City Council - Regular Meeting

Thank you.

Madam Chair, we're ready when you're ready.

Thank you. Good evening, everyone. It's great to have you here, both in the chambers here, but as well as online. We typically start our meeting with a prayer followed by pledge. So I ask for volunteers, of course. Do we have any volunteers for this evening's prayer? All right. Thank you, Ms. Christensen.

Our dearest Heavenly Father, we are so grateful to be gathered together this evening. We thank you for the abundant blessings that we have. Please bless us that we would all be able to express our thoughts clearly and to listen to those around us that we would be able to make the best decisions for Sandy City. Please bless all of our employees that they would be watched over and protected as they are doing their jobs. We love thee and we say these things in the name of thy son, Jesus Christ. Amen.

Well, please stand. We'll all join together. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Thank you for that, and Councilwoman Christensen, thank you for the prayer. We'll move into introductions. We'll start on this end with our council staff.

Thank you, Madam Chair. I'm Dustin Fratto. I'm with the council office. Mr. Goodell, Council Legal Counsel, will be here shortly.

I'm Justin Sorensen. I'm also with the council office.

Chris Nichol, District 3. Cindy Sharkey, at large. Brooke Christensen, District 1.

Marcy Houseman, District 4. Allison Stroud, District 2.

Aaron DeKaiser, At-Large.

I'm Mayor Monica Zoltanski. Hi.

Martin Jensen, CAO. Lynn Pace, City Attorney.

And Councilwoman D'Souza is excused this evening. So we have a lot of things on our agenda tonight. As a reminder, we do take public comment, general citizen comment. Our policy has us holding until at least 6 PM for that time. So if any of you are here to make general comment, comment to address the council on any kind of city business, In the back, there are the blue cards. We ask that you go and fill one out, bring it over here to Mr. Fratto. Again, we will hold that general public comment roughly 6 p.m., not before, but we do finish whatever agenda item we are on before moving into public comments. So that's our general comments. So our first item for tonight is our MVP update, and I believe, Lori, we're turning it over to you, and then you will introduce your team. Lori Hopkins, thank you for being here.

Is this on? Wonderful. All right. Thank you so much, Chair Hausman, and thank you, council members. It is a pleasure to be in front of you again. We are now in a cycle where we will be reporting on the MVP semi-annually. So in July and January to update you on our progress. And I'm happy to have our teams here today from Shelter the Homeless, as well as from The Road Home and from 4th Street Clinic. So with that, we would like to walk you through a presentation. And there will be a portion where we actually welcome the chiefs, the fire and police up to assist with some of the data. And so that will be an added element that we have tonight. And once again, thank you very much. All right.

And while you're bringing others up, do you want questions along the way or do you want to get through your presentation and then pause for questions?

I think what we've done is go through a slide or two and then pause and take questions, usually by agency. If we could do that, that would be great. Okay. Wonderful. Thank you. All right. Let's get going.

So there is a clicker just right there for you guys that you can use to advance through the slides.

Thank you so much, Dustin.

Hello. Am I close enough? Too far away? Oh, both together. OK, perfect. Hello, my name is Kelly Koster. I am a division director with the Road Home. And I'm here to speak about the Road Homes portion of the MVP program. So if I just hit play. So as a quick reminder, I know you all heard from us in January, but the MVP program, or the Medically Vulnerable People's Program, is such an asset to the whole Salt Lake County community who are offering homeless services. We are seeing that the number of seniors who are over the age of 62 and experiencing homelessness is one of the largest or quickest growing demographics of folks experiencing homelessness nationwide. So Utah is not unique in that, but we are one of many communities trying to navigate that. So folks who are either elderly or experiencing chronic health conditions have a lot of additional barriers in accessing housing assistance and other assistance programs that are available to them. So the MVP program is an incredible opportunity to get some of their medical situations stabilized with the help of Forest Street Clinic staff and support, and then also help folks navigate those housing opportunities that are available to them through the Road Home staff. And it was really the collaboration of those two programs that leads to the successes that we see for these folks who need those additional supports. So in January, you heard our updates for the calendar year of 2025. Today I have for you our fiscal year 2026 data to share. So that goes from July 1st, 2025 through June 30th of 2026. So I realize the timelines overlap a little bit there. So in FY26, we were able to serve 464 unique individuals at the MVP. We have about 165 beds, so that means that we had turnover and folks moving on to other living situations after their time at the MVP, which is great. We had 59 moves to permanent housing or longer-term care. And that longer-term care could include things like skilled nursing facilities. It could include assisted living. It could also include end-of-life care. Or it could include an apartment paid for entirely by that client's income or a housing placement that is subsidized in some way. Um, 100% of the clients who were served by us, all 464 individuals had a case plan created during their time at MVP. So what that means is that our road home staff were able to connect with that client, talk about all the things that go into housing barriers. So that of course includes healthcare, which. The 4th Street team will talk about more and the work that they do to support clients there. On the Road Home side, we also talk about things like social connections, family reunification. Are there faith groups that folks would like to be reconnected to? What is their income like? Do they have employment? Would they like employment? All these different things that kind of make us whole human beings and contribute to barriers to housing, we are able to work through and support that guest in removing those barriers so that they can have a more stable living situation no matter their situation. In FY26, we've also been very proud of ongoing partnerships and our focus on growth and growing those partnerships. Of course, we meet at least weekly with Sandy Police and Fire and are always so grateful for their support and always want to be a good partner and help make their jobs easier as well. So we work very closely with those groups. We also have, in more recent months, built a better relationship with the Sandy Senior Center, so our guests at MVP are now able to go to the Senior Center and participate in their programming, which has been incredible. I hear they have an incredible lunch, and there's movie nights, and Zumba, and trivia, and as we all know, that social connection is so healing for folks, and so we're very appreciative of their collaboration so that our clients who are experiencing homelessness can have more of that social connection. We've also been participating in project bridge events with the Utah Office of Homeless Services, which is intended to connect folks who are in winter overflow beds with living situations that have more resources and more supports, like our traditional homeless resource centers. So through those bridge events, we've been able to move many folks out of those overflow beds and into MBP so they can access the services and supports that we have at MBP. And then I will move into our vision for this next fiscal year. So we spoke last time about a senior homelessness task force that has begun as part of our continuum of care. That task force is continuing its work. One of the things that I checked this week, we have about 500 people on the wait list for MVP. As a reminder, we are not a walk-up facility, so folks do have to go through a referral process to access our services. So 500 people on the wait list means that for every person we were able to serve in FY26, there was at least one more person who we were not able to serve due to our capacity. sort of an unintended benefit of having the MVP program that we are able to more clearly see the scope of the need in our community at large. And so that Senior Homelessness Task Force is really working on expanding the services for seniors outside of the MVP and into our other homeless services sites and resources because we recognize that the need is greater than what MVP alone can provide. We are always looking to build partnerships with other, again, skilled nursing facilities, occupational therapists, anyone, any groups that kind of support our very specific demographic. And I also wanted to shout out that we have a little bit of leadership turnover. So last time you all heard from Bailey, who was our director. She had an incredible opportunity to join, to move across the country with her partner for a great opportunity. So we're very happy for her and we miss her very much. We have our new director, Tori Smith, is in the audience.

Hi, Tori.

And Tori has been doing an incredible job stepping in as the director of MVP. So if you come out and visit us anytime soon, you'll get to meet and interact with Tori, who is also phenomenal. We also have a new supportive services manager. Her name is Amy Sanchez. So she is leading out on the Road Homes case management team. I will share just a couple successes. So from February, we had an elderly couple who came to MVP. Their names are Jim and Sandy. Fake names, but their names are Jim and Sandy. They'd been on the streets for many years. They were frail, ill. And because of their frailty, were being targeted on the streets, having their belongings stolen, the victims of some violent crimes. They were just not able to be safe in their unsheltered state. They came to MVP through a collaboration with Unsheltered Utah. They were connected to 4th Street Clinic and were able to stabilize medically, so much so that Jim actually took a really big step and found employment, which he had not been able to do for many years. And I wanted to share this story because I think it really highlights how the partnership and, you know, supports and employment from the road home side and the medical stability from the 4th Street side really coalesce to build our clients' hope and independence and safety in a way that is really unique and very important for the folks that we're serving. And I also wanted to share, because I think as the folks who are fielding emails all the time, Shelter the Homeless, The Road Home, 4th Street Clinic, we get emails all the time from groups outside of Utah who are saying, we are seeing a similar need in our community. How do we run a program like this? We see those all the time. I want to make sure that you all are also aware that the MEP is a really unique program and is really looked to as a roadmap nationwide for how to support, again, this very rapidly growing demographic. So we had the opportunity to go present about this program at the National Alliance to End Homelessness Conference earlier this month in Washington, DC. which was an incredible opportunity for us. But again, I think the highlight there was that many communities are looking for a way to address this particular issue and are looking to Utah and looking to Sandy and the MVP as a roadmap of how to do that in their own community. So your support for the program means a lot to the individual clients who receive support. It means a lot to the other homeless services providers who now have a space to direct folks who need that higher level of care that we're able to provide. And it also means a lot to other communities nationally who, again, are facing really hard challenges and looking at folks who need supports that they don't currently have and looking how they can develop that in their own communities. So thank you so much for your support. And I will just end by saying that if you ever want to come out and see the magic of MVP, we are always looking for volunteers. You can just reach out to volunteer at theroadhome.org. We're always looking for folks to serve a meal, to host an activity like a movie night and s'mores or anything else, craft night, whatever you all, whatever our imaginations come up with. If you have any interest in coming to visit us, please just email volunteer at theroadhome.org. And I'm happy to take any questions.

Thank you so much. Council, any questions? All right, Ms. Sharkey.

Thank you for coming. I really appreciate that. And I appreciate the twice yearly reports. These are very helpful for us, especially to identify trends that we're seeing and getting to understand what we thought we were going to be getting versus what we're seeing. And I know that you're experiencing the same thing, right? Is the age range trending down? I think we felt that maybe we'd be getting an older population. Is it trending downward a little bit in terms of the average age? And is there an explanation for that?

So the average age of folks that we served in FY26 was 62. So that definitely means that there were some folks who are younger and there's plenty of folks who are older. But our average age is sitting right about 62, which is about what we had thought.

OK. I was thinking that we were going to be serving like 60 and above, but we do serve a number of people below age 60. Is that what you're saying?

Yeah, so the way that we address intakes is the referral process is looking, again, for folks who are over the age of 62 or medically vulnerable. And most of the time, that's actually an and or, right? So folks who are older and have medical vulnerabilities. They could be younger and have more intensive medical vulnerabilities, and that's why they are staying at MVP. So again, our average age of clients served is 62. The folks who are younger who are at shelter are there because they have very complex medical vulnerabilities.

Hannah, I just have one more question. It sounds like a lot of people that you're serving there, and a wait list tells me it's a pretty large population that has needs. Our shared goal was to not release anyone back out into the streets. How are we doing in terms of attainment of that goal?

Our team works very diligently if for any reason we need to exit someone or if they are choosing to leave, that we are coordinating with other homeless resource centers, other emergency shelters, not just in Salt Lake County but across the state even. So we are, I would say, pretty successful in making sure that folks have another option to go to and are not returning to unsheltered homelessness.

Do we have any numbers about how successful we are in terms of percentages?

I don't have them on me today, but I would be so happy to pull them and send them to you. That'd be great.

Thank you. Thanks.

Okay. Thank you. I mean, we're doing this in phases, so I think we're ready for the next segment. Thank you very much.

Thank you so much, and I will invite my partners from 4th Street Clinic up.

Good evening. My name is Janice Olson. I'm the Chief Operating Officer at 4th Street Clinic, and this is Dan Astin, our Medical Director. So similar to the Road Home, we're reporting on the timeframe from January to June of 2026. So just here, we're giving you a patient overview. So we've served 279 patients. The average age mirrors what the road home side at 62. Um, and the average, uh, gender ratio was about 73% male and 27% female. Um, you'll note on the right hand side there, we have some pretty high engagement with our case management services, our EMT services, and over half of the patients, um, at MVP had a visit with the medical provider. So very high engagement. So the last time we presented to you, Madam Chair, we heard you loud and clear. You wanted to hear about some outcomes. We may have overdone it, so I'll try to be brief. But we wanted to highlight some of the improvements in our programming that we've made, and we also wanted to provide you with some metrics that we are watching closely. So one of the first program improvements is program orientation. So we know that the patients coming to us have a history of calling EMS for their medical care and we want to reverse that immediately. So we started a program orientation in March. And our goal there is to make sure that every patient understands the services that are offered. And right in orientation, we're looking at charts. We're scanning for care gaps. We're ensuring that patients who want to make an appointment with us are able to do so in orientation. We're also surveying to make sure that our orientation is effective. And we have noted in some follow-up surveys, and again, this has only been since March, so it's a small sample, but at least 42% had improved their understanding of our services. You know that we offer primary care and you also know that we have expanded our primary care offering at MVP from one to two days per week. We have also introduced something called patient rounding. For those unfamiliar with patient rounding, our goal really is to look at the patients who are engaging in primary care and make sure that they've got a coordinated care plan across all of our service lines. So we're really trying to be proactive in anticipating patient needs and ensuring that if they need an appointment with behavioral health, they've got it. If they have a follow-up appointment at another facility, we can get them there. We really want to make sure that every aspect of that plan is addressed and looked after. I want to note that since January, we have delivered more than 5,100 medications to patients at MVP and the majority of those were to manage chronic conditions. Speaking of chronic diseases, we're really looking closely at diabetes management, not just at MVP, but clinic-wide, but as you can imagine, several patients at MVP have that diagnosis. So we've been monitoring closely the A1Cs of 37 patients at MVP, and we are happy to report that of those, 84% either remained stable in their A1C or had an improvement, which is a huge achievement for us. Um, really if a chronic disease is unmanaged, we know that that leads to an EMS call and ED use. So unmanaged diabetes, for example, can lead to falls, amputations, um, a whole host of other problems. So we want to be very proactive in managing chronic diseases like diabetes. Infectious disease management is also a huge concern, especially at a site like MVP. We've got a lot of medically vulnerable patients in a concentrated area. And so for us, a goal is to make sure that as many people who want to be vaccinated are able to get vaccinated. That number of vaccines that you see there on the screen is low, but I also want to highlight that it is low season for vaccines. Folks aren't necessarily concerned in spring or summer. So we'll see those numbers ramp up as we get into cold and flu season next. probably towards the end of August, beginning of September. It's also a goal of ours to make sure that patients are screened for HIV. So 47% of patients who saw a primary care provider with us since January have been screened for HIV, and we will continue to see that number ramp up as the year goes on. And happy to report, of course, that there were no infectious disease outbreaks at MVP during this time frame, or ever. I should have said that. I know the council had some questions about our behavioral health services when last we met. Before I get into this slide, we hired a new behavioral health therapist early this year. So you can imagine it takes a little bit of time for that therapist to build rapport with patients and to get things back up and running. So the behavioral health engagement, again, we expect to see that number rise as the year continues. Um, we have started something called a talk with us campaign. Um, so that is really, I like to think of that as like a no wrong door for behavioral health engagement. So if you're talking to an EMT or provider, a case manager, um, it doesn't matter if you want to talk about your behavioral health and get connected to services, that's kind of the point of this campaign. Um, and that how you're feeling is okay, however you're feeling, but we want to be able to talk to you about it. So that started just recently in May. We also have the therapists implementing some group sessions that are very responsive to the needs of the population. So we've got a stress management group that's starting and then a recovery group that's focused on substance use disorders. Behavioral health is really hard to measure. It ebbs and flows for all of us, right? And it is very dependent on the circumstances in which we live and what's happening to us at the time. But we have implemented something called the PHQ-9. And for those who are unfamiliar with the PHQ, it's essentially a depression screener. Most providers are measuring this annually. We are trying to measure it every visit. And so we're trying to track the improvement over several visits. This, again, is a little bit new for us in terms of tracking it and measuring it in this way. So far, 69% of patients who have been issued a PHQ-9 have improved their score, which is, again, another huge achievement for us. We've also really solidified the referral pathway between ourselves and The Road Home. So we've, to date this year, received about 63 referrals for either behavioral health or substance use. Okay, I'm going to turn it over to our medical director to do a bit of a deep dive on our EMT services, and I'd like to invite Deputy Chief Bullock to come on up.

