment uh to site approval process. About four years ago, we changed our process because a lot of final site approvals were coming to city council and it was pretty much already done and we were looking at them and it was a um it seemed like it was already a done deal because they'd already been vested by previous meetings. Um, so considering that we said we don't know, we no longer want to see them at city council. But I was considering after visiting play with planning commission last week after seeing a real big red flag in my mind that wasn't addressed properly that maybe we want to have city council with the experience of ordinances look at uh a final approval again. and it would add some items to our agenda that we would probably not have to discuss too much, but it would be one more step where we could interject with some concerns that we have and see if we can't get them addressed. I will give you the example if you'd like it, but in general, it's just a a matter of I think things are getting missed because we have a very inexperienced planning commission at the moment. Um uh but you know there is some things that you see with experience. Uh again this is the same site plan that I'm concerned about and it is the U dot access the way

that it's set up. I can see very likely we will have backing up onto Analopee Drive because they didn't when the lot was sold, UD do advertised it that it would have it would not have an access direct onto Analopee. And yet now the developer is pushing UD do say I have a site that has no access unless you give it to me on Analopee. Well, it was advertised appropriately. I mean, and they should have known that they have to go to the side street in order to get that access because it is a dominant drive up business and has very little turnaround in there. I'm very concerned that we're allowing a business that will have that will produce backup traffic daily. And that's a real serious traffic hazard when the speeds of analopee are incorporated in there. But that was completely approached as it's not our call and it should it should be addressed by us. I mean it was just said well that's UD do's problem except for think about that a little bit do throws that into any city are is UD do around to take the complaints? Is UD do there to take the accident challenges? I mean, and what will we be able to do after the fact if we didn't get them to develop some stacking or some alternate access and we end up having regular accidents?

We we have a very similar example of this already that's in another city. Uh just swag right there always backs up on Analopee and it creates a major hazard when they have a deal during rush hour and everybody leaving school like it's it's not safe. Yeah. and and we deal with it because it's on Analopee, but it's not even our it's not our city, right? If I'm under the right impression. Yeah, you are. Swig swig is uh just uh Swig is in Clearfield. Clearfield. Yeah, it's on the wrong side of the street for us. Terrible. Well, or the right side. Do we do we take the uh accident if it happens there on Analopee though? We sometimes do if we're the closest there.

So, yeah. Yeah, I mean we we we it's not a it's not a this might be a problem. I I think it will be I think it is going to be a problem, but 100%. And that would be that would be a good development for that unusable space. That could be their drive-thru. It they could have routed extra parking or Yeah. So, I mean, again, these are these are the whatifs, but I'm concerned that it was missed because um that traffic issue is is going to be real. So, I don't know. I don't know if that could be solved by a final approval from this group, but we city council members gives us a place to go. We're concerned with this. Bring us a solution to it. Yeah.

And if they can't, then we just say, well, then you don't get an approval till we have a solution, right? I mean, that's not illegal for us to do. It's definitely not because we don't want the business. No. And in fact, we are continuing to give them an opportunity. What am I right? If we say you this is something that has to be solved, but you still get approval if you solve it. Yeah. Yeah. We're not kicking them off or changing their entitlement. We're we're just forcing them to address a problem. So, I'm suggesting that maybe the second set of eyes site plan does actually make sense.

I would want to look at the state laws. There's been a lot of movement over the last several years to speed the site plan approval process up, speed zoning changes up. So, I would want to look at state statutes and make sure that we would be allowed to do that because with the number of developers that we have in the legislature, it would not surprise me if they say you only get one shot and it's in the planning commission and then you're done. And if the planning commission doesn't approve it, it's considered approved anyway. Yeah, let me do that little bit of legal. That's fair enough. Because this would be a site plan recommendation then from sit. If you change it, it would be a recommendation from planning commission

and a final approval here, which is, as far as I'm aware, it's it's perfectly legal for city council to take on certain things, but it's not really the the norm to for city council to take on administrative items. So, you have to be aware that it's a little bit different than crafting an ordinance. It's if it meets the ordinance, you have to approve it. And if you can't deny it for something that's not supported by ordinance. So it's a different deal than what legislator it is a little different not like zoning res and it will slow things down especially because we have a work session requirement and a voting so it could slow some of our commercial developments down by couple months.

I'm just so I'm trying to understand if if it's a if it's the site plan either meets the ordinance or not. How are we as a city council going to offer any other remedy if if if it doesn't if it doesn't. Yeah. What what are we bringing to the table at that point? Yeah.

It's a good question. And we turned down a car wash because of safety because all the other ordinances were were met, but the safety issue of access to where kids are was insufficient for city council. But everybody else said, "Fine, we'll just it meets the standards for developing on this property."

Yeah, I remember we headed that one off and did a zoning amendment to the amended uses in the town center. So, I mean, I don't know. Maybe there's other ways to address this. Maybe it's better uh education for our planning commission and that that you can't trust a state organization to solve your problems because there were definitely ones there that were concerned about this, but what came to the surface was let you do deal with it. I'm saying I'm not I don't have faith that you do will. Well, in the future, you know, as a as operating procedure, we can we can say, "Hey, we're not going to take you to planning commission until you have your until you have a dog." Yeah.

Yeah. You know, we could we could look at that as kind of an operating procedure. I'm open to alternate solutions, but I see uh what happened and I have to bring up should we consider what we used to do to solve this because that's my only concern is slowing the process for applicants which is probably already a somewhat arduous. Yeah, arguably we are one of the fastest. We we do it on average in six weeks which is one of the fastests around. So, but yes, this could force it to go another two weeks or four weeks. Yeah.

I guess I guess the question would be is who's who becomes liable if that is deemed by a traffic engineer to be an unsafe in a hypothetical, right? If a traffic engineer comes and says we have a major injury collision that happens and they come in and they go, well, this is foreseeable. The roadway wasn't safe for this. Who becomes liable? Is that the city becomes liable? is that UD do becomes liable because that's what attorneys are always trying to do is move the target to the guy with the bigger purse. Yeah. Right. It's not the guy that causes the accident anymore. Now we're looking at Syracuse to pay out, right? Because you got the you got the insurance, right? I believe we would have governmental immunity for that. But yes, people will try.

Yes. So, it's a really good point. I'm going to actually call on Chief Davis here for a minute. My guess is just from having seen this a lot, but it may not be true. Do we get a lot of accidents there where the waffle stop is and analopee because people come in that shouldn't or try to make too big a turn? Because I see one there every couple of months, but maybe that's not significant. I don't know. I'd have to pull that up. We could look at that. Um, as far as it being consistent, I'm not aware that has a huge amount of problems

because this would add to that because it is not a safe distance from that exit to this one. And so even though this would be a right in right out, one of the biggest problems on analopee is people who try to make left-hand turns where it really shouldn't be a left-hand turn. And the other thing that I don't want to do is for you do to turn around and say, "Let me solve your problem. I'll force a median all along anote because that would handicap businesses on both sides. and residents and residents because that's how UD do probably solve it is force a median. Yeah, they're pretty good at that.

We haven't read about putting a median in there. So, I mean lots of ideas have been discussed. Are there any of them you'd like to consider for a future meeting? Because this is your decision, not mine. Well, Noah, your plan of getting the U dot approval first. Is that something that you've explored or looked into or? Yeah, we definitely can do that. There's ordinance in there that could support that. It's just, you know, whether or not we interpret it a certain way is it's a chicken in the egg kind of thing. It's having UD do approval is a requirement, but at what stage is not entirely clear in the ordinance, but but if you move it up,

yeah, we we've set a precedent already that you have to come with a complete packet. I think if this body just simply said we consider all necessary outside approvals part of that complete applicant. I don't think we have to actually change the ordinance. We just say we're considering everything. So now require it. I think that's actually good. I think that's reasonable. I like that better than getting a final approval. Especially if the final approval is just rubber stamping because we can't do anything about it anyways. I think that that opens us for more liability because it's like, well, the city council approved it. Yeah. Right. And like I I would rather I would rather have everything up front. I think that that's a smarter approach than

agree. And I think maybe helping educate the planning commission on what they on on maybe some of these. Sounds like he wants to be the leazison back. No, but it is important that we help them understand that they've got to take care of these safety concerns because

there is a tendency to think that some other expert whether it's the fire marshal or you do or some or even just the planners in that have already addressed this. That doesn't mean that it's really safe. It means they've already looked at it and they're not sure they can say no. Well, yeah, we certainly don't want to get sued for overstepping something, right? But at the same time, you know, every every site is unique and nuanced and it comes with the experience and this particular circumstance is kind of nuanced and planning commission is required to have training. We could have a whole work session discussion about traffic safety and dot roadways and you know we we're always looking for training that goes up commission

and we may want to do that because that's where they're generally weak. That's one of the reasons why I appointed Commissioner Sheay because he has a real background in it but I can't you know depend on him to be there every moment and bring it up. So well and he's usually very thoughtful in his deliberations and But yeah, I I just worry about making it extending the process and not us not being able to do much more than

So what I'm hearing right now is we are going to consider prior all prior approvals as part of the complete application. That much solves a big chunk of this. And at this time we won't change and take back the site plan approval. Is that what I'm Because we already have an initial approval. you have an initial site. Well, if it's zoning, if it's not, if it's already zoned, we don't ever see the site. We don't see it at all. Oh, but it doesn't really change anything if we do see it. If it meets the code everywhere, correct? We can't go and change the code because we got a site plan we don't like.

Right. Which is why we have to be really careful when we do the zoning that anything that's allowable be considered cuz you know there are times when people say well they're just going to do this and we don't mind that but they you also when you create zoning you have to consider what else they might do because that could fall through and they may come back with something you really hate.

Yeah. You guys are still in charge. you you set the rules and then when you get an applicant, our job is to check their plans to make sure they're following all the rules and then planning commission also uh and then they move on to building permit. If somebody feels like like a resident out there feels like we got it wrong, they can always appeal a decision from planning commissioner staff if we interpret something wrong out there. But but I've never seen a city council appeal a planning commission's decision, but you know it it's it's a moving target all the time as far as

All right. So, I think I've come to consensus. So, we won't do the site plan yet, but do you need to know that you won't even see them if the zoning is already in place? Going back to middle school civics, it's executive power versus legislative power. And you have both actually. But uh the zoning is your legislative powers, right? But once someone applies now you're acting as is in the in the executive branch administrative. So you have to use So if it meets the law you made, we can't say no.

Is how how long is the how long has the planning commission had that? Uh it's been three to four years that we gave that up and sent it over there because we didn't feel like it was ever we were always approving things that we were like okay well it's meets the rules so why are we even that's what I'm saying I don't I don't see that changing I'm not sure it will I I think the only thing that it changes is it brings it to our attention that there might be a need to change a rule but then again if you already have an application that's in that one stuck, but now we're like, well, this is a problem we need to be aware of.

Okay, that's a good point. I'm going to move us on because I think we are kind of agreed. The next one is for council to review a draft memo from the UD, Utah Department of Transportation, UD do regarding affordable housing directive from Governor Cox. This is the interesting one I was referring to earlier in is that um he's asked UD do to look at their surplus properties and identify ones that could possibly be designated for affordable housing. They came back to us with two. I think we've I think we've discussed this discussed this. Yeah.

Yeah. They came back with us with two. So, we just want to get everybody on the same page and um see where you're at with this. Noah, go ahead if you've got more. I drafted a memo based off of our previous discussion. Should hopefully reflect what I believe we talked about. The north one we're not too hot on. Southern one, if somebody wants to come in with the reszone, it seems like we're we're somewhat open to the idea, but they still need to come in and apply for a resone. The north one's just impossible to make safe. And that south one we're okay with low low density. Yeah. Yeah. Residential.

Well, uh, if it is similar to what is west of it, it would be considered medium density. Is it R? Oh, I thought it was it's R3. They're about I think it's the RPC, but they're about um 6,000 foot lots. Okay. So, it's kind of on the fence between low and density. But if it's matching family right next to it, if it were developed as a PRD, it would probably get the six units per acre, which would be okay. But they still need to actually amend the general plan and change the zoning so we get a chance to see like what their proposal is.

What I'm concerned about is it's very likely that somebody will come back and say, "Hey, now that we bought this, we want you to change it to high density because that's how it works for us." I mean, I don't see this working as high density. So, you just have to know that in advance. that that to me would create a traffic problem because of the safety issue of that many cars. But um anyway, but it is what it is. If you're okay with what's there, we'll move forward with it. Okay. All right. I'm seeing enough head nods. All right. So, the next one is discussion to consideration potential amendment to the gravity flow sewer ordinance. This uh comes again from me because we had a developer come in here and want to reinterpret what we had. I will tell you we have debated this over the years many many times. And here is what I need you to know. The intention of council has always been very adamant that we do not want pressurized sewer because it ex it adds so much cost to the city to have pressurized sewer. And people say, "Well, what if you just do it on your own personal property?" And the point that we got to about five years ago was that if somebody did that as an after solution, similar and we compared it to sump pumps, sump pumps in the city by ordinance are illegal. You cannot develop knowing you need a sub pump, a sump pump. And it's usually it's because of what it does to the drainage in the city. It just adds to the drainage problem with our storm sewer which was never developed to add for sump pumps on properties. Similarly, we have not developed a sewer system to add for pressurized uh sewage.

So the point was if after the fact you came in and the only thing you could do to make an a an accessory dwelling unit or to make an apartment or something was to add a of the lesser not a full pressurized lifting device but maybe a screw pump or a grinder pump, then that's on you because it's technically against our ordinance. Just like if you your sump pump causes a liability in the city, it's on you because they're technically illegal in the city. So again, we approached it that way, but we just had a developer come in and say, "The way I read it, we should be able to design for these in advance because everybody's going to want one. So, let me put in the sewer lines for pressurized sewer." Pressurized sewer is a horrible thing. you should know that it has been outlawed at the level of the sewer plant. So, anything that uh connects to them cannot be pressurized. It has to go through a gravity elevation. And our ordinance actually said we won't accept it in our mains or our laterals. You would have to have it pre-esigned to where it would then gravity flow to us because we don't want pressurized. But my point is that we're trying to tighten up this ordinance so nobody comes in and says, "Oh, your ordinance clearly says that people will do this eventually, so I'm going to design it necessary." We do not want to design necessary for pressurized or you will end up uh my favorite term is if you have pressurized poo, you could have a poo geyser because the pressure keeps going and as long as there's something there to shoot, it will continue to shoot. The real issue is with pressurized more than anything is there's a huge liability. Those cities around us who have let someone talk them

into lifting devices have all gone through situations where a neighbor is now complaining that the neighbor because of a force situation created a blockage that forced their sewer to back up. And now you can and this can go down the street in West Point. The mayor of West Point told me he lives on a street where if somebody has a backup, they start running down and knocking doors. Nobody flushed. Nobody flushed. Nobody flushed because anybody who flushed would back up until they get the city crew out to fix this. Now, they've put in an $8 million lift station to probably take care of this. But I don't want to have to put that in to take care of this in our city. That's a city expense that never was there. So I my my work with Colin on this was let's make it absolutely clear that we do not do pressurized poop period in any form and if you do it it is completely on you because you're liable because it's not legal in our city. There's my soap box for the night. If there was anything more preachy than that, I don't think so.

Agree. Have you read this? Yeah. And you like it? Yeah. There were a couple comments I had, but they were pretty minor. Yeah. Robert called me and he said, number one, where I said you had to get it permitted. That was so that we, the city, would know where the individual inside residential poop stations are.

And I said, you have to get a permit from the city. Robert had a very good idea, which is we should say you have to get a building permit. It's not a permit to authorize it. It's not that the public works department is going to say, "Oh yeah, your plans work. We just want to get a building permit so that we know which house it's in. When things go badly, we know where to look." Uh, the other thing that Robert talked to me about is there's currently language that says you can't do this unless the facility is owned, operated, and maintained through a public special service district, which would be extremely uh expensive and likely never to happen. Apparently, my predecessor Paul put that language in so that someone couldn't say, "Well, you're not allowing it at all." Yes, we're allowing it, but you have to do it through this very expensive, very awkward way, etc. I'm not a big fan of leaving that language in, so I ought to take it out. Um, but there was a reason for it.

Yeah, it was hardship that they claimed hardship. Yeah. No unlesses. Yeah.

Nevertheless, unless I've just I mean, again, all the research, every time we bring in the research and we show I've even showed pictures at some point so that people would understand. I I do know how things get processed out here. I I've been working with the sewer district for quite some time. This is bad for us. We do not want it. We do not want the liability of having us rubber stamp something that affects your neighbor because if it backs up on your property, it can back up your neighbors that were down the line. And if it's not caught soon enough, it keeps going to the next house. And these are hundreds of thousands of dollars of repairs each for each incident.

So this is disallowing it even on a individual single family home. It does provide limited exceptions for single family, not single family, but individual homes. Yeah. Very limited circumstances such as uh the one that they dealt with before was what if you put an ADU in your basement? Now you've got an alternative dwelling unit in your basement that didn't have a bathroom before. How do those people go to the bathroom? So they were allowing in limited circumstances there. We kept that the backyard perhaps build a whole separate building. Yeah. Build a whole separate building below the where it's below the the gravity flow. Get that sewer out. It's made a little too hard to

So if you do it that way though, you have to come get a building permit so that it's inspected so that it's we know that it was done right. If you do it otherwise and it causes a problem to your neighbor and it's against our code, we have no liability because we outlawed it. It doesn't mean people aren't still going to do it. People still put in sub pumps all the time. It's a solution when the water table doesn't work for them, but we don't allow it by design. And that is key. If we allow this by design, then every weird shaped odd lot that has no sewer fall will end up doing this. And collectively each one adds adds pressure and more potential problems. Each one they add up. I think one challenge to think of if it's if we allow for new development and subdivisions just start doing that. Uh people move in may not realize or understand how to maintain them. Maybe don't even know that they have them. they start failing after, you know, their lifespans over 15, 20, I don't know, however long. Uh, you're gonna get a whole bunch of residents that show up here because they're talking to each other and blaming the city that just approved this and now they have flooded basement and we want damages paid and it's their health, safety, welfare that the city should be concerned about. I I think this is probably trying to limit that potential

uh and the city being forced to kind of get involved in uh solving a problem that developer came and just put on us and deal with

I'll give you another example because this is existing today. We approved the shoreline development as an RPC and they didn't want to deal with the wetlands. So they've left a lot of wetlands as part of their design. One of the places they've left wetlands has created some flooding for some of the residents that built in that res. They have contacted me a couple of times. They want to lay blame on the city for having approved a development where the developer failed to deal with the drainage.

And we did approve that. So is it really our fault? I don't think that it is at all because it could have been dealt with better. But again, they will look to blame the people who approved it even though we knew better. So I'm saying we know better. Let's not do this. Let's not create a situation because one of the things Robert mentioned is they won't know how to deal with this. And that is true. These fail on an average after 15 years. If they're not aware of it, they won't replace it. They won't maintain it. And then they will have a backup and they will and if they cause their neighbors to back up, their neighbors going to be mad because the city allowed a system that let them fail, too. Two things I'll add. I asked Robert how many of these we have in the city now. We don't know exactly, but your best guess was three or four.

Yeah. And we'd like to keep it at that level. Um, I forgot the other thing. Oh, the other thing I read and I studied this for two weeks. Regular routine maintenance is required. It's just like if you have a a septic tank, you got to get that thing cleaned every third year and put the stuff, you know, the chemicals in it on a routine basis and so forth. If you don't maintain these systems, they will break down. How do you know about the three or four?

Um, one was an accessory dwelling unit, the back yard, and it was just far away from the street. Um and so they couldn't gravity flow up. Another one was uh it was limited because the sewer line in the street and the storm drain line u prevented them from the storm drain line was in the way. Both lines were shallow. They couldn't really get it u to flow there. And it was just a one home house builder on an existing parcel, not in a subdivision big parcel. Another one, I'm not 100% sure, but I don't know how else they would set sewer. The house is set really, really far back from the road, probably 200 feet, and the sewer in the road is too shallow to gravity flow it. So, they would have to have done that. But these are just individual. They're not even in subdivisions. So,

one was confessed to at city council. Somebody said, "Well, I actually we have one, but I never got a building permit and nobody knows." No, they do. We do. In those cases, you know, they were kind of custom home built. They know where they built uh and and it's part of the building permit for the home. So that's how

So in one of those situations where somebody's far back on the lot and the fall isn't there or the fall is too shallow because how far back do they just go to like a septic tank and then gravity flow it from there or well they usually pressure they usually lift it to a point where it can gravity flow which sometimes means uh even at exterior even above ground lift which is again horrible because there kind An example, a figure example in the packet on this is what Jo West was trying to oh is some similar to that where everything upstairs could gravity flow and then it just be the basement that yes, they would have some sort of a collection tank that with a float in it and then it would just once the float gets up high

once it gets high enough it turn would just pump it up into their gravity line and then it still grab the stream. That's that's no we don't let them shoot pressurized sewer directly into our system. The object one of these systems is to get it above the gra the gravity line and then let it fall down into our line and then flow out. That's fine. We just don't allow them to shoot straight in. There are systems where they actually pressurize and shoot out to us and that is the worst. That is the by far the worst system. Pressurized poo is no go. What a load up.

I'm okay not allowing. Yeah, I I don't have a problem with it. I I I default to the department head that's the expert in all things waste management.

Okay. So, we're going to update this in the next meeting because this is a no-go. Um item G, discussion, consideration of surplus of two parcels of real property located at 508 and 2700 and 546 and 2525 south. These are properties we purchased for road widening. Uh we didn't need the whole property. We needed just a bit of the yard. We would now like to surplus these and put them out for sale and return them now that the work is done and we have they would now have non-compliant sideyards is the but they that's possible. They just couldn't have built under these circumstances.

Yeah. Add anything you'd like. There were really just the questions at the bottom that I think we should discuss and see how how would you like to handle this? Um, so far we have uh um we're getting an appraisal done on both properties. So that appraisal uh should be coming to us I imagine later this week. Uh we do have a request for proposal out to secure a realtor. Um so and that contract would have to come to council, right, for approval. Yeah.

Anyway, so you'd see that. So even if you decide you don't want to do it, you can tell us it during business meeting. If you want to change your mind, that's okay. We just figured that there's a there's a two week required timeline for requests for proposals. So, we figured we'd do that. That's due tomorrow. Then we'll see what we get. Um, and this is a good time to get them on the market. So, we should just move them somewhere to get

and we decided to get the appraisal uh done as close to when we're ready to surplus it, which is which my opinion would be close to the end of construction. So, end of construction is looking like I know I put like June 30th, but it's looking maybe like it'd be closer to the end of May. So, I think we're real good on timing. Um I Yeah. So, um one of the properties, the next door neighbor property owners already expressed interest in uh purchasing that small house uh 508. So um but regardless that does I mean we can we can still follow u the same procedure we would with uh selling any surplus property. So, so I'd just like to know, give me your input on maybe some of the answers on these questions is um let's see. So, when an offer, if we go forward with the realtor, we put it on the market and we get an offer, how would the council like for us to proceed with that? How do you want to to staff to facilitate that?

Yeah. So, by by policy, we have the council for something this big has to authorize it to be surplus property, which we can do in the next meeting. So, we can do at our next meeting where you say, "Yes, we're going to authorize this property to be surplus officially." We can put parameters on how that surplus. We could say within a certain percentage of the estimated price or you can say that that staff would be free to act.

Yeah, we can we can go like sort of like a bid like entertain offers up to a certain date and then highest bidder gets it or if first come first cur first come first serve with the highest best offer um you know if they if they want to pay asking price then you know we can just go ahead and do it. So there's a couple ways like that. But regardless of what we do before anything is done, we we will do it in a business meeting first because uh for a real estate purchase contract that would have to come here. Yeah, you'll have authorize the mayor to sign that.

So I would almost think we'd want to just so we don't slow down the transaction is just come up with a I would say almost an open bid date. say highest offer up within whatever percentage of appraised value. I mean, by doing that, you're telling the world that you're willing to accept up to certain amounts. I, you know, you may end up way over, you may not. I guess you wouldn't have to do that. You could just say open bid and then we could we could set a minimum. We can set a minimum. I think we should that's probably the highest offer and then a deadline

and there's a chance that nobody makes that high of a bid and then we can reconsider. But but I think that we should we should like set the minimum like within 10% of the appraised value or even 5% of the appraised value. I don't think there's any reason to say that we're going to take something at 50% appraised value. Yeah, I like that. What do you think? So, if you've got guidance, we could set this up for approval on the next meeting. If you've got ideas of what you think we should do, I mean, we're expecting based on what we paid for them. These are what we paid what, five? You want me to tell you the amounts right now?

Yeah. The amounts we paid. Yeah. Um, in 2019, we bought the 508 house for 271,000. And in 2022, we bought the 546 house for 675,000. So we expect that they're close to that because of inflation. They might be over that, but because of the less the impacted yard, it may be about the same. So, it's important to know we're not in it to make money, but if it turns out that, you know, we're always in it to make money. Fine, but we're not We didn't buy these for any other reason.

Not to make money. The purpose of it was to purchase the strip of property we needed to to improve the road widening. We're not speculators, right? That's what we're saying. And any money that comes back would go back into the road impact fee fund because that's where it was purchased. Well, we need to hold a public hearing for that, right? Yeah. But so yeah, for sure that Cassie knows that. Public hearing will be recorded. Public hearing for that. I think we got plenty of road impact be needs. Yes. Yeah. So, uh, yeah, we're in it to make money. I'll tell the whole world from the rooftop.

Okay. So, uh my suggestion would be that we probably put it on a bid with a minimum uh I I'd like to say at least five minimum bid within 5% of the appraised value. Whatever that comes back at. I would be fine with that. Yep. Although that kind of tells the same thing as an undisclosed minimum, but somebody could come if they want it, they could come back at the appraised value and we at least get that. I mean, get the highest bidder. Yeah. I mean, that's the minimum amount. Yeah, that's the middle. If they really want it, they probably if they Yeah. If they really want the property, they better bid over.

That's what I That's what I'm saying. Can we have an an internal minimum but an not disclosed publicly or do you think it makes sense to disclose it publicly? I think it makes sense to disclose publicly if it's close to the appraised value because because otherwise we're going to get otherwise we're going to get a bunch of lowball bids. Yeah, you'll get more bids if you don't have a minimum. But they doesn't mean doesn't guarantee we even have a realistic bid. Yeah. Stinky fish wants to buy it for $1.

Yeah, that's not saying we don't have a minimum. I think it's not non publicly disclosed, but yeah, I I would be fine with the with within 5% of the face value. Oh, you can't bid. You know that, right? Well, but the point I mean I do think that if you put that out there, you let people know that we expect that it's going to come in at appraised value or higher. Yeah. that we're not messing around with who can bid really low. Everyone with that? Yeah, this is outside my scope. That's good. I agree with all of that. Okay. To default to

then we will move forward with that direction. We'll have to vote on it in the next meeting and hold a public hearing. If you have thoughts between now and then, you know, we'll discuss it again. Well, how long do you want the bid to open? That'd be a good question. 10 days, two weeks. I think you need you need like 30 or something. I think you need more than 30. 20. I'd say at least I'd say 30 days. Okay. Yeah. Some people have to get their financing in order. Realtor's going to want to take pictures and put it on the internet. That's going to take 10 days right there.

All right. 30 days has been proposed. We'll set it final in the next meeting if anybody wants to change that. All right. The next item is to discuss consideration of proposed mutual aid agreement for IT service support in the event of a cyber security attack. We have kept Corey waited for a long time tonight and we weren't even to share because he wanted and we were not even that entertaining tonight. Poop was Yeah.

pooper pooper. So the issue here is in the event of like a ransomware attack or some kind of cyber threat, it takes more people to help. It takes more hands to get through something like that. We'd like to set up a mutual aid agreement between neighboring cities help us get through something like that. actually throughout the state uh different sizes of entities that have put have joined this agreement offers 40 free hours of help when the first occurs that's a that's also along with our a managed service provider would be helping but it's just kind of a safety net for us something happens

these things can be big they can be we hope they never happen to us but they can be

my goal is to never happen a great idea Okay. All right. I seeing mutual approval, we will put that on the consent agenda. The next item is discuss draft amendments to the recruitment and retention policy. And I am going to turn this over to Brody, who is the primary authority on this. Okay. So, um, couple things. We're going to break this off into more bite-sized discussions. We don't have to get to the final edit tonight. So the idea here is we're gonna we're going to take this in chunks so it's easily digested. Um and kind of back up again, why do we even have this policy? We're trying to attract and retain good competitive employees uh you know competent employee. We just had a discussion about you know whether the planning commission is too young or you know needs more training. it becomes you start having these issues and now now multiply that by the hundreds of interactions we have every day with the staff and the residents. You want to have people who are competent and and well trained. So that's one reason we want to we want to make sure that the employees understand what the deal is when they sign on to work here. Um we want to be able to reward performance, not just tenure. and um make sure so a lot of that is competitive pay. Um and so it's a balance, right? We're trying to we're trying to do this in a way that's also affordable. So that's the balance we're trying to get with this policy. So today, what we want to focus on really is the beginning of how we benchmark compensation and that is how do we determine what to pay a certain position, right? How do what what do you pay a police officer? Well, it kind of

depends on the market on what police officers are getting paid, right? So, um, one thing I noticed today in the packet, I don't think the red lines actually came through in the PDF. So, I don't know if your copy shows any red lines. Um, so what what I think I'm going to do here is I'll pull it up on the screen in case you want to reference it. Um, so we can get that I didn't see red lines and I thought you just gave up.

Yeah. No, they they were there in the PDF and I think just the conversion to the to the packet just didn't didn't do it. So, okay. Uh let's do this screen. Okay. All right. So what the proposal is um this first issue is we normally compare to seven cities when we do uh and our current policy is we take the average of the top three and that's where we set our our pay scales for each position. Um, about 80% of the time that works, about 80 to 90, 10 to 20% of the time we run into a position that maybe only two of these cities have that same position. So, when you're trying to get the average of the top three and there's only one or two cities that have it, how do you calculate that? So, one of the thoughts uh we had was if if there's not enough to get an average, then you would you would add these additional six into the mix and see if you can get an average out of that. And the the the reason we would do that in waves instead of just include things up front

is because it takes time for for the staff for the HR staff to to go get the information verify it and that sort of thing. So we don't want to go get it if we don't need it. So because remember we only actually use the the top three. Now I have a question on this and that is that we provided for them to find to bring in comparables where there weren't enough. That was already in the policy. So So yeah, we we could but there were there were parameters whereby we would uh accept a city and parameters were based on like population.

I think it was as hard though. was kind of loose as it was. Yeah. And it and it what it did is it generated I think three or four cities that actually that actually were the only ones that would actually qualify. And um those cities were Bountiful, West Haven, um City. Plain City was one. These are the additional cities. Yeah. Yeah. in in the current

if we didn't have three in the other group and and that's where I get a little bit leerary about adding too many because I can see where some of these work but then I can't see where like one of the purposes of the original policy was do they act do we actually compete with that city would somebody just as soon go there as go here it's just as close it's just as it's it's comparable in all the things I don't think somebody drives to plane city or North Ogden to change jobs because I mean yeah it's it's it's really at the edge of what we allow for a commute. We we tell them officers need to be within 30 minutes of the city in case of emergency and that's more than 30 minutes away.

Okay, I may be jumping too far ahead. Okay. But one of the one of the challenges that we're facing with our current policy is our costs are far outpacing our revenue. Great. Yeah.

And so while I agree that we've got to have some method benchmarking of comparison entities, great uh to establish ranges are and I realize these are geographically close to us and we may compete with them for in the labor market, but are we really comparable to Leighton? Well, the reason that we are

the reason that we are is uh are we comparable to Leighton? Not in size, not in budget. But do people leave here go to Leighton and it's just the same for them for a job? Yeah. And that's kind of why we added them to the list is that if you were a firefighter, police officer, recreation worker, or public works worker, and you said, "Hey, you know what? I could get paid $5 more to go to Leighton." You don't really have to change your commute much.

You don't have to. It doesn't, you know, you'll have to think through, you know, I mean, if you go to Clearfield, there's a lot bigger or a lot higher crime rate than they have here or a lot more, but and and I I get that, but it seems like we're going down the kind of the same we're doing the same thing and expecting a different result. Well, I think the point is that 80% of the time the these cities we compare to do the job. We're talking about the few times that it doesn't. Okay.

Yeah. And I I'd say, you know, there's there's a number of times where, you know, Leighton's not even in the top three. Um and so it really didn't matter any but um but but but you're right and and you are to a certain extent you're skipping ahead but but not totally. This is the first step. The second step is well then how do we compare like where do we set the wage? Yeah. Right. Yeah. This is who how who is the market? Okay.

Right. This is this is the first step. What is the market for these employees? So, so I guess the be I guess I am getting ahead because the the the point that we'll have to probably narrow is okay if we're going to use these comparison entities then we have to decide how much we can how much we can afford to compete.

Yeah, that is the next step. But for me, I have a hard time when we go outside of North Weaver County or into Salt Lake County because, you know, Salt Lake County is a whole different animal. When we get more than 30 minutes away, I would think twice before I took that job and and and added a half hour to my commute. I I mean, but that's just me. Maybe other people think, hey, you know, an hour commute's standard, so anywhere within an hour works. Yeah. And and so so there's that first step. Yeah. And then getting to that point, there was there was the second step. If you add these six additional and you still don't have three, you take an average.

And this is very few positions, but there's there's a couple that where this then there's this list where we just go down the list until we get three. And th this was a list that was generated by uh putting into an AI saying what cities on the Wasash front are the closest in you know factoring geography demographics to Syracuse. Okay. And um you know one example I I'll mention that might fall into this this paragraph is um the museum curator. Not every city has one, right? Um, not everybody has. So, so it's one of those

every city has a museum. Yeah. It's one of those positions where you could decide what do these for a city. What do these what do these get paid? We go further and further out to find one. So that so that's that's the philosophy here. I so I want to get your feedback on that on this on this first section on how to establish the comparables. Basically,

I like more of a loose system that says that we can look where we need to for those few positions because I really want what I don't want to do and I said this the last time we went through this. I don't want us to be cherry-picking something in the second group because we think that it's a little bit more like something, but then we drive the wage out of reality for us because I'm sorry, but Draper can afford a whole lot more than we can afford. They have a really different and they're in the third group, you know, they're not like in the first group, but

I just I don't and and like we used to have on the list Saratoga Springs and Haramman and 20 years ago they were a lot like us, but today they're not. They are booming with industry and pee population and, you know, resources we just don't have. So, I can't see us compared to them at all. But how is that any different? And I I realize there's a geographic closeness to the other ones, but there's a lot of cities on our first list that we don't really compare with either other than we're going to directly compete for the labor. We compare with is West Point and Hooper. That's who we compare with.

Actually, no. We are bigger than Clearfield, but Clearfield is got some things that we don't. We are bigger than everybody. I mean, what we really looked at that list was who could we logically see losing employees to because they didn't have to suddenly commute more than they already commute. They don't have to go to a city that is completely in a different county. They don't have to, you know, it's not a relocation.

It's not a relocation. It's not a It's not a totally culture change, though it might be in some of those. I mean, Leighton and Clearfield Pill are culture change in a lot of cases. Although, we wouldn't lose any police officers or firefighters to Hur or West Point. They don't have them. If they don't have them, right? Must be nice. That's That's tragic. Anyway, it is it is tough. I mean, it it's tough. I know that everybody wants to say, "Well, my job's really different." But it's got to be kind of close to something because we define what these roles are.

If if it's that unique that it doesn't compare to anything else anywhere, then we have either a unicorn or we're really not comparing the job, right? Yeah. And I mean really every city is unique in some way.

Yeah. So you kind of have to just approximate the best you can just like any business is unique in some way from the other. But um so that's that's the philosophy on here is this first step was okay let's establish our comparables and this second and third wave is only because like I said about between 10 15% of the time there's there's positions that just we don't get enough comparables. So that's that's all that that's trying to fix. If we can go if we go to a more broad uh perspective, I think I think we could entertain that and adjust from the current language. The problem with the current language though it's written broadly, it turns out there's only like three cities that qualify. Yeah.

So, it it became narrow and that was the issue.

It's to me it's hard when you we have to put Leighton in the mix in my mind because they're so close that somebody could from their house drive to Leighton and it's no no New Burn. Yeah. So that is a competitor whether we like it or not. Though financially they have resources we don't but they don't always spend them in the same places that we do. But when you go to like Bountiful they've got all the resources and that is a commute. That's a serious commute. You have to get on the freeway and go down there. So you know to me I don't think that's as comparable. But I do understand that city-wise they're probably close to us as far as number of people, number of services they provide, but they do have a whole lot more retail than we have because of the freeway. So they're not like us in resources financially. Yeah. Do we are there are there entities on this list if if we're okay with this general approach? Are there entities on this list we we just need to take off because of because of those reasons? Is there any feedback on that? But the we don't actually compete we don't think we compete with the labor for labor. Well, like I said, I don't think we compete when we drive more than 30 minutes because I think that that's to a point where But if if secondarily we have to pull them onto the list, we pull them onto I I don't think we're going to compete with a lot of these on the very last list like Draper and Highland. And

no, I don't think we ever if you're needing additional data then Yeah. And like I said, I mean there there might be I don't know two or three positions in the whole city where we we would have to pull that last I I would really like to take the third part off. I agree. May I can I go? Yeah.

One thing to keep in mind too as we build out this policy when we talked at the budget retreat about different levels of budget crisis, right? We talked about if we go to average the top four, average the top five under certain conditions, I think you need to have enough in the pool that we can go down that list if they get if that's where the council wants to go. Just to keep that in mind. Yeah. If you have two or three on the list and you do average of the top five, the number is the same as average of the top three because you're take you're taking the average of whatever. Yeah, we still don't have any new ones. Yeah,

I think that it's just so few positions when you get down to the I don't know. I I Yeah, when you get down to the rich cities down to the Drapers and the Highlands and just Bluff, I just don't think that there's very many positions. If we're at that point, we need to start comparing it to a little more broad scope of the comparison. In my mind, instead of reaching out even further to where we don't compete, I think we broaden what we accept as a comparison like another position.

Like another position. Maybe it's not in the same department. Like maybe you're trying to find an admin for fire which is very specific. Maybe it's more what are the admins in general compared to that you know yes they have to have certain specialized but maybe an admin for police is more comparable to an admin for fire than say what an admin for fire makes in Draper. Yeah. And we do we do that now. But the the uh um I'm trying to think if uh other examples other than like the curator one where it would go facilities maintenance. Not every city has facilities maintenance.

Yeah, that might that might get into that third level to get five. They might have three or four, but um I mean we can limit it by by geography. If if we want to just stay out of like Salt Lake County, again, that that limits us. Yeah. But

well, again, I would say maybe we need to just brainstorming here. I think maybe we ought to think more ways to to deal with comparables than start adding in things that we don't think are really comparable because I don't think anybody in Salt Lake County has the same kind of job market that we have here. It's just you it's just not the same. Okay. Yeah, that's fine. Yeah, because like I said, that's those are like the exceptions. It's not like, you know, we're looking at money that's going to be like, you know, the 1% versus the 99. But,

you know, and museum curators very unique. But, you know, you bring up facilities maintenance and I think, well, while it may be unique to cities, similar positions do exist in maybe counties or school districts or,

you know, because of that. So, we expand to that kind of thing is similar jobs. that are maybe not with a city but they are the similar job. That makes more sense to me than trying to go further away. I would agree. Um the the ease of access of data um in administering this policy is is is uh one of the concerns. Some of them are in technet even I think our our school districts are you aware. Um but the counties are Yeah.

Right. Uh some some of the counties on the Wasach front anyway. And then um so it's we want to try to get access to data that we can actually get easily. So that is hard. Yeah.

But but I like that. I I think we can we can look for that a different way to compare other than reach out further. Yeah. Geographically. I mean, for simple admin positions, I'd look on Indeed and and LinkedIn and see what similar jobs because they're the job is not that different. Working for the city may be different, but a standard admin duties are the same as you find on and that's why even in special districts and stuff, when we put a position like that out, we still get 50 60 applicants because the job skills cross over. They don't have to be in a city. You're not going to find private sector ambulance drivers very often. I mean, it does exist, but you know, we are looking at cities and special districts for that.

Okay. Yeah, that's good. Any other input on that? I think I I can move forward with any with that. Okay. I like that idea.

Yep. Um the next the next point was um instead of doing each department every two years when we go to look at benchmarking financially it's it's essentially the same because if we went to every year it's going to be less of a jump for each position, right? instead of waiting every two years because now you got two years of typically you have escalation of you know wages and inflation and things like that. So if we go instead of every two years we go to every year um it's the whole city. The other the other issue with with going every two years is our financial situation might be different one year than the other and we end up treating half the employees differently than the other half. Yes, we we understand the realities of having to do that. But the but they look at it they start to divide themselves amongst the halves and have nots and those those kinds of things that they got better treatment than we did and that's a bunch of crap, you know. So, um, just looking at it from everybody's perspective, I think both financially and as far as like the perspective of the employees, just doing the benchmark every year is

I thought part of the reason was it was too much of a creative burden. Are you guys going to It was so they've gotten um the system to where we can pull it a lot easier now. So, we've we've been able to get some efficiencies in doing the the benchmarking. Um, and I think since since this was first and initially uh implemented, we've we've added an HR person. We have several years ago we added an HR person and that's that's made it so I think it makes sense to do it annually if it doesn't overburden

and it is in the last two years there's been not only more available but more ability to search um AI is generating more information accurate or not I mean we we don't know for certain but there are more ways to to find data because some of the stuff that's in obscure places is now exposable.

Um so that for tonight I think that was all we wanted to cover on the policy. The next steps is to you know determine how we compete in those markets. This was just to set whatever the market is. Okay. Thank you. We will move on. Next uh we're going to discuss some of our budget issues that are still unresolved. And so, um, I'm going to bring Steve up. First item under our budget discussion is operational expense items to follow up on. Uh, I'm going to go through these one at a time, hopefully fairly quickly, so we can have a discussion on each of them and basically just get a head nod up or down whether you want to include this in the budget. So to start out as a baseline with all the incorporated changes from our budget retreat, our our general fund deficit is around $316,000 before we talk about any of these items. Um which is about half of what we are this year. So we're making progress on closing that gap.

Sorry, Steve. The 36 or 17,000 gap is not including these or yes is including these. It's a mixed bag. I should clarify that. So number one is not included. Okay. Turn this on the screen for those who are not sure. Since we're doing a recording, you're going to have a lot of people that watch these and have no idea what we're talking I'll I'll share it. Second here. Sorry. Just for I'm I was just about I was just about to leave the the the meeting too. So, that's

I was about to I'm sure I'll get phone calls. Where is this data? Okay. So, number one was one of the items on our retreat that only got two votes. It was on the fence, so it's not included in the budget. Um, there are some some um advantages to funding a crossing guard coordinator. It does free up time for our current police officers that manages all the the the crossing guards. And we are continuing to bring on more and more with the new DSD elementary school coming online this fall. We'll have I believe three or four I think it's four four addition four additional four additional for the Stillwater Otter. So

still water otter. Yeah, they're the Still Water otter. It's a mouthful. So at a low low cost of $8,500 I you know I would encourage this one. I I don't want to get too bold in what I push for, but this one frees up officer time. Th this is like putting a police officer back on the street for quite a few hours. I I really think this is worth it because if we had to hire another police officer, that'd be a lot more money than hiring a crossing guard coordinator to put that officer back. Okay. So that that 8500 is an addition to that.

That would add to the Okay. I don't have any. Can I get head knots? Do I have three for this one? Consider that. All right. This is just for the otter water otter for Well, because that's where we'll have four new crossings. So it'll be four new crossings. Coordinator. Yeah. So yeah, this is the coordinator, but he has we've already considered the new crossing. Yes, they're already because we have no Go ahead. 35 crossing. Okay. Yeah, we have 35 total crossings. A coordinator is in order that helps make sure people are there and and scheduling.

Who who would this fall under? Would this be supervised by the police department? I believe so. Yeah, Julie, it's for the coordinator Gator. That's good. So, I got yes on that one. Number two, um, is not included in the budget. This one did not pass with the revolt. So, there is some caveats to that. We do have an agreement signed agreement with you DOT saying we will manage and maintain the parking lots. So, this is also in addition to the So, this would be an addition. This increases the deficit. The question is it's class C funds or general fund. And that is another question. Um, I don't know if we've got clarification. I know we've been transit assets.

I have been asking around and most people are assuming that class C funds can be used for this. What's a class C fund? Class C is road funds. So, they're they are tied to gas tax money. So, it doesn't it can only be used on roads. And the question was and I tried to get the legislature to do this. It's not clear whether park and reds are considered roads. They're kind of not, but they're a part of roads. What I got back was, I'm not going to push this through as a bill because we think they are. So, the legislaturator's opinion was this is in. But Colin and I agree it's not clear. It is not clear.

Great. That means it's good to go. But the legislature has not black has suggested that this is pro. They think that it's already covered. The state statute says the department of transportation shall decide what you can use class C road funds for. So they push it off to the department to UD do you do adopted a rule and here's the answer to your question. Can you use them? Local highway authorities which would be us may spend class C road funds to design, construct or maintain eligible class C roads and related facilities. is a park and ride an and related to that building. Arguably, it is.

And then further in the same rule, there's a specific list of what you can use it for. And of course, parking rides are not on that list because no one's ever asked. So, the answer is maybe. So, the we need a good attorney can argue yes to that. You could argue yes to that. Perfect. So, so the pain decision that we have to deal with is this impact if you put it in general fund, it impacts our general fund operations and ability to fund that. If you take that if you if we spend the money out of class C fund, then it takes money out of our like road paving program. So, but

but maintenance in a lot of ways is road paving because we're I mean I understand that the weed control and stuff is not but patching and repairing concrete, you know, that that definitely is. So, but is it still a question whether or not we can use a fee to collect road funds? Uh I would say you can. Yes, we can. So we could make this. That's not a question anymore. So I know it was at one point. Yeah, it's been authorized now by statute. You can do it. Transportation utility fee. There's a lot of hoops and criteria and so forth, but yes, you can do it

and we've already done the study. We're we're we're poised if the council ever wanted to do it. We're we've already taken the step. What about what about permitting people that use park and ride overnight to store commercial trucks and RVs and parking excess vehicles overnight? Yeah, that's coming. We we haven't really delved into a lot of uh specific regulations that we want to see. Right now, we're just operating under like general state law and and city ordinance on behavior. When we take possession, we can limit it. We could put up a sign and says, "No, overnight parking."

We we have pretty broad discretion on what rules we want. We just got to discuss those. Get if we if we charge if we charge somebody that's parking a commercial truck there overnight, right? You have these guys that are owner operators and have their trailers and they're parking there. You see it all the time. If they're paying us for that parking spot, could that money also be used and allocated to the road fund to help recover the loss for our public works roads that we would use to cover this? Perfect. We just need to sell one $25,000. What's an annual pass?

Okay, next item. So, what I'm hearing is yes, class C fund. Yes. There's three part there's two parts to this, too. I I did a breakout. So, 19,000 of that is for the the maintenance of the parking rides. 6,000 of that is for the station 33 land that we just purchased. We'll have to maintain for a long term until we ever develop. And that's clearing the sidewalk. No. And we can split.

That's how much? 6,000. 000 that would be added to the deficit. Yeah. Or or when the neighbors complain, we just say, "No, not going to mow. We're not going to mow it." We can just tell everybody that you do still own the For the record, the neighbors have already complained. Yeah. And we mowed them. We We went down and cut it.

I saw it today. It is mowed. death freshly mode. Yeah, we're going to have some issues with what we do with that. And I think that we probably need to consider long term another way to the sidewalk's one thing, but when we take that house down, we might want to consider a fence and letting somebody rent it because I'd rather have a cow mow that than send an employee down to mow that or or let a farmer handle it and lease it out. This is just on the north side north side station 33.

There is no station 33 yet. So this is the site for station for the loan tree. Oh. Oh, okay. Right there off the 2000. Yeah. Bought the land because it was available. Right. So it wasn't being mowed because it's a vacant house. Because it's a vacant house, right? Yeah. It's about two and a half acres. And so 2 and a half acres, you know, maybe we give a lease to somebody to use that would take care of it. We may not even have to put up the fence. Maybe the person taking care of it would. I don't know. I'm just brainstorming because How's that look? That takes Oh, yeah. We've done it before. Okay.

Yeah. We've we've had other properties that we can't m we can't develop at the moment. So we put it out to bid and the highest bid gets to lease it. Yeah. Those properties there was no water to the property and we don't have water. We could run a hose so they can't grow anything on it. That's not how we get water and tap in. The house doesn't have water. No idea. colony solution. That's what I have. This is the land. There's no secondary water because it was a

it was part of a 13 acre 20 acre. So, it was just flood irrigation. It wasn't pressurized irrigation. But they ship on the lot of 33. Yeah. So, anyway, yes, we can work through that, but we're talking about $6,000 in a, you know, 20 nine million million dollar budget. So maybe we can focus our time in this meeting on other things dropping bucket matters. Man, we can come back to it. So I agree. Video shift. I'll put that as pending discussion. Okay.

Number three is included in the budget. So with our tier 2 hybrid public safety employees, it's one of our retirement programs. um if it gets over a certain percent the employee is required to contribute into their own retirement fund. And in in 3e you can see the public employee portion is 1.3%. By law the city cannot pick up the public employee per percent. But they have allowed the cities to pick up the public safety portion. Over the last what five or six years this has increased. This is the third round where they've added to this. So in the two previous times the city has picked up the total the 4.73% for public safety. This newest increase of 1.25% the city either needs to pick up or can elect not to. But then the public safety employee would have to pick that up and contribute to their own retirement for that portion. So in the budget it has been included because we did it two previous times. Um it doesn't mandate that we do it every time. So I'm just bringing this to the council in full disclosure so they know.

And and this is unique to public safety. Yes. Well, it across the tier 2 hybrid retirement funds. It hits all employees, but the city can only pick up for public safety. It cannot for city can't do the for regular employees. So right now your public employees are on this plan are paying the 1.3% into their own retirement or will be. So again this is included in the budget as drafted. So this would be a reduction if you don't authorize it. Well to be clear

going to our retention program. What are the surrounding cities doing? It's a good question. I'm not sure off the top of my head what it's fresh legislation. So I don't know we have an accurate picture of that. I I would just be interested into what our comparables are doing. I mean I'm I love public safety. I'm it's it's an easy thing for me to want to do.

I do know some cities are and I I can get you comparables. I mean, if that if that helps our culture and that helps our retention, I I'm a huge champion of that because we want to keep skilled labor and that that's our most expensive skilled labor and it helps us to even be able to attract laterals and cut ties with people that are liabilities, right? That gives our department heads more flexibility for more attractive. So, does and does this increase every year? It just depends by year what the legislature does. They increased it again for the third time. So this past we picked up the first two.

There there's no guarantee they'll increase next year or it could continue. We don't know. It's just yearbyear that they adopt their rates. So is this a yearby-year decision or would we want to say, "Hey, we'll cap it and pay up to whatever percentage you could." Yeah. I I I would just be interested in what the comparables are and and what that does for our morale and our retention. Well, I'm sure that it won't be good for morale if we don't do it, but well, if nobody but if nobody else is doing it, right? But this year, for sure. Yeah. I mean, it just is an expectation built in. We put it in the budget because we've always ended up doing it, right?

So, that's why I think that it's in the budget right now. I'm not I'm not saying I'm opposed to it. I'm saying I'd like to know. No, I I know. I hear you are. And what I'm saying is is that some of them are just like we are going to decide by June. And that's the problem is that we're all deciding at the same time. We we won't know officially what they did until they vote. And we haven't voted either for the same reason,

right? We can we we can reach out and I I don't know that all the cities know, but there will be some I think that will definitely know that they either are or that they definitely know they aren't. Some of the south county told me they were already doing it. They're not necessarily the cities we compare to. I have been asked by a couple other mayors, are you guys doing this or not? I said, I don't know yet. I do know it's a mixed bag. So, what what are what are our guys expecting? Are the guys and gals at work force expecting this? Is that the feeling in the firehouse? They talk. I'm asking direct the answer.

If I go ahead, I've had uh some firefighters ask me already. Uh it has been as they've said if they've done that in the past are comparables. I guess one way to look at it is look to see who has not done that the past two times. There are departments that have not covered that cost and they are having retention problems. Um I don't want to get into naming the cities but some of our comparables have and over the last couple of times have picked up that portion. So I believe it you know it is a retention issue and I have I have got a couple of firefighters that have asked me about this. They because URS the retirement system sent something out. Oh

they saw that. Yep. And uh so they were concerned and they reached out. I told them I don't know. So I mean this is the first we've gotten that deep into it. Yeah. I'm I'm aware of the same people are asking what Syracuse is going to do as far as this increase to retirement. It's also worth mentioning that these tier 2 public safety employees um have already experienced significant change in their retirement budget since coming on board. So I I think from a retention perspective it's there's certainly a cost with it but let's say this loads there's a cost there.

Yeah. But let's say this at this point this is not going to increase our deficit. So if you were to say let's continue to do this this does not create any additional need. Yeah. Because we did include it. But if you're looking at it as a savings it is an opportunity. I I don't think it's worth it. That that would be my argument to two other councilmen is I I think I think I would support it full on. So I just need a couple of head nods. Who's in? Yes or no? Yeah, I don't think it's So we're in. Let's move on. 2000 to take you for ice cream.

Last one. The operational is the public works concept plan. This kind of got overlooked a little bit in the budget retreat. It it is a 50k ask one time. It would come out of class C road funds where the again this goes back to the facility that supports the roads, right? Public works building. Um they are out of space down there. They are two and three people deep in some offices.

Um as we continue to grow, we now have the extra space to the east um that we've we've acquired. Um and so this is just future planning. This is a concept plan only. It's it's basically to a feasibility study to see what that looked like. It's not committing us to anything further at this point. So, is this in is this in the class C roads um deficit for the five-year plan that it would add to any deficit.

So, the 722 which is the five-year deficit, this would add to that. What is different about using class C funds and utility funds is we can spend them before we collect them. So, it's not so much a deficit because yes, it would still be a deficit of what we need for other projects, but you can spend ahead because you could save a lot of money that way. So, we don't add to our general fund debt. We are just need to recover more. Sorry, I'm just maybe deficit was the wrong word, but we're for funding our five-year plan.

Yes, we're 722,000 short. This would add to that. This would add to that shortage. Okay. Yeah, it'd be a one time. So, it it wouldn't be like an annual but for the but for the fiveyear time period. Yeah. It it did it makes that a bigger number because we're it up. What's our one What's our one year? 144. That's what we're That's what we're short. Yeah. This is over time. So over five years. Yes. 144,000 per year. 722,000.

So where's that 144 coming from right now? These are these are potential projects we have to push off. And keep in mind with our five-year plan, when we do a road project that includes utilities, we can only go down that list until we hit a shortage in one of the utility funds or class C before we have to decide either to not do it the whole project or do that project without that portion of the project included.

This is also an area though that I'm less worried about because there are a lot of grants that deal with transportation. They don't all qualify for every project, but there are a lot of places that we can reach out to to try and supplement this fund. There are no resources I can reach out to at some of the other departments. So, right, general fund, right? But if the 1445 doesn't come from somewhere this year, then next year it's double that. No, next year it's it's just still the 144 that's missing from the five-year projects. one project you push a project into next year, right? But to cover that, you're going to have to pay for both

if you want to complete a fiveyear plan. I mean, that doesn't go away. No, it turns into a It's got to be somewhere. Yeah. I mean, it just rolls into the next year, right? Yeah. Yeah. Just compounds. Starts your Yeah. Because new projects come online in year six, right? So, it Yeah. It over over time a burden the next year, right? Because it's not like those same projects can be done over the six, seven years and those are the only projects we have to worry about. After year five, there's new projects that then come online that are due.

Sorry, where I cannot remember where where are our class C road funds coming from? What what are gas? Two different sources. Gas tax and the quarter cent from the county. And sorry, the what from the county? quarter cent. It's like a little special sales tax supplement county. So over the course of that fiveyear that that those funds we could get more than anticipating or you're saying that's pretty you could Yeah. It's an estimate. It's based on current collections growth. I mean there's there is margin for error. Yes.

Yeah. We could I mean with the growth of the county that it's it's countywide. So everything that grows in the county increases that amount. We don't know how much. We're guessing how much that's going to be based on past experience, but it could jump one year. It could. And and then we could also consider a utility fee to help. That's correct. With class C, transportation fee could also And we've got the we've got the data that we'd need to to comply with the the state law on that. There's also and It allows us to go up to a certain number based on our study. Where' you tell those two houses

up to a certain number on the utility fee increase? Do we know what that Oh, sorry. That's fine. Conceptually, how is a utility fee different than a tax as far as pocketbook of citizens? It's the same thing. It's the same thing. I don't believe it's the same thing as far as property tax because property tax is paid solely by those who own property. and they're being they're being assessed a tax solely because they own property.

I guess the the difference to build on what Paul's saying is everybody who occupies a home pays the utility portion because it's based on occupancy rather than property ownership and and its transportation impact. There are certain entities that are tax exempt uh property tax exempt and um so they don't pay property taxes but they do have to pay utility fees. Yeah. And if you add up these little things that we've added to the class C funds, keep in mind we sell these two houses. That all goes back in there,

right? It's why we sell them for money. You need to make a profit. Well, I'm not selling them for Keep in mind to to to Paul's comment. I mean, our our funding our our revenue each year is around $2.8 million. So, we that there's some estimates. Yeah. So, there's estimates on that coming in. Also, on every road project, we put together budgets and engineering estimates. We go out to bid. Sometimes those are under under project bid cost. Sometimes they're over. I'd say lately we've been fortunate enough to have them under under our estimates. So there is there is play in this fund where I think

you get some hungry biders that you know sometimes a bit less profit margin. the the road utility fee is looking more at also long-term maintenance of the the minor um well I'm trying to say the keeping the road road uh condition up to a certain level instead of letting it go until it's in disrepair where we have to completely repair the roads. Our capital projects in this fund right now really only contemplate the end of life projects and a road utility fee would help prolong the life of roads from maybe 20 to 30 years if it if we do the surface treatment. So it helps it helps push off some of these big costs to a future year. Um, and that's really what the road utility fee

do. Do do we have enough data to at least I would just like to at least consider that and see what that does to our fight if we were to do a utility fee for the for road transportation for transport. Yeah, we have all that data. We've done the study. We can back. Let's bring that to the next work session because we'll still have another work session before we do the budget because for me that that five-year fund, it's so flexible. It's like, okay, if the 50,000 if now's the time to do that, yeah, that concept plan, I don't have a problem with that.

Okay. So, what I'm going to say is we'll leave this one for a last minute discussion, but tenatively we'll put this in and we'll bring back the transportation fee structured and put that on the Maywork session, too. Pull that in. Okay. I'm still not clear on where the 1445 is. Yeah. I mean, I'm fine with the utility potentially. I'm not saying that it shouldn't. I'm just saying if we don't do something, we're kicking it down the road. Well, yeah, that's why I want to evaluate that. No, I I

Yeah. So, we might find another way to make that up. And I want to be more aggressive with third quarter money and tap grants and all of these others. And we could we could potentially find some grant funding for that too. That could make that up easy.

Okay. While we're while we're talking about infrastructure plan, I'm going to skip to the second one while we're still here. So, um, and again, these are all highle projections on revenue, cost of projects on a five-year plan. A lot of variability. What's the cost of a project four years from now compared to the day? We try to do estimates. Um, that being said, our deficit is about $1.8 million per year over all the utilities, including class C. Um, and if you look in your packet on the five-year plan, there were five or six projects we had to push a year that are highlighted in red that we just didn't have funding to do that really should have gone this year that we just don't have funding to do. Yeah, there it's it's in the in the budget documents I I dropped earlier today. Um uh we can pull that up if you'd like. But

what yeah, what I'm trying to show is this this five-year plan there is there is an imbalance there. And I'm not saying that necessarily we need to fix and raise taxes or do whatever to to the dollar. What I'm trying to show is this plan um these these ones in red we had to push a year because they really should have gone in 2027 but it would have made our cash balances negative. And you can see even at the end of 2028 we're going to run into the same problem in three or four of the funds because there's just not enough funding to do. So that's here in the yellow. Yeah. The this would be end of year fiscal fiscal year 2020. Make that bigger for me.

Yeah. So this is why you're proposing the utility fee increases. Yeah. Is to get these flush so that we can finish projects. Typically we evaluate our capital costs for these projects. It's been probably three or four maybe five years since we've raised fees for the capital side of things. Every year we we are adjusting fees for the operational side with cost water increases, garbage hauling increases, things like that. um mostly the pass through costs,

right? So, this is something we evaluate every year and and why I'm showing this is that we're getting to a point where we just need to take a look. Again, a lot of these are estimates, so I'm not going to say go out and raise raise it. So, we're gen we're generating $1.8 million. I think we could um we could wait and see on some of these, but just know that this gap is getting bigger as far as fundability. Cost of projects have gone up. Co really did a number on us as far as cost of projects. Um you know, I think about what five 10 years ago it used to cost about a million dollars a mile to do all the roads and and utilities underneath that. that that cost is now closer to three.

So it's tripled in cost. So I think that's why you're seeing this this differential and this delta in our revenues versus our expenses. And keep in mind that what I've presented before at the retreat, the economists that that brought information said CO effects are still taking inflationary uh toll. And so that's what we're seeing here is, you know, those things that went up because they had to manage differently with the under the circumstances never went back down and materials have now caught up to the manufacturing challenge. So they cost more in addition to the challenge. So we're still kind of paying that price

because our inflation has the increase is not as substantial as it was during co but it's never recovered from that but it's not recovered. So it's increasing now from that new point right and that's that's what I'm trying to bring forward is so when we see that these are off it's not poor planning it's an event that is still impacting this faster than we can address it. We we didn't see the lasting effect. Well, and and I I think and how can you when you've never had a pandemic before?

I think at least in concept when we looked Sorry, I'm on the the fee portion because at least in concept, I thought at the budget retreat, we kind of said, okay, yes, we want to use the utility, you know, utility fees to fund some of these new park employees, emergency dispatch fees, those types of things. Yes, that's correct. This picture is bleak and I want to say something to make me maybe feel a little bit better. In the secondary fund, please do.

There's about a $12 differential per user per month. That's where the biggest differences in in terms of the shortage. If you scroll down to the last year of the five-year plan right here, actually go up. There are about 10. Go up a little bit more. There about 10 road projects that all say secondary. These are all the backyard lots that we talked about that if we wanted to replace all the lines and move them to the front. We were worried at one point in time of we've had to get them done by 2030 to be in compliance with um the metering mandate.

But now that we can do this backyard conversion with the loop, these projects could probably be pushed out a little more. Not all of them. Some of these are they're all older lines, right? there. But I don't know if we need to do them all at once as well. I thought there was some additional grant funding that we talked about last we did, but they won't do water lines. They won't do that. Oh, that has to be done. Yeah, they'll they'll do the metering portion to bring those out, but they won't do the lines that run them. So, we could put meters in the backyards, which is what we're going to do. I think that's what Robert can. We're going to do them in the front yard. We're going to move them to the backyard.

What is the amount that's needed this year, and where is the money coming from? So these 10 projects, if you were to take them off the list for a second and say they're not due within five years, that closes the gap to almost zero on our utility funds, maybe a dollar or two differential. And I don't know what Robert's timeline or if we know the the useful life of these 10 projects. What I'm trying to say is we put them on the list. They are a little bit older lines, but I think they still have some useful life that they might be able to last another 10 years. So, these projects could probably be pushed out further. Yeah, we could push them out further. So, which helps

out the line that's bad. It was the situation that we were until you retire that we were not sure we could address and then there's somebody else problem. So, then we could do a more gradual. All right. I think you could spread these out over the five to 10 year range which really reduces the the differential that you're seeing in the packet. They are smaller, right? These these mains Yeah. They're like 3 in to 6 in things backyard bolts. So So does that affect pressures? Yeah. So our standard minimum is 8 in. So we could put in we want to get them 8 inch man in the street.

Yeah. better pressure, better service. In terms of like the residents water pressure, how many res that might be an issue? There's less than a thousand. There's like 800, five or six of them. Nothing needs to be done this year with Yeah, back to your question, Brett. I don't think we need to raise rates this year. I'm just trying to make you guys aware of a problem that is slowly building um w within this five-year plan. Bumping projects from year to year. We do that all the time. It's not the end of the world. Those projects in red unless Robert tells me wrong could be bumped a year and I think we're okay.

How acc how close do you think those numbers are? Oh, within the penny because I knew there is a one% margin of error. There's a 99% chance that I'm off. These are all projections, right? No, they're projections. Yeah, we didn't we didn't put inflation in there. These would be like today's So, if it's pushed to next year, if we if we roll it to next year, what does next year look like then? Because we got projects for next year, too, right? And now we've got this year's projects. How does that look if you can?

Well, and from year to year, you might have a year where you do more and some less. If you if you go back up to get 2028, there are some red in the projects, there are some negatives. We may have to push some down further. But what I'm saying is if we push some down to year three and cascade that down, those ones we just looked at would probably push off the list uh down a years from 5 to 10. Helps your bottom line.

It does help your bottom line. So, if you again from your packet summary, it does kind of show you what the five-year plan ending cash balance need is. In the secondary fund, it shows $6.7 million deficit, but again, most of that comes from those 10 projects. Um, and I can I can provide a revised number to show you if we were to bump those projects off the list and kind of cascade. Do we have to do all those in one year? No. Or you we did only based on that deadline the state gave which we found out is no longer applicable. Oh boy. We just found a better way a different way to accomplish it. Okay, fair enough. U still using the grant money.

Yeah. And uh and then that that kind of delays that immediate need because of the situation we're in with the budget this year. I don't think it's going to hurt any residents to put those projects off. put the widening of the lines off. Yeah. It's not going to hurt our citizens. It's It's not going to hurt our budget in the future either because our budget is going to grow and the water lines, like you say, could last 5 to 10 more years. So, we don't have to be so anxious to change those

even if we just take one project at a time too and just like Yeah. get them done. And you know, so just to give you some perspective, 10 years ago, we had probably a 10-year deficit on roads. It was one of our worst areas, and some of our roads were really terrible. But we did just a little bit here and there to to uh supplement that from things like surplus and other projects that we were working on. Found some savings of of value engineering that we could then do a little bit more here and there. What we've done is we've taken at least five years out of that deficit and we are still chipping away at it. So on all of these projects there is some fluidity. We can little by little chip away at that to where we could find the the savings or affordability. We have done that successfully. So, so you're saying nothing needs to be done this year and we're banking on that the cost of doing this in two or three or five or 10 years will make sense with this whole thing.

Cost will be more in the future. I'm not going to downplay that. I think with our our five and even further out plan, we can push those and and level out where we're at on funding and still be okay. Um, and this the point of this whole discussion was not like to scare you or what not. What I was trying to do is have an in-depth comprehensive discussion on our fiber plan because there's a lot that goes on with this and um to get down in the in the weeds to to understand how this is really working with you know you're talking about six different funds here that all tie into projects and again we sometimes if we hit short on like storm storm we've had some issues with if we get down to that project we have to kick the whole project a year because of funding. So, um, the important part of this discussion is just to make you aware of our five-year plan and some of the challenges we have. We'll work through them. We'll do an update and revised plan and bring back to you kind of where we're at. Um, I would think next year's budget would be the better discussion point at this point in time. This

Yeah, I So, let's move on from this until we get the numbers because Steve can do that for our next meeting. The last piece in the infrastructure plan, just to make you aware more than anything, our street light bite fund, we did replace all of our street lights in 2012 uh to the induction lighting. Uh we did that and we took the savings from the power cost to pay that lease when we did it. Uh so we have no debt in this fund. Uh the fund is $132 per user per month. Um, but those lights will start to run out of their 20-year warranty here in the next four or five years. Uh, the cost to replace all those lights is the $1.6 million. So, just something to be thinking about on the horizon. If we want to start replacing some of these lights, we're not doing them all in one year. We'd recommend like a four to five year plan where we could spread that out, but there might be a little bit of a cost. There is a little bit of cost differential.

Are we are we looking at switching those to LED? Yes. So to be totally transparent, this fund was put in place because we had to deal with street lights that we really hadn't done for a long time, right?

But we have finally accomplished the goal of this fund. So technically, we could move past this. What Steve is explaining is we are going to need it again for replacement. So if we leave it in place, we might build up to where we don't start with the huge deficit that we had when we put the program in place. So but I want to be completely transparent having caught up. There is the option to either suspend or sunset it, but you will need it again in the future. And if it's in place, this is like saving for the this is like saving for a new water tower. the more you can put down, the less you have to go into debt for it. And

I can't remember, Robert, do do you is there a is there a reduction in the power bill going to LED? Reduction on the power bill, but we still for a power bill out of this. No, I mean not not from induction bill. No, I mean from induction to LED. Sorry. What was your like by going to LED? Is there any change in the power bill from induction? No, because the power company doesn't want to lose their money, too. So, they charge us a little bit more. So, we're using less power and they charge us more because more per light or than induction because I don't they have to make I don't know.

They they probably realize you actually get more light out of an LED versus Oh, we're going to charge you by lumen now instead instead of save money. So I think they phrased it just a little bit. It's not like cash, but back on there what you mentioned the there are other things that we use that street light fund that is paying the power also cars hit these lights. So it's paying to maintain them if they're broken over out. Are we not going after insurance when a car hits them? Yes, we do. Okay. We always get it though. Fire the seat. There are sometimes that there's hidden runs. Yeah. Uh and then we also use it

and there's some vandalisms new developments when they put money from the developer in that fund and then we use that money. So so it is a useful. though to be fair we have kind of adopted a different the original intent was and this is before I was on council but the original intent when you wrote it when it was written was to supply and that someday it would end but we have transformed to using it to pay the maintenance so it isn't totally done but and it's totally not there sometimes either yes that's correct I I feel like I feel like this is one that it's already there it it seems foolish to take it out of the budget if we've already I'm just

talking for transparency because I don't want somebody to come back and say, "Hey, when we put that in in 2012, you this was, you know, yeah, I I'm aware of that." So, I'm I'm sharing incandescent was the bees and knees in 2012. Now, we have LEDs that the power bill charges based on lumens now, I guess. But the 320 that you have up there, if that's not spent this year, then we have 320 next year towards plus maybe plus next year's. So 640 needs to we need to worry about that next year and I don't know is is the deficit funding is that in addition to or is that inclusive of

addition to that what we generate right now is 125 per year. we need. So, so it's 320 plus 195. And if we don't do that this year, then maybe we need to worry about that next year as well. Am I saying that correct? Yes. Unless we try to extend these past the 2018. Understood. But at some point, we're going to be rolling that to the extent of half a million dollars a year. It it that's a continual roll. Sorry, it's 320. All right. I I didn't I wasn't so an additional 195. Yeah.

So, yeah. Well, what you're saying is correct. Yes. If if we're we're starting on year 15 and we want to do a fiveyear conversion to get them all converted by year 20. If we don't if we don't increase the fee to start doing that, we're going to be bumping that year. And I'm only bringing this up just just to paint a picture of of continuing to kick down the road. That's okay. And if that's what everybody votes to do, that's fine. But it it is creating some issues down the road. But are these So are we are we on a maintenance plan with these lights? Meaning we're paying for a maintenance plan from whoever sold them to us. We've paid off.

It's paid off. So we're maintaining them ourselves. So our So that estimated life of 20 years is just an estimation. They can Are they are we seeing Yeah, inductions are meant to uh they're 20 year life. Okay. But the the last few years it's meant to just dim. You still see it on, but it is so dim to where it's not really So we're getting to that point. Okay. They're they're still hanging in there.

So um and with this fund, we actually have $400,000 that we are in this budget are proposing to do the first phase. So we have that money and that is in the budget drafted this year to do one of would it require utility breaks to do this? Yeah, that's and that's what I'm saying is we have money to do a quarter of it but going forward we only generate 125,000 per year. So it would take us another 10 years to do the remaining. So we'd be pass.

Okay. Um before we before we move off into it, um I did want to throw I'm gonna share my screen. Um this is something this is something I noticed today when we're reviewing this. Um we we've reviewed this at the last meeting. Yes.

Um on in the fire department we did have So there were there were two willing to fund the fire engineer and there were two willing to fund a firefighter paramedic. So, we missed this when we looked at it last time because it was just two and two, right? But technically, you could call that three votes for one firefighter. I just wanted to make sure we we bring it forward to see if that's really what we're looking at or if that's if that's what you wanted to do. We can't hire just one firefighter. No, because that's only one for

three firefighters, right? If we hire a firefighter, you got to hire three firefighters cover 24 hours. Yeah, I mean listen, Monday through Friday, that's only when fires happen at night time. We understand that. I was up at 3:00 Sunday morning otherwise. So, so we just need a fireman for the weekend. I Yeah. And I mentioned this to the chief this morning and it was like Yeah. And I wanted to just make sure it was like, you know, transparency. We we reviewed it. Um Yeah. It's like which shift because there's three shifts, right? 24-hour period. Which shift gets the one is what you end up doing. So,

well then like where where would where would that be better spent? It's not spent today. So, no, no, no. And I'm asking hypothetically because hiring one firefighter, one firefighter paramedic, like that's that's not plausible. We know we need three if we're going to hire one and we know that we have a deficit of nine. Correct. Yeah. Um, so e even hiring three doesn't really fix our our struggle. It's a progression. Yeah, it is progression. But hopes to get guys days off.

Where you might think about this though is our need for uh an assisted fire marshal because that doesn't have to be spread across three shifts, right? So, if you were willing to fund one more in that department, maybe you hire the one that doesn't have to work uh in shifts. And and just so you know, that number would add on to the 316 and it would be an ad. Yeah. But this that position in the current proposal is not if we're not able to keep up with that work, that could inhibit business growth. So, that's where I'm just throwing that out there. We have to do inspections.

And the the ask on that was a was a part-time fire inspector. Hoping we can get one and nobody which was some work part-time though, which was the 31,000 unless somebody wants to take it as a second job, which isn't really ideal ideal. You might find like a retired or you might find and remember public safety retirements are still young, right? Um, so you might have someone who may want to do it part-time. Yeah, I mean, I'll do it part-time. Hire me. Maybe a lot less. Are Are you a certified fire inspector? Oh, I can learn. He will be.

I've never met a fireman that's smarter than me. Okay. Didn't say they weren't smart. I'm a smart guy. Okay. Just saying. I'm gonna say that's out of order. forget you. I don't know if we have any direction on that, but No, but I just throw it out for your consideration. You have another meeting to talk about it. I'm not going to I mean, you now know about it. If you want to bring it up at the next meeting, we'll do it. I would like to give them all everything they want. missing. Okay,

we're going to jump back to the five-year capital plan. Um, so in your in your pack or in your uh team's town, you'll you'll find the five plan that he'll pull up. Over the five years, our total requests were 8.4 almost 8.5 million. Total funding is 5.5. A differential of just under three million. Divide that out by five years is just under 600,000. Um, and this is just another another one of our five-year plans where we we take a look and we watch. Again, if we don't fund or don't aren't able to fund additional dollars, some of the these things will get pushed or not funded. It's split into two categories. There's the building and projects down here. These are these are more I would say wish. Some of them are wish list. Some of our are are planned maintenance in the future. Um some of them are are needed. If you ask Alex probably five years ago the workplace improvements over in PD. Um but some of them like signage in parks for example the third line down. Do we want to put $50,000 a year towards monument signs and other things, signage in our parks? Um, if you do, that's part of that that deficit. If not, that's something you could cut. Not advocating one way or another on any of these. Um, but just know like the first one, the light and pedestrian access over here at the roundabout, there's no lighting or safe cross on the on the

Are all these funds coming from the general fund or who are we pulling from?

Yeah. Uh, so this would all be general funded. Um, and right now we've we we transfer $1.1 million a year from our general fund to fund everything in this fund. That number has not really changed over the years. We actually reduced it a couple years ago to balance our budget. And as a city grows, these needs continue to grow and grow. Um, so this is another fund you you eventually have to put more money in to maintain. So, so right now it's $300,000 short. So that means that the general fund deficit technically isn't 316. It's 663. Is that right? If this is funded,

correct? And if it isn't, then we're just rolling again. Next year we've got a million dollars. We're going to be sitting around this table again and we're going to look at a million bucks and say, "How are we going to deal with that?" Maybe. Well, now Steve started this by saying some of these are a little bit wishlist that they're

Okay. Well, let's go through the list and let's go through the list and see what the wish list is. We've got uh personal protective equipments for the fire department. We've got life pack monitors. We've got extrication equipment. We've got uh uh EMS transport ventilator. Are those the kinds of things that are wish list? I understand there are some that shouldn't be or maybe there's some room and I'm not saying I think the police need to get their their walls painted. But but this kind of thinking that we're doing that we're kicking this down the road, kicking it down the road, kicking it down the road, it isn't going to work for very long. So I'm not I I'm not going along with that. Now if I'm going to get outvoted, I realize that. That's okay. But I'm not going to get outvoted without saying we've got to look at this because just tonight around this table, there's been hundreds of thousands of dollars that we're not looking at dealing with and and it's going to be a million bucks next year and Costco isn't going to cover that.

Oh, I agree. Yeah. So,

yeah. I mean I mean budgeting is a yearby-year process. We re-evaluate every year. I I mean my prerogative is not to try and solve a five or 10 year plan in in one year of tax increases. And so, yeah, I want to give us time to evaluate on a year-by-year basis and see where we're at with property tax revenue and sales tax revenue and see how that's impacting and and yeah, just like just like any of us with our personal budgets, we have to decide, okay, what is critical? What what can we what do we need to spend funds on and what can we wait on and and see what our financial situation is the following year? It's just part of the the the budgeting process.

Yeah, I I agree with you 100%. I'm with you 100% with that. I'm just looking at saying if if you take two years that I mean the numbers are right there on the bottom line of that thing. The these people that are putting together these numbers, they're smart people. Oh, I don't disagree. These numbers just aren't pulled from the sky

that's there. I mean, it it says right there there's $300,000. The next year there's 640. So, when I look at this, I say I'm I'm going to take that for what it says. And is there some is there some cushion there one way or another? Absolutely. But I'm looking at next year then we're going to have this same list and the same kind of thing and not doing something about it now is problematic. Now, whether that's whether that's to raise fees, which to me impacts the bottom line to citizens just the way that that a tax would, but I I don't care how it gets structured, but I I'm not comfortable about not doing anything because next year we got this same problem again and it gets worse.

Do you have a solution? Uh, not that anybody's going to go along with No, but what's your solution though? I I'm I'm open to hear your solution. It is to increase property taxes by what? Well, that that's what we would need to come up with. We need to come up with what on this list is most important. Clear across because all of this all of this impacts everything. I mean, one one area here impacts another budget somewhere else. And and you know what? You say the you say that threeletter word that tax and people go nuts. I I understand that. I

I just went through what that's like. But but either you raise revenue either you raise revenue or you you cut expenses. That's that's what we're dealing with. It's just like everything else there. There's not enough money to to do everything. Do I wish there was? I I agree. I think I think there's again I don't think Costco is going to be the end all and solve everything. Um I think we've got a pretty legitimate option for our firefighter funding to try and work with the state legislature to get that um resolved

that uh sales tax that we can you know help support Analopee Island um and and get some funding from there. like this. I agree there's things that need to be assessed and we need to evaluate, but I don't think that at least for me, I'm not ready just to say, "Okay, let's solve all this in one year and pull that property tax lever le lever and and fund everything for the next 5 to 10 years." Um, I want to work through it on a yearby-year basis and exhaust every option that we possibly can. And yes, that includes cutting out things that we don't think are essential. It includes looking at um grants. It it includes looking at, you know, those property tax items. It includes business development and and and and I know that I know that it's it's not a a an immediate answer, but but Costco is the opening gateway to developing that entire area of of commercial development that's going to greatly impact our sales tax revenue. I mean, we've got the we've got the the city property that's being developed and and the rest of that land near Costco is going to is going to develop commercial.

We know that we have at least 18 lots that will be commercial that we haven't even fig factored in for revenue and they will all be commercial lots. There are six around Costco for certain, maybe seven. There are at least five on our property. There are six uh spots that are pre-approved and and ready for shovel ready that are between the car wash and we care and there's more around the corner. So, we know that there are lots that are coming online that we haven't even factored in how they will bring in revenue, but there's enough of them that we know there's a change. What I want to be conscious of is that we have to be sensitive to where our citizens are right now because I'm hearing some very frightening things. When you hear from citizens who say maybe government shouldn't be taking care of what we think are essential or we think that the majority can't live without. What you I'm hearing is those people are feeling enough pain, they're starting to question even the basics. And there's enough of them that we have to be sensitive to that. Um I mean, I'm hearing people say, "Well, I've never called the police once." Well, I'm not going to stop funding the police because uh enough people have. But when you've got people saying that, that's an indication that their pain is really there because they would be willing to say something that radical. You know, I mean, it is a problem and we're going to have to figure it out. But there's a lot of various solutions that are still in play. one is all of these commercial lots that are within a year or two of of being filled and um we know that we're ready to break ground on a lot of them.

Some of them have broken ground. On top of that, we're going to experience some regular growth and we've done really well at finding some alternative sources for some of this stuff in grant funding. And I mean, where would we be if we couldn't have got all the water grants that helped us pay for these meters? I mean, yeah, it's a challenge that didn't pay for everything. And it sucked that it was a mandate from the state, but we found a way to cut it in half. And we can continue to do that and I continue to work on that regularly. I was just in here yesterday setting up with some software that will help us find additional grants. It's a monitoring system that help lets you know when things come available and we can search that database and we're going to get that set up because it's not that much. You it's like 200 bucks. So, we'll get it set up and we'll get it going. But, well, the the other thing is property tax is limited to what we can get from the citizens of Syracuse. And once we pull that lever, that's it's never going back the other way. We never say, "Oh, let's have a property tax reduction."

Yeah. We're not doing that. And so by by playing it methodically and slowly and evaluating yearbyear, that that sales tax revenue gives us opportunity to collect revenues from outside of the city. And and that's where I think the I think that's where the play comes in and that's where the power is. But we we we've got to In my mind, I've got to play it a little bit slow so that we don't don't overburden the si the the citizens with with property tax when we when we've got potential for this for this a little bit of a commercial boom here in the city.

How much of the commercial boom has been taken into account in putting together these numbers? I'm assuming that other than Costco, other than Costco, nothing. We don't Yeah, we don't speculate. Costco's speculative. Costco's close enough and specul and they've given us they gave us actual numbers that their targets are. So, that helps. We've heard from a couple that don't even have building permits what their projections are, but we haven't factored them in because we don't even have they don't even building permits. Costco's at least ready to open in a couple of months.

I I I will say this. I I think you're very intelligent and I this is a hard conversation to be had. I I lose sleep almost every night worried about this every night. And I guess it's better than the other reasons I used to lose sleep. So, I'll take it. It's a trade-off to worry about the city budget, but I'm willing to have the hard conversation with you. I I I don't want to be avoidant about it. I can be a little bit of a jokester sometimes. Put my foot in my mouth. I'm good at that. But th this is a hard conversation and that does mean a lot of what's here. You've done this longer than I have. I even though you know where I sit, I still am open to discussion because I have to be because it's a team sport. We're all in this together and I think we're all worried about the same thing. I would love to give every department head everything they've asked. I'd love to fund everything on this budget, but I also would love to build the ADU in the back of my house, too. And it's just not in my budget, right? Like there there's all these things. My kids ask to go to McDonald's, and sometimes the answer is no, right? So, but I don't want to avoid the conversation just because you feel like nobody's going to vote with you.

Well, I mean, and that's okay. I mean, that has happened before. Um, but I I respect you and I want you to know that. I would love to have the hard conversation with you. And I I 100% respect what you're saying too. I'm not asking right for a look at fund the fund the budget for the next 10 years. That's not what I'm doing. But I am saying we may need to look at something a little bit more broad to take care of the numbers that we've got this year and probably what we know next year because we know that right we can deal with those kinds of things

somewhat now and and within the rain range of um reason I think you know and and and maybe we do better maybe we don't but but we can work in a range that makes sense. I mean, I these are the numbers. I mean, I I see 300,000 bucks sitting down in the bottom corner. I see another 300,000 bucks is what the general fund deficit is right now. That's 600 grand, right? So, so either we're going to dip into rainy day and bank on the future. I'll gamble with you a little bit to to do that. Um, but we're going to have to look at the different options.

But even that has to be done responsibly, right? Right. because we could bank that nothing bad happened. Yes. If we all had a we'd be in there, you know, I I get that. But but I don't for me I don't think these numbers are being fully addressed in the way that that they should be. And I'm banking on these numbers. These aren't my numbers with this.

I mean, I've I've come in and met with staff to better understand the numbers. I mean, I I don't I don't know what more to do than to have the conversations and try to sit down and have the solutions. I don't know. Maybe we need another budget summit. I I don't feel like I comprehend all the numbers. Well, I think we're at a point where we can get through with the meetings that we have scheduled. So I don't see a point to have another retreat all day because I think that the numbers we are going to have to make these tough decisions whether we put it in the whether we

add it to the tax or not and that is your decision the five of you and

I I think that we can get through some of this. I do at this point we still have a couple of five-year plans to talk about. So, I'd like to move on to those because fundamentally, I don't think we solve this one tonight. But we are going to have to continue to talk about whether we go any deeper into either the deficit funding or fees or taxes. And right now, we are sat or we are on a no tax schedule. That can change. We are on a fee increase schedule because those were voted on at the retreat and that can change too up or down. And at this point we do have a minimal we have a well for what you I 300,000 compared to our $29 million budget is not a lot. So I should call it minimal, but we do have a deficit in our budget that may or may not grow

because anybody because Steve, you included in that I can't remember the number. You included in that email that you sent today what the dollar amount was per 1% was about 292,000 292. So any of you can go and you can look at the budget deficits and you can say okay if I want to fund XYZ whatever you think is critical you can take that 282,000 and know that every or 280 whatever every 280,000 you add you've got to be willing to add a 1% increase in property tax. So you can play with we've got the data to play with the numbers and see what you're you know what you're comfortable with but

uh that's That's 1% of that be 1% of Yeah. of your fund balance. So So it'd be that's 1% of your total of your total fund balance. Yeah. That wouldn't be a 1%. That's not tax property tax. Oh, sorry. Because property tax is only a small port. It's a minor portion of your total revenue. Were you going to come up with that number? Because we usually have that number. What percentage to to fund when when the county comes back with their appraisal? Okay. still waiting the county is and and sadly you'll get used to this but every year they wait till like June and sometimes past the voting meeting that we have

well I think we we're going to extrapolate we talked briefly about this I think our real estate's probably at a 2 or 3% growth rate over prior year but from some of the preliminary numbers I've seen but based on we had last year you could probably give us an idea of what that looks like yeah last year was almost a wash there was hardly any growth um like you know 2% I want to say might be $50,000 $100,000. It's not going to generate a lot of of money if you were to hold the rate to hold that that value.

I think what you're asking is yeah you you gave us a a number last time that was tied to if we fund X amount this is what the property tax say to balance to balance. Yes. because you you gave us a number last year in our in our budget retreat that said if you do a 1% increase in property taxes for Syracuse city portion of property taxes it equates to an estimated X dollars in revenue right

that's the number I'm saying if we had that or or I mean it's a ballpark right but if we have that ballpark any one of us can sit and we can say okay if I want to fund we can look through all of our budgets that we have and if I want to fund X Y and I know that I need to apply a 5% or 1% or 10% property tax increase. And then anybody can look at that and say, "Okay, what am I comfortable with? What do I think is an absolute necessity? And this was this what is what it equals as far as a property tax increase. But I do want to also chime in and say we have never ever in the history of all the time that I've been here or every budget that I've looked over from historically, which isn't that many because just a few years of historic, but never ever funded every request. That's never ever happened. And so I don't think the expectation should ever be that everything requests happens. growing into

well because I think when we looked at that several years ago it was like a 36% or so five years ago we looked at that and it was like a 90% tax increase to fund everything when you when you look at funding everything the numbers get large as far as percentage of property tax increase and we didn't do that and we I don't think that we ever will I don't think that that's actually expected and I don't feel like you're saying defund everything either. I feel like you're saying look at these deficits and let's make sure we're covering what we have. Yeah. If we're going to take it a piece at a time, let's start taking a piece, right? Is what I'm saying, right? I understand.

I think we're all kind of in agreement on that. We're just trying to figure out how much to look else that we've kind of been presented. What did we save? What where does the money go from those two homes? Roads. And they were bought with class C road funds to expand the road. So it goes back into the road fund. Yeah. Impact road impact fee, not class C. But it it does come from roads because it's Yeah, it has to go to roads. Sell for a million dollars. We do not have a choice on that. Take it to Wendover, put it on black. Do we? That would be wrong, right? So if we wait if we sell them for more than our basis,

you could take the Can we take the extra and put it in general fund? Debatable. I think you could argue that. I think you could argue against it, too. It's not Let's just argue. Let's argue. We love the gray. This is Let's not argue against ourselves. I don't want to lose more money again paying for an attorney to fight it. It It really only comes from the excess, though. That's probably not going to be a lot. And I I don't want to lose all that excess by paying an attorney to fight it. Yeah. By the people from the people who actually like paid the impact fees. If you're going to spend money, spend it on attorneys.

All right. So, quick at this point, we are uh three hours into the meeting. If you want to continue, we still have IT planning and parks planning and utility summary to cover. Um, we could push this into the next meeting. I am willing to have a work session after the business meeting so that we can spread this out a little bit if your brains are fried. If we're going to continue for another hour, which is what I think it's going to take at least an hour to get through these three, then I'm going to recommend a five minute bio break. What's your preference day? I think we do it in half an hour.

You think we can do it in half an hour? I think we've covered the I guess this little business meeting, too. Right. That's why I'm trying to Oh, we've got that. You have a quick business item, but that's going to take five minutes. So, we got one for keep at it. What are the others? Yeah, we're here. All right. Okay. So I'm going to recommend a 5m minute break because uh 3 hours is a lot of Thanks.

better. Okay, I'm gonna bring us gonna bring us back in out of recess and we need to uh address let's move into the IT budget went up.

Steve, I'm gonna let you take away. So, we we talked about this in the retreat. Uh the $200,000 additional that was requested over our five years, 200,000 per year has been incorporated into the budget. The one thing in blue that has not we we talked about this at the end of the retreat, um the phone system, we do need to incorporate that into the budget. I was going to let Corey kind of explain or or talk about um timing when we need to do that and then possible solutions on how to fund it. Want to go over the solutions?

So there's really two different options for phone systems. There's a on premise which is an upfront a larger upfront cost and a a smaller per year after that. Or there is a cloud-based system which is a consistent it's a slightly more cost the first year but then becomes a consistent amount over the next however long we have is this. So it's kind of like a per user uh uh cost. Uh both have benefits. Um really we just need what we got and put in the budget were budgetary estimates from an average of three uh different vendors to give us an idea of what it's going to cost. Are there any questions on that or the system we have is end of life?

Yes. And very end of life. Yeah, it's it's at the scary point. That's why I pushed it. That timeline has bumped it up. It used to be like 2030 gamble and put it on. I mean, there are there are there are people on that system on older systems, but where we want to be. Yeah. And I've seen that, but you you the the reason that why I I bring it up is we risk a total outage and that that scares me as a city. That reflects really poorly on us. I thought we talked about that. We did not include this in the It was not part of the five-year plan. the plan or or the plan that I was asking for was we shift a few things around so that we could get it in this year's budget, right?

Because of the scare of I I have seen total failures and and it could be days while we deal with the failure and that's really bad for a city. This this comes to not kicking the can down the road. Is the VoIPO cloud-based system more futurep proof than doing an in-house system that that's here that has a higher upfront cost? But are we going to be in 20 years in the same spot where if we go to a cloud-based system, it's easier to adjust and move as as phones and technology continues to develop and change.

That's a good point. Uh I would I would venture to say yes in in the long long run right over the next five to 10 years they're going to be about the same because they're both being a maintained we're not buying an end of life system we're buying an actively upgraded and maintained system both on premise and uh in the cloud the system we're operating lasted over 30 years right

so I mean you have to keep in mind that if we bought one today it would be expected to last that long as Well, that doesn't mean I'm pushing for that because actually the cloud-based system seems to be the future and it will be there will be a little bit of adjustment for people who are used to having a handset in their ear, but this is the world. We adjust and so so what what's what's the counterindication for using the cloud-based system versus using the heart system in the 100% relying on internet? Yeah. If internet goes down, your phones are down. Do we not have Utopia fiber to our city buildings? We do. We do. But we did lose internet this week. Did we really?

Firewall firewall issues, but we have lost I mean they do maintenance. They do other things that we don't have control. That took the phones out, too. Yeah. Well, that was un unrelated to a normal outage. So, the current systems use a PRI or an actual phone line, right? So, as long as the server's up and the phone lines up, we can get we can get into the out, right? We're not relying on necessarily on the internet currently or in the on premise it would be very similar to that. That being said, the uptime for Utopia is, you know, 49. So,

it's and if the internet goes down, what are you going to do on the phone anyway? You can't help anybody. call for help and need. Well, that's true. But we can tell them we can't help. That's what we have left. But but communicate that VIPO is if the internet goes down, that's only if you're on the PC. But most of these voipos have applications that if we have city phones or department phones that you can have the application on your phone that's fail over to your cell phone. So, so you're still able to function and use without Yeah.

And and I believe there's some similar function on the on premise as well. It's just the softwarebased thing rather than right there's there's compatible mirroring that you can do just so you're really it's not that different. It's uh it is structured different in payments but they're not that different. So what what's the preference from staff? Because re realistically that's who's affected by this decision. And if the cost is sixes relatively over time and what's the preference? Do you guys have a preference? Is this you're asking us us five to make a decision that it's not going to affect us?

You you don't have to make it. I guess you just the decision really is to fund something cost is what we're asking council to consider. We'll we'll come up with this the proposal. you're doing all those. I think I think we have to replace it. I I think it would be negligent if we didn't. I guess one of the questions then is are there costs in this 2027 year we can move around to make the 20,000 work. Uh there always are. You know, it's the we we push things to the next year is the same thing. It's the general theme. Find your plan

and that can be done. the the reason that money is in there and I don't necessarily plan on spending every dollar of access control, but I may have to. Yeah. Right. Because of the longevity of our our systems,

but I will do it strategically throughout the year rather than just, oh, I got $50,000 just spend it, right? It's going to be planned. So, it could be that we naturally don't spend all of that money and that we kind of do get paid for some of the phone system with that unspent amount. But if if I were to take a stab at it, and I do know this world quite a bit, I would say take part of it or most of it from your computer upgrades, push them down because I don't think we have very many computers that won't function for one more year. And I would also say that access control, maybe you don't do the full amount. I don't know. But that's 70 grand. I would do the phone system above before those because I think they have more likelihood of of sustaining another year. Do they need to be done? Yes, they do. Access control there is a real issue that it's old, but it we still have we're still locked up. I mean, we're I mean it can we could go real

keys if we're looking at balancing we're we're looking at a at a 10% of the total budget here. Yeah. So we'd have to find 10% out of that all those I think that's an easy I think we can have I agree and keep in mind this is a separate fund. It's a fund that we want to have contingency balances in case something happens. So, we don't necessarily want to bring our cash balance to zero down to zero. We do want to have above 30 million for unplanned things,

but I mean for yeah, we need to be on a plan to regularly upgrade computers, but to be honest, we'd probably run an extra year in that cycle on everybody's and and probably there'll be some emergencies, but they won't be like, "Oh my gosh, I've lost total ability to work." Just just so you know that includes fire and police as well. So that's like rig laptops and patrol laptops. Those are the ones that get broken. Yeah, they'll do hiding. So they'd be a little nicer their equipment. So I mean what do you guys do? Save people from fires. Sometimes with everything there's choices for sure. So

you're right. But but I mean I mean you know look I've been in that world and and recommended to businesses is scheduled for replacement and yet I always go beyond my life on computers. So I think we've got a year in them except for ones that actually actually break. That's what I I don't know. And the other option is if if none of those are feasible, can you take a portion of this from your your general fund balance as a onetime transfer here to Yeah. Because 70,000 in the grand scheme of things is not much. Not on millions of dollars. That number is reflecting the highest amount the on the first year

on cloud is roughly half that. Yeah. So if we went to cloud the numbers cut in half which is actually pretty good number but then the ongoing will be more down and that that might be a better system anyways just because it gives you flexibility year-over-year. Yeah. I mean I think the only risk is cyber security but most of those companies are on it's not as big a risk. Voipe's now pretty standard. I think it's different functionality that we don't have like recording like that

translating to you can record it and translate the transcripts to another language. Anyway, so I don't want to draw this out. Are we okay to figure out a way to go forward in bumping the phone system up? Because I do really think that's system critical. All right, we'll work out the details, but you got approval. All right, parks, you're up next.

All right, five plan for parks. Um, the only things I want to really bring up are a couple points. Our wrap tax, I think we talked about this a little bit. It's a 10year. It it will be come due next year. So, 2027 would be the initiative on the ballot if the council wants to put on there to renew. Um, that's one of our funding sources at one pulls it up in one of our columns. And let me just chime in on that right here because if anybody has a serious objection, tell me now. But almost every city in the county does it now. So, in one form or another. There's some variations on it. But if you go to every other city and you're kicking into their parks and wreck, why should we do the same and have them kick into ours? So if if you feel differently that's fine but I would like to proceed with the idea that it's been very beneficial. We can point to all lots of successes and I think it would pass.

Yeah. What what tax is that? It's a wrap. It's called uh recreation, arts and parks. It is a percent of sales tax. Tiny little percent like a quarter quarter of a percent.1 oh.1 even less. And it's a ballot initiative and it's passed on a 10-year basis. The citizens get to vote whether they're going to pay it or not. Let them vote on it. But Oh, yeah. But you vote to put it on the ballot. Done. And why wouldn't you let them choose? Yeah. So,

but so I think that we start the year understanding we're going to put it on the ballot and I'm going to promote the heck out of it because for that tiny little amount, everyone wins something. We've had new playgrounds. We've had new art programs, right? We've got concerts. All of the stuff is paid for through that in some way. Small portion. It it it's a no-brainer. And voters never vote against it. Yeah. Anywhere. They they approve. It's almost always passed. Well, it's And then they don't get to yell at us for it. They They vote. They voted for it.

So, two other points with this. This this plan contemplates the sale of the hot triangle property going back in here to fund the line for blue with the cemetery expansion. There's two big projects on the horizon that aren't funded on this 5-year plan. That's the regional park phase two and a future community center expansion uh that we want to consider in at least our five-year plan. Those are two pretty big ticket items. Those are both not on this year. No, they're not even on the plan. They're not even in terms of placement. They're just down here at the bottom as future considerations. Yeah. And these are unfunded. Yes.

And I'm already working on other ways to fund at least one of them. I don't think that we've got a chance of funding them both at the same time, but I think that we might I mean, that's what we have to do. We have to find alternate funds. We just don't have money in this fund. Both both are critical as the city continues to grow. We've maximized our community center usage. We split it between two and three sessions of junior jazz. All of our parks currently are are programmed to the max. So, it'll be nice to have this uh 10 acres come online this next year. But as the city continues to grow, population grows, these are considerations we'll need to plan for.

I mean, I'm I'm really working on any other funding we can find. We'll have to find it. I heard this new plan Minnesota's using where they start some learing centers and Oh jeez. Oh, Stinky Fish. The Stinky Fish Laring Center. Yeah, they teach you how to fish in there. That's what happens when you stay here too long. So, but we'll find a way. We'll find some other way. We got to So, we're going to go open one of those in Minnesota to fund to fund it here.

Perfect. Last thing on the uh packet item is utility fee summary of everything we've talked about as well as operational increases. So on the last page of the document, I don't know if you can pull that up. Thank you. This shows a summary of of everything. So we talked about the three new parks employees. That's the cost for those. Emergency dispatch fee. That's the full $395,000 as a utility fee. So that's $5 of the $789. The remaining 289 are operational. Their water supply increases. They're part of funding our five-year IT file. We just talked about we talked about the customer portal uh for our meters or tower reads. We talked about the new superintendent and then our employee compensation and benefits plans. That's our our current plan that we've we've been working on. $789 uh increase in total across six utility funds. You kind of see there at the bottom where we currently sit.

We're still quite low. And keep in mind that we don't know how those are all going to raise funds and fees and taxes as well. So 789 a month each month. Yeah. For us for a month across across how many? Six different six different utility funds. This is Yeah, I think we agreed on this. What what's what's that 789 up? That's 1789 increase to what it is now. 1186. So you're So people are paying 118 a month. 127.

It would put you in between Leighton and Roy assuming they didn't raise any rates which would still be middle of the pack. They're still a lot higher out there. Farmington, look at them. They're at 150. I don't like Farmington. I didn't buy a house in Farmington. So, in full disclosure, I just want to show the council where we're as in terms of utility house. So, the the nice thing with these to go to what was brought up earlier is it does it does capture all the residents and not just property owners. Yes. Everyone is affected by this instead of just pushing it to property owners. Yes. Which is good.

It way it's a way better way to do it if we're going to do it. It's distributed over Yeah. Every property you live here, you pay for it. Yeah. So, our high density housing actually pays a fair share. That's right. Even, you know, tax exempt uh companies, they paid they pay utility fees. So people who would not have to pay property tax and they use water, right? And they use right those things. Does anybody have an issue you want to bring up with this or we're going to as if we have agreed. Does the temple help us at all? In what way?

Spiritually. Yes. It depends on it depends on how you're asking. They pay their utility fees. They do pay utility fees just like everybody else. So, they have their little seven. Okay, go on. If you're talking economic impact, um they don't pay property tax. Um there's no sales tax, but they do tend to raise property values in a community, which then generates more tax, but which only hurts residents. That just Yeah. um and uh brings people from out of the city into the cities who may or may not spend money. that there's

nothing or that depending on which you came from 193 but not all of this some but not all bigers a month churches pay maintenance fee um does their own parks but if they're not indigenous We're not thinking.

Okay. So, before we adjourn from this meeting, I want to make one special note. Brody just brought this up. Compliments to the debate that happened here tonight. That's the way it's supposed to happen. You all talked to each other. You listened to each other. You did seek solutions. And nobody walked away wanting to kill the other. And you know what I mean? for all the nights that I've been through very many different councils and some of them say, "Oh my gosh, I'll meet you in the parking lot." Or effectively, "I I will hate you for the next two months." That sounds fun. Um really good. Thank you

for being awesome because if we debate like that, we will hit everybody's points and we will find solutions and we'll be able to talk about hard things. So, I really appreciate that and kudos to you and I'm excited for what we'll do in the future. I'm going to adjourn us from this meeting so that we can convene a special business meeting because we do have a project that was awarded or that was closed its bidding. So, we're going to uh award that so that we can move forward. So, I call to order a special business meeting of Syracuse City Council. Um, I need a motion to adopt our agenda of two items. One of which is adopt the agenda.

Motion to adopt. Second. Motion made and seconded. All in favor? I. Any opposed? And then we authorize to e or authorization to administrate and to execute contract for uh 3000 West Roadway and signal project. We had uh several bids. I three bids. I'll go let Steve go over it.

Yeah. So, we had three bids. This project had quite a few different elements to it. So, there there is a 3000 West roadway with a a raised median. There's the emergency signal for the fire station to get their fire apparatus in and out. There's the Bison roundabout with the sculpture. There's also the future park expansion with the parking lot on both the east and west sides of the current. Then we're also doing some drainage from the dog park out. We're having some drainage issues there. So all that combined in this project, we had three actual biders. Uh the low bid was Leon Pollson at $640,723

probably because he's already doing part of the roundabout. I want to clarify one thing though that yes you said the bison the bison is actually paid for separately. This is the footings to put it on the footings the irrigation and the rock the rock wall all that but the the vice itself's already is that is that utility to hide it too. Yes. So it did come in under budget expectations which is great. Um we did it through four different funds it looks like there. So, any questions to the council on this? This is a huge savings. I'm glad we're able to realize it. Why are we having problems with drainage at the dog park?

Uh, the sidewalk over there is effectively acting as a barrier. So, when the water rains, it it slopes to that low point and just pulls along the sidewalk. So, we're looking to do a perforated drain along there and do some sloping. So, we'll actually get the line, but we can get a drain in there. Maybe we'll get it fixed. I move that we authorize administration to award contract for 3000 West Roadway and signal project to Leon Pollson. Second. Moved and seconded. All in favor? I. Any opposed? Okay. Seeing that that's the last item on our agenda, I will take a motion to adjurnn. I make a motion that we adjourn.

Yes, sir. Motion made and seconded. All in favor? I I We are adjourned. Thank you all again. Really good meeting.