City Council - Regular Meeting

That was not a disrespectful thing. sexual.

Yes, I would too. It's It's a good thing people All right. Are we recording? I'm going to declare it's close enough to six o'clock to call this meeting to order. Uh this is the work session for March 24th, uh 2026. The first item on the agenda, um, second item on the agenda is public comment. This is an opportunity for anyone to address the council. Is there anyone here from the public that would like to make a comment? Seeing none, I will declare that closed and move on to item C. Item C. The first one is discussion regarding request from Ed Green Construction of the Westlake Landing LLC and Wagstaff Investments LLC to consider or consideration of an impact fee reimbursement agreement associated with the development of property at 2000 West and 2700 South. I will be very clear about this that um the this is something that we have commonly dealt with when we have um new items of construction that actually build a piece that is on our master construction plan already. So this is something that we've legally dealt with before. It's not new. But Noah, if you would describe this particular situation council.

Yeah, you did a good job teeing it up there. Um in this particular case uh we have three groups who are developing the southwest corner of the sixway roundabout and on our math transportation plan we have designated those as uh minor arterial. So with that's a lot right now it's just a like on if you look at the road there's really nothing there. So, we're requiring them to widen the road, um, put curb and gutter and a trail and, uh, you know, we require developers to pull their fair share all the time, but sometimes we ask them to install what we'd call regional improvements. So, so, uh, since we collect impact fees on transportation impact fees in all of our developments, we uh, for this very reason, so that we can participate and when the time's right and when we have the efficiencies of having them do some work, we can pay them back for some of those what we call regional improvements. That's what this is. So to be very clear, I think one of the things that we have to consider is sometimes it's not something they would normally have to do, but because they're working in the area, we can save money by having them do some of our work at the same time because they've already mobilized a crew. So there's a mutual beneficial element here. But uh now that you've heard it, the question is, does anybody have a problem reimbursing for the part that is public improvement? We're not reimbursing for all the work that they would do on their property.

How is the amount established? The amount is established by the percentage of the work versus the bid that came comes in. So, it is an actual they have to submit receipts. They can't just tell us that this is a ballpark figure, but it is based on the percentage of the work that we're requiring them to do. And then there's there's an exhibit in there and and so they've they've gone through with their engineer and they've identified what is considered to be like an upsize that we've acquired that

and we have had our engineer in the past review it. I don't know if we did on this one, but we've had them review that in the past to make sure that it makes sense that somebody's not just heavy loading the public portion and deducting for their portion. And then this comes out of our directly out of our impact fee fund. In this case, what it would be is they would they would get back from what they have to pay because it's they have an impact fee for the property, but if they're going to do this amount of work, we're we're basically discounting that amount. We're trading.

Yeah. I fee credit. So when they come in for a building permit, they won't have to pay that part. And after they get done developing, if we're still a little short, we can take from the previously collected. But overall, between all three of those builders, I'm confident that we will we will gather more than that amount transportation impact fees. Okay. Does anybody else have any questions?

Anybody have any concerns about this? It is money so I don't want to put this on the consent agenda but I will move it forward to the next agenda for our decision if everybody's okay. All right. I'm seeing plenty of head nods there. So item number two is going to be discussion regarding proposed amendment to memorandum of understanding regarding the sale purchase of city-owned property located at 3000 West and Analopee Drive. Um let me be really clear about this one because this is really pretty simple. When we wrote this agreement, we did write it uh with a kind of loose interpretation of the possibility of a hotel. We anticipated that we may have a longer period of time getting to a hotel justification because hotels really come as a part of a uh report that is kind of standardized and nationalized that says we see the need and we know that we have been right on that border edge of where it justifies that occupancy. So when we knew that, we anticipated that this project could get to a point where they had plenty of uh interest in the rest of the property and this one element could hold up the development. In this case, they've come back and said, "We don't have a a tenant on board for the hotel and uh we do have an alternate tenant and we could move forward as much as a year earlier if we released them of that." And so we anticipated and we actually wrote it in a way that we could do that without a motion from the uh council. However, what we do need a motion from the council to do if we're going to alter thisou is if we're going to move up the timeline because that would be the exchange that we get back on our side is

moving up the timeline of the project to get things built sooner. I will also tell you that I have talked to two of the possible tenants and they want to break ground right now. So, getting this closed is actually real and we can move forward faster. Did I leave anything out? Oh, there.

So, I wanted to be clear about where we are. We kind of knew that this was a possibility. I think the other thing that's a twist for me that I would throw out there is we talked just in the recent months about the possibility of what would justify a hotel in the city at another location. So, maybe that's a better option going forward. Not that this is a bad option. I just it's not timely, but in conjunction with something else, it might make it more desirable at nearer to that function. Does that make sense, too? Because I know I'm not being really clear because we're not talking about all that yet. Yep. Okay. Any questions at all on this?

Why is there a tire center on? That's the exchange. The tire center wants to go in there. They did not have that on the plan. that would they would put a tire center in exchange for the hotel. Tire centers are a good use of I mean they they do produce income. They're a little noisy which also goes to the fact that since this is right next to the highway, it's probably not going to bother as many people as if it were next to a subdivision. But that's the tenant that wants to occupy the space that we had planned for a hotel. Are we tied to that?

We are not. But we don't have any in here to object to it. Are you objecting to that use? I don't know enough about it to say whether Amazon was just wondering.

We are not tied to it. That's not a part of it. That's their suggested substitute use. And we have had this particular tire store coming around for about two years looking for a spot. They've wanted to be in city center, but every lot they've looked at has been close to uh residential and we thought that that would be a noise ordinance problem. So, we've turned down those applications. So, just so you know, that's the same possible tenant and they are looking to be in the city and we suggested that they look over towards this area either here or on the other side of the street because it wouldn't have residential neighbors as close by. Any other questions? I mean, we can certainly talk about any of the tenants. I do not know the sixth tenant, but I do know the others.

The the major two that we really want are in line. They're set in stone. Yeah. Purpose is to just kind of not hold it up and make sure we still get those major two, which are which are Chick-fil-A. We're all excited about those. And Chick-fil-A is ready to break ground. They've talked to me already. They want to break ground now.

The rest would be what would be allowed in the commercial zone. So, I don't They're showing that as an exhibit, but that's not a set thing. They still have to go through a site plan and they they still need to do a commercial subdivision. So, they're they're just we asked them to show us how it would possibly play out if there wasn't a hotel. There is a financial institution on board with an L letter of intent. There is u so I can't tell you which one it is yet but there is one. We're probably going to get two or three in that area because there will also be one in the Costco subdivision. So that just increases again not a great sales tax provider but it it is useful part of our community. Um, actually a tire center up against the park and ride kind of doesn't bother as many people in my opinion.

I just think we've had several developers evaluate hotels in the city and they're all coming to the same conclusion. Yeah. That it's too soon. It's probably not. They won't develop one here. So,

or or that it's just too soon. Well, they say they need 70% and we've come in at 70% and they're saying we really wish that it was higher for us to put money into building a facility. I think that we give it a couple of years, we're probably going to be closer to 80 and people would say, "Sure, let's do it." Or the other potential use that we've talked to some people that would put it over the top for sure. So, I think we just have to bite our time and see how it fits into our master plan better. I do think it fits into our master plan better if we were able to get the other user offline and I'm working on that too.

Yeah, that's that's the tradeoff. The hotel might be five years out, right? And how many dollar how many sales tax dollars will we get five years if we let something else develop? If we let Yeah. I'd rather see the development move forward. I I agree. I'm I'm kind of indifferent about Tire Center versus something else, but it's Yeah, I agree. We do have some residents who really object to a hotel in that area. I heard that as well. Yeah. So, it's a good area. You know, this is I've not had anybody object to a tire center, but we haven't really advertised that either. Well, I think that's a good area for a tire center, and I think it would generate good sales tax. So, tires are expensive. So, I mean,

and we do have, you know, we do have to travel pretty far to go to tire centers now, right? Unless you want to buy from Walmart or Costco. Yeah, that's our only options at the moment. So, competition Costco, but no, I think it's better to move forward quicker than Okay, one more. Want another head the right way? Okay, we're good. The right way.

Well, I mean, I just try to go by the book here. So, we got enough head nods that this can move forward. We will put it on the business meeting for a vote. Uh, the next item, item C3, is discussion regarding affordable housing opportunities on properties owned by the Utah Department of Transportation. And I'll just kind of give you an outline on this. They came to us and said that the governor has an initiative where they ask you they he asked UD do to look at properties that are still owned by UD do that could possibly go up for auction that might possibly be used for an affordable housing component. And Noah and Brody and I met with them. They brought two properties to us of which one property the first one that I think I think it's the first one in your package. It's the long skinny one. Yeah. So the first Oh, that's the first one. Okay. So the first one is the triangular property that is down on Gentile. Um that triangular property is we have it slated as possible commercial, but it is kind of small to be um any major commercial. It could work out. Um what they're suggesting is if we allow it or we're willing to work with them, the buyer would sign a 10-year deed restricted property that it would have to be owned by uh the owner would get a discount. They'd have to qualify for the discount. I don't know all the details of this program, but what I am saying

what I am saying about this is that this property could go as housing. it's functional. The other property we we gave them the feedback that we do not think this is a functional uh housing element. And you saw in the packet the reason in the packet what we said was there's a very narrow spot where it connects with a major road and it does not connect in any other place that is also in a place where federal guidelines say it is too close to other roads and would be a likely accident. So considering that, I don't want to put a number of homes where their only access point would be technically illegal by federal standards. It's it's a real disaster location. So that one we told them that we probably would not support, but again, it's up to you council. So if you look at these two, when we talk about these, we are not unrestricted to say that you can put whatever you want there. We're just saying that we could see some kind of element and we could decide as a council what would be permissible there because we still have zoning authority. And in the packet you see that we suggested that probably a PD would work in the first the triangular property but the long skinny property nothing would work because no entrance would be ex uh would be legally allowable. We'd have to tear down a house. At one point, I actually suggested that we look into buying that property to extend the yard of our um of our parks, our new park center. It was more money than it was worth. So, we didn't go anywhere. We didn't really need it. We just know that it's unaccessible unless you go through our yard or through a house that exists. It's just completely unaccessible.

Yeah. So the the end game here is not to actually change the zoning because a PRD development before we change the zoning we always require a development agreement. We want to know what we're getting ourselves into. So I think is what we we told the state is we would get your input and provide some sort of letter so because they're going to put these properties up on auction and so uh they can include our letter in their auction materials to give the prospective buyer an idea of where we're at. So, if we said, "Yeah, we we think that it needs to stay commercial," or if we could see some single family development similar to what's adjacent to it, or whatever you guys envisioned, they're just asking for some input that we can include in a letter that they'll put in there. And I actually think it would be really good of us to put together a letter for the long skinny property that says we would not entertain that because of the access because it's been up for auction twice before and it failed both times because they'd come into the city and people said before I bid on this can I know if I could develop town homes or apartments here and we said well we just can't get into it safely. So, no. And then it didn't go to auction because they knew that we weren't I mean, we there's a safety issue there. I think you can all see that it's too close to the other roads. It's too close to the overpass. It's got some blind vision spots. It's a problem.

What is the What is the area across the street from that triangular? What is that on the It's uh actually Bureau of Land Management. So it's not Oh, it'll it could become available, but right now it's it's BO. Where are you talking about, Paul? On the south side of Gentile, across from the across the street from that Oh, nature conservancy. Yeah. So my my only question is is what when they're when the governor's office is talking about affordable housing, what are they what are they specifying that as as condos, single family homes, apartments? And that's where we

because I'll I'll oppose high density 100%. I won't go for it at all.

And and that's okay. We could we could say that the best we would approve here is maybe a PRD, which would be in our zone six units per acre. and that we've done that in places and that seems somewhat reasonable. I think that a property like that because it's so isolated from everything else, we probably ought to include in our letter that we would expect some kind of green space and amenity because it's really cut off from anything else. You'd have to walk outside and around fences to get to any neighbors. So, it's really an isolated property. So, I expect as a PRD you'd get even less density, but you'd have to require them to put some kind of amenity to make it uh green space friendly. But we could specify that you don't we do we could specify in the letter of of uh to the governor's office we would not allow apartments because the density would be too much for the site or we would not allow you know we could say these are the things that we would find permissible in that zone.

Do we so it's it's slated for general commercial right now. Yeah. Do we not think that's viable? I guess they hate giving away if we're changing anything. That's Yeah. The previous commercial.

Yeah. Previous council master plan is this thinking that somebody would buy this lot and put a a gas station on it because it's right there close to the South Gentile roundabout. It's not next to an exit, but you have to pass by this property to get to about 1,200 people in our city. They all take that to get to home. Yeah. So, it's a logical place for a commercial development, but again, we don't control that. So, if somebody came in and said we nobody wants to put one there, it just sits vacant, which is also fine, too, right? Yeah. And we don't know that no one wants to put one there. It's never been available. So, it's not

it's not been available because it was part of freeway construction. So, we've been over five years where this is sat in UD do's hands and not publicly available. The thing about this site is it's visible from the freeway, but there's no access. There's there's not an interchange. You have to go under the freeway. And the the the true intersection is at the roundabout with Bluff and and Gentile. And commercially speaking, usually you want to be right on the intersection. The freeway actually cuts this side off from the direct frontage to the intersection. So, I think commercially it maybe downgrades it a little bit because you don't have that that true front edge on it.

And because of the raised freeway, you probably wouldn't see any signage. So, you'd have to know that it's there because you wouldn't see you'd see it eastbound, but you wouldn't see anything westbound. But that doesn't mean that somebody doesn't take a chance on it. I mean that that is what previous councils thought was this would be a commercial area and the sound wall ends and there's no sound wall right there. There's no sound wall right there because it's elevated freeway because of the overpass. We have an ordinance that any new development up against the freeway has to build a concrete wall concrete wall. The new owner would have to put one in.

Yeah. I'm not opposed to residential going into that space. Like I it's not it's not that I want to restrict people from being able to have homes and if somebody wanted to live there I I would have an objection to that. But I really I really feel concerned about not having space for people to be self-reliant and have a garden and and we we I to the governor I'll say to Cox's face, we have done our fair share, okay,

in having apartments in Syracuse and our growth has been astronomical. And that is one reason that I ran for office is to oppose any more highdensity housing coming into our city. It puts a lot of strain on our resources, on our first responders, on our roads, on our water, on everything. It impacts everything. And so I'm I'm completely opposed to any highdensity housing coming in. As a smaller property, I could see why somebody would try to put in or request that we bend to the apartments. But at the same time, I think that we have a logical argument to say that that would be too much traffic because if you have a handful of houses, maybe what did we think maybe 12 or so was probably the maximum density, then you've got an occasional user that has to come out on that short angle. But if you put 30 units in there, that's probably 60 cars that are going to come in and out, and it's an accident waiting to happen.

And what about the impacts to the existing neighborhood? Well, I'm saying of having that mass volume of people come in, that influx of neighbors right there on top of you. I think they're in I think their traffic patterns are far enough away from this site that it probably isn't an issue. if you look at that, they have to go way down gentile and come back into it. So, I think that traffic-wise, it's probably safe, but um I I think that if you put too many users on this property because it's just right under the freeway pass, it's probably not a good idea.

And and we told them we we suspect there there may not be support for higher density residential and they seem to be amidable to single family. So these are owner occupied but price restricted single family is is kind of the idea that they were willing to entertain. What's the neighborhood to the south? Is that R2 or R3? It's uh to the to the west it's RPC. It's the first RPC in the city. So those are about 6,000 sorry those are about 6,000 square foot lots. Is that like six per acre? It's around about the same as the PRD would allow.

It's just a bigger more complex because that's where we got our 50 acre land in return for higher density. So if you look at the aerial photograph, you know, something similar would be about what a single family PRD would look like. The other thing about making it single family is then you're more likely to have the restriction of owner occupied as opposed to it would be difficult to have any kind of restriction that's apartment that doesn't end up being some kind of subsidized apartment and that is harder to manage from a city standpoint. Well, the location the location is poor. Yeah.

Yeah. Typically our higher density where where the city has allowed higher density is on arterials. Yeah. Right. So this wouldn't qualify for it's up against the freeway but it's doesn't have access to Yeah. There's no bus. There's no services. It's just kind of out there. Maybe someday on the other side of someday we'll probably get a bus, but you know we're still way too far out here for UTA. So anyway, what are your thoughts? Are we okay to consider a letter? I mean, we don't have to vote tonight, but

I I I would never be opposed to having a conversation, but I I mean, I'm pretty solid on my position. I'm not going to move off of my position. I'm I'm confident. I'm not They're not going to persuade me. So, but if it were single family, if it were single family and it made sense, I I'm I I would love to have more residents in Syracuse that want to live here and contribute to our community. I think we have a great place to live, but I don't I don't want 400 new families in that little robot. No, I I think we're we're talking I think we we were talking about 12 to 16. Yeah. Between six and 8,000 square foot single occupant lots. 8 8,000 is like a third.

It's just less than it's more than a quarter less than a third. I don't know. Just trying to push it to that quarter third, you know, with open space with green space. I like that. Yeah, with green space because it it is a little extra, but there would be no parking. So, we would have to put maybe a dozen Yeah. dozen at 7,500 8,000 square foot lots plus some green space. And I and I do love the idea of starter homes in our community, too, because it it really helps to balance everything out, bringing in young families. And well, 8,000 square feet, if it's a third of a lot, and there's some green space, I mean, that can be somebody's forever home. Yeah. I mean that's that's wonderful. Yeah. Correct. Yeah.

Any other thoughts? All right. I'm going to push this forward to another meeting. I don't know um if anybody has any real thoughts about this. What we'll do is we'll try to put together a letter that reflects the conversation we've had tonight and you can vote on it up or down on our business meeting. All right. Right, let's move on to item number D, which is discussion regarding proposed

franchise agreement with Lumen. Steve will bring this forward. Um, folks, just for this one, it's not that complicated. We allow all carriers into the city as far as their ability to use uh, you know, to put cable under our streets and stuff like that. I mean, there's restrictions, but but we don't discriminate. Everybody's welcome. This just has to be updated and I'll let Steve go over how.

Yeah. So, this is um Lumen is just the newer name for Centry Link. Centry Link has been in our city. Before that, I think it was Quest. Um we couldn't find any formal agreement when under those old company names. And so, Lumen is just going through and wanting to renew or at least have a new agreement in their name. And I know they're doing this with a few cities in the county. It's not just ours. are trying to clean it up with the name change. Like the mayor said, this is common practice to allow them in our rightways. It provides competitiveness for residents for telecommunications and then the residents pay a 3.5% fee on the bill that goes back to the city as it's a 10-year term. A lot of this is pretty standard. So, if you have any questions,

considering it's really just the same agreement we allow all the competitors to have, I don't know that there's much other than just to allow them as well. And and like they're already in the city. They're just not under their new name. And the three and a half% is the maximum allowed by state law. And it's standard. Everybody does three and a half%. All right. So, I'm going to move this one forward. Um, since this is just a regulatory agreement, I'm going to put it on consent agenda. Is that gone? Yeah.

All right. We're going to go for that one. And then, uh, while Steve's up here, let's go to item E, budget items. Number one is discussion regarding proposed amendments to the Syracuse city budget for fiscal year ending June 30th, 2026. And these are just some updates. We know we do a couple of budget openings during the year for things that have to be adjusted. Yeah, we try to think of everything that happens before the budget is approved in in June, but with a growing city, there's a lot of things that happen throughout the year. We've had a bud budget up opening in October. Typically, we'll have one in April as well. A lot of this is just clean up. There's a few things. We had some grants that came in with the police department. Kudos to to Chief getting that with the $55,000 grant uh for some equipment and some other things. So, just if you look down the list, I'm not going to go through a lot of these in detail. If you have questions, I'm here to answer them. This is pretty typical though that we'll do um adjustments throughout the budget a few times here.

We always love it when we have to add money from grants. That's the good side of the equation. So, it's an $84,000 swing that at this point. Yes. And I can't remember. So on our on our uh our impact fee fund that goes negative, but we can allow that to go negative. We can legally you can we basically borrowing against your general fund money to do it. So it's not wise and a long-term practice, but it was one of the things we signed up to do when we build it at regional park phase one is to to use it a little bit more knowing that we will recoup that money.

Yeah, we should balance out. So that's good. Yeah. All right, I'm going to move this one for discussion and voting on the business meeting. The next one would be discussion regarding proposed amendments to our consolidated fee schedule. And I'll have Steve go over these.

There's just a few of them in here. Um the next agenda item we'll talk about Robinson waste. I'm going to leave that one for now. Uh CD had just a few updates they wanted to add and change in the fee schedule. Uh the commercial sign fee is one of those increasing $100. We do charge a solar fee. It's just not in the fee schedule. So, I wanted to make sure that that was in there. Uh we did increase our building fees from $60 to $100. So, some of these are just items to clean up. And the last one is the impact fee. We do have two plans that actually escalate every year. That's built into the actual IFFFP and IF8. Uh your impact fee analysis plan. And that's every January usually is when we do it. So, we do it this time of year. That's our um let's see that's our public safety and our storm water the two. So you can see the fees compared side by side. Again those come straight from the FA plan what's on our website. if

any questions on those or concerns or it's part of the B schedule that would be implemented before the year end with a vote on our next meeting. We'll talk about Robinson waist if if the council moves forward with that. It would be an effective date of May 1st. the other the other other items will be approved April 14th or upon the effective date once you pass it in the business meeting. Is everybody okay with that? Yeah.

All right. So, I'm going to move to the next one and I'll tell you why I broke this out. So, uh Robinson Waste has requested a fee structure adjustment. It's written into the contract that they can request a cost of living analysis and adjustment um regular or once a year. Um, but because of this is a pass through expense. We don't collect any money that doesn't go straight towards the fee. So that's why I wanted to break this out. This is not a council uh decision on what the fee should be. This is a contractual thing that we've already voted on. So they do have the right to request. If we were to deny, we would be breaking the contract and having to go out and find another provider. So, um, so this one is different in that way because it's not structured by what you decide, it's structured by what they've submitted.

Yeah, this is based on um the consumer price index. So, it's tied to that. So, the 2.8% comes from that exact increase year-over-year from the previous year. Um, Robinson Waste is pretty competitive in our city. They service several cities in the in the county. We're one of the cheapest rates in the county, just so you're aware of that.

I will say that I did get some news tonight that I was not expecting that regards this. Uh I just came from a waste management meeting where I was informed that Robinson has sold a significant portion of their business to a company called Alos. So there is a controlling interest from another party, but all contracts including ours are supposedly honored as written. So just letting you know that on your radar that um it's a little different leadership structure there. Now

this contract is effective through April 30th 25th. See that in your packet. So we do have one more year on this contract at which time it won't go out to bid. But but that was significant news to me. So, mayor, yes. Just letting you know I'm on if you need me to address any of the information that was in the memo that I wrote about this. Okay, that's Cassie. Does anybody have any questions for Cassie? Nope. Seems like a contractual obligation, right?

It is pretty straightforward. I mean, but it is a pass through as well. So, I wanted to treat it separately and uh in case you were voting for or against the B schedule, this one's separate. This one's a contractual issue. All right, everybody. Okay, if I put this on the next agenda for a vote? Yes.

All right. So, we're going to move now to uh utility items. And uh first one is discussion regarding secondary water strategy for 2026. Um, I we sent out information that Robert had gathered about our um, uh, snowpack as well as our heat index. Both are looking like a terrible match for each other. I don't know who let those people date, but uh, yeah, they don't go well together. So, you are right. They don't. Uh, so yeah, unfortunately, we we've hit some records in a bad way. Uh um and what's really strange is you still see snow on the mountains. Uh it's just not as much snow as we would normally have this time of year. We also haven't had as much uh rain. Precipitation is running average. Uh we've got the NRCS keeps track of 45 years worth of data for precipitation. Uh snow water equivalent which is basically measured from snow melt and uh they track too. Um, and then our reservoir, most of our water comes from Echo Reservoir and some from East Canyon, but uh, Echo is at 62% full even as of I think three days ago. So, it's not looking like it's going to fill this year. Uh, I did go to a customer agency meeting last week at Weber Basin. They were concerned about it. They are very hopeful that we'll get some heavy precipitation this spring. Uh but they are uh considering uh they will do a drought reduction this year. How much? We don't know yet. Their board meets in two days and we'll know a little bit

more after that. So it could be, you know, in best case we're looking at 20% reduction for water that gets delivered to us for outdoor watering. If it is more probably worst case is they're looking at 40% reduction for outside water plus uh um 10% reduction for culinary water. Farmers would also take a hit at that point too with 30% reduction. So, we're hoping it doesn't get to that level, but um a lot of it depends on the precipitation. So, I'm coming here just to kind of make you aware of it. It I I also just had some things um that I like you to think about, maybe give me some input on. I'll bring this back to the next business session or uh to ask you to do a resolution for how we operate for this water season. So, in the past when we've done some drought reduction years, we've um we've worked on what I call the quadrant system where the city is divided up into four parts and then there's a no watering day on one of those days. um for each quadrant and then a no watering on Sundays for all citywide. So basically then they could choose from out of the five days a week which day to water. Uh and in the early season generally we've done before Memorial Day and after Labor Day it's pick two days out of the five to water and then during the yeah in between the Memorial Day to Labor Day pick three days of the week. out of the five to water. So, um but the only way that really works is if we do

enforcement. So, that that would be needed if we go with that. Now, we are starting to get meters put in the ground. Um we are still not uh 100%. I think we're more like 80% um done with meters on secondary. But um we also have to calibrate them so they're all reading in the right units and make sure we're getting the data. It's all accurate and good to go. So that's going to take a little bit of time too. But if we just rely on the meter data, that could be helpful. But we also if and we can give it to the residents, but if they don't know what their a lotment really kind of should be based on their uh lot size, it's hard for us to say you should be using, you know, no more than so many gallons this year and then you get to manage. We're hoping we can get to that point, but I just don't know that it we'll get there in time for this water season. I think we could for next water season. it would just take time to go through and figure out a lotments. Um so for this year um that's uh potentially I'm thinking the quadrants because we've done it over the past five years. This is not a new thing. This is something that

uh should be you know people should be familiar with anyway and it would just require uh enforcement to really keep people on track. So, so that's what I'm bringing to you for consideration for maybe a resolution for next council season. The other thing is uh just dates, start and end dates. So, our ordinance says May 1st, October 1st. Uh Weber Basin's doing a May 15th start with full pressure and then to October 1st.

So, this year we're not even getting the early season at all. It's not going to be up and running. So, we still have Davis Weaver, um, Canal Company, and they have not decided, but they meet tomorrow. I'm sure they'll have a discussion to talk about it, too. Uh, whether it's May 1st or May 15th. Yeah. Yeah. And whatever drought reductions they may give us. Our water comes from two suppliers, primary suppliers. Uh, most of us from Davis Weaver. It's kind of like a 6040. So, Davis Weaver's probably the 60% Weber base like 40. It could be very awkward to manage if we get different dates from different fundaments.

So, I'll see what Davis Weaver says. I'll see what the Weaver Bill board says. Those are both this week. I think by the April 14th, maybe we'll have a little bit better idea and I can probably come to you with uh maybe some options so that you can make a good decision. I do agree it there is uh it does make it easier to enforce when like a lot of cities are doing the same watering uh season and begin and end um because then it's not just hey this other cities doing it this way and why couldn't we? So so that's kind of where things are at. Do you have any input before

is the based on what we think the restrictions are going to be does the two and three days per week quadrant system still work? We didn't it did work. Um so in 2021 we had 20% reduction. In 2022 it was even worse. It was a 60% deduction which is absolutely crazy. But that's what we did. Well, for that one, I believe we were at like a we did the one day week and then the two days a week in the in the summer, if I remember, right? But

it really comes down to when we have the heavy restrictions, we do have to enforce because there are people who just ignore it and if we don't catch them and address it, then they'll use up their whole neighborhood's resources. I mean, I think enforcement is good. I think we need to have a well advertised Yeah. plan. I think we've done a pretty good job of it. The other thing with part which you hear all the time is

people think they're single singled out with with residents and so they see churches or schools or parks watering during what they what are restricted times. So maybe some of the education should be why some of those types of areas are have a different there's a different system like the city tries to water when residents are not supposed to water so that we don't take away pressure from when the citizens are supposed to water. Uh they're they take up more acres than the city does. So it actually makes more sense.

Um but yeah we have to do it. Also in our uh city code it requires and this is an every year thing no matter whether uh it's water conservation or not. Um every year large water users are required to submit a water conservation plan uh before we'll even turn them we can basically turn them off until they submit that plan to us. And so that's that's everything that's three acres or bigger which pretty much hits your schools, churches, parks. Okay. Um and then it also applies to HOAs. So, and we we submit ours, the parks submits theirs. We submit our own. Yeah.

And we we try to make it simple for them. Um mainly we're looking for uh a primary contact information if we have to get a hold of them. Also, we want to see what their schedule is like or or what they're doing to conserve. And um if it's if it's the same as previous years, just tell us that. So, so are we so on those plans are we requiring conservation on on their part as well and reduce water? So, yep.

And I think one of the things that we need to be conscious of and we'll probably have to do better education of is that sometimes in those plans we allow things to be different because they've agreed to other restrictions. So, like some of them do day water or like churches will day water because they're agreeing to use less overall. Um, but they're using it at times when the pressure isn't compromised. Um, things like schools, they will water at night. So, sometimes they'll water overall less, but they'll water heavier on like turf fields and not at all in like garden beds. They'll just let those go. So there are different options that they can put into place as part of their plan. But overall, if it represents conf or conservation, that's the hard part that citizens don't understand is they're submitting a for a larger parcel, they're submitting a plan for how I will use overall less water, but they're giving some freedom to use it differently than what how we manage neighborhoods,

right? Are those plans diverse enough and varied enough that it couldn't be consolidated into like a one-pager? Like if we're talking about the education coming out before people start complaining and saying, "Here's kind of a simplified for conservation plan." We do have we give them an option. We do have uh like a one or two page little template that they can just fill out

uh to try to make it simple for them. Uh but if they have something that they prefer that's maybe different for them um like the uh church or the school district just might have just a blanket one that's for all of their schools because it's not just our city or our specific schools or churches. Uh then it it may be just easier for them to give us what they use on other properties. So we give them an option just to try to keep it simple. Okay. But you're talking on the education side. You have access to it and it's there, but it could be released like on the city website or we could have a section that says conservation water plan or something. Is that

I mean you would have to disclose the details of every different one. You could just say large an overview. Yeah. Yeah. Large property acules but they are required to conserve conserve. These are the conservation efforts they are making. It's going to be interesting because every time water is a restricted resource, we get lots of people who like to find the problems in the system. It's all fine. But, you know, I mean, that's why we need some some enforcement because we'll have more people report their neighbor than fix their own sprinkler heads.

Another thing on education is you'll get complaints that they'll see the city watering the park every day, right? Well, there may be a sprink one of the sprinklers are on each day, but when there's 52 zones, um, so each zone will only get water twice a week or whatever, right? Even though you see a sprinkler on every day because it's such a big piece of property

in different part of the park, so it soaks in differently. And another another complaint you get actually you see some some of the city parks how they that they're so they're so green sometimes that people assume we're overwatering. But again, this is education. We have park maintenance staff that go to seminars. They they learn turf science and they understand fertilization that actually makes the grass green even with low water.

We actually put chemicals on our park that help absorb water faster. It's an actual fertilizer that will keep things greener and stronger, but it's an expense and you could do that at your home, too. But it most people don't even research that type of thing. So, you know, these are just different things that we've learned to do to develop high wear turf and so it takes less water, but it's an investment we make. Are residential customers able to do the same thing with zones? So if they did different zones on different days, they could potentially water more days of two or we're saying you have to run your whole it's

system on two days. So it's harder to enforce it. It's harder. It's harder to enforcement. We'd be looking at Oh, I I I think maybe I'm now I understand what you're saying. Yeah. He's saying if it goes from if you're still not watering on the two no water days, but you're spreading it out. That's what you're saying. Yeah, on that with like the residential, they could start watering at 6:00, so they can get through their cycles. We have so many programs and stuff going on, we can't start till 9 or 9:30 and then have to be the off by 10. So, I think that with the residential, they can usually get through their cycles. It's just harder for us to do it.

We could probably work through that. Um it's it is difficult when you know a lot of times it's the neighbor that complains. That's what you say. It's and we have to go look at it. But we have to address the complaint. We have to work through it with the owner. So is that just asking for more issues? No. If people are more calls. Well, I'm not saying I'm just saying if someone interpreted as that.

Well, you know, it's not a bad thought. But the other twist to the whole thing is is that you also have to work with your neighbor because most of our lines are split between houses and the one line supplies both. So you try to work with your neighbor to water on opposite days. So while you may have 5 days to pick two, your neighbor's picking the other two and so you don't have that much flexibility because you want to have adequate pressure and you're and two residents throughout most the city, not every spot, but through most of the city, two residents share uh an in uh input line.

You could also change times of day of watering them too or times at night, you know, so you can between 10 and six. So they're you I think our city citizens are used to the quadrant and I think they're used to the two days and I think they're used to nothing between 10 and six. I think they're really well trained. I am. I think the clock is probably already programmed. The good news is we've been doing this for five years anyway. So it's not it's just taking it up to that next level. It's like let's just enforce it now and and and do our part to try to really have everybody comply with that. Have we not done enforcement in the past? Yes, in higher water years we've not emphasized it as much.

Yeah, the past two years we did not. Uh we put out conservation messages, general messages out there. Um but we did not do active enforcement is more passive. So if someone called then we would put just put a door hanger on their door and just kind of friendly reminder, you know, could serve water. But I mean I feel like I feel like for the most part that worked. Everybody in my community thought you'd get a ticket. So yeah. So in they were afraid definitely in 2122 there there were lots of hands and that's probably why they thought they were oh the years before they and that's they were training people.

I was going to say that too. I I really feel like at least the people that I've talked to this has already been a conversation that's been had all winter long that we're going to have a dry summer and that's just what it is. And so a lot of the people in the public in in our city that I've talked to are already anticipating and conservation efforts. So I mean pray for rain everybody because that's what we all need. We're all in the same problem, right? We're trying to manage it by sharing the responsibilities. So

and then if they don't let us, you know, if they link if they push us back to May 15th and that's going to be huge, too. the gardeners will revolt because they want to get their crop started early, which is fine. I understand why. But if we have a limited crop or limited resource and we can't get the supply, there's nothing we can do. I can't, you know, you can use culinary, I guess, but we do have meters for culinary, so we'll know and you'll pay for it.

Okay, I think I have enough. I'll bring back. So we'll we'll move forward with the discussion, but I think what I'm hearing is it'll be based on the same quadrant philosophy we've used in the past to manage this situation. Does anybody feel any differently on that? And you are welcome to come forward if you have a brilliant moment before next meeting. I mean, you could just give us more water. Yeah, it's that easy, right? There are there are some cities that their um their strategy is keep it alive but not green. Yeah. Uh there's different people have different strategies. That is rough. Yeah. And people and people have been losing in Syracuse. People lost their lawns. Yeah.

Just trying to keep it alive but not green. And they completely lost their lawns. Yeah. Thousands and thousands of dollars. Yeah. All right. Item number two under the utility items is a discussion regarding secondary water metering project and pro and the customer portal. So this is actually a really positive discussion I'm excited for, but I'm going to let Steve spill the excitement.

Okay, so I've given Utah code reference that's kind of boring to read, but there's two highlights in it. um state legislature said by January 1st or by 2030 we have to have meters in place and a billing requirement by July 1st of 2030. Uh we are doing this quicker than the 23rd deadline because we have almost 11.5 million in grant funds that go away in the end of this year. So we've been pushing this hard. We you can see the breakdown. We have about 11.5 million dollars in grant funds. We issued a bond for just over 4 million, a total of just over 16.4 million in city funds, matching funds, bonds, and grant funds. Uh with that money, we've spent all but about 4 million of this. We we spent about 75% of it. Uh to date, we've uh this was as of the 1 of March, we had about 88% of our connections that have been converted and the holes dug out. That doesn't mean they all have meters in them yet. Uh we still have about 2500 meters to buy as long as well as radios. Uh but the hard part is doing their conversions. Um the last 10% are going to be the toughest. We have about 750 backyard um connections

that we have to move to front yard.

We have to move to front yard. So there's a couple options we can do. Uh the first one was we could just put the meters in place and the radios in the backyard, which isn't the best option. we don't really want to do that. Um I actually just recently talked to the state representative over the grant and there are some agencies turning back grant funds. They're not using them. Um one of the requests I want to make with the council tonight is our second option would be to run piping basically a loop from the backyard to the front. set the meter pits and radios in the front yard and loop it back until we have a point in time in the future we can move the actual water line to the front yard. Uh you'll see as in in the budget retreat in our fiveyear plan I think in year three there's probably about $10 million projects on the list and that's what those are are moving those water lines from the backyard differently. We don't have to do them all at once. If we can find a way to loop these, um the cost per connection is about $2,500 to $3,000 just depending on the length and all that. That's about $2.5 million in project cost. My estimate is is we can't we can't do all those under our current funding structure, but I can make that request to the state and there's a pretty good chance they could they could reorganize and and uh reallocate some money to us in their I believe they're in their May uh meeting. So, what we're what we're hopefully wanting to do is propose that they allow us to do that. Get give us additional grant funding um and try to get those all done by October, November this year. The grant funding runs out in December. They've given us a deadline of October and November.

We can get that extra money funded because it's there at state level. So we're proposing an extension where we ask for an extension of the grant to get more money than we've had. So along with that, we're also requesting additional grant dollars or or money to use for our old tower network. So the original plan was to and the cheapest option was to use Weaver Basin's towers, use their portal, and then they'd send us reports with information on water use. M

it isn't as ideal, especially when we have now when we're fully converted over 20,000 connections. Um but with this grant funding, we can actually stand up our own towers. It's about $200,000 that the grant will pay for. Um this is a critical decision point because we have to change the frequency of all of our radios either to read from their towers or from our old towers. Um, with that though, and you you'll see in your packet, there is an additional cost to us if we get our own data and um have access to own data to troubleshoot meters, to have real-time data for our utility clerks to answer questions. Um, all this all this information will be funneled through a portal that we'll advertise pretty heavily um to have our customers use. And the good thing about the portal is it'll it gives you updates about every four hours versus once a month.

So people would know how much they're using even if it's not built that way yet. So we could get early user data. And the other thing that Steve hadn't mentioned yet that I think you have to know right now is the people who went with the Weaver Basin towers have now left there because it was too clunky and it wasn't working. It was too overwhelmed with information. So that's why we shift it back to the idea of we might just stand up our own towers is then our people are served with actual information not a day late information. Yeah. Two of the agencies that we were the last one to convert and that's why we're doing it now. Two of them that had converted have said we just want to have access to our data so when a customer calls in we're not saying hey we'll call you back in 24 hours and we'll let you know why your water went up.

Is is our anticipation. So for our citizens the the end user to have direct access to our own portal because eventually there's going to be limitations on how many yes gallons you can use each month or and by by a resident having access to their own portal and up-to-date information on how much water they've used. The studies they've done up at Weaver Basin show that they they actually save like 20% of their of the water usage just because they know is their response. I think they'd be more responsible if they have accurate

and that's why we want faster information. Yeah. Is it really does matter if you're looking at accurate or you're looking at bad data because it's a day old because we have to use the Weaver Basin connection and relay system. So to be clear, we still want to use their portal um to process all information through it. They they would do an API so it looks like our portal um we'll have the data to troubleshoot on our end. And to be clear, we basin does a great job. They're a great partner. Um and from a standpoint of we were originally going to go with them. The only reason I'm saying let's go a different direction is because we can get grant funding to get our own towers. We can pay for our first year of data under this grant. And we actually are the biggest user in the network including weaver facing when you count number of meters because we have two systems and that was kind of eye opening to Robert and to the their annual meeting was you know at full buildout we'll be over 22,000 connections the next highest I think was 20. So um

how many towers would we is it just one? We'd have to do a a propagation study but we're thinking it's probably have to be two. And the grant funding would cover both of those. Now, what's the what's the life expectancy of those towers? Thank you. I'm not sure exactly. Um I know our meters are at least 15 20 years, I would think. I can get you an answer. I don't I don't know if Robert knows off top of his head. You I don't know. We can get you an answer. Um they are I mean they they can be set up on top of a building so they can be protected from cars hitting them hopefully, but um I'll round so You never know if you're fine here, don't you?

I want to be clear to the council though, this this method will cost us a little bit more and that is in the packet. But I think the cost or the the efficiencies that we'll gain from having our own data, not only install, troubleshoot, um do all that on the public works side, but to help the customers on the front end with the utility clerks. We we could save it in labor over over time because our people get better information and are familiar and can help people directly and we're only going to grow as a city. And the eye openening thing for me was two of the agencies I think one had 9,400 connections, the other one had 7,000 connections. So they're not even half our size. If they if they went away because they wanted their own data, they don't want

I'm recommending that we go with their own data. Still use the portal. Interestingly enough, there are companies that that provide portals. Even Census has their own portal. It's the Cadillac of portals. You'd pay like $40,000. So, the fact that Weaver Basin is allowing us to do it through them, I think it's $4,500 a year. Uh there was one agency that went a different route and now they're coming back to Weaver Basin to use their

So, so my question really comes down to like future proofing, right? like I don't want to make a decision to go with the original plan and then we just kicked a can down the road then we have to we have to do this anyways. Is is that what we're thinking that it eventually one day we're going to have to build towers and do our own

that would be the optimal way to go from the from the get-go? And that's why I said originally we wanted to go that way. It was just the cost was just too high. We couldn't justify it. We were basing was a good alternative. Um but with the grant funding to me it makes sense. Let's do it now because that's that's the direction we're going to be in I think in the future anyways as we just continue to go. is the grant extension and the request of additional funding for towers. That's also tied to those tied to the um meters that we're trying to move from the backyard. So, we're trying to get additional funding for those as well.

So, I did a summary. We have about $4 million left. I we can do everything with the towers. Um I think we have about 15 $1.5 million left to do the backyards. This would be about two and a half million to do the way we want to do it. So I'm going to ask for additional funding state. It's not guaranteed. Um I would recommend that we try to do as many as we can regardless of we don't get Do we have to move the valve from the back to the front before we use the loop

eventually for service? I mean yes because eventually we're going to be in a situation where we're going to have easement issues and backyard issues. if we have to service them or if we have to replace or upgrade a line, we're going to have to go through everybody's backyard and that's going to be expense because we'll have to restore. So, by moving to the front yard, it makes it easier for us to have minimal cost on operations. Okay?

So, eventually we'll want to do that. It was really just old school, really bad design, and we've seen that in other districts, too. I mean, like, we had a couple of sewer lines that ran through backyards and the expense and the annoyance that you get from having to dig up people's backyard and then try to restore it and and the claims are phenomenal. Like, you know, that's my favorite tree. And Oh, that's my grandmother's telling. Yeah. You're dealing with trees, sheds, fences, and dogs and other things and other things. But, but it is an option to leave them in the backyard. Yeah. But eventually that pipe's going to have to be upgraded or restored anyway. So at that point you don't want to do it.

Just know that these are old in the city. That's that was our standard before we went to the front. So those are all the old ones. They're the ones anytime soon. Yeah. So So they're already they're already due. Yeah. They're they're we already have to replace them. We already do have to replace. I mean they maybe got like 10 years left. Oh no. They maybe have lost I don't know. It's hard to know what I like. Yeah. I mean, these pipes were put in in the original back in 1983. So, they're young. This year I was born last that long. Um, is a long time. Yeah.

Pipes are generally have to 30 to 40 years is like considered a max life and we're already at 40 years. And they're smaller pipes. They're generally like they don't carry as much water and our standard as standard has been since 1990 has been a 8 inch main in the road. So

um you connect someone's you disconnect from a 3 in and get onto a 8 in you'll see a huge difference of serviceability to our residents. So so eventually we'd like to get to that point. We just can't replace all these little 3-in backyard manes all right down. Uh but setting this up for future so that we it gives us the ability to when we have money to replace them in future. You know, this is really the smartest way. So we are futurep proofing because we'll want to do it better when we have to do it.

So the council's good with this approach. Um, the timing of of getting the grants money for to do the backyards will probably be right before the end of the grant ends. I mean, we we'll get it done. The tower timeline is 3 to six months. So, I don't know if the towers will be online before the end of the water season. We'll try to get them there as quick as we can. Um, the good news is is next next year we'll have all the data. We'll have we'll have information to send to give out to the residents and we'll still have two water years where we don't have to bill based on usage. I know we were based this that they would give the customer their information that would say you know you you use this much water you could have paid this much if we were billing based on usage things like that education. So by the time we hit 2030 when we have to go based on the usage the the customers are

so this is moreformational. We don't actually need to take an action or do we but we don't have to apply. We're going to apply anyway and see if we can get it. Yeah. if we get it, we're just making sure you're on board to do with it what we're applying for because that would take an action to receive the money. And um so we're hoping to get it by May. So this is all just kind of preliminary. Make sure that we're not doing something that you're going to reject because that's really bad.

The critical decision is either option not one or option two. If we want to go with our own towers, our own data, we need to know that now so we can program the frequencies of the radios to our towers. And I think we do based on everybody else. I mean, if everybody else is turning away for because it's clunky and not effective, we might as well do it right, we might as well follow the pattern of what people are having more. I mean, that's that was my question, right, Mayor? Is like if we if we did what the original plan was, are we looking at four years down the road, we're going to have to go to our own towers anyway, and now they cost twice as much money because who knows what's going on in the world? Yes, that's what we're And there's no grant money then.

Yes, that's what we are seeing is let's try to do it with the grant money and do it right. Is the ongoing subscription cost to pass through? So $55,000 per year is going to be the ongoing cost if we went with we were basing that cost would have been 35,000.

Is that passed on to the I mean it's only like a $150 a year. Yeah, the proposal would be that be a utility fee increase to the customer and with 10,000 users in the system we're about let's say 20 to 30 cents on each system. So it might be 50 cents per user per year. It is a cost and that's why I want to have this discussion with the council so you know fully uh which option you want to go. But if you're trying to play within the rules and not be charged because the the state legislator's already told us we're going to have to charge per use. If you're trying to do that, having good information, I think, is worth having live data. That's worth the user

because that will save you the overages that you would end up paying for. We want people to be able to to manage their budget better that way.

And really, if we can get a portal that people are using, like Robert alluded to, if we could say you're allowed this amount of water, you could actually track it on your own property. That would be the ideal scenario is you get this amount of water, use it wisely. You know, once you hit a certain amount, you're either going to get charged more or some some mechanism would be in place. Um, users can can set alarms. They can it it does a lot with water leak detection. Not only from the user side, from city standpoint, it's been proven these real time data, they can actually help with water.

Yeah, I think that would be way better water pump conservation. a lot of good things that come with this mandate. It's interesting.

So, this won't be for a vote right away, but we're going to go ahead and apply. All right. So, moving on to items G. There's a couple of items that came forward uh from COG that I need to bring to the committee. So, um the first is the great uh Great Salt Lake Scenic Byway Committee. There was a committee formed before the freeway was put in place to help uh get legislation passed that we all agreed to where we would dedicate uh 177 and the path from 177 out to the guard house as scenic byway. And that preserves a couple of things. It it requires basically basically we can sum this up as a no billboard act. And so they don't want big distractive things. They want to be able to let the beauty of the community shone through. Um they're asking to reinstate this committee because when the freeway opened, they kind of dispersed, but now what they'd like to do is use the same committee to apply for federal funding so that they can get some unified signage for attractions. like they would add some signs outside of the byway that say Analopee Island. It's your next and they would be not just your green sign, but they would be kind of nicer like a national park style sign,

brown sign.

And so we want to help them do that because our city will probably be affected more than anybody else because we are the way to get to Analopee Island. We're also part of uh some of the other attractions. they would like designate certain things as hey this way to the nature park or this way you know so we want to do that I think it's good and with some of the other things we're discussing um it would be helpful they're asking that we assign a staff person because they plan to meet during the day and they also want it to be somebody who has access to our data that they're going to use to write these grants so I'm suggesting that we assign Noah to go to these meetings um he's going have easy access. He's also agreed it's probably a once a month for an hour thing down at the county. Um probably a good use of time, but if you really object, we can force Marica to go. So,

oh, let's say that and she has not agreed.

Does anybody have any issue if we send Noah to this committee? I mean, I would love to have you guys do it if you wanted, but it is going to be a middle of the day and it is going to be a little bit tedious because it's you'd have to constant constantly go back to Noah and say, you know, what was our population? What was our what's our ordinance with signs? What's you know, because that's what they're going to try to for. So, I'm going to put on the next agenda that we're going to appoint Noah to this committee and wish him the best. The next item on our agenda is an anti-hate resolution. uh they came forward at the last COG meeting and uh one city and the county have passed resolutions to be against uh anti-semitism and generally against any religious hate. You see in the packet I wrote a memo that explained that religious uh bigotry is on the rise while generally racism is not which is a good thing but there is a concerted effort and a group that is out there. Now we I will say this has been a a policy of our city. We do not generally pass a lot of resolutions that are for specific interest because if we did that every one of our meetings would have 10 resolutions that set aside a day for this cause for that cause for this cause. However, they're asking us if we will consider this one because it is kind of a movement amongst the whole county. It's up to you. We can write this. I put a sample resolution of what the county wrote. um is completely up to you council how you want to handle this.

I I like the framing. If we vote no to it, then it looks like we like it. Yeah, I'm gonna I'm gonna preise whatever I say that I'm not anti-ate, but I don't see I don't see the purpose of doing these types of resolutions. It's political points and sure it's y I don't understand against hatred in general. And yet I I do I do we run the risk of somebody saying, "Well, then my cause needs a resolution too." And we could be

we could be doing a lot. Like I will tell you that I already in this meeting we discussed it and like Bountiful has a policy of no resolutions for any measure that is not directly tied to the city. So they have a policy that they've passed that says they won't do this. Um I don't even know that we need a policy, but I I don't think we have to pass this. I feel like Syracuse is pretty anti-discrimination as a whole already for people. It could come back to us that, oh, we're the only ones that didn't agree. Put one out there. I'm again, I'm not You could say that the choice like didn't like it. Specifically to call out anti-semitism. I just like to keep it general. Hatred in general.

And some of the cities agreed to that as well. They said, "We'll do one that's just anti-hatred." Then again, you're just, you know, narrowing it down to groups. It's like, no. Yeah. I I don't I don't want to be partisan. Yeah. At all. So, I I say I I I would I would say that I'm I feel like staying out of it. I don't even want I would agree with that. If you wanted to not do an official action, but you know, maybe something to promote anti-hate, we could we could have Cara put together something for the newsletter just like this an article that just says in general this is a challenge in society of

we don't want to see it in our community for sure. Yeah. I I don't I don't feel like it's a good use of our city council though, like take a stand to to be partisan in any way. Okay, great.

All right, then we will not move forward with this one. And I'm perfectly fine with that. The last one is uh we had and we brought this to you already that we had decided that we were going to try to raise money during the America 250 celebration to put towards a veterans memorial. And at this point, I'm starting to identify grants that we can apply for, but we're going to have to come up with some uh official backing that we are for this. We're moving forward. We haven't actually taken a vote. I did a sample rendering that you see in your packet. It does not have to be that specific, but in talking with other staff that there's actually several ideas that came from people here of what would it look like in our city that would tie to the similar things that we're doing. And we talked about what if we do something that's lit from within like our signs and our all of our branding.

We like that idea. Another thing that we uh you know Brody came forward he says well you like some kind of obelisk. And I said well let's make it six-sided so that each side could be dedicated to a branch of the service. Um, you know, none of this is set in stone at this point, but I feel like I need your approval for us to start paying somebody to do a an actual design because we would not approve some thumbnails. And this is very high level. This isn't going to be anything we're committed to right away, but we need to commit to the project so I can apply for grant money because there are federal grants that we've identified that vet recognize veterans and could pay a chunk a considerable chunk of the cost and we don't know what that budget is yet because

I was under the impression this was going to all be privately funded.

Well, it's not going to be funded by our tax dollars. That's was the intention was we are not going to do this but we are going to try to raise funding like so we have an entry fee for the Americana relay race the freedom run and that will all go towards this. It's probably not going to raise a lot of money but that way the entry fee is just to get people to commit so that we don't have dozens of signups and nobody show up. So, um, we agreed to put that towards this as well as we can start soliciting corporate funding or federal grants. I my goal was not to spend any money of tax dollars from the citizens because that's general fund money that needs to go to other things. But if we could get uh a federal grant that pays and the matching funds from a corporate sponsor,

I think that it's wonderful. But we you mentioned we need to pay somebody to do a rendering. Where would those funds come from? They can be paid back out of a grant. Okay.

So, we have a contract right now for people that do renderings and stuff for us that if it go it's no more than $5,000 and it's a time and materials contract. I'm expecting this to be around two. It could come out of the grant and we just pay it in a rears when we get a grant or when we raise money. I think we'll probably raise that much in the city for private donations. So, we're not I'm not proposing this comes out. We would authorize it. The risk would be absolutely nobody supports this in any way, shape, or form, and that would be the most we would lose. But I think at this point in time, we have to get something a little bit more official. Um, I like what we have if anybody else likes it, but that was just my concept. Does not have to be the one to approve. Is that putting the cart before the horse if we get a rendering now of something? But we don't know the location. So, we're not exactly sure about

I proposed this. I sent to the company for consideration um seven locations in the city that could possibly their undeveloped park space. I didn't want to use developed park space because that's already on the books. I wanted to increase our park space of these. Um, the one that I think that comes up that most people said would be functionally working is probably to put this adjacent to Jensen. And the reason is is where is this AR there is a big swath of land between the pump station and the fire station. It's completely wildland at the moment. We've been we got that as part of uh the UD do thing and the fire station. There's already parking at Jensen. So that saves us money. Um, it's next to the freeway, so if we build something large, it would attract attention and maybe give people a reason to stop and visit us here, which might be a reason for them to spend money in the community. So there are other things to it, but I think that there's enough space there to do the this rendering three times over. So we would be able to just use that space. That seemed to be the preference. There were a couple of others that were mentioned. Uh, one of which was a part of the park that is developed and I don't want to take away from that. It's just grass. But back there by the where the birdouses were, there's a little triangle spot. Um, this is next to it. So, I would just like add on. So, we increase the developed acres. Uh, the other spots that we looked at, uh, we talked about maybe putting it in the regional park and but that's design. We don't really have design. I mean, we have something else designed now. So, this is completely undesigned space. Yeah.

Um, we talked about maybe doing something near trailside because it's a just uh it's not really programmable space, but again, the feedback that I got from the architects and people who chimed in for free. These are just friendly comments said that that's probably not as exciting as the ones over by the fire station. Agree. And I like the idea of it being near the fire station because then I'll have some people that will look at it once in a while and I'm I don't expect them to protect it, but I expect them to notice if something in, you know, shadyy's going on next door. U it's going to be the firefighters that are doing

well. And I'll tell you, I have

I have an ulterior motive for this and I'm just going to share this out here. If we get this done in that space and there's still more space, we might future add on a first responders monument that would kind of cohabitate with these in good space. We would honor both and they would, you know, they would be separate. They wouldn't be the same thing, but it I think that that would be a significant something for our city to have to show that we honor those people. And I think we could also get a grant for that. So that could be phase two. There's enough space for both thoughts. I like it.

I like it. I love it. Yeah, I like it. Do you like the vein of where we started this? Is that a possibility? I like it going by our new fire station. I love the I think by Jensen with the parking I mean all that makes a lot of sense. Peaceful. It's a peaceful place. the design kind of centered on the obelisk things. Excited. You like that? Love it. The internal lit thing. I really like that idea because that's what that goes along with what we've done in the city. Just my curiosity. How much would something like this cost?

I'm not sure yet, but I did look at um some similar things. So that was one of the reasons why I went with a design like this is because we actually came in at a reasonable budget for our signs and so we could build something like this. I haven't priced flagps yet. Again, they could be separate or not. Uh but thinking maybe in the Well, it depends on the land work. I I think the monument itself were probably 50 grand. the surrounding area maybe another hundred because there'll be a lot of land work and clearing. We won't have we'll have electrical but we won't have need we'll need water

maybe for just for plants solar but we won't but you know again it's I don't know I'm I'm trying to keep it within a level that we could actually get a grant I don't want to design something for $20 million and go oh this never happening you know I I want to see this actually through and I think that if we keep it we keep it reasonable We might just get the whole thing paid for. We do like bricks, like buy the bricks. We can, but the most the majority of this money is probably going to come from a federal grant

or even the state grant. I've already reached out to the veteran affairs committee. I have connections there and they are willing to put forward something as a contribution. See, when we talk about those or even corporate sponsors, we can get tens of thousands of dollars where bricks are going to raise maybe a couple thousand. Yeah. $50 for a brick isn't going to build this monument. So, it's going to be the big grants that and it's money that they've dedicated to use for those causes. We would not get it otherwise. It's not money I could spend somewhere else, but I really believe the Syracuse needs something like this. It beautifies our city. It Yeah.

And it it takes care of some space that we are not currently using, too. I'd like to get that used. So, any any objections? You wouldn't be offended if we put this near a fire station. Just checking. We can tell you our cost estimate for a 14oot bison internally. Internally bison. 14 foot bison. Well, including all the landscaping and everything that the estimates around 5.5. Okay.

And this could end up being around the same too. But if we get the money from the fed or from fed and the state or from fed the state and the county, if we use all these resources, we could get this done. I can tell you right now, if we do a a a safety uh you know, safety uh monument next to it, Joe Hamlin's going to be the image of the firefighter. Just his mustache. Legendary. He always gets embarrassed when we say that, but that guy third monument just just a mustache. All right, that's a good mismatch.

All right, so if you're okay with that, this is not a voting item. We're just going to start proceeding to get things in place and try to raise some money. We're okay with that? Yeah. Any no objections? Because if you object, then we got to maybe do a vote. Okay, no objections. All right. Now, I'm going to turn the time over to Colin because we did our open to public meetings training, but we also have to do an ethics training and nobody better than Colin to entertain us for the next 10 minutes. It's going to be hard to beat the mustache now. So, Paul, I need a guinea pig. In my mind, I picked you, but are you willing to be a good sport for the next 15 minutes? Okay.

Yeah.

Thank you. We're going to talk about stinky fish. Some of you heard this talk a couple of years ago. Um, if you walk up the side of the road and you see a dead fish lying there and it sort of smells bad and looks rotten and it's kind of squishy when you touch it with your toe and you pick it up and it's slimy in your hands and you smell it and it doesn't smell good. My advice is don't put it in your mouth. That's how you avoid stinky fish. And the ethics are the same way. So, I have some great news for all of you on the economic development front. There is a new uh franchise available. It's called Stinkies Fish and Chips. And Stinkies Fish and Chips might have hypothetically approached the city. You might want to put their world headquarters right here in Syracuse along with their 15 premier pilot outlets and then spread out from Syracuse and take over the world. You now know that because you just learned it in a closed meeting and it is not yet public information. So Paul leaves our little p our little closed meeting and he goes out and he immediately buys 500,000 shares of stock in Stinky Fish because he knows once this thing hits the ground and starts producing these 100% recycled fish fillets

that he is going to become rich. Ethics problem or not an ethics problem? Yes. Sounds like Nancy. Yeah. Are we following federal guidelines or depends on the city? There's probably an ethics issue

there. No doubt is and that is that as city councilmen and city employees, we are not allowed to use non-public information to benefit ourselves, our families, our friends, etc. Okay. Um Paul decides not to go buy stock. Paul calls up the Stinky Fish Corporation, which is currently located in some guy's basement, and says, "I am the best Stinky Fish filt salesman you will ever find. I want in on your company." Problem? Yes. Yep.

Yep. You cannot accept employment with an entity that's about to do business with the city. Next slide. I got that one on there twice, so ignore the top one. So now Paul says, "Gee, I don't want to buy Stinky Fish stock, nor do I want to work for Stinky Fish. It sure would be nice if I could work some kind of a deal in exchange for my vote to approve this whole thing if Stinky Fish would offer me one free fish fillet sandwich every week for the next 10 years." Problem? Well, that a lunch learned.

Okay. No, you cannot accept a gift of substantial value that would cause you to depart from what you might do otherwise, which would be to vote against the Stinky Fish operation. and the one there at the bottom. Um, if it appears to the reasonable person in the public that what Paul is about doing with the Stinky Fish Corporation, um, appears to be something that would affect him or affect his decision, then he can't do that either. So, it's it's based on the reasonable man standard, the objective standard. He cannot without disclosure accept that gift. um he cannot without disclosure receive compensation. So he can't go to Stinky Fish and say for $100,000 I'll get this through the city council for you. That too would be a problem. And there are some exceptions to this substantial gift thing. You can accept a gift under $50 in value. You can accept a gift that recognizes your public service. Little plaque for the wall, a little uh pencil holder for your desk, those kinds of things. You can take out a loan on your home at 6% or whatever the going rate is. But if someone comes to you that's going to be a new financial institution down here in the hot triangle and says, "Boy, if you sweeten this deal for us, we can get your home loan for three and a half%." You can't do that. You have to go the same rates that are available to the public. And finally, political campaign contributions don't count. Um, when do you have to disclose? You have to disclose if you're an officer, director, agent, or employee, or owner of a business entity. that's regulated by the city or that's about to do business with the city or if you have a personal interest or an investment that creates a conflict of interest. And that is generally um 10% or more of the business ownership in you, your spouse, your immediately intermediate family. Penalties for violating the act. It's a

class B misdemeanor for small violations. It goes all the way up to a seconddegree felony for large violations. uh someone can sue and undo the contract or undo the agreement. That's called recision and that happens civily and you can be removed from office. So if you're looking for a way to get out of office and work solely for the sneaky come and see me after.

Now I didn't have a slide for the next one, but there are disclosures. We all know about disclosures. Every January you file a financial disclosure that Cassie or Marica sends to you. You fill it out. You file it. you turn it back in. If you don't turn it back in by January 31st, it's a class B misdemeanor. Okay? So, that comes to you every year. You also have to disclose upon being elected whether you not whether you have any of these conflicts of interest. Let's say I don't have any Stinky Fish conflicts today when I am elected. But four months from now, I now have a conflict of interest. Do I get to wait until the following January to disclose that? I see one Julie saying no. and she's going to say that you've got to disclose it at the time that it happens. And she's correct about that. Also, if there's a stinky fish agenda item coming on the agenda, you have to disclose that to the mayor and the city recorder at least 10 days before the meeting. And at the meeting, you have to publicly disclose it and say, "I just bought 50 50,000 shares of the Stinky Fish Company." You then don't participate in the matter. You don't get to turn around and represent Stinky Fish at the meeting. You're just out. And in fact, you're out of the room until the matter is over. You don't get to discuss it. You don't get to vote on it. And you don't get to talk to the other members of the council about it privately. So if you are disqualified, if you have a conflict of interest, you just take yourself off and you stay out until it's completed. Um, I won't tell you when and and how to file those 10day disclosures because the rules change all the time. I did say that it was with the mayor and the city reporter. That's the current rule. the 10 days is the current rule, but I've never seen a legislative session where someone hasn't tried to tweak those to make the period longer or to make the public or to make the disclosure more public or something. So, when in doubt, call Cassie or call me and let's walk it through. Any questions? I did do that in 10 minutes or less.

Consider yourselves trained. And Paul, thanks for being a good sport. Love.

I've got a fish fillet sandwich in my office for you after. There there is one more thing I should say that that you all probably know and that is that the previous council has adopted rules of order for the council for the city council. There are specific and I will say more restrictive disclosure requirements and conflict of interest requirements in there. So, when you get a chance, go back, take five minutes, look at those rules governing the city council's um procedures and decorum and so forth and take a look at them. They're kind of the same, but they actually are more restrictive than what the state law requires. You have a higher standard located in the toolkit on the team's channel.

Yep. All right. We are going to invite Cresta up who is our parks and recreation director and we are going to do our bianial review of the parks department and this is one of my favorite subjects because I love parks. Well, and look right there off, you know, near that site is what we were just talking about. So,

yeah, it's beautiful picture and before we get started, the pictures were of Cara. So very grateful for her for all that she does for the for all of us departments and she's taken some great pictures. So let's move on. Um our mission at the parks wreck is to provide accessible high quality parks, events, and recreational opportunities that improve our community health, well-being, and social connection. Um we will unite is what we say. And we repeat this monthly. We have um descriptions with each pillar and I'm not going to go over those with each of you, but um you are more than welcome to reach out to me and I will tell you what those are that we we try to live by. But um we we want to do more branding and get that out with all different kinds of things so that our our citizens know what we're we're about. Um we're going to be talking today obviously about our vision statements and the key results and KPIs that you guys approved um back in March. Um and then we'll discuss um our personal personnel and organizations um cemetery expansion updating our master plan and IFP and then how we want to name our regional park. The first one our first vision statement is Syracuse city offers well-maintained parks and facilities that accommodate diverse recreational uh needs and our key results are parks conditions consistently meets high standards and we strive to provide recreation opportunities for all age groups. Um, I wanted to show you our KPI for this one is that we have our a percentage of our go ahead next one. Our percentage of our parks and facilities are rated good or better um for internal inspections. Uh, so I wanted to like we said, we just started these KPI. So we don't um I don't have a percentage for that, but I wanted to show you the maintenance plans that we do have in place um with our parks and our community center. Um, and we do do internal inspections regularly, um, weekly, monthly. Um, and then I wanted to give you some quick facts

because I think sometimes a lot of people just think that our parks people just go out and mow and that's what it is. But we maintain a lot in our parks and our community centers. And so you can see within our 16 parks, we have um 67 landscape beds, 22 playgrounds, four volleyball uh pits or courts, um multi-use trees, and this doesn't include all the ones that we're going to get at the regional park. It's, you know, 2,300 trees that we maintain, 17 pavilions, 18 restrooms, six baseball fields. We have that pump track and then the irrigation because I don't think people think of the infrastructure underneath. miles and miles of irrigation that we have to maintain um which is a lot and then we have our splash pad our cemetery Jensen building community center um with that the maintained acreage we have is 160.57 with the regional park which will be done here in June will be 17627 that we maintain and then along with that you guys know that we do 18 miles worth of trails and just continues to add so that's where we need to discuss us with next because coming with maintaining parks and having them look as great as they do is our staffing and one of the KPIs is our staffing per acreage of maintain space compared to benchmark cities. So when we did the when we started doing this we were trying to look when we were meeting with Brody and Steve on how we could actually um get the staffing per acreage because when you look at the national levels it's not the same as what we would be doing here. It's definitely much more. And so we decided that we would get our benchmarking cities um and we sent out the information, asked them their acreage, what they maintain, the employees that they um have just in the parks um maintenance division and then what that came up to and that was for your um FTEES so your full-time equivalent which is whether it's a full-time person and and that's worth one point one person and then you have um part-time which is.5 and then um

seasonals which are 33. So with our 176 acres that we'll be maintaining this se this season we have an equivalent of 13 12.96 um but what I have to explain with that is we have that for the FTEES but our seasonals which is a huge thing every season um but we really only get them for three months out of the year because we're really getting just college students. So out of the 12,480 hours we're supposed to get, we only average about 5,116. So that's why when you look and we're saying that we're stressed and stuff, it's because those the front season and the end season always ends up being very difficult for our staff. Um, and so with that, if we have the 13 FTEEs, we maintain 13.6 six acres per FTE and our benchmark cities are doing in the average 10.5 per employee. Um so you'll see this next slide as we say and we're looking at to get up to the um average we would have to add um four FTEEs to get to that average. Um the next slide we're going to talk about is um our KPI is our maintenance budget allocation per maintain space. Oh, go ahead. Yeah, as of maintained space and that's kind of the same problem that we had. We were trying to look at at national um and that's very difficult to do. Um it was actually telling us to do it per population, which didn't make a whole lot of sense. And so that's why we went to um this. And again, we went out to our benchmark cities and asked them what they um they do to maintain their parks. And again, we're at uh 176 acres with 1,495 is what we budget. And so our cost per acreage would be 8,481. So we are below the average um of cost

per acreage and our benchmark cities are 10 10.3. So with that said, when we were looking at what would equal us out and get us average, adding the four FTEES would put us at a line almost exactly. We'd be at 10.2, they're at 10.3. So um the next slide with our KPI is that we strive to provide recreational opportunities for all age groups. Um and if you can see there's we have on the left side all the programs that we're offering right now. And one of the our KPIs is to investigate two per year which we have done. So our new program offerings I don't know if you guys have seen it around but we we've offered street hockey and people are loving it. It's it's been really fun. I actually was one of the ones that was kind of like I don't know, but it has been such a good thing and we have so many people. So, we started that in the fall. Um, and I know that it's probably because the mammoth are are becoming so huge here. Um, and so we started that. We started our uh we had clinics in street hockey. We were doing baseball clinics and we also are trying to do a threeon-ree basketball. Um, we we offered that. It hasn't been success, but we're continuing to do that. But, um, outside of that, we're offering inside the community center. I think you've heard me talk about this before is our contract employees trying to get more into the community center to get classes and um clinics and camps that we really don't end up having to do a lot with. We just have to get them in. And that's our STEM camps. We're doing a jump rope clinic and they're going to do a huge national competition at the community center on um April 18th. So if anybody wants to come and watch that, we've got people coming from all over that are going to be watching that. But we thought that would be a nice opportunity to introduce um some jump rope clinic and workshops and camps. Uh so we're going to be doing that. And then I like we said, we have partnerships um that we're investigating with baseball and softball clubs because we're trying to bring u people in on our in the weekends

to help with our economic. And then um we're doing a high school basketball tournament. And then we really want to get adult baseball started um in the city. we have a nice new field and so we want to be able to partnership with um a baseball program that's already kind of set up. So next I wanted to show you the participation numbers that we have. As you can see um they're growing. Again we did fall uh street hockey and spring hockey and those are just growing but we just continue to grow in all of our programs. uh we don't have our baseball and softball uh this year yet, but we're reaching, you know, above 1,200 in in a lot of our our sports and our combined sports. And then the next slide is um just our participation in our not unlike our non-sports that we're continuing to to do. It's lower numbers, but it's it's we offer and they're just continuing to grow. Moving on to statement our vision statement number two is that um the parks recreation department provides financial sustainable recreation programs um and that they'll our key results will be that there are sufficient revenue to cover direct uh costs of our over uh overall program. To the right, you'll see that we do a cost analysis after every single one of our programs so that we see that we're making money and covering our costs and and we're hoping to to bring in 10% so that we can help cover the costs of um our coordinators. I'm excited. This is showing, and I'm really happy to show this because as I was looking back in past ones, there are definitely programs that were not because it our uh KPI is that our overall costs for the programs um will will be financially sustainable, but every single one of our programs is in the black. Um and we're we're really proud of that. Next slide. I don't Yeah. Okay. Vision statement number three is the city has a

comprehens comprehensive improvement plan that ensures the upkeep and enhancement of park facilities. Our key results are our park and community center improvements align with city's parks master plan and our projects are completed within an acceptable time frame. As you see, you guys know we you guys work with a 5-year plan all the time and uh so it's it's a working document that we're always you guys are always seeing, we're always working with. Um, the next slide is about our master plan though. And just so that you guys, the last time we updated was in 2019. Um, but it was that was kind of it wasn't like a full update. In 2016, we actually sent stuff out to the community. They gave us feedback. We had someone draw maps and and um and do things for us. The 2019 was more of a revise because it was 16 pages, I believe, and we, you know, whittleled that down a little bit. But in the master plan and and one of the KPIs is that um we have 5.66 acres of parkland per 10,000 residents. And as you can see, we're we're not meeting that goal. We're at uh if we have 39,000 people, which we do, we should have 218 acres of developed property. And I lifted the national average there for you. Our actual developed acres this summer will be 176, which we're 41 acres short. Um

does that include the regional part? Yep. That's the 176 is with our first phase. Okay. So the 41.73 is our we're falling short at and um we do have undeveloped park land which is 77 acres but a big portion of that 20 acres. We have our 40 acres and then we have 20 acres that as the fields. Um and I do believe that the development on that was that we really wouldn't be developing. Yeah. It's not a real it doesn't have sewer fall. But yeah, it's a real limited use space because we can't put bathrooms on most of it. You could almost count it as development. I guess we could, huh?

So, if we developed all that, we'd be at this at 6.51 per 10,000 residents. Um, the residents where possible have to have access to a park within one mile or less. And we were close to that, but as we're growing, it is definitely we're getting out of whack, which is a reason why we need to update our master plan. And then our overall mix would be 70 act 70% active and 30% passive. And right now we're at currently at 64% active and 36% passive. So we're working on that. But as you can see it's like really outdated and as you'll see was one of our future considerations. That's what I want you to kind of keep in mind because we've never been able to reach the goal that we've been putting in there. So maybe we need to re-evaluate the goal that we're we're trying to shoot for. The next one is our KPI is that our park projects projects are completed on schedule per year. Um I just wanted to list like all the projects we've done in the last two years. Um we have met 80% of our projects um completed. Uh things can change throughout the year. Things are unseen and so we adjust and move stuff around. Um, as you know, it was a struggle to get the park maintenance facility completed, but we did it and it has been such a huge benefit for our parks division. Like, we are so grateful for that. It's been it's been a game changer. We've done major changes in the Fremont Park. Um, it's still ongoing. Um, we're still going to be putting in some parking um, and rearranging some irrigation, but we got a new um, dog park that everybody's been really enjoying there and a new pavilion. We've got new concrete, um, renovations to the restroom. So, we've been we've done a lot there. Um, as you guys know, we've started the regional park phase one, which I don't know if you guys have had a chance to go down and if you haven't, go on down there. It's pretty cool to see. Um, we have done a lot of stuff at Founders Park and we're just continuing. You probably see the construction over

there. We just put in uh got the new lights put in and last night was our first night of using them. And because of that, we've been able to expand our soccer program, which has been great. we were able to add teams so we could go later into the night, which was the whole point of of putting those in. So, we're we're we're good on that. Um, and then we are we got the BMX and the pump track done. We're still have to do our pavilion, our landscaping, but what's exciting is what we wanted to happen with the BMX um pump the BMX track was to get things here nationally. and they didn't ever think it would happen this soon, but we are going to be able they're going to be able to bring a national um race here in August, which will bring a ton of people here for a whole week. A ton.

And uh that I mean that's kudos to them. The volunteer, you know, that they put into the work hours that they put into that. Um it's unheard of that you get a national conference that quick. And so it was it was crazy that they are already getting it, but they're going to have everything ready to go and they're pretty excited about it. So next slide. Um, our next one is we foster a strong sense of community p pride through improvements, events, and services. And this one should be Oh, it's our citywide vision statement number two. The city produces and sponsors events and programs that improve the sense of community in the city. Um, next slide. As you can see on the left is our special events that we do. Um, and Leslie does an incredible job with those. She also actually has deals with all of the um service hours with the community whether they're courtmandated or um just people wanting to volunteer or with our special events. So we wanted to show and that's one of our things is is that the number of volunteers engaged in city events programs and civic bodies that we're showing that we are having a lot of community service done um for our community. But what I didn't show here and what I'm going to keep track of is the volunteers that we get for on the recreation division side. We could not do what we do without volunteers. And it is thousands of hours that our um volunteers put in for coaches to make our programs run and we're very grateful for that. So we're going to we've started keeping track of that to make sure that we can report the volunteer hours back to you guys for that. Um, the next one is about social engagement. Media engagement for the next one. Yeah, the social media engagement. Again, I'm thankful for Cara. She's the one who pulled all this data for us. Um, it was interesting to see this is from um data at Founders Park from Placer AI, which tracks your cell phone to see the number of visitors we had during Heritage Days week and the pumpkin walk. Um I do don't

the pumpkin walk was a little off and so she wanted another year to kind of see that but I still wanted to put it up because I think that that was a year the 2024 was really cold if you remember people don't want to come to that when it's really cold but um we had over 16,000 visitors for that and then heritage days as we saw in 2020

28,000 visitors came into the park throughout the week which I think is is incredible. So we wanted to show that uh the next slide is our social media engagement. Um very grateful for Cara for all the time and effort she puts into social media for our department. The communication and consistency has been a huge difference for us and as you can see you know having almost 70,000 views on Facebook and um 100,000 views on Instagram is a big deal. So next, now getting into our future and our future considerations, we're going to talk about our personnel and organization cemetery expansion update to our master plans and naming of our regional park. This is our current um org chart that you see. We've got in the more green is our parks division, which is overseen um by Chad, our assistant director. And then on the rec side, we've kind of um divided our responsibilities but also work very closely together to make sure they both run efficiently. But um as you can see that's what we have um right now. Next slide is what we've talked about before and what our staffing situation is. Um we have the five positions that you'll see in our thing was was the four um full-time park maintenance workers. That would get us up to the average. We've also been asking for a full-time department administration professional because if you remember, we don't have one of those down at the um parks maintenance facility and um so it's locked up most of the time. But it's also um Chad and Brax has spent Braxton spend a lot of time um doing administrative duties um because we don't have anybody down there. So we have been asking for that for a couple of years. And then we're going to ask for one title change um to go from a coordinator to an assistant operations manager at the community center. As you saw, there was a whole line for our

recreation manager. And we've had struggles with our last our um with this position only because there's just so much to do. And we we looked at our work charts throughout our benchmark cities and none of them oversee also the communities like their community centers or their complex. It's a lot to have to look at and things fall through the crack. when you're focusing on the community center that something's getting lost over here on the wreck. And when you're focusing on the wreck, you're getting lost. And we could be asking for um a new manager, but we know that our front line stuff is the most important. So Chad and I are going to divide that between um parks and with in um wreck and we'd like to have a recreation coordinator that will focus on community center, but we'll also program inside of the community center, which would be all of your contract employees, anything that's happening, pickle ball, anything that's happening on the inside. So, um we just wanted to just say that our demand right now with the parks, it exceeds our current staffing capacity. And I know that the mayor said like he's working hard to to to figure that out. But our our park staff, they are amazing. I am so grateful for them. They work so hard and they have such high expectations of themselves and as you look around at our parks, the pride that they take in them is extraordinary. But they are overextended and they each of our seasons are at risk of of burnout every season. And as you can see, part of that reason is because seasonals, we just don't get the seasonals. If we could expand and get like 10 more seasonals that would take that off, we would do that. But we we just don't get the seasonals. And it's not just a Syracuse problem. It's all the cities around. They all struggle with getting seasonal employees. Um as we grow our park systems grow, we must grow our staff. You know, we grew our sta our our parks 10% this year with the regional park coming on and the dog park and all of the um stuff we're taking on at the West Davis Quarter. Um, so if if we don't get new staff, we're going to have to look at what we can reduce. And that means we have to bring to you guys and say, "What

do you want us not to maintain because we cannot keep going the way that we're going? It's just not working." And so, um, there's hard decisions. We understand that, but we're just going to and that and if we have to, you know, cut some services and things, then that's what we'll have to do. But we just want to just be, you know, open with you guys that that they're at their capacity. Um, and in the future, I w just want to reiterate that when we're talking about new projects and what we want to bring, we just have to make sure that we are looking at you bring something new, you have to add staff. Every 10 acres that we have, we should be bringing on a new employee or an FTE, whether that's part-time that that you know um helps offset that. But we've we bring on these new things and then we're trying to figure out how we're going to maintain them. So the next slide kind of shows oh that's sorry I got ahead of myself. This is the propo uh proposed um changes if we were to hire um where they would go. Um like I said we would have the um assistant operations manager report to me and then Chad will be taking the active um parks. We have three divisions. We have the I guess pillars. We have uh the active, the passive and then the cemetery. and it's a lot for one um manager to focus on and instead of asking for a manager, we're going to um divide and conquer there. But and so if he'll take on the active part of it, but if um we get new people, this the where the red is where it would go. It would one would go in each division and then we'd have two inactive because we are getting um the new regional park and that's where we have a lot of the a lot of stress. So next, this is what I wanted to talk to you about is if we're at instead of in the other departments, they can say like if we go up a thousand people, we're going to need this. If we go up, you know, it's it's easier to be able to say we have 5,000 people, we need five new

officers or five new firemen. We don't have that, but again, it goes back to acreage. So, I just wanted to show in the next 5 years what our um capital improvement project is showing that we're going to be adding so that you guys can see that and that you'll understand that when we come to you and as we are going to be talking about this coming up that as we discuss to add like a cemetery expansion or we try to do the legacy park expansion or add more trails again that we're also looking at um having to add more staff with that if that comes along. and not the staff that like that we're saying we're behind but new staff um and the Regan Regional Park phase 4 like just really take that into consideration because 40 acres that's coming on would constitute like four FTEEs. So when we are making those hard decisions that's something that we need to look at is that we bring staff along with it. Um next the cemetery expansion which we need because we're down to 53 plots as of when I put this slide together. We only have the single plots available. There's no pre-sales allowed. Plots are available to Syracuse residents at the time of death only right now. We are looking at reclaiming uh reclaiming plots. There's about 88 plots that we that we can reclaim. Um and so we're working towards doing that.

Reclaimed plots. So it's ones that have been purchased for years and years ago and that we can't get a hold of any we can't find an owner. Yeah. So we have to go through this whole process. They're buried somewhere else. They decided they got better real estate to reside in. Yep. They like it better or that they, you know, have passed on and just never pass those on. So that's why we try to reach out to family members to see if they can come in and approve. And we do a whole process. Colin's been working on that to make sure that that happens before we re reclaim them. Um, but that's in our the oldest part of our cemetery.

They're not used by the people who bought them. they could pass them on, but they also need to let people know that they have ownership of this. What happens is occasionally over time, uh, there generations pass and nobody realized that a plot was bought for somebody who's now buried somewhere else. So, when it's unidentified, we can't find out, we can't find an owner over and it has to be old, but our cemetery is really old. So that means that there are plots that we just can't find a relative a living relative for. And if we can't, then we're going to be able to resell them because um yeah, nobody nobody's claiming them.

Yeah, it's good. Um and then our cemetery infrastructure, the cemetery that we have now, like the not even expansion, we have storm drain issues. There's roads, as you can see, that need to be replaced. Our irrigation system um needs to be redone. The fencing up front, which I know that some of you probably heard like there's pieces missing out of it. We don't we want to be able to do a fence for the whole entire thing

and so it would look, you know, so that's why we've held off on that. And then our maintenance facility there that we are going to have, it's in our five-year plan that we're going to have to um do something with that there because we still work out of there. Um the next one is updating our parks master plan. is like I said, I'm not sure why I have FY27, guys, because that's Oh, that's because we wanted to do it in FY27. That's when we have it in our master plan. It was re last revised in 2019. And like I said, the community involvement. The last time we did that was in 2016. And so, um, we went out and looked and saw what it would would cost us to do that. And we'd like to get obviously the community involved again to see what going forward what we need to do. We also need to update our trails master plan which hasn't been done till 2012 and combine those and then um update our impact facil facility plan um and add the community center so that we can when we need to do um renovations and expansion we can use that

and those can all be paid for through impact fees. Impact fees. Yeah. And we have that those are all in our um fiveyear plan. So we're we're past that. We're past our 5 years in it was 5 to 10 years. So we still have time if we if you don't want to do them right now but we would recommend that we start working on these master plans at least first our parks master plan. The last thing that I have is um naming our regional park or the process we want to do of of naming our regional park. We just are at the point where we have to look at whether we're going to do signs or not do signs. And I have pause here. So I'm gonna interject

because my only thing is naming a regional park of significance is an opportunity to maybe sell a sponsorship to the park. And so I don't want to name it just randomly or uh I want to see if we can get a corporate sponsor because they millions of dollars can go into that. And so it's going to take work. It's not something I can do overnight. So, we may have to delay some and see if we can get some income that way because there's a lot of parks still to build. And um if we can find a way, I mean, people do it all the time in all these communities. People make an investment. And so, let's see if we can realize that. That's what I'm suggesting.

Great. And that's great if we we just want to make sure that we're putting it out here to the council so that you know so that when we're you know we're almost to where hard to have an unnamed park. We have one in the city right now. The linear park never really got a name but it's really not a usable park either. It's a green passageway. So it is harder when you don't know what to call things. Uh but but this works. Yeah, I think we we can sit on that for a minute while we I think we have to treat see if we can't find a way to get money out of that cuz it's so hard. It's so expensive to build. I I we got to get some support. Anyway, that's where I'm at.

And I just wanted to show a picture of that um artificial turf at the regional park which is going to help us with conservation efforts also. So um that's just a picture of it. Next. Robinson Regional Park. No, I want I definitely don't want you definitely do not want a statue. All you need to do is give us $10 million. I had it for free the rest of your life.

Yeah, sure. I can use it for free whenever. Um, and then I just wanted to say I know that all the departments um have amazing staff, but I am so grateful for the staff that I have and the time and the effort that they put in and they have such pride in what they do, our rec staff and our parks and special events. Like it's I'm just so grateful for them. But I wanted just to share a few pictures of this is our why. We do it for our community. We're so grateful for the opportunity to serve them and to be able to bring joy and bring our community together. And that's what we really feel like our department's um is here to do is to bring our community together and and uh joy. So with that said, any questions from you guys?

All right. Thank you. All right. Thanks. Seeing none, I am going to exercise my unwritten rule and that is when our meetings go beyond two hours, take a five minute break. So I'm going to give us a five minute pause and then we will come back because we do still have some significant agenda.

Everybody back. I'm going to go ahead and reconvene this meeting and move on. I'm going to reconvene out of recess and move on to item J. Item J, I want to begin discussing some of the uh big ticket items before we get to the retreat on Friday. On the retreat on Friday, we have a whole day planned. So, Sorry, but we're expecting to go the whole day. I'm planning to start at 9:00. It um and we'll we'll go the whole day. Um you should be getting an email from Cassie. We decided we always decide to support a local restaurant that in need. This year we're going to support Morty's. So, we'll order from Morty's Cafe. And uh the retreat is at station 32 if you didn't catch the memo. So, the new station, um, if you go to the old station, you will be the only one. Um, so,

well, that sounds like a good idea. You might as well not come. Um, all right. So, the first I we divided these up into two uh parts for the purpose of discussion. And the first part I'm gonna Can we get this to pull up? Oh,

so the first part of this is large ticket items that are new requests that are over 10K. There's several really small ones that are also in the budget, but and these would be divided from non-staffing and also in a separate discussion after this about staffing. But we wanted to kind of talk about these, get you familiar with them so that when we start to divide out what we're going to be able to afford and what we're not, that you've got some time to look into it. All right. So, anybody have any specific comments? We know that dispatch is a big change we didn't plan on years ago, but it's been thrust upon us. Um, can we blow that up, Benny, for the bottom portion of that page? I don't know if that's doable or not. Scroll down.

I guess when I make it full screen, it doesn't stay like that. I just kind of

All right. So, that's the biggest one and the biggest impact that we can't avoid. Um, the ones in green are because they're eligible to come out of separate funds. So, they don't have to come out of the same dollars. We will talk about that at the budget retreat when we will divide up where the dollars can come from. Um, are there any others besides dispatch? Because we can talk about that one for a long time, but it's it's non-negotiable, unfortunately. So, there any other items you'd like to discuss or ask questions about previous to the retreat? We will have more information at the time. We have been scrambling all week. I mean, this has been a busy busy week for Steve Brody and I uh trying to keep up with getting all of the numbers together. No one. No. Okay, then let's roll on to the new staffing requests. These are the things that have been requested from departments. Um, we will have to make some choices because there's no way we can afford all of them. But um is there any that you'd like to talk about in particular?

Well, I feel like we were told we have to do the crossing guards. Correct. Yeah. So, the crossing guards, the four new ones are because a new school is coming online. We have no choice on that because

um that we're just obligated. I would love to have the school district contribute to these, but until that happens, we have no choice but for us to do it. Um, the coordinator for the crossing guards is a new request and it makes sense that we would take it. It essentially gives time back to a sworn officer because the crossing guard would not have to be a sworn officer, the crossing guard director. So, that's actually kind of a best use of of cash and it's not really as expensive as other options. So, I like that one. Um, the firefighters, while we definitely need firefighters, I feel like we may have one more shot at getting the legislature to pay for those. So, that's a possibility. I know it's not our our favorite idea, but I think we have to consider it. And you just heard Crest to talk about the parks maintenance workers. Um, again, these are your decisions, council, but we have to talk about

I I would be interested for the parks maintenance workers. If she had to pick one position, what position would she pick? Well, essentially that we wait to talk about at the

Yeah, I think that I mean you first of all anybody can reach out to any department head at any time. That's that's always on your plate. Um I think that the maintenance workers are essentially the same worker just is how you assign tasks to that person. What would be different is um and I'm trying to see is it on the list the it's not on the list. So we had the the uh the last one that she mentioned. I'm not sure why it didn't make the list. Um but is the uh admin position. So that's the only one that's different. The others are just about how you assign out the people she has. So I don't see them as different. Yeah, she's wait she's agreeing with that. So,

but it's a good question. I missed that one. I was gonna say that that one's needs to be added. We will add that in because there is one more position at least. You want me to answer that here? Go ahead. If there's five positions, I would put three park maintenance ahead and then so that one could go in each of the divisions that we have and then the admin and then the last worker. Any other questions? Yeah, the packet says personnel requests will need to be discussed after the council discusses priorities with our employee recruitment retention program. Who wrote that and when will that be discussed?

So Brody wrote that. He's prepared some slides for the retreat. It's one of the things that we've been working on throughout the week. U Brody is scheduled to to present that in the budget retreat. So yes, that's a part of it. When we bring in crossing guards, is that does does like West Point bring in crossing guards too at the same

Actually, they have to bring in the ones that cross in their city. So yeah, every city has this responsibility. So it's interesting because a big chunk of our students go to like Horizon Junior High and we're only responsible for the crossing guards where they cross a street. That's our street. the other ones have to are the responsibility of West Point. But in this case, this is the new school that is they do now have a name for it and that's just come in the last two weeks. They're going to call it Stillwater Elementary that is down by the regional park and that's entirely in our city. So, we're going to have to provide all four guards. And just so you know, what happens is there is an official policy of how we do a every year they have to re-evaluate. I don't know if it's every year or just every time the boundaries change, but every time the boundaries change, we have to do what's called a SNAP plan, which is the most safe way. And you probably can tell me right off your head what it stands for, SNAP. So, UD do houses like the the system for it and then it's safe routes are what the school administration ultimately is responsible for establishing through UD do. So, they go in and if you're a parent of a student, you can go and look up your school through UD do and it will show you where there's crossing guards. It will show you where there's crosswalks. Um it'll show you what route they've designated for certain neighborhoods to get to school. And so this this four new crossing guard request, it's actually five, but because we were able to re-evaluate this year because student counts, we went to one um island island island view.

Yeah. And said, "Hey, we'd like to reallocate one of these positions and asked the administrator, the principal to look at the safe routes." And he agreed with us. And so he he went in that day and modified the the route. So we actually reallocated one position over there. But we have we have involvement in this from the city level where we can give our input and say here's what we believe and most administrators because they are busy with other tasks as well are going to take our input. And so when we look at this we say what's the what's the most efficient what's the safest route? what what serves our community best. And so we haven't yet had the meeting with the principal because he's not at the school yet, but that's schedu

stands for safe neighborhood access program and the standard that that they go through and decide what the best safest routes are. I will tell you one problem that we do have in the city right now is we have in one neighborhood in particular with the new school in West Point who are saying we don't want to follow that program. We don't want our kids to have to f walk to the nearest crosswalk. They should just be able to jaywalk. Well, this is on us to help promote to I mean not on us alone but the school in particular to promote these are the safe routes and if you don't if you choose not to use them I can't like have random midblock crossing guards because that's not safe. Um so it is a formalized program that says this is the way that you get the most people the safest way who walking there and we have to supply guards for those spots. So that's how that works. Is this the universe of new personnel requests? I mean, I'm assuming that if if a request is not on here, the a department head who has not made a request is not seeking an employee.

That is correct, except for the one we missed in parks. I I confess we I didn't see that one and I I missed it. I didn't miss it. That was me. Yeah. Anyway, we missed it and sorry about that. It's going to be corrected. But yes, this is everything that was requested through the first phase where department heads say this is what I need to function at these levels. And so that's the request. Nothing has been omitted.

So in these costs, it's payroll and benefits only. What comes a lot with this a lot of times are your equipment, your training, your even your your vehicles, which you'll see in our five-year capital plan. There's four vehicles for the park maintenance workers and one for the fire inspector if they were to be funded. Um and then in the operational budgets, if you went through fire and parks, you'll see um the all the different Yeah. line line items that go with

uniforms. If an inspector needs a subscription to the the guidelines, all that stuff comes per employee. So this is the this is wage and retirement and and benefits. The equipment will be broken out and it will be flagged in the budget when we go over it on Friday so that you see that these are only in there if we add the position. And that's another thing we've been working on is trying to tie things together so that when we start to make the decision we know what the full cost is. Everyone saw that the budget documents are out there on there.

Yeah, the full budget did get completed on Saturday. Thanks to Steve staying here all day Saturday. Um, part of the job. I I mean, I really have to thank Steve and Brody. They've worked a lot of overtime this week to get this prepared. And I even came in on my own for a day and wrote memos and stuff. I mean, we've we've spent a lot of hours just to get to this point, and we've made no decisions. It's all there for you to decide.

Yeah. I mean, I don't have any particular questions right now. I I think it I really like the exercise of the budget retreat where we get to kind of examine it as an entire picture and brainstorm and see what our priorities lie and what monies we do. and don't have. And I mean, it it's a step process, and I know that everybody'd like to see it all up front, but

this is what we could get done by by the time this packet had to be out. Tomorrow, we will put out a packet for the budget retreat. You already have the entire budget. The only thing that will come with the new budget or the new packet would be the schedule and and setup to make sure we've included all the decision-making elements. Um we're we're doing it as fast as we can. It's it's just a lot to do and particularly this year there's a lot more variables than we've had in a while. Just getting data on our where we expect to be with all these new businesses has been a little bit of a challenge. Yeah.

But we are we have some projections of where that will be. So we have a a firm grasp on where that might land. We there's always variables. You just have to do the best you can. All right. Any other questions? Anything on the budget's fair game at this point? We're going to work to get to Friday where we will discuss it in great detail. Great. I know it's one of the most thrilling days of the year, but we in those comfy chairs over there on at station 32 on the recliners. Yeah,

we need you to stay awake first call. Okay, seeing no other questions, then I will adjourn this