I'll step in the middle. All right, thank you again for having us. As Janice said, we heard you loud and clear when it came to metrics and outcomes. The improvements that we have implemented in this program are direct outcomes from the requests that have come from here. In addition to that, they have strengthened our relationships with both the Road Home and Sandy City Fire. These relationships have led us to a much more robust program. As you can see in this slide, we've created new patient education. Patients need to know that we're there to provide these services for them. So we've created these simple flow sheets to help them understand whether or not they need to call 911 or if the emergency services that we provide are sufficient for their needs. In addition to that, we have created multiple targeted interventions for patients that are high utilizers. We've implemented weekly phone calls with Sandy City Fire to help us identify those individuals that are calling frequently. We've implemented weekly reviews with the Road Home to discuss in depth the patients that have high complexities and high needs. The metrics that Janice presented are a direct outcome from these meetings that we've implemented. The rounding has allowed us to take really deep conversations about complex patients. I can't express enough how complex some of these folks are. They require multiple different interventions from multiple different specialties, and we have to talk about them regularly in order to meet their needs. So rounding has created a pathway for us to help identify where these patients need interventions. We create these individualized care plans for these patients. It helps us with our chronic disease management. It helps them with their medication adherence. We're able to connect them better to our behavioral health services. We also have the opportunity to review hospital discharges, go over all of the charting that comes with that, and meet the needs. Anytime somebody comes out of the hospital, they're very vulnerable, and we need to meet those needs as soon as we can. It allows us to make that connection. As a part of our EMT services, there are certain things that our EMTs can handle and some things that they are unable to handle. And there are certain things that are outside of our control. Some of the things that our EMTs can handle are on-site medical assessment, treatment of minor illnesses, minor injuries, things like that. They can do emergency stabilization, rapid EMS activation, and then ongoing patient monitoring. One of the most important aspects of our EMT program is that patient connection. Patients see the same person, they talk to them about the same concerns, and they start to build a relationship. And that relationship leads to trust and allows 4th Street to step in and provide medical care with the goal of reducing the number of times they contact Sandy EMS. There are some things, of course, that our EMTs are unable to manage. Things like respiratory distress, cardiac emergencies, traumatic injuries, and diabetic emergencies. Those are things that, regardless of who's there, 911 needs to be called, and the patient then needs to be transported for services. Again, there are some things that are outside of our control. Patients can call 911 independent of our presence there, and we're unable to control that. But using those rounds, using those daily touch-ins with EMTs has led to significant improvement in relationships with those patients and has led to a reduction in EMS calls to the facility. 61% of the clients at MVP have engaged with 4th Street Clinic EMT services at some point. You can see on this graph that we did have a little bit of a spike earlier this year, and I'll talk about that in a later slide. We also were able to identify through the data that Sandy City gave us the most common times of the day for phone calls that are made to EMS and the most common days of the week, and we've outlined those here. I'm going to turn this one over to Chief Bullock.

So the information we're looking at here is we're looking at transports, the percentage of transports we're actually taking out of the facility, and how many residents or patients are actually calling repeatedly over a period of time. And we've noticed on that right-hand side one, or right-hand side, graph there that we have a pretty good amount of people that are calling repeatedly. And that's an item that we've been addressing in our meetings, identifying those key individuals. And then, like you were saying a second ago, finding when those common times are calling and making sure the EMT coverage is there and working with those patients to make sure that they are aware of the services that are available at the facility versus having to call 911. As far as our transports, you can see over the years, since 2024 and 2025, we were transporting about 60% of the patients in the encounters that we were dispatched to at the facility. This year, it's actually increased up to 80%. And we look at that as a direct result of the reasons we're getting called out are legitimate issues that need to be transported. We're not getting called out for just the minor issues. issues that are occurring there. So that's actually trending in a much better way for us as we're engaging in these meetings and identifying those key issues that we have in the facility. And just to say that the repeat patients is not something that is unique just to MVP, that is something that is community-wide across all aspects of EFS.

In addition to that, we've been able to use the data that Sandy City has provided to us to identify the top six complaints for people calling EMS. It's important to point out that these top six complaints are consistent with any facility that's working with patients over the age of 62. You look at injuries, respiratory distress, pain, abdominal pain, weakness, and falls. Those will be consistent at any facility similar to MVP. I wanted to discuss just a couple of case studies with patients that we've worked with. And I mentioned earlier that we noticed that there was a spike earlier this year in the number of calls. And these two individuals represent a significant number of those calls. So our case study number one is a 56-year-old male, new client to the MBP and not a known patient to Port Street Clinic. He came to MBP with a long history of chronic gastritis, chronic abdominal pain, complicated by acute gastrointestinal hemorrhage. He also had hepatitis. He also had a long history of depression and suicidal ideation. A lot of the depression and mental health was directly linked to his chronic abdominal pain and chronic pain. He would call frequently. He became one of the most frequent callers at MVP. And the team was quickly able to rally around him and introduce him to the process that we discussed earlier. We started talking about him with Sandy City. We talked about him with the Road Home. And we gathered all of our resources at the MVP to start working with him directly, not just about him, but talking with him. We created a plan with him about how to best access our services, what kind of services we offer, and when to call EMS. This plan, this creation of a plan with a patient, helped him feel empowered, and because of that, we saw an immediate reduction in the number of phone calls that he was making to 911. We did offer behavioral health services. He declined. Not everybody engages in the things that we offer, but this highlights this cross-organizational work that has been done over the last several years, specifically to target individuals that need that additional care. And in case study number two, we have a 61-year-old female. She also had chronic gastrointestinal issues. She has an ostomy bag, which is very difficult to manage if you're living in shelter, if you're living on the street. It's very challenging. She also struggled with substance use disorder, chronic post-traumatic stress disorder, really complex mental health, which led to the substance use, which complicated things like her ostomy bag. We did the same approach with her. We coordinated care with each of the organizations with her directly. Unfortunately, this one didn't work out as well as the first one, but it still illustrates the point that our teams are going to gather regardless of how complicated the patient is, how difficult the challenge is, and we're still going to try and move forward with the best solution possible for those individuals. All right, I'm going to turn it back over to Janice.

So this slide is really just to highlight the timeline in which we have implemented all of this new programming or program improvements. It is a story of continuous improvement, but it is also to demonstrate that some of these things are really, really new for us, and it is going to take us some time to get some good data behind them. It is our goal, first and foremost, to ensure that our patients have high quality care and care that is integrated and that they get what they need. Secondary to that, or I should say parallel to that, is that we want to have a positive community impact. And so I just wanted to highlight that the changes that we've made for our patients inevitably do have a positive community impact. So if our patients are receiving proactive care, and we're able to mitigate calls to EMS and mitigate those stays in hospital, that's a benefit to the community. So just wanted to point that out. And then finally, I feel guilty presenting this slide alone because there is a team of people behind me who worked very, very hard the last six months to achieve what's on the screen before you. About a year ago, we found out about an opportunity to become nationally certified in medical respite care. As soon as the applications opened last fall, we were first in the door to apply and were accepted in January of this year. And we have spent the last six months working very, very hard to ensure that we meet national standards. So Utah is now on the map in terms of a nationally accredited medical respite facility. I just want to say our fidelity score was 99 out of 100, which is quite amazing. So I just want to thank everyone sitting behind me, including the Road Home. They really had to pull some heavy weight to help us get to this place. We also had an on-site visit from national creditors, and we had the opportunity in this process to learn from and visit with other operators of respite care facilities. So I'll end with that and questions.

I'll look this way first. Any questions, council members? Ms. Nichol.

So back to the slide of top patient complaints. Injury is number one. Injury while they're, I mean, falling in this age group is inevitable. Are they injuring themselves at the facility or coming in injured? What can you tell me about that?

Yeah, there's a mixture of everything. There are some episodes of patients that are falling and unable to get themselves back up, and maybe our team is unable to get them up. So we do end up calling EMS for assistance to lift them. That's due to age, it's due to other complications, things like that. The patients don't spend all day, every day inside at MVP, and oftentimes they'll come back with chronic blisters on their feet. Many of them are diabetics, and so they're dealing with wounds that they didn't know they had until they got into medical care and were able to evaluate it. There are injuries that are not associated with the program that they'll come back in for. It's a variety.

I didn't mean to assume that your facility is not safe. That was not at all what I was thinking. If there's something that we could do, if there were some deficiencies there, get a group to help with that. I was going to offer that, but thank you for the explanation on that.

I'm really grateful for especially for this presentation really honing in on where our areas of concerns were and I'm really hopeful because we've really boosted it's clear to me we have really boosted the on-site care the coverage on-site these are fantastic benchmarks to be hearing about I'm specifically interested in Addiction and substance abuse knowing that that is a big part of the suffering of Many of the people who are homeless including at the MVP shelter Have we increased? Services relating to that are they treated is that treated as medical care is it treated as behavioral health that someone can you know, decline it? Can we drill in on that specifically? And I'd love to hear some real positive results of that, if I could.

Sure. Yeah. Forestry Clinic as a whole presents with what's called an integrated care model. We don't necessarily lead with medical. We don't necessarily lead with behavioral health or all of the services. We use all of them whenever necessary so that any of the patients at MVP have access to all of our services. Our medical providers can and do prescribe substance use treatment options. Our behavioral health therapists that work at MVP offer support through therapy. We do have psychiatric care that can be obtained online. at our main clinic. So all of these things are utilized together based off of the patient and their specific need. Not everybody struggles with opiates. Not everybody struggles with alcohol. Not everybody struggles with meth. So each one of these care plans has to be individualized based off what that person needs. And Fourth Street has been built specifically with those supports in place. So anything that we offer at the main clinic can be accessed for our MVP patients as well. And so we use an integrated care model to address substance use.

Okay, Councilwoman Stroud. Thank you, Madam Chair. The National Institute for Medical Respite Care Certification, on that slide there, you mentioned a statistic. Could you, one more time?

The fidelity score?

Yes.

99 out of 100. One more time? 99 out of 100.

That's an A plus. Well done. That's something that I've really appreciated from all of you. Over the past several years that you've been coming in, You are continually trying to strive to find better ways to serve this population. You've been very responsive with Sandy, with our concerns, and this just goes to show another feather in your hat of how well you are addressing the community that now calls Sandy home. So thank you, thank you for that, and I love that 99 out of 100. Thank you. Councilwoman Nickel.

I had one more question about your EMT program. They can administer meds too, or?

We're not to the point where they can administer medications yet. We're still working on that. EMTBs, AEMTs, and paramedics each have different levels of medications which they can prescribe. We're currently working towards those kinds of certifications, but we don't have that capability just yet.

Awesome. Thanks.

OK. I think that's all for this segment. Thank you both very much. Very informative. And I celebrate, too. My questions are coming later. I'm just waiting till we get them.

Thank you, council members. I'm not sure I can beat that. There you go. In past presentations, I have been responsible for updating you on our CUP compliance, on our MOU. That is in place. It's going strong. I wanted more to educate you all on the programs that Shelter the Homeless supports on site, in case you weren't aware. We provide, in partnership with Catholic Community Services downtown, we deliver two hot meals per day, and The Road Home provides a continental breakfast. We also have the safety and community liaison, who is in the audience as well. He's reached out to each one of you. He has also connected with the neighboring apartment complex, the Axios car dealership, and there's a nearby bank. Any neighbors in the immediate vicinity, he is the point person for non-criminal complaints, and he connects in all the security meetings as well. We also provide the 24-7 security on-site. We have recently done an analysis and found that at nighttime, the facility is asleep. So we have reduced that grave shift only down to one officer. That was in May, and I have since done a look at all of the numbers, and there has not been a change in any of the incidents. They remain zero to one at nighttime, and we don't have any plans to adjust any of the other shifts at this time. Just kind of big picture, I wanted to let you guys know that Shelter the Homeless has engaged with architects and engineers. We're doing a full assessment of all of our properties to create a 20-year capital plan with a funding strategy around that. Just so you guys know that we are very invested in keeping these facilities in incredible working order. and places of dignity for clients in the future. This year, in the fall, we have plans to make a lot of ADA improvements, restructure the entrance to have it full ADA, install a lift to the second floor to support more wheelchair-bound individuals, and install bathroom grab bars, which will assist in those falls and calls to EMS. um and lastly i want to update you we have refreshed our website as shelter the homeless we really view this as an education and communications tool This is a screen grab of just the MVP page. It's small so you'll have to go there yourself. It has program information, access to the referral form, contact information. Additionally, if any of your constituents are asking what is the MVP, there is a detailed image gallery that we have just done recently so they can take a virtual tour. Any questions for me? I am going to turn the time over to Chief Nyberg. He is going to discuss the mitigation funds.

Sorry. So yeah, we just wanted to touch on this briefly. I think we mentioned this before, but we have been awarded $725,000 this year, which is a step up from where we were previously. We received in the first year, I think it was 560, enough to cover the five positions, two of police and three of fire. The second year it went down a little bit. And so this year it's actually gone up enough to cover the five positions plus the additional will go towards the purchase of an ambulance. It won't completely purchase an ambulance, but that extra $150,000 will go towards the $400,000 that is required to buy an ambulance. So trending in a positive direction to be able to cover the five positions plus have a little bit extra for equipment. So we're excited about that and hope that that continues.

Yeah, I think that's all I had to add to either. We just have two positions that are paid for by the mid-vacation funds, and we purchased two patrol cars for it. So do have a little bit of information on calls if you're interested in it. But last year, from July 1 to June 30 of this year, we had 3,100, a little over 3,100 calls in Sandy City to homeless-related events. It's not necessarily to the MVP, but 51% of those calls were actually in the mile radius of MVP, and then 49% of those calls were outside of that radius. And that may sound like a lot, but we have two homeless liaison officers, and we're trying to be proactive as a police department, so we're making a lot of contacts in the streets, talking to people, trying to get them the resources they need, cleaning up homeless camps, different things of that nature. I had a great opportunity to speak with our two homeless liaison officers, and they absolutely love the MVP. They say they are, quote, unquote, they are locked in, is what they told me. So we have a great relationship with them, and we can communicate, we can coordinate, we meet with them often. There's a great sharing of information kind of nexus there that we have, and we're happy to support the MVP and appreciate all they do.

And that concludes. Thank you. Any final questions for any of my partners?

I have just one, but I will say part of why I held off is you answered so many, like just one of them was the 80%. I was a little confused by that, but then you clarified that. So I really only have one question. Let me get back to it. So it's somewhat what Councilman Sharkey referenced, but not exactly the same thing. In 2025, you shared kind of this outcome data around 50, if my number's right, 57 individuals who moved to permanent housing or some long-term care. But I didn't see that unless I overlooked it. And I know we're only halfway through. So it could be that that's an end of year reporting. And this is our semiannual, semiannual. So you can just tell me that's coming. But that was really the one outcome I didn't see.

Yeah. So I did speak to it. But there are a lot of numbers. I probably missed. Totally makes sense. So the numbers that I had to report on were fiscal year of 2026, which begins July 1 of 2025 and goes through June 30 of 2026. we had 59 moves to permits for a permanent living destination in that fiscal year which does overlap because last time you heard a calendar year number so those do overlap okay but i think the the takeaway there is in one 12-month period we had 57 move outs i believe was the 2025 number and in FY26 we had 59 move outs, so in a different 12 month period and some of that's overlapping, but I would say that those trends seem to be somewhat consistent. We are of course always striving to increase those and to build other partnerships and to better support our clients so they can move out to permanent housing destinations, but in the first couple years of operation we're seeing a fairly consistent number.

And that's part of the goal is that transition. So thank you for that. I don't have any other questions as much as in addition to the certification celebration, the 99, I sort of just did like, Top outcomes, not that I should have favorites, because I love all of the outcomes, but I really do see the effort to think about metrics and evidence of progress and outcome-based. I love it. It can never be too much. So you started by saying, I think we might have done too much. Nope. It was great. But I noticed a few things that I think are just really that idea of here's what we did, And here's how it mattered. Here's the impact it had. So you kind of talked about the orientation that was relatively new. And I love the idea of empowering your clients, which I think is a great name, by the way, empowering your clients with information to then ask them for feedback on the experience they are having. And they are self-reporting improved experiences. So that conversion rate was 83% in terms of those who attended the program orientation and followed up by making appointments. That's a big number. It's not an 89%, but 83%. Still good. And then your pre-post measures. Again, I know a lot of it is self-reporting, but you've given them the language to use to explain their experience with you. I just think that's excellent. You mentioned the A1C tracking. My mother was diabetic and very, very familiar with how hard that can be. And staying on top of that is so critical. So I love that 84% number. And then thank you for the PHQ. Who was that? Thank you. That definition, like what it is, why you put it in place, like that is significant. What a great measure. And then to have achieved almost 70% stability, I think is what you said. I love that. And then she already celebrated. That was on my list too, but she already celebrated it. It's fantastic. Thank you so much. I know what it takes to achieve that kind of certification but also put together some reporting like this and I'm grateful to know that like we're partners in this and and you have you know found value even though it was like oh Marcy stop it already you know it did get some things started and some conversations and I appreciate that I appreciate it very much we always appreciate your guys's partnership thank you very much yes thank you thanks everyone I think I think that's all

Good. All right. Madam Chair, I just wanted to say hello to our friends from the MVP. If I may make a comment about what's going on. Sure. Thank you. From administration's perspective. Thanks so much for working with my team, police and fire and administration. Had the chance to visit the MVP and tour with former state representative Clancy last week, who's the new state homeless services director. He'd never been out to the MVP. And I hadn't been out there for a while either. It's been six or eight months. And it's really nice to see. the community garden literally taking root. There's probably about a 10 foot high sunflower growing there in the flower boxes. That sense of connection and community plans to remodel the entryway to make it more user-friendly for people to get in and out of the facility safely and securely. Always constant plans for improvement. That's what I like about the MVP partnerships because they're always looking at what's coming next, how we can do it better. There have been so many modifications at the council's suggestion and the providers' experience that have come together to really improve quality of life, improve safety and security for the residents, our neighbors, and the MVP, and neighborhood around the MVP and I just want to let the council know if you haven't heard coming right next door you've probably seen the signs at the property right next to the freeway on ramp at 90th South this is coming soon it has like family living community affordable and attainable housing 68 for sale units are going to be built the nation's largest home builder DR Horton is building a model project in Sandy at one of the most challenging locations in the city right next to the freeway on ramp between the MVP and the freeway. So maybe not attractive to the average developer but we have someone coming in looking for a place like that to build affordable attainable housing with incentives for workforce housing. So they mentioned incentives for up to $25,000 to $50,000 for first responders, police, fire, school teachers, people in workforce housing needs right here in Sandy. So if we were looking for an endorsement of whether the MVP is number one, mainstreaming to Sandy community, not other separate facility but really becoming part of the community and then the outside endorsement with big developer private developer funds coming to Sandy deliberately next to the MVP to create affordable housing we have it groundbreaking should be occurring within the next month in the month of August we're hoping so we'll keep the council community informed we look forward to celebrating that milestone moment for the MVP and for Sandy So thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you, MVP friends, for being here tonight and giving such an encouraging report to the community.

Thank you, Madam Mayor. Thank you all. We're going to move on with our meeting. You're obviously welcome to stay and enjoy exhilarating conversation, but we imagine you have other things on your plate.

Okay, and we have some.

Thank you again. All right, we're going to move on to General Citizen Comment. We did hit our 6 o'clock mark, so at this point I'm going to move to General Citizen Comment. Bless you. Right now, I only have one blue card from those who are here in the chamber. Reminder, if you do want to share something with the council during this general public comment, I ask you to fill the blue card out. We'll go in the order of the cards, and then we'll move on to those who have joined us online. So the card I have currently is Deb Jordan. Thank you, Deb. Sorry, I forgot one thing and you know, I think you know this already but we do have a three minute Yeah, we have a three minute time. This is for those online as well. Thank you.

Thank you so much Thanks for letting me be here tonight. I'm Debbie Jordan and I work for AR UP blood services just across The freeway here in sandy. We're really proud to be part of the sandy business community I'm here to announce a special event that we're having on Saturday August 8th, you each have a postcard. The University of Utah Air Med helicopter is going to land at our donor center parking lot. Mayor Zee, Councilwoman Sharkey came last year. It's a super cool event to see a helicopter land up close. ARUP provides the blood for University of Utah Hospital and Huntsman, and the blood that we collect also flies on those Air Med helicopters out to the greater Mountain West region. Our goal for the event is to bring awareness to donating blood. 60% of the U.S. population is eligible to donate blood, and only 3% donate blood. And we had a blood drive here, I think, two weeks ago, so thank you so much for doing that. Sandy, fire, and police are also going to be there. I know they can't commit 100%, but thank you, Chief Bullock, also, for coming out. The fire truck was a big hit last year. And we've also added some new participants this year and resources. The University of Utah wellness bus will be there. The trauma department, the burn center, the Safe Utah group will be there. The Alta High School drum line will be there performing. Swoop and Bumble will also be there to take pictures of the people. It's just a really unique opportunity. The helicopter will land at 8 a.m. It will depart at 11 a.m. again in our parking lot there and our Sandy Donor Center. And I know it's the same weekend as the Balloon Festival, so hopefully you can go to that, see that takeoff, and then come over to our parking lot. We'd love for you to come by and see it. I think all eyes will be on the skies over Sandy on August 8th. So I really appreciate your time and letting me make this announcement. So look forward to seeing you. Thank you so much. Thank you.

All right, I'll do one more scan of our chambers here if there's anyone who would like to speak during this public comment. Seeing none, if we can go to online, please, Mr. Fredo.

Madam Chair, I'm going to have Mr. Sorensen take care of our online commenters today.

Oh, yes, Mr. Sorensen. It's all yours.

Thank you. If you're participating on our Zoom meeting and would like to make a comment for general citizen comment, please use the raise hand feature, and you will have three minutes to make your comment. I don't see any hands raised. Oh, we just got one. Oh, OK. OK, Tamara, remember to unmute yourself. I'll allow you to talk, and you'll have three minutes to make your comment.

OK, can you hear me all right?

We can.

OK, so I just want to say happy Disability Pride Month. And then I kind of came in late and didn't hear everything about MVP. And this is not an insult to the work they're doing. But in honor of Disability Pride Month, it is so challenging to be a person with a disability and be pushed out of the workforce, be pushed out of your housing subsequently, to be placed in a shelter with oftentimes endless endless workshops that you have to attend. And the community for a long time nationwide in Utah has been, Utah has led the way in a lot of ways for disability reform. And the general idea is hoping that is Accessible, affordable, integrated housing is what the disability community asks for, fights for. And no more shelters, no more being forced out of the workforce into a shelter. And so I am excited to hear what Mayor Z had to say about the new affordable housing being built. And I just hope that it's an answer to many people with disabilities. situation nobody wants to be isolated and we want integrated housing to be with the rest of the community not people who are exactly like us or want to be with family in our own communities and close to our own churches and not relegated to the nearest shelter or nursing home but again happy um disability pride month and i want to thank sandy for all the work they've done The infrastructure here says a lot about what kind of people live and run this city. So again, thank you. That's all.

Thank you. And we'll just wait to see if we have anyone else online. Madam Chair? Yes.

While we're waiting, just FYI, I have two comments that were sent that I was asked to read into the record this evening as well.

OK. We will do that. Thank you for the reminder. I am not seeing any more hands. Mr. Sorensen, you either? OK. Then can we go ahead and move to the ones that have been requested to be read into the record?

Yes. And Justin, if you wouldn't mind setting a three minute timer, just out of fairness. Okay the first is from Jay Allen Payne and Jeanette Payne regarding the purchase of Crescent View Middle School. It would be great to have a community center next to the already established Crescent Park. However the question is is it financially feasible and is it worth raising our taxes. Crescent View Middle School includes a total of 17.8 acres with a large middle school with amenities such as a large gym a kitchen an office a cafeteria. but it also has deficiencies with its many classrooms that really might be unusable and would need to be removed. Canyon's district has an appraisal for and is asking $17 million. This would only cover the purchase price without any renovations. Sandy wants a $30 million bond to cover the expenses to renovate the school as well as buy the property. This would not include the interest paid on the bond. An article written by the Sandy Insider figured that there would be $16 million in finance costs and estimated it to cost $46 million. But are these the real costs for the community center? Sandy Insider also thinks that an independent third party financial analysis should be done. After the school is renovated there are costs to keep it up. We understand that there is no room in the budget for this expense and there would probably be another tax increase. We know that the Sandy City has had two appraisals done one for 10 million dollars and one for 8 million dollars. These appraisals are substantially less than Canyon District's appraisal. We also know that Sandy has sent a letter of negotiation to Canyon District. they have not sent a reply as of today. Why is there a need for an appraisal? Because it is third party opinion. Usually a buyer and a seller of commercial type property will both get an appraisal to be more informed. As you can see there are three appraisals and all are different with two of them being much less than Canyon District's appraisal. There is no consensus on price because both parties have yet to sit down and negotiate. Some questions for these appraisals should be, what was the appraiser told was the reason for the appraisal? What comparables were used? Were they truly comparable? How close were they located to the property? Did they give a land value only, which means that they deducted the expense of tearing down the school? Or was it for the whole property, including the school? This decision should not be rushed into. The different scenarios given at the meeting should be studied and given financial feasibility before going ahead. This makes sense to us. And then it outlines a few qualifications, I guess I'll call them, for this individual, J. Allen Payne, graduate of the U of U, 50 years of appraisal experience, designations of MA, ISRA, WWAC and AIGRS, President Payne Appraisal and Company Inc, President of Utah Chapter of the Appraisal Institute, Chairman Legislative Committee for the Utah Chapter of the Appraisal Institute. I'll end that one there, Madam Chair. The second is from Jude Ingrassia. Says hi sandy City Council. I'm a sandy resident and I just wanted to clarify a potential misunderstanding in the flash vote vote results for the Crescent View property I noticed on next door that councilwoman Cindy Sharkey commented quote the survey result from verified sandy residents tell me that the majority would like sandy city to buy the property and but most respondents don't want taxpayers to pay for it." However, in the most respectful way possible, it seems you might have made a mistake when reading the graph in question four of the poll. I've attached a screenshot of the results. In question 4, 31% of verified Sandy residents said they don't want a tax increase to buy the property. However, 53% of verified Sandy residents said they would like to use a bond to purchase the property. Those 53% chose varying amounts for the bond, but the total yes vote for the tax increase to purchase the property was 53%. or majority of Sandy residents. So 53 percent said yes to the bond. Thirty one percent said no. Twelve percent were unsure and four percent voted other. I just wanted to make sure we were all on the same page when reading the results. If I've made a mistake I apologize. Please let me know. Thank you so much for making this poll. I appreciate the city council's open houses and invitation for public comment on issues like these. Kind regards Jude and Gracia Sandy resident.

Thank you, Mr. Fratto. All right. I think with that, we will close public comment, this general citizen comment, and we will move to item number two, which is Mr. Fratto again, getting a little bit of the dancing Fratto show. Wow. So you're on again. And I saw, thank you for this, I saw that you provided at our seat, you actually provided our policy booklet. So thank you for that.

And Madam Chair, I just have a request if the council's OK with it. I'm kind of wearing a few different hats and juggling things up here tonight. Would the council be OK if I presented from this spot here?

Can you dance from that chair?

I don't have a lot of practice dancing sitting down.

Just tap your toe and it counts. Yes, I'm fine with that. Council, does anyone object?

Okay. Thank you. Thank you. Okay. So let me – Justin's got the presentation pulled up. And actually, let me do – I need to grab the clicker, though.

Do your shuffle over here?

I hope my wife wasn't watching. She logs on to the meetings a lot, and she is a former ballerina who made it pretty far. And so I hope she wasn't watching and being not great for me. OK. Let's run through this. I just wanted to start out by kind of reminding everybody that the council adopted a policy. It's been less than two years ago now saying, hey, we just want you to come in and give us an overview of all of our policies every other year. And so this is the first time we've really done that. You may remember that back in February, we did an overview of one specific policy, our longest policy, the rules of procedure. So that's separate from this. I'm not going to rehash that information in this presentation. The other thing I want to ask is I haven't viewed this as a time to hash through all of the 25, 26 policies in this document and make changes to them. What I would say is this is an overview. I'm going to tell you where things sit right now. I have identified just a couple of policies that maybe aren't necessarily complying with other rules that have been passed since this was adopted over a year ago. But I don't think we need to hammer that out tonight. If you would like to see changes to any of these policies I would suggest that those get brought forward through our legislative process which we'll talk about later on. That being said please interrupt me with questions if you have any as we're kind of moving through it. The first policy that we're going to talk about is the attendance policy. This is an attendance policy addressing council member attendance at council meetings. I'm not going to go through each of the bullet points that were in the slides. You've all read those. But one thing I will note is this policy can be found on page three of your policy document that's in front of you. And I also wanted to note that we do track council member attendance for you. And if anybody gets close to that six meetings, we will let you know. It has happened in the past. I don't get to decide when somebody is excused or not excused. That's up to the council body to decide. So if somebody gets close, I'll let you know. You can bring that forward to the council and say, hey, here are the reasons why I think these absences should be excused. And the council decides that. Alternatively, you can say, hey, I am just voluntarily foregoing compensation for any meetings that I miss from this point on. And then the council doesn't have to worry about it. We have had council members do that in the past. That's what I would suggest, just to do that voluntarily and comply with the policy that way. The legislative process, and you can find this policy on page five. A reminder, any council member can bring forward legislation. You're all very familiar with this policy. It's the first and second reading process. The one thing that I'll note that's not on the slide is that the second reading may be rescheduled until final action is taken on the proposal by the council. Once final action is taken by the council, that same proposal can't come forward again. If you change it, you can bring it through the process again. But the exact same proposal can't be brought forward after the council has taken action on it. The next policy that we'll go over is the election of council officers policy that's on page eight. You're all familiar with this as we just went through that a couple of weeks ago. I will note a reminder that each election can contain as many as three ballots. But once we hit that three ballot limit for any office within that particular meeting, that's it for the night. The incumbent chair continues serving until the next week. And then we hold another ballot election. The other thing that I'll mention is that even though we do this by secret ballot, the council still has to vote on the chair or vice chair. And that's why we ask you to make a motion and vote on it for the policy. A reminder, six-month terms, as you all know. And to appoint a chair and vice chair requires a majority of the council. And the chair or vice chair can serve two consecutive terms maximum. OK. The next policy is the role of the chair policy, and that's on page 10. I think you all have a pretty good understanding of the role of the chair. I think everybody, has everybody been the chair? I think everybody's been the, no. Not everybody's been the chair. OK. Essentially, the chair sets the agenda. You're all aware of that. The chair orchestrates meetings. supervises the council office director, and then represents the council on its positions adhering to the media policy and social media policy that we'll talk about later. It's important to note that the chair's authority comes from the council. It's not above it. The chair doesn't get to control the council. Ultimately, the council gets to control the chair. The only other thing I'll note is the chair is also the one who signs all official documents approved by the council. So being the chair is not all that special. You don't have a lot of extra things that are thrown at you. You get the pleasure of being able to tell me what to do. But I don't know how exciting or great that is. The next policy is the Code of Conduct. This is a fairly new policy. It's on page 27 of the document. Again, I won't go over the bullet points. This policy is long. You can read all of the requirements that are within it. But I will mention something important. Allegations of councilmember misconduct need to be made to the chair, or if they're about the chair, they need to be made to the vice chair. The chair or vice chair cannot dismiss outright those allegations. If you're the chair and somebody brings you an allegation of counsel misconduct, you cannot just dismiss it. You have to bring it to the attention of the counsel during a closed session. It's a requirement within the policy. Once that's brought forward, the council can conduct meetings, reviews, investigations as needed to determine the appropriate response and disciplinary measures to the allocation. Those are all outlined within the policy. Rules and procedures. I'm not going to go into great detail on this. We went over the rules and procedure in detail on February 17. This is on page 32. I will make a couple of kind of important notes, though. Number one, the council has required that we do training specifically on rules and procedures every even-numbered year. The rules and procedures can be amended at any time if they're placed on an agenda. However, if they're not placed on the agenda, a super majority of the council can also suspend the rules in a meeting without it being placed on the agenda. So if there's ever an issue that comes up and in order to accomplish something that you're hoping to accomplish, we have to suspend the rules. You can do that. It just has to be done by a supermajority. The rules of parliamentary procedure adopted by the council are also within the rules and procedures. They are adjacent to Robert's Rules of Order, but far less complex. We don't adhere necessarily to Robert's Rules of Order. Importantly to you as members of the council, the rules of procedure are going to outline the rules for debate during the meeting. And so I always recommend having those handy so that you can access them during a meeting if you need to understand what can I do during debate. Alternatively, you can also bring that question up and I can try my best to answer it as well. The agenda policy is on page 41. A couple of notes. Per your policy as staff, we begin publishing the agenda at 10 a.m. Friday. with the goal of completing publication by noon. Usually, 95% of the time, we're able to do that. However, there's an occasion where publication takes longer than that amount of time. But usually, we're able to have it published by noon. We sometimes publish it early if, for example, there's a holiday on a Friday like there was last week. City staff is responsible for producing materials for agenda items that their department is sponsoring. Those materials have to be entered into the agenda management system by city staff or provided to our team in the council office by 5 p.m. the Thursday prior to the meeting where they'll be presented. So the day before we're publishing is when we have to receive materials. does not give us a lot of time to review things. So I'll just mention that. The city department that is bringing an item forward is responsible for complying with any public notice requirements. So I'll use planning as the example of this. Most of the items that they bring forward often require public hearings. They always take care of all of the notifications. They do a great job. Brian Kelly's team also does a great job of making sure all of their public hearing notices are done and provided. But the administrative staff who is bringing forward those items is responsible for that. Next is the public hearing on the side. We're calling it the public hearing policy because we couldn't fit the entire title on the slide But it's actually called the public hearings council voting items and process for citizen comment during those items policy So a little bit of a mouthful but it covers Really public hearings and all of our voting items. It doesn't necessarily cover a general citizen comment we cover that more in the rules of order and procedure but it does address some processes during public comment for during hearings and council voting items so per this policy commenters have to fill out a blue comment card they have three minutes they shouldn't repeat the same points made by prior speakers they must only direct their comments to the council right they shouldn't be making their comments to an applicant who's here or to city staff, for example, it should be made to the council. They have to provide copies of any written comments brought to the meeting to council staff for distribution. And we don't often get this request, but they may speak a second time if authorized by the council, but only to provide new information. The chair during voting items or public hearings cannot unilaterally limit the total time allowed for public comment. However, the council can create those types of limits by majority vote if they'd like to. So if we're in a meeting, there's some issue with public comment, the council can put those types of restrictions in place per your policy. The chair can't do it unilaterally. The chair can, however, ask the public to line up behind the lectern if they'd like to in order to make things move a little bit more quickly. That is something that the policy authorizes the chair to do. The policy also addresses civil discourse during meetings. So it requires that no one undermine the integrity of the meeting nor the dignity of others in the meeting. It does not allow for any vocal signs of support nor opposition. from anybody in the audience. No vocal signs. No one in the meeting should leave their seat or otherwise disturb the meeting. Those who disturb the meeting may be required to leave the meeting following a supermajority vote of those council members in attendance. We haven't had anything like that really happen since I worked for the city. I hope that it never does. If it does we always provide the chair with kind of a script on how to go through that process in accordance with state law and we can help with that as well. OK. Next is the media policy. This is not to be confused with the social media policy. So the media policy, it's on page 61. A couple of comments that I'll make is, from our perspective as staff, If we get outreach from a member of the media and they are asking to speak with or get a comment from a particular council member, we are required by policy to send, to notify that council member and send that media request to that council member. That council member is welcome to comment. They should comment from their perspective and not from the perspective of the council body. We are required to refer media requests for general information about the city council, its actions, or its policies to the chair. So the chair is the one who has the opportunity to make those types of comments to the media. I will note that this policy recognizes that as independently and duly elected officials, each of you has the discretion to personally contact media organizations and provide your comment. There's no restrictions placed by the council on any of you from doing that. The social media policy. So this is on page 76. With our new council communications director coming on board this month, there may be recommended amendments or changes that come to this policy in the coming months. I don't know. That's something that we'll discuss with this individual when they start. But I would suspect that they may want to bring something forward. So the council uses Facebook, Instagram, X, and YouTube. The council body social media accounts are primarily meant to inform residents of council actions, events, and opportunities for engagement, and then to disseminate information on topics related to the council, such as meeting details, agenda items, topics of council discussion, or increased visibility of the council and council members. Social pages for the council office are solely the responsibility of staff, council staff. Individual members do not have the ability to access the pages, to make posts, or respond to messages. That's within the policy. Members may share content from the council pages to your individual pages if you'd like to, but no posts on the individual members' pages will be shared on the council page. Members attending community events. We would love it if we're not there for you guys to take photos and provide them to us with some information so that we can post those on social media. That is not a problem. We'd love to do that. And then also, when council members receive some type of an award or recognition, there's a news story written about them, those can also be shared on council social media pages upon the request of the member involved. So if you have something that happens to you along those regards, You're going to reach out to us and say, hey, I would like this shared on council social media. And we'll do that. Council members Stroud and Christensen were recently recognized in the Sandy Journal. And they reached out and said, hey, we'd love you guys to share this. And so I know Justin is working on that if he hasn't done it already. Am I? What did I say wrong?

I might have forgotten to tell council member Stroud that we had sent it over to you. Sorry.

You know now. But Councilmember Christensen was involved and did request it. So we still complied with the policy, as you can see. But yes, so we're not out searching for that. But if there is something that happens to you that you would like to be posted, let us know so that we can make sure that that happens. OK. Okay council member compensation. So this is on page 13. One thing I'm going to note on this is with the recent adoption of the elected official compensation ordinance this may require some updates. So something to just keep in mind there. But again I'm just giving you an overview of what it says right now. So just a couple of notes. The starting rate for a newly elected council member is the average hourly rate of all incumbent members of the council. And that's calculated by human resources. Council members under this policy are compensated for six hours per week, and the chair is compensated for nine hours per week. And the council members also have the opportunity to participate in city-provided medical, dental, and retirement plans. So those are the items within the compensation policy. I'm sorry the council member compensation policy. The council also has a compensation policy that's referencing citywide compensation. Kind of your views and perspective on compensation citywide. This policy I believe was adopted I would say 10 years ago. I don't think it's been updated since. So it may be one that you want to take a look at. I don't know. Maybe it still complies with your kind of perspectives. So as written, this policy is on page 24. It expresses the intention of the council to establish a citywide compensation plan that considers the following. competitiveness in the job market, specifically it points out our comparison cities, reward for individual performance, recognition of employee quality of life needs, fairness and equity, transparency, consistency, and objectivity, recognition of fiscal constraints and taxpayer burden, use of quantifiable and objective measures to evaluate the plan's success. The compensation plan it says shall be established with established within the following framework. Salary ranges when compared to the comparison group average Sandy City citywide and individual pay band minimum pay and maximum pay should be at or near 100 percent. Merit pay programs structured using performance evaluations should not be solely based on long long jet long jet. Longevity, thank you. Fringe benefit programs, work-life programs such as training and skill development, wellness programs, and alternative work arrangements. So those are the items that you've identified within your citywide compensation policy. Committee appointments, so this is specifically referencing special committees is what we call them. This is on page 15. So some of you may recall probably eight years ago the council adopted an ordinance that defined special committees and also adopted a policy and procedural manual that talks about how they're organized, how people are appointed to them, et cetera, et cetera. That was updated, I think, in 2021, 2022. But it's really kind of the meat and potatoes of special committees. The policy mostly points to that ordinance and that policy and procedural manual but essentially it says that council appointments to special committees should adhere to that policy guide. The city staff overseeing each committee will advise council liaisons when there are vacancies. The liaisons then can advise of replacements. These may be screened by committee staff. And then the staff may produce a memo of recommendation to the council. The council liaisons may then work with the chair to place the possible appointees on the council agenda for consideration. The council then has the opportunity to interview the possible appointees, deliberate, and then consider an appointment via resolution. So that's the process that's outlined within our policy. Citizen recognition. So this is one that if I'm being honest it's never quite been followed I think to the letter of the law. And so it may be one that we you guys might want to consider kind of addressing whether or not you'd like to change it a little bit. But essentially what it says is if there is a council member who wishes to recognize someone during a council meeting There is a it's recognition form. I think in the 10 years that I've been here that's maybe been filled out twice. But essentially it's the name of the council member who they'd like to recognize the reason they'd like to recognize them what they'd like to provide them with. It's passed around to council members. Everybody checks off whether or not they're a yes or no. And then that recognition gets moved forward. How it's actually happened in reality is those have just been conversations that have happened. I don't know that the forum has ever really been very, very effective. So it may be something that we want to take a look at. But that is what the policy says right now. Okay, the next policy is the advice and consent policy. So this is on page 21, and as drafted right now, I know there's some conversation about potentially changing this, but before granting its consent to a candidate, the council must receive proof that the candidate has passed a criminal background check, a current resume or statement of interest from the candidate, the opportunity to interview the candidate, and then a disclosure detailing wages and benefits for those who are being appointed to a position where they're receiving pay. A few other notes. The council, as you know, may choose to hold a closed session before providing its consent. The consent should be provided by resolution. And then this doesn't happen often, but those seeking reappointment to the same or similar position who have already been interviewed by the council generally do not require a second interview. So that's also within our policy. Next is the electronic meetings policy. So we are required, in order for council members to participate virtually, we are required to have an electronic meetings policy by state law. So here's what ours says. If a majority of members aren't available in person, then an electronic meeting may be conducted. However, it has to comply with all the requirements found within the Open and Public Meetings Act. Council members must be notified of an electronic meeting at least 24 hours in advance of the meeting. A notice of how members will be connected to the meeting must be included with the agenda and an in-person anchor location is required for electronic meetings unless there is a substantial risk to the health or safety of those present. So in plain language, what that means is if at any time we have less than a majority of council members at the anchor location, then we are having an electronic meeting. Per our policy, in order to do that, we have to provide 24-hour notice to all of the council members, and we have to let the public know how everybody's participating. So if two or three members are participating virtually, that's fine. But if we have a majority doing so, it's potentially an issue. And so that's why it's so important that if you're going to participate virtually, that you let us know at the earliest time possible. just in case. We have had a couple of instances where it's been really close to that happening. So something to keep in mind if you're going to be joining a meeting virtually. If you're participating virtually, as you all know, we use Zoom. That's outlined in our policy. The council chair may restrict the number of remote connections if needed. The policy says that that's you know, if there's some technology requirements for the remote connections. With Zoom, that's not really an issue anymore. iPads or computers that you can log in with. And then when we conduct an electronic meeting, all non-unanimous votes must be taken via roll call. So if we have people participating virtually and the vote isn't unanimous, we just shouldn't be doing a voice vote. We need to do a roll call vote. You don't need to remember that necessarily. We'll remember and always point it out if we ever run into that issue. Approval of minutes. So the policy basically says unless extenuating circumstances present themselves, generally draft minutes should be presented to the council within 21 days, 30 days at the maximum. We do that. I think there probably have been a couple times where there have been extenuating circumstances. But generally, that is what happens. The public safety staffing report policy So it's the PSSR that's on page 58. So this is reported quarterly to the council by human resources, police, and the fire department. So those reports are then taken by me. I compile them. And I provide them to the council on a quarterly basis. You've all seen the reports. But overview, they include hires, terminations, overtime numbers, and vacancies within public safety personnel. I think at this point we have eight or nine years' worth of quarterly reports that are all tabulated into a single chart, so it is pretty useful. So there are a couple policies that were adopted back in 2015. And from my perspective, I don't know that anything has ever actually been presented or done with either of these policies. I do not recall in the time that I've worked here ever seeing any of these presentations. So these may be items that we want to address with the administration or policies that we want to do away with. I don't know but I've never seen these presented. But the long term financial plan. So this is on page 60. It outlines the council's intention that a long term financial plan be adopted by city administration. The plan is supposed to be substantially similar to the budget book. and presented to the council on an annual basis. The policy was adopted in 2015. But again, I don't know that I've ever seen any type of annual report or anything along those lines. So that may be something we want to address. Non-employee transportation. This policy basically talks about offsite pours. So it's on page 65. And during council tours, non-employees are generally not permitted to ride on the city bus. However, the chair may grant an exception if the business of the city is served by having a non-employee on the bus. Council-wide deliberation should never occur on the bus en route to an off-site tour. And as staff, when we're publishing the agenda that includes a tour, we're required to include the tour stops, addresses, and our best estimates of the time, which we try to do. Those aren't always accurate, but we do our best to provide those guesses. Outside legal counsel policy. So this is on page 68. The contract for outside legal counsel is signed by the chair. The vice chair is the designee to the council attorney. However, we don't define what the role of a designee is within the policy. But they are classified as the designee. Council staff or any member of the council may request the council attorney's legal advice on any city business. Any work product or legal advice produced by the council attorney shall be shared with the council executive director. Tracy does a great job of providing, you know, feedback to me on that and providing that information to me. Okay. The next policy is the investments policy. So this is the other one that was passed in 2015 I think they were both adopted concurrently is my record. I wasn't here at the time but that's my understanding. And so again this is one that I don't know anything has ever actually been done with it but it's the policy of the council that the administration have an investment policy. The administration should present this policy to the council annually during the time and again during the time that I've worked for the city I don't recall this being brought forward but you know maybe that's something we could address later on. The next policy is on page 71. This is the administrative management studies policy. So every 10 years the council is supposed to adopt a 10 year management study schedule. We've done that. The next schedule will be adopted in 2030. The council is supposed to appropriate at least $50,000 each year towards conducting a management study every other year. By September 30th, each even-numbered fiscal year, which would be an odd-numbered calendar year, the council director will issue an RFP for the department identified in the 10-year schedule. So the next time we do that will be not this upcoming September, but next September under the current policy. A qualified consultant will be selected by a joint review team consisting of city council members, Me, Justin, Martin, and then the department head or division head and the deputy department head or deputy division head. That's the group that will select the consultant. The report is intended to be used by the council lead administration in organizational planning and then budgetary decisions. Go black, Justin.

OK. Maybe.

There we go. OK. The next, and this is the last one, is the biennial policy review. That's what we're doing right now. And so we will do this every other year. If you guys have things that you'd like to change, let us know. I hope this was really fun for you guys. It was super fun for me.

Thank you, Mr. Fratto. I'll just reiterate the goal of this was to go through the policy, but I appreciate you making some recommendations of, hey, think about this one, but tonight's not the purpose of that. But open, absolutely open to any, if anyone's piqued, their interest has piqued in any of those and wants to revisit them, we can chat about that. Any questions for Mr. Fratto? Okay look at that. No questions. So thorough.

And Madam Chair just wanted to thank Justin for taking the lead on putting together that going through and putting the presentation together.

Team effort here. Team effort. All right. We're going to go ahead and move on in our agenda then. I'm bringing my notes back up. Item number three, Sandy Recreation Center presentation on membership and fees. And I believe we're folding in our update as well. And you get to dance your way up, too, if you'd like. I knew you would. Thank you.

Well, we're grateful for the opportunity to come forward today and talk about the Sandy Recreation Center's operating budget and feed programs. We're going to take a team effort on this. Just for the public's information, I'm Ben Hill. I'm the Parks and Recreation Director. We've got Lois here, who is our Center Manager, and Jetta, the Assistant Parks and Recreation Director. The outline that we'll follow tonight is we're going to first share with you the methods in which we got to these recommendations, the membership fees and the membership fee structure, some details about the operation of the center, a snapshot of the programs we'll be offering during the first six months, and the overall operating budget. So keep in mind that we are on track to open the building in January, 2027. And for this fiscal year, 2027, the budget has been approved, but keep in mind that it's a six month operating budget, but we still are, when we will be open, we'll have revenue for those six months, but we are still having expenses throughout the first six months as we have staff planning and preparing for the opening of the building. With that, I'll turn it over to Jetta for the method.

So I get to tell you how we got to our fee schedule and our budget numbers and our program recommendations. And I have to take a minute and give some serious credit to Lois and her team. She's going to hate every minute of it, and that's okay. There has been a tremendous amount of work going on behind the scenes. This center is completely different than anything we had at Alta Canyon. It's not a plug and play. We are reinventing the wheel. Lois has been incredible and I have been very impressed with the way that she has managed herself and her team to keep them all on track to make sure that the opening of this new center will be successful. In addition to the expertise that they all have from many years of operating Alta Canyon Sports Center, they've also done a ton of research. They have scoured the internet. They have made hundreds of phone calls asking people questions specifically. They have been brainstorming. They have been programming. They have been planning. They have been budgeting. They have been adjusting. There's been a lot of work. They took several trips to recreation centers around the state, specifically targeting a few that have recent experience opening brand new facilities. They conducted a very in-depth fee comparison study that Lois will talk about on the next slide. And they also considered the recommendations from the National Recreation and Parks Association so that we could also include some national benchmarks as well as those that are here local. And we stayed conservative in our estimates and we recognize the need that we have now to make sure that all of this information stays up to date. And we're presenting our very best recommendations, but we're also very aware that adjustments will need to be made. And I'm confident in and proud of the work that has been done. And I have no doubt that Lois and her team will continue to keep up on that work in the future.

Well, that was hard. I got all sweaty. Like Jenna said, there's been a ton of research going into this, asking a number of people just to get to the fee comparison part and the benchmarking. A lot of this work was done as far as gathering the data points in January and February, which is the time that me and my staff get to prepare that budget. So this is something that we do constantly every year, even prior to all of this. We scatter the globe and try and figure out, you know, are we on track? Are we there? Where are we at? Where are we lacking? So this will continue to be an ongoing process, but what you have in front of you is a tiny, tiny snapshot of a much bigger picture that we were able to put together. And if you want that data, you want me, it's very overwhelming if you don't know what you're looking at. So that's why we didn't put it all in here, because it gets messy really, really quickly. But not only were we just looking at the fees of all of these other facilities, rec centers, we were very methodical in it. We paid close attention to the facilities that were the most comparable to us. Type of membership we looked at was very like Apple. We tried our best to get apples to apples comparisons. Um, some of the facilities that like we, it wasn't quite apples to apples. What's we tried to figure out what that conversion would be. Um, what the, you know, what's the most similar to what we're looking to offer, trying to offer. Uh, we broke down the, we got into the weeds in this, we got debate, we debated in our office, everything. You know, from definitions of what a membership is, like what constitutes a family? Is it two people, six people, 12 people, a couple, a youth, a senior? What's a resident versus a non-resident? What qualifies you as that? what is the age of a senior? What is the age of a youth? It's very, there's a gap, like there's a range for sure. And once we kind of broke down all of that, we went also through what is included in all of these memberships versus what's excluded and where do we want to land? What do we want to offer to our community? Everything basically on the table was analyzed and analyzed again and questioned and our goal when we started this was to be competitive with our market. We are going to be one of the newest facilities in the Valley for probably a little bit. So we are a little, we're in the middle, but not the direct middle, just a little bit above, to stay competitive because we are a new facility. We are gonna have some new amenities. Like I said, we are going to analyze this a lot. and make adjustments, elicit feedback, and when we do this process again in January for the next budget, we'll have a few data points to kind of track, but this will be an ongoing kind of moving target that we're going to fight really, really hard to maintain our competitiveness with the current market and where we are. I don't have a clicker. Nope, it's me, bud. Oh, you got it. Um, so after all of that debate, at some point you have to make a decision, right? And we have to move forward. Um, we are a little bit more unique in the sense that we still have a functioning, uh, operating tax district within our own city. Um, so one of, uh, the solution we came up with is a three tiered. resident non-resident fee structure we are offering one of the main things we wanted to focus on and that we recognize is not only the value that the alta canyon special tax district residents have paid into our facility for years and kept us going but also the sandy city residents that have also paid into this facility for several years in our time of need. So that was one of our biggest pinch points in the previous facility is Sandy City didn't feel like they were a part of it. It wasn't their facility. So with that kind of in our mind and our focus, that's how we made it to this three-tier system. So right out of the gate, if you're not within our Sandy City geofence, you are a non-resident. Not to say that we don't want you. We want you in our facility. Come, bring your families, bring your kids, because we have an amazing facility and a pool. But you will be paying a premium price for that. Then you as a sandy city resident you do drop down you get a discount for being a sandy city resident We will require, you know utility bill or some sort of qualification to prove that you are a city resident and again in addition to That if you are in Alta Canyon tax district resident, we will also offer you an additional 10% of off of that Sandy City resident. So that's kind of where we get our three tiers. It does leave room for a little bit of growth. It does leave room for some flexibility in the future if we need to, but ultimately that's the best compromise we feel is fair across the board and helps include as much of the city as possible. This is the community's Facility it's not just the residents. It's not just ours. It's the entire cities and we want to recognize that and honor that one of the biggest changes that we are doing is Adding in our group fitness previously it was an additional cost on top of the membership We recognized years ago that the standard across the board for all rec centers the group fitness is included in every membership we With the structure we had, we were not able to change that in the moment. This is a perfect opportunity to do that, and we're taking it. So every membership going forward, once you make that purchase, all the way down to the daily fee, is going to include, if you so choose, a group fitness class. Not only do you get access to the facility, but you can go to any classes that you would choose to. Along with that, we did a ton of research, but one of the questions I literally get asked almost every day is, what's your health insurance plan? What silver sneakers are you doing? Are you going to accept mine? I am happy to say right now, pending contract approvals through everything. The top four that are the most well-known and the most used, SilverFit, Renew Active, SilverSneakers, and Active and Fit. We are in current contracts. status with all of that. So I'm really excited about those two additions. I think that just brings way more people into our circle and bridges all of those gaps of, well, this isn't our rec center. Yes, it is. And it's for you.

A little bit about some of the details of operations. You'll see our center hours. We are planning to extend the hours a little bit to be open a little bit later than Alts Canyon Sports Center was. Like Lois said, memberships and daily fees will include group fitness classes as well as all of the amenities inside the building and the swimming pool during the summer months, as long as those amenities are not being utilized by programs or reservations. We worked really hard to create the best balance that we could with open play versus reservations. We want it to be available to the community. We want people to come in and play basketball and pickleball, but we also need to generate some additional revenue and we have an opportunity to do that through reservations. So we're working really hard to keep that balanced. That is another one of those things that has been really heavily researched, and one of the questions that we asked several other facilities how they manage. This will likely be a moving target. We do have a schedule that we're set to open with in January, but we'll change that based on community use, reservation demand, as well as revenue needs as well. We will offer reservation opportunities for individuals, families, businesses, community groups. The reservable spaces inside the center are the gym, the field house, the group fitness room, and the community room, as well as like full facility rentals outside of our regular operating hours. This is just a sample weekly gym schedule. So this is what we plan to open with starting in January, and you will see a good mix of programming, open play, and reservations. And like I said, that will likely change based on needs, feedback that we receive, and also the time of year. We have similar schedules like this drafted for the field house and our group fitness classes, and we're happy to share those if you want to see them in detail.

going along with programs again the challenge of trying to balance open play with programming one of the challenge or one of the things I tossed our team with is I want to make sure that we're providing something for every age group so and they came through starting in January we've got you know programs with our three to five year olds our grade school kids we've got some after-school programs set up for Friday on early days, things like that. We've got some sports camps, some clinics. Also, all of our group fitness is going to be available. We are offering some team fitness classes as well to make sure that we're trying to get all of the groups together. We also are, with our seniors, we're really excited about a walking club because we do have that track upstairs, and we realize January's not the greatest to be outside, but we're going to start some specialty classes and some walking classes definitely for our seniors and make sure that we're getting everybody involved. So a lot of those programs will run year-round, and with eliciting feedback and getting every couple weeks every couple months and stuff. If we need to pivot, we can. We do aim for our programs to be as self-sufficient as possible. In our experience, it's taken approximately three years to kind of see if a program's a go or a bust. An example that we have currently is about three years ago, right after, well, more than after COVID, but we completely revamped our tennis program. We changed hours, we changed times, we changed levels around, instructors, layouts, all of that. And it took a minute to get going the first year. The second year, last summer, we had a little bit more. This summer, we were pleasantly surprised to see that growth almost doubled. even though we had to completely change the location from Alta Canyon to Falcon Park. That is something that we continually analyze. Where are our pinch points? How do we get better? What does the community need? What do they want? So this is definitely a great example of how we can pivot if we need to. One of the... That's all I have on that. I'm sorry.

So I love that Lois shared that example, the tennis. That's a similar approach that we're trying to take with the recreation center. This is a brand new recreation center, different than what we had before. And I kind of wanted to share a little bit of the experience at one of the Crescent open houses. I had a resident, a middle-aged lady, that came up to me and was asking questions about Crescent, of course. But she says, you know, I've got a membership at Dimpledale. And I said, well, where do you live? And she says, yeah, I'm a Sandy resident. And I said, well, do you know that we're building a new recreation center? And she said, yes, I actually even live in the Alpha Canyon taxing district. And I used to go there all the time, but the building continued to be run down. And for the price point, she said, I decided at some point I'd go over to Dimpledale. And I said, well, I really hope that you give us an opportunity to come back and see what this new facility will do. And so I think that's an example of what the growth is going to do. Some people have gone on to buy memberships elsewhere. And day one, I hope they come rushing back through the door, but we'll see the steady increase. Then word of mouth is going to spread and people are going to be talking. And so in that two to three year balance, we'll be able to find a really sweet spot with this cost recovery. So these next couple of slides go over the budget that was approved in the fiscal year 27. You can see in the revenue, we've got the taxes that come from the Alta Canyon Recreation Special District. It's about $405,000 when you add in those top three, as well as other revenue generating income. that we'll get from rentals, recreational programs, memberships, administration fees. Those are all things that are being very conservative at this point, as well as with the expenses. We're being conservative knowing that We will definitely hit these numbers. And I fully expect that we will exceed these numbers. But again, we're going to need some sample sizes to see what that is. But we are being conservative. For example, you look at that rental income. Depending on our scheduling, that rental income could go very high with that field house that we have. There is a transfer in general from the general fund of $250,000. That's to kind of help us get through these first six months of not having the building open, kind of carrying the weight to help us get through. As we switch over to the expense side of things, of course we've got our staff. Any city and recreation department knows that your staff is usually your highest cost. So we got Lois and her team along with a bunch of seasonal employees. The utilities, this will be a brand new building. I expect that some of the issues that we had in our previous building, having to replace things constantly, will be a lot better, but they're also gonna be brand new. And anybody that's bought a brand new house or a new car, you think there shouldn't be any issues, and you run into those for a little while. So we got the utilities cost in there. Keep in mind that we have outdoor pool that we will still be operating. Those are heavy expenses, so pool maintenance and other maintenance items in there. And then the bottom five or six items are administrative charges. that we know that some of the council members have some questions about the administrative charges. And we asked Brian Kelly to be prepared to answer to that if the council so wanted that to be addressed. Now we're going to go over just an overview of what we're looking at. I first want to bring up NRPA. We brought that up at the beginning. NRPA is the National Recreational Park Association. They send out studies every year and give us a baseline or benchmarks of what the entire nation is looking at. So you need to take it with that in mind that maybe Sandy is different than a recreation center in Oklahoma. But when you bring them all together, it does tell a good story. So this is what they say about facility benchmarks. Modern municipal recreation centers are often designed to recover 40% to 60% of their operating costs depending on aquatic programming and membership strategy. This is the benchmark many consultants use when evaluating the fiscal performance of a standalone recreation center. So 40 to 60% is the base mark, is what you're shooting for. If you're at the top high end of that and you're bringing in a cost recovery of 60%, that is exceptional. And I'm sure there's some outliers that get beyond that 60%, but that is not the norm. And if you're below the 40%, then you're probably not pulling your weight and you need to reconsider how you're approaching things. So the benchmark is for 40% to 60%. We try in our programming, when we program, to be 100% self-sufficient, like Lois had said. And then when you get to aquatics, aquatics, especially outdoor pools, is a 0% to 20% cost recovery. We know that outdoor pools do not make money. And sometimes that's strictly because they're just not open the entire year. So if we break down what we've got here in front of you on the slide, the tax revenue that we received from the Alta Canyon Tax District is about $405,000. The other revenues that we proposed, recommended that we will generate, is just over $1 million. So that's a total revenue of $1.4 million. We've got a total expenses of $2.2 million, and that difference is $871,000. So you can look at this a couple of ways, and it just depends on how you want to look at it. If we include the tax revenue along with our other revenue, we are at 62% cost recovery. We're unique because we have this additional tax revenue that we bring in from the close president. So that's pretty good. Now if we say, OK, well, that's not fair. Don't include that tax revenue. What is your subsidy or your cost recovery without that? And then we would be at 44.2. So we're a little bit low, but we're anticipating that because we're being conservative, and we will get this thing growing. And then in three years from now, we'll be able to come up to you and say, we've been consistently at this percentage, and I think this is where we're at. And we're always looking for ways to make that look better. The last slide is just our next steps, and then, of course, we'll take any questions that you have.

Guys, we are five months and a week out from our projected opening. So knock on wood, like we said earlier, everything that I have right now, construction is on time. You have to do it. That puts us at opening. We tentatively have our ribbon-cutting event. January 4th, 2027. So everything that my team has worked on for the last year or longer than that, but year, we now have to hit the ground running. With that, we are going to be rolling out our membership strategy and our membership costs later this fall. We're going to try and do a systematic rollout where it's not everybody all at once. It's going to be select groups first, residents, things like that. And then one day we'll have our health insurance patrons come in so we don't all get swamped together. But it will be a systematic rollout. We are looking at doing some specials with purchasing, just generating that excitement, getting people engaged, getting people excited. If you purchase this date to this date, you get one extra month free, or you get an early bird discount, or you get to lock in your rate for the next three years. Things like that. Leading up to the ribbon cutting, we're gonna be offering some sneak peeks, some tours. um, some early access because really I need you guys to test out the facility and make sure it all works. Um, so offering some, you know, group fitness classes to come try them out. Um, some early program registrations we'll start rolling out this fall also, just so that we can hit the ground running that first week of January with our, you know, afterschool programs, get some kids signed up and just let's go. Um, We do plan to, right now we have an entire, we have a full group fitness schedule ready to go. We have after school programming and we have some really fun community classes. That's one of the best, that's one of the, been the funnest is trying to figure out, you know, what does the community need? What's trending right now? Um, to try and generate that excitement with those community classes. So we're really excited about that. Um, one of the, as we continue this process and going forward, um, uh, I'm going to steal fit city. So I ran it, we went down to Spanish fork, um, fit city opened six months ago. They're about six months ahead or a year now, but they're brand new facility. We grilled them, and God bless them for letting us just pepper them with all of the questions. That was one of the things they really stressed to us is make sure you're getting that feedback and you're able to pivot. Again, I said I'm stealing their example, but one of their kind of mottos or mantras that they talked about was failing fast. There are going to be some moments where we're like, oh, my gosh, we didn't think of that. Okay, fail, take it. move on to the next let's pivot let's go where we need to go i'm very confident my team can do that um that's one of see i can't do it now um i do want to say my team is incredible and being picked up from alta canyons forest center our routines changed everything and moved down to another facility they're exceptional and um i we wouldn't be here i wouldn't be here without them so i do need to give them a shout out But we are so excited for this facility and we're so grateful for the opportunity to just be a part of this. Not a lot of people in my position get to do this. Same thing with my team. And it's giving us a great experience at creating something for the community that this is why we do this, this is why we get in here. But I am really excited and grateful for the opportunity. Do you have any questions for these guys? Because I can't.

What an outstanding presentation and both of you acknowledging the truly impactful team effort behind all of this. I know it made you a little emotional but it is so good that you called attention to the extraordinary effort that gets us to where we are. So I appreciate that so much. Council members, Ms. Christensen.

Okay, none of the questions are negative. They're just the nuts and bolts because you guys have done an amazing job. I've just got questions about how we're going to make this work, right, financially. So... Reservations, like okay, so I'm looking at the budget book and all of the prices in there are the prices on your sheet. So we've already established that. I'm assuming that rental prices will be the same for members as well in here for all the courts and everything like that.

The members will...

Sorry. Part of the perk of buying a membership is that you will get a discount on programs ran within the city. Sorry, ran within the rec center. So there will be a non-member price for majority of the programs and the reservations and things like that. And there will be a member price, which is a little bit more discounted.

But it's all in the budget book, right?

Yeah, it's all accounted for.

So... The additional children cost, like I know it says, these are just thoughts in my head, right? So it's like 40 bucks a year if you're a member. You can't buy a pass without an adult pass, right? You can't just buy kids passes.

You can, but the kid pass would not be $40, right? The youth pass is 150 for Sandy resident.

Okay.

But if you already have a family pass, you've already bought the two and you want to add your child to your family pass. That's where that $40. Okay.

Cause then I'm just thinking through in my head, like, and I know you guys have done a ton of research, but that's like 1250 a month for a kid. And I would pay $150 plus. for a summer to drop my kid off every day at your pool and have you babysit. So I'm just saying I think that's really low. And I'm making suggestions because we need to make more money, right? That's our goal is to come closer to it.

So in a scenario where you have a family of two, so two adults and their dependents, the family of two as a standard resident would be $462, right? And for every dependent, it'd be an additional $40 to that. So sometimes what happens in our field, too, is the family, and rightfully so, you've got six kids, you've got 12 kids, you've got 15 kids. We have them, right? But it does start hurting a family as they get more and more. So that's where that $40 gets in. We feel like they're already covering the bulk of the the need for in the family cost of the 462, and then each additional, that's why it's so discounted.

And then on your schedule, it said, like, I know it's a sample, but the thank goodness it's Friday K through 5 programming, is that an additional fee?

It would be, yes. It's a program fee.

So if you have a membership, it's one price, non-membership, another K. And then pool maintenance, I know we talk about it being the most expensive part, but it's only $40,000 a year. Right? And water's only like $5,000. I mean, even if you add all of the utilities and assign them to the pool, it just isn't that expensive.

It's the seasonal costs and... For the employees. Yeah. And the chemicals and...

But that's part of... Chemicals is part of pool maintenance.

Incidentally.

I mean, employees, yeah, because we're running programs and things like that, and we're teaching and all those things. But the pool itself only costs just like $40,000. I mean, $55,000 if we add in every single thing to maintain, right? So it really isn't that expensive.

Well, I mean, yeah. If you factor in that, it's three to six months, yeah. Right?

No, that's for the year.

Yeah, yeah. So if... Meaning that for the wintertime, it just sits there. So we're paying a lot for less amount of months. Yes. So we're paying that amount for the year, but it's like, if you were to run that pool all year long, it would be triple. Oh, yeah, but we can't run it all year. We don't have it.

So really, it's not that expensive, is what I'm saying.

So then why are administrators...

If you were just to open the pool... Yeah, and if, like, lifeguards, I know you have lifeguards, and we have a lot of them, and that's great. But, like, the other ones, they're all there teaching, and they're doing summer classes, and, like, they're bringing in additional other swimming lessons, other revenue. Like, how many lifeguards, it doesn't matter, but you don't have that many lifeguards on staff at one time. It's like three or four, right?

Yeah, so if you look at the seasonal part-time non-benefited pay, it's $478,000, and a good chunk of that comes from the summertime.

Yeah, because it's kids' camps, it's swimming lessons, it's tennis lessons. That includes all of our lessons and everything else. Not just pool. They're not all just watching the pool. They're doing so many other things.

A good chunk of them are just watching the pool.

Yeah, like four at a time, right?

No.

You have more than four lifeguards on at a time?

12 at a time, plus site supervisors and things like that.

That brings up more questions, but OK. Then administration charges. I do want to know what $712,000 worth of administration charges are, because that's a lot.

Yeah, good evening, council. So the administrative charges are charges from the general fund to the, in this case, the recreation center or other centers, other enterprise funds. It's to recoup the general fund's cost to the center. So they, for example, and they are charged in arrears. So they're a year behind. So we're trying to recoup the admin costs. In this particular year, 712,000. The majority of that, 31%, is Parks and Rec Administration. And we do a study. We have the staff report on how much time they spend on the different enterprises. That's the biggest chunk. And like I mentioned, it's recouping the year prior. So as a lot of time has been spent on this project in the last couple of years, and even the current year, And so we're capturing all that cost and then the time.

So we should expect that the majority of the 31%, which is $220,000, would not be assigned to it next year in 28.

Well, we're still going to have a lot of time. That's the Parks and Rec administration. They're still spending a lot of time on this project. I think it should decline in the next year after that. I think fiscal year 28 or 29. Because these are fixed costs, and as the city's administration focuses their priorities on different things, you'll see the costs kind of shift.

Remind me, where does this fall in the hierarchy of departments for administrative costs? Is it towards the top? Is it the top? Is it the bottom?

It's toward the top right now because so much attention has been put on this. And it includes the CAO as another chunk, their office, the time that the city council spends on these agenda items. And it's you know, the finance department the cash receipts the purchasing and those are a lot smaller The legal the time that the legal department spends on these issues Roughly, I'm not gonna hold you to it.

Just like roughly in a normal year. How much would you expect that to be?

I'd probably go I would just guess off the top it'd be a couple hundred thousand less and

Okay.

And maybe more.

So it's still probably at least roughly $500,000 a year in administrative fees.

But the concept here is they are kind of a subunit of the city. If they didn't have city HR, they would have to hire employees to run all those different processes.

Okay.

That's what it's paying for.

Okay. Because one of my questions I brought up earlier was we are increasing the hours that we're open. But it feels like that's just more expenses in personnel. Have we looked at closing? more often, like are there hours during the day that don't bring in as much revenue or have as much participation that we can like close for three or four hours, split the shifts and have less employees?

Yeah, the answer to that is we don't know yet, right? We're not open. Is that a possibility? Absolutely. What we're trying to do here is to get a wide variety of being open so we can get the data. So say a year or two in and no one shows up at That 5.30 time, which is not the time that they, that's the time that's going to be busy, but the late evening time from 9 to 10, it's a ghost town. Then we can put those data points in and go, okay, it's time to close at 9. My experience in opening recreation centers is the public is anxious and they're really ready for this thing to open. And if you open with not enough hours, even those that aren't coming, will just complain and say, what? We put all this money into this and these are the hours you give us? And it's like, well, are you coming? No, but. So we're trying to keep this wide open so that we get the data points and then just make those decisions in the future. The great thing that's gonna happen is these rentals, right? So in my experience also, when you have these, these competitive advantages in recreation centers, right? There's very few field houses. And so we will be a regional pool for field houses. And that will allow us to stay open past 10, where we'll have a high revenue cost of these non-resident, non-member rentals. And you won't have to staff the building with 20 people. You can staff the building with three people. You've got a few spots you need to open, but the rest of the building's closed, and you're just running a filled house.

So are you anticipating on your sample schedule, for example, that all of your open basketball, open pickleball times, and Monday through Friday, and then Saturdays, and then past 10? Because on there, there's only like two hours. a day of reservations and three hours on a Saturday. So are you anticipating that those times will all be

not really open they'll just be reserved and so people they won't be open anymore well we'll see how much it gets used and get that sample size and realize oh we don't need this much open time we only need this much over time so then that allows it to go to rental our fear would be let's open this thing up with all rentals and it would fill up and then we would be stretching to try to get open time for the public in there

Because I mean, budgeting wise, so I'm assuming you budgeted only like two hours a day for reservations and then three and the three hours on Saturdays. I mean, that's not a lot of money.

Right. And that's why that budget revenue right now is so small. But I think as we get into the first five, six months, we'll realize, oh, there's some great opportunities here to stay open later. And we'll do a lot more than what we're showing there.

Okay. And then this last year, we supplemented $2 million.

Sorry, this is also just the gym. So we will also have additional reservation opportunities for the field house, the community room. I mean, the community room's wide open. Okay. There's a few programs that we're looking at running in there.

That's good to know.

Yeah. Thank you. It will also include, like, the pavilion rentals out at the swimming pool, after-hours parties at the swimming pool, things like that. Lois reminded me, as far as the pool maintenance cost, this only includes one month of the summer because it's only open from January to July 1st. Okay. So it's the $40,000 a month. So this budget number is only June. Correct.

Right. It is the pool.

So for the three months we're open would be $120,000. Okay. Okay. Thank you.

That's a good point.

Okay. And then so $2 million from the general fund this last year, and we're only anticipating $250,000 this year. That seems wildly optimistic. Am I wrong?

What was that again?

Yes, so the general fund transferring in.

Yeah, that $2 million covered us for the whole closure period. And so the $250,000 is just for the six months before we open.

Yeah, that's correct. We put in $2 million anticipating it would cover us longer. And year-end statements, we're still preliminary right now, but we're looking like we're about $260,000 better than we anticipated. So they may not need this $250,000, but at the time we put the budget together, we thought they would.

So for the next year, for 28, do we anticipate like $500,000 because – if that's half a year under normal operation, or do we think it'll be

No, it shouldn't be that. I mean, I'm hoping not any.

Just because I'm seeing, like, the $800,000 difference. Do you know what I mean?

Well, it's because, like we're saying, we put in $2 million. We knew that was a large infusion to get them by almost two years' worth of this project. We thought it was going to cross two fiscal years.

But it's going to be $260,000 is all that will be left over at the end of this fiscal year.

Yeah, they're drawing down their fund balance, but...

So do you see what I'm saying, though?

Yeah, I don't think it's not. The bottom line is we're not going to have to keep subsidizing it. We don't anticipate. At all? Well, other than the district that they have.

And is there a plan to expand the district to the city? Do we have a proposal for that yet?

It's definitely a discussion that we need to have. There are some options before us that it's a political city council and administration discussions that need to happen. There's expanding or there's dissolving or there's keeping it the same as it is. All things we need to explore in the future. And I don't say future like let's throw it way out there.

No, I mean this has to happen in the next year, in the next six months, or we won't be able to – fund properly. Okay, so the other question I have, I think the last one, is I heard you guys say that special deals for if you sign up now, your prices won't change for three years and things like that, which isn't an option that i'm aware of because if we don't approve it in the city budget then they can't keep that rate like if we decide it has to be higher they don't really get to keep the lower rate right those are all just ideas that we're throwing out so maybe that one doesn't stick i just wanted to check yeah well that could be included in the budget book in the future as well if if we but if we don't prove it because we need more money like yeah I just want to make sure that that's a consideration. It might happen, it might not.

That was one of the suggestions that came up a couple of times when we visited centers that have recently opened. It became part of this excitement-generating endeavor. And not only did it cause people to buy a membership where they maybe wouldn't have, they call them founding members, right? Yeah. have some ideas, but we probably won't steal that. That was one of the benefits they got was to lock in pricing for a couple of years. But they also got early access to those soft opening events and things like that generated a lot of revenue and they saw a lot of people come in because of that. And yeah, we might have a discount as fees increase year over year, but we also will have them kind of locked in and committed to us for several years rather than just one. So there is a cost-benefit analysis that we have to consider with that.

So before that, I'm assuming we would have to approve that. for the future? The fee schedule for three years out?

Everything we need to do would need to be in the fee schedule. So if it's not in there and we needed it in there, we would come to you.

And you need it there for three years? I'm assuming that would open a budget process? Mr. Jensen.

My experience with this is usually before we open the building and start selling passes, they will come back with a recommended promotions that will come before the council to say anything that deviates from the fee schedule for you to review.

And we'd have to notice it and open the budget and approve it for future years councils.

In my experience, you haven't had to open the budget. You just accept those fees.

You'd have to approve it by resolution, but you don't have to do a budget opening in a public hearing. It's not appropriating money. You're just adjusting the fee schedule. If you're appropriating, increasing appropriations, you have to do a public hearing.

Okay, cool. And also, I would highly consider a summary Like for the three months, and it's much, much higher than these rates. We have that. What is it? Do you know?

I don't, but I can give it to you.

I just didn't notice it in the budget book, so.

Yeah, we just, we didn't, it should be in the budget book.

It probably is. I just didn't notice it yet. I'll keep looking, but like, yeah.

Yeah, we had a three-month, it was a three-month membership, but we are going to the summer membership.

Yeah, just so it offsets the cost of the pool at minimum.

Yeah, exactly.

For those $120,000.

And I think there are some buyer tendencies, like when we buy a new cell phone plan or whatever, a cable thing, that, oh, they're going to get me in for this price, and then watch next year, they're going to hype me up. And I think that's a little bit of the promotion, too, is trust us. We're not trying to hook you up. Trust us, we're the government. It'll be fine.

Most of the time we also haven't seen dramatic increases in our fees as well. Like I said, we've done a lot of research to see where we're at compared to the market, and usually it increases by a percent or two each year.

Which I'm assuming would depend on expanding the tax district or not. Yes, a lot. Thank you. Critical.

Any other council members with questions. Miss Nichol and then over here.

Thank you. I have a question on the membership fee right here. Family and family is defined as two people. Just from a marketing standpoint I think that's a bad idea. I would add the 40 dollars and make it two adults two kids because there's no family. in Sandy with two people. So you've got to list a senior couple. It's just the optics of that doesn't really sell very well. But anyway that's just my opinion on that. So this 872 we're going to be opening with a deficit. Is that what you're saying.

It's really difficult in that first year. Yeah because you know we've got six months of operating and we're opening it.

Do you have any ideas on how to pay for that.

Yes, and those are further discussions that we need to have No, that's that they're in there they've spent that fund balance down the two million No, the fund balance has not been spent down completely It's about 800 and we're still closing out the year, but that's our preliminary numbers And that's why we added another 250 to get them through this fiscal year that we've just started.

See? Yeah. Okay. That's cool.

I just needed a – Yeah, it's in their fund balance.

Okay. And the fund balance is at eight and we're estimating – it'll take them $200,000 to get them through?

Yeah, that's what we budget. That was our estimates when we put the budget together. Okay. And now looking at we're through the end of the year and just closing out things, we actually came in about $260,000 positive as of today. Okay. We still have some invoices coming through, so those numbers will probably change. But when we come back to you in October with carryover, you'll see the exact year-end closing and what they have available.

Okay. Thanks.

Thank you.

Councilman Stroud, and then I'll come back.

Thank you, Madam Chair. One of my questions, which Ms. Nichols just brought up, was that family two, if it was a couple or family three or something. If you have a single mom with two kids. But yeah, the family too. I don't think of family as two. I think of couple as two. So just something there. And I didn't pull up the budget book. But we do have the three months. Is there a guest rate or a daily? So if my kids had friends over, we do have that in there. I know I've seen it in years past. I just wasn't sure if we had that.

Yeah, that's gone through the same process of looking at every rec center and saying, okay, what should that be for what age groups, seniors, adults, children.

Perfect. And then just an observation or suggestion on if you're looking at the sample weekly gym schedule of opening that, your K through 5 that starts at 1. I work at a school that has the earliest time on Fridays, and we don't even get out until 1.10. So, you know something just but that doesn't account for charter schools private schools, you know homeschooling but that first block it may not be You know as robust and then a question about the opening date on the 4th and I did bring this up You know with administration, but I you know that ribbon-cutting, you know, January 4th being a Monday 6 p.m Is gonna be pretty cold and dark. I'm hoping that somewhere maybe we could alter that. And I know this is probably just kind of a tentative putting out there.

Gotcha, because it's a Monday. You don't want to open up during the workday.

Well, and this is something that we are really trying to get our community, the entire city, to be in. You know, hey, come cut the ribbon with us. You know, and that's... And so if it was a 10 AM, we may not get people that are returning from New Year's, the break, that can take work off. And I would love to see as big of a turnout that we can get. So if there was something to accommodate people that are working, kids that were in school, things like that. You know, just looking at that time or that date to make sure that it's, you know, come join us. This is great. We've got hot chocolate for you because it's January, whatever that is. So, you know, just a suggestion there.

Thank you so much. I've been keeping saying the 4th, but I haven't thought of, oh, that's Monday. Thank you. Mr. Jensen.

Madam Chair, thank you. Just acknowledge that feedback. We have to give our construction crew a date to work towards, and so we're It's a target date. More to come and we'll see as the construction progresses where that may land. We'll keep you updated.

Was that all you had?

I guess the opening doesn't need to be the grand opening, right? I mean, we probably would like to have the ribbon cutting with press and everything. So a big deal. Anyway, I kind of want to start I'm not going to get into those kind of details. I'm going to, you guys, I'm impressed with the amount of research that you've put into this.

Thank you.

So I'm not going to second guess decisions that you've made about things. I'm just going to ask questions about, so in the fee comparison, this is not taking into consideration property tax revenue. You're really just looking to hit the right membership and class fees in comparison to others, notwithstanding that Cottonwood Heights charges millions a year.

Yeah, 3.1.

So that is a big, big, huge disadvantage for us, right? Can, was it your feeling that we cannot sell that? That Sandy is a little bit more because we're not charging you millions and millions of dollars in property tax revenue as the subsidy for this. That would be a disadvantage. I mean, and the fact that we're shooting for kind of being a little bit above the middle, a brand new facility, I don't know. Let's have RSL players there for the grand opening. Let's make it a really big deal. Let's put our backs into it and make this something that is different than the other rec centers. I started this off by saying I'm not going to second guess where you landed, but I'm wondering if we didn't put enough into... differentiating and whether it's the differentiating in the total cost to you or the differentiating in that this is brand new and it's brand spanking new and this is the only field house nearby i'm feeling the room i i'm feeling like miss christiansen did in a couple of cases charge a little more this just this isn't the elta canyon sports center right this this is something different um i don't know though you i'm just planting that seed i'm planting that seed and saying that if you felt you could get away with it that that's what i would support a cost justification to go just a little bit higher and the reason i bring that up is i remember back years ago You guys will remember when we had hired the consultant AECOM, right? And I had asked them at one point, how do we eliminate the taxing district? And Pat's answer was, you charge a dollar extra per fitness class. That's done. So little things can go a long way is what I got from that. A little adjustment that can go a long way that maybe doesn't make a world of difference to the customer, but it might make a world of difference to our bottom line. That's kind of what I'm thinking about. Thank you guys so much. The number of times that I have said to people who said, don't build a rec center, don't compete with the gyms. This is not a gym, and you proved it. Your programming is completely different. This is for families. Gyms are for adults. This is programming for families. That's what we do, not the same thing. And your programming really, really, in all your descriptions, it proves it in two pages, right? This is not what Planet Fitness does, yeah.

Families and building communities.

So the 2027, so here's what I want to ask. The 2027 tentative budget that we passed was for opening the facility for half a year. So why isn't the revenue source number doubled in a full year? Why is it, so it's, I see 713,302 in income, rental income, recreation fees, instruction fees, membership fees, admission fees. We're talking about the fact that we're still drawing down on the general fund subsidy, but why in a full year isn't it double that, which would mean like $1.4 million in revenue from those sources instead of the $1.0 million that you're projecting here, I don't, the numbers aren't adding up for me. It looks like we, I don't understand that.

Right, because we're only, we don't have a full year yet, right? Am I following that right? When we, they were based for the numbers of the dollar amount so we could open, but we currently are in the fiscal year 27 and we aren't collecting those revenues.

Yes. And we're subsidizing in order to get us to where we need to be because we recognized that condition.

We're running some programs. We're trying to offer a few things. We did a lot of summer different things to offset that.

Is the overall operating budget a full year or still only a half year? Okay. So that's where the budget shortfall lies. That's what we're talking about. We're still in that condition. So what I'm curious about is when we are in the following year, 2028, when we've got a full year of activity and income and all that, I'd like to understand what kind of financial condition we expect to be in when we're operating under a full year. The council has made it quite clear that we would like to entertain eliminating the taxing district. so we'd also like to know how to go about accomplishing that what would that look like what would need to be achieved i'm curious too about corporate memberships we just received a large donation from the Miller Corporation and they're a couple miles down the street. I wonder if they might be interested in buying memberships for their employees. SEG as well, they're all in the you know, sports and fitness kind of space. IHC is right down, halfway down the street.

That is something that we are working on. Sandy City actually in the past has had a corporate membership for Sandy City employees and their families. So that definitely is in the works.

And it could be right based on what this new facility is, right? Much more of an attractant. For serious sports, I mean, could we have RSL players? You know, is that even possible? And think about how you could attract memberships if someone might bump into a Royals player or something like that. I mean, I'm thinking, I don't know, but I'm thinking that that kind of thing, if we put our backs into it, could boost memberships easily a couple hundred people, I'm thinking. through corporate memberships. So let's see, what else do I have? Can we please get another cell tower there? Literally Saturday, Saturday, I walked out to my car after shopping at Smith's. There was a woman next to me. Oh, her car didn't sound good. It was not a battery. I think it was a starter. There was no hope for her. And she had ice cream in the back of her car. And so she said, my phone is dead. And I said, here, use my phone. She couldn't use my phone either. I said, you're going to have to walk over to the bank or the loop place to see if they have a landline because phone calls do not work here. So we would love that, and it's more revenue.

Yeah, and we are being contacted by the cell phone companies, and sometimes it's just adding more suppliers on the existing pool.

That's great, too. They still pay a lease fee, though, right? And, you know, I would love to see... some forgiveness on those administrative charges. That would be so nice if we could do that. Just a little forgiveness there to help us all get over this little boost that we need. I do understand the need for – I appreciate the fact that you think that you're estimating conservatively, and let's hope that we're all blown away.

Right.

That would be great to whatever extent I can help, we can help, we can all help, whatever it takes. We all want to see this work. We all want to make sure that this is a Sandy City-wide facility and everybody knows that. And this is not just Alta Canyon 2.0, right? Totally different. So even keeping the taxing district in place, that wasn't the plan. Hopefully that will not be the continual plan. And I, too, would like to see a solution for that sooner rather than later on how we can overcome that and eliminate that. Thank you.

If I can, I just want to address a couple of those things. The interesting thing that I've been thinking about this a lot in fiscal year 28, being that I have only been here since January, so I'm trying to replay, okay, coming this January, what's in store? We're going to be opening a recreation center, and we're going to have January's of this brand new, maybe February, and then we're starting to profile the budget and showing it to you, and I still feel like fiscal year 28 is going to be a wild year. guess, but we should be closer. But then that fiscal year 29, we will actually have a full year's worth of data. And I think if we keep in mind the NRPA benchmark recommendation, 40 to 60%, right? So say in the first couple years we're at 45%. I think it's appropriate for administration and the council to say, Ben, Parks and Recreation, we'd really like to see this thing at 52%. What can you do? And then we will go to work and get that up to 52. And we get there and we think, and then it's like, hey, how can we get this to 55? Okay, let's get it to 55. But As an industry, getting past 60% is very difficult, especially if you have an outdoor pool. And then back to the comments about if you charge too high for a membership, even if I'm paying the tax or not paying the tax, I might drive five miles to that gas station because it's $0.05 cheaper than the gas station closer to me. So we've got to keep in mind that there are other recreation centers nearby. The most nearby ones also have indoor pools, which we do not offer. So those are all factors that Lois and her team have been looking into.

Thank you for that. Any other questions from the council? I mostly just I don't have any questions because the ones I had have been answered. So I'm just going to say thank you. The benchmarking you did came came clear. I know you you told us how you did it but I need you to know that the evidence of your benchmarking shows in not just in the presentation but the way in which you presented tonight truly it was you were not reading a script. It was so clear that you've been in deep analysis, conversation. I love that you mentioned debate. So I just want you to know that I know there is so much more than what you, quote, displayed. But the numbers do tell a story of analysis. And that whole, I think I wrote down here, It was five different facilities and break out a definition. That was deep study. And I just thank you. I appreciate it. There's so much more information to come. But I love where we are headed. I love what's about to be possible. And we wouldn't be here without all of your hard work and the team that is behind you. Please convey that. I know it's hard to stand and be the face of presenting to the council when you know there's so many behind you. But you acknowledge them. And their work is evident in what was presented tonight. Again, not just written word, but spoken word. You know your stuff. It's very evident. Thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you. Oh, Mr. Justin.

Just briefly, I want to echo your comments and just say tremendous work to Ben, Lois, and Jetta, and all your team. You've worked really hard. It does show the spreadsheet and the benchmarking you just mentioned. It's a huge spreadsheet, and we grilled them on it, and they knew their stuff. A lot of hard work. A lot more is coming as we open it, and I know you're up to the task. So we look forward to working with you.

Perfect. Well, Madam Chair, if it's okay, I'd like to give a brief construction update. That kind of leads right into this. We're talking about it opening in January. So we are on track for that January, giving the construction team a deadline. Things are happening rapid. If you drive by it, it's looking beautiful. The fun things to report this week is the elevator is being installed this week, and by Friday we'll have a working elevator. The second level ceiling paint has been completed. Right. First to write, you might win. The millionth to write gets a prize.

Can I do like elf, where I go? There's only one. I know. So yes. I still want to go.

The water lines were also completed, and the entire system will be tested this week. We do understand and recognize how hot it is out there. So these are parks guys down to the fire, the police that are out in this. We're trying to do the best we can to keep them hydrated. That goes for the construction workers as well. We will, in a month or so, probably reach out with Dustin again, and let's do a fall visit tour and see where we're at. But I don't want to take the council out in the heat. We'll do that in a month or so.

Yes, Ms. Nickel? I was actually going to ask, because I know the next item is going to be rather lengthy, so I thought maybe we'd want to take a five-minute break. Okay, it looks like there's support for that. So, Mr. Prado, we will go to break. Five minutes-ish.

Recording in progress.

Madam Chair, we're ready when you're ready.

Alright, I think we are We got a quorum we are gonna move on to item number four And I know our bond council is here and I've already stuck it out for a long meeting so if it's okay Council I was hoping we could sort of Let them begin the meeting, give us information specifically about the bond, ask our bond-related questions, and then move into the rest of the presentation with Mr. Mecham and team, just in the interest of their energy and the time they've already spent with us. Is anyone opposed to that, council?

Madam chair just a heads up. I don't know that they have anything to present related to bond information Correct me if I'm wrong Brian, but I think they're available for question.

That's my understanding if there's any bond related questions Yeah, I know Ryan make him he has a couple slides that have some dates and outlines that they provided us Okay, so that's in the slides, but we're they're here for questions and I could introduce them to Into the public and then we could just try to address questions. Yeah, I

I just imagine that there are a lot of bond-related questions specifically. I know everyone's done their due diligence and has a set of questions at the ready. And that's what I kind of thought could be helpful is we, and again, you don't have a presentation, but you could go to those, maybe just those slides, quick introduction. And then if that's all right, council, we'll start with questions you have specifically about bond. I just feel like that is good use of their time.

Yeah, we appreciate that.

Thank you.

Yeah, for sure. Dustin or Justin, I don't know if you'd mind pulling up the presentation and going to those slides that have the outline timeline. And while you're doing that, I'll introduce. We have Randy Larson here to my right. He's with Gilmore Bell. He's our bond counsel. And then to my left, I think you all know Jason Burningham. He's with LRB Financial Advisors. He's our financial advisor. And they're both our consultants on projects and many projects in the past. They're very well respected throughout the municipal finance community and the state and regionally. We're really lucky to have them on our team. They have a ton of knowledge and experience. So maybe I'll just hit on a few points that I know that you've had some questions on, and then we'll just open it up for other questions you may have. Here on the slide is kind of an outline that we would be shooting for. As you know, we're hoping to get a resolution approved or official direction by the council on August 11th so that we have time to prepare the language for the lieutenant governor's office by the outside deadline of August 20th. I know there's been some questions on the amount of what we bond and what we put on the ballot. For example, one of the concepts includes purchase of the property of 17 plus another 13 and improvements for a total of 30. If voters approve that, you can always do less than that. You're not obligated. In fact, you're not obligated to do anything. Even if the voters approve 30, you don't have to. And say some plan changes. you're not obligated to issue any bonds. Another variation of that is you could do them in, they call in financial world, they call them tranches, but essentially batches. You could issue $17 million in bonds on the outset to acquire the property. and then do more planning work and at a later date issue another amount of millions of dollars of bonds if you want, if it's the 13 million or if it's five million. That way you're not paying interest on money you're borrowing and you don't have a plan to spend it right away. So you can take it down, as they say, in tranches or in different issuances. You will have issue costs each time you issue a new bond, but you will likely save in the interest costs if you do them in segments like that. And I think another question that's come up is when would this impact the voters? It would be the tax cycle after the bonds have been issued. So if they vote in November to approve them and say probably the soonest we could go out and issue bonds would be January, mid-January. The closing date is March 1st on the property. But say we do it between January and the end of February, we would go through the certified tax rate schedule with the county in June and July, and it wouldn't impact voters until the November tax date that's due, property taxes. And say you say you do another batch the year later or two years later that wouldn't impact them until that tax year. So that's kind of how that would work. With that I'll just open it up for questions and let Randy and Jason kind of address those.

Councilman Christensen.

Is there a limit to the number of tranches you can take or amount. Like is there rules about that.

no okay so you're talking about how many how many how how small the bond you want to break up yeah so like let's just say we take a 30 million dollar bond and we want to do it like over six installments over five years does that matter That's legally possible. It may not be efficient because of the closing cost to do six tronces, right? At some point, the closing cost for each bond may minimize the interest savings of accruing interest.

I think that's a great question. Brian had mentioned that as well. What we articulated as part of the process of analyzing the frequency potentially of how many issues you would look at, it would really be a cost benefit analysis of what interest costs do you forego by pushing it versus the cost of issuance that you pay in addition to that. It may be as frequent as every year you issue a bond if you're offsetting interest carry that you would have otherwise had to pay if you drawed it all down at once. So really a question of how much interest earnings versus the cost of issuance. Typically, we don't see a bond authorization, even if it's a school district that's programming over multiple years. I think typically we would see a school district have a 10-year horizon over which they spend it, and they might have three separate issuances over that 10-year period. That would be typical for the type of projects that they do.

Do we have to have... on the bond we have to have specifically, like how much detail do we have to have about what we're spending this on? Is it broad or is it specific?

It's both. So let me tell you, right? Isn't that a lawyer answer? Yeah, Tracy knows this. Your bond language needs to be specific enough such that there's a reasonable understanding for the public to vote yes or no. And it should be broad enough, however, to allow you the flexibility to evolve over that period of time. The most legal answer, I was trying to be practical, the legal answer is if it's not in the ballot proposition, It may say recreation center and related improvements and land. If it's not reasonably within that ballot proposition, you would not be able to finance it. So that's where you want to be broad. On the other hand, you want to be specific enough, I think, for a voter to be able to say, I know what I'm getting.

So if we decide not to do part of it that we bonded for, and we're like, yeah, we just, for whatever reason, we're not going to do... XYZ on what we've said. And can we, is that a problem?

No.

But we can't spend the money on other things?

Correct.

So is there like an early repayment penalty? Or do we have to do it at certain time frames?

You want to talk about the repayment?

Yeah, so I think that's a good question. There are different ways in which we could go to the market with this. But traditionally, general obligation bonds, and specific to Sandy, you received a AAA bond rating in their 2024 bond rating. And so by virtue of going to the public market, investors typically require a 10-year call feature, meaning that for 10 years, they wouldn't allow for those bonds to be prepaid. Now, there's some flexibility in terms of negotiating. However, anything that's different than what we would typically see in the market would be a factor in interest rate. So what would offset that flexibility is with interest rate. So that's on the public marketing side. And the reason why a general obligation bond would be viewed that way and we'd want to have it the broadest distribution possible is because it would be the lowest interest rate cost. AAA, the type of bond purchasers that would buy that would recognize the credit quality and so the interest rate would be very low. The give and take of that is you'd generally be locked out for a period of time in order to prepay it. So in the past, Sandy has also looked at other ways in which to issue bonds. We've done that on sales tax bonds or other types of structures where we've gone a private placement route where we've negotiated with a financial institution or someone that still understands the credit quality of the community, but is also willing to provide a lot more flexibility when it comes to call features. And so one of the things that we discussed was how much flexibility does the city want based on that, and that would depend on what method we go. Now in terms of the bond proposition that you'd be talking about, we wouldn't delineate. In fact, it would be kind of general in terms of you can issue bonds. They could be private placements. They could be public offerings. They could be in one series. They could be in multiple series. What you really are required to do by statute is set the maximum principal amount that could be issued or amount of bonds, the maximum maturity over which the bonds could mature. And then we've got some other requirements relative to what's the estimated impact on property taxpayers based on an average resident versus a similar market value of a commercial. And that's pretty much what's enumerated in there. Randy's main charge here in my mind is to craft this bond referendum language to meet the parameters that the statute requires, but also provide you with flexibility. So our hope and intent in this is we get your input so that we don't too narrowly define it, but then also don't make it so broad that it becomes a difficult proposition for voters to get their arms around. Your process that you've gone through has been actually remarkable. I've seen all kinds of news media and everything on the various different options. That was one of the questions that was asked of us of, well, can we put all those propositions kind of on the ballot? And unfortunately, the way the statute is contemplated, it's very much a binary proposition of for the issuance of bonds or against the issuance of bonds. So the next best approach is doing what you're doing. Open houses, surveys, you know, making the public aware of what those options are. But before, this time schedule that Brian kind of, you know, illustrated and whatnot, that's probably the most important element of this is to narrow in on how much, what time frame, and how you want to broadly and narrowly, I guess, describe what the purpose of the proceeds would be used for.

Thank you, guys.

Your repayment, generally speaking, flexibility for repayment earlier than 10 years may cost you a little bit in rate. So that's the balancing that he'll help guide you through.

Other questions for Vaughn? Ms. Sharkey.

I don't know if this is a Jason question or a Brian question. Just out of curiosity, we're bonding a lot lately. We bonded for the fire station. We bonded to buy the Arbor building, and this is another. Are we getting near a territory where our bond rating drops, our creditworthiness drops, or because of the amount of debt we're taking on, or are we nowhere near that?

A great question. And there's kind of two sides to that question. One is a constitutional limitation. And I misunderstood the question earlier when I mentioned the 4%. But from a constitutional perspective, a city could issue general obligation bonds supported by voters up to 4% of what basically your assessed or market value would be within your community. put that in context that's almost a billion dollars for Sandy City so really constitutionally speaking it doesn't create much of an impact there but there's a practical impact when you consider we have other outstanding bond issues economics are such. We have interest rates going up a little bit. And so certainly, the rating agencies look at that. When we evaluated the 2024 bonds, I think we mentioned at that time that we felt that you still had powder, you still had bandwidth to do probably at least another $30 to $50 million and still stay in that safe category, AAA. Things could change if the market turned on us. You know all of a sudden tax values decrease significantly and so forth But really Sandy's in a great position from that if you look at your peers, and we've done some benchmarking Still even the communities around you have more debt per capita and debt per assessed value than you do right now, so I Think the answer is yes, you have some bandwidth, but I don't think it's unlimited I

And so taking on another $30 million in debt, you don't believe we're getting close to the territory where it might affect our bond rating? We've got plenty of elbow room still, you think?

Yeah, I think more to that point from the rating agency's perspective is voter authorized. I think voter authorization is a big indication of the willingness of the public to potentially Increase taxes in order to pay for that Based on the tax rate that would be increased to support a 30 million dollar bond your overall tax levy still is quite low compared to even other cities that Have just their normal o&m levies general obligation levies, etc. So We really don't see a lot of pressure on there But of course, you know, I think that's probably why you're pursuing looking at a general obligation bond other other than You know because this could be done another way the sales tax bond or a municipal building authority but I think I think for a project of this magnitude with an opportunity, it seems to make sense to look at general obligation and have voters weigh in on what they feel ought to be the right way to approach it.

Because it creates the revenue to repay those bonds as opposed to the sales tax or lease revenue budget constraint.

Thank you for that. Questions over here on bond? No? You look like you're pondering a question. No. Just pondering? Just not this?

Madam Chair, I guess I can. Yes. Yes. Go ahead, Council Member. What are rates sitting at right about now?

Yeah, we shared some updated rates just based on several comparables in the market today. We had a few state of Texas issues. We had some other municipalities in Kansas. Not a lot of volume of general obligation bonds in Utah. Just by virtue of kind of how those work, but in terms of the other AAA that were priced probably within the last two weeks, our 20 year, basically what I would consider our true interest costs or annual percentage rate puts us about in a four to 4.1% interest rate. For the property tax impact analysis, we've added another I think 30 or 40 basis points, just because once it's voted upon, then you would go to the market. So we're still potentially January or February of next year. Interest rates, just as an aside, two weeks ago in the municipal bond market, they were about 20, so 2 tenths of a percent lower than they are today. So we've seen that type of a movement in the market.

Thank you. Ms. Christensen. So you said bandwidth for Sandy. What would you say is the safe max of our bonds limit left at this point? You said 30 to 50, but like,

Yeah, we could go back and run some more. I think when we did that analysis in 2024, the tax base, I can't remember if it was $12 billion was your tax base or if it was $13 billion. It's now just under $16 billion. I think that's grown more than we had thought that we had programmed. So I'd have to go back and look that again, but our $30 to $50 million was based on I think it was $12 or $13 billion at that point with a kind of a 2% or 3% increase. So a little more. Yeah, I think right now the $16 billion is more than we thought it would be at this point. Thank you.

So I don't have as much of a question as I want to say back what I heard make sure I process correctly and then point out any misunderstanding understandings that I had. So so when we come up with a number if we come up with a number because the first question of course is are we going to put this on the ballot. But let's say we do and we come up with a number whatever that number is. Let's just call it 30 because that's sort of what I heard you throw around a little bit. If I heard you correctly, whatever that number is, is what we are authorized by voters. Again, should voters say yes, a majority of? Quick question, and I know I've heard this before. What does approval look like? What is the percentage from voters? It's a simple majority. Simple majority, OK. That's what I was thinking about. OK, so voters give us a thumbs up. They are essentially authorizing us to bond. Up to, let's say that we pick the numbers 30, up to 30 million. We then have the ability to say, okay, we've been authorized. That doesn't mean we go out and bond for all of it right now. We could potentially, if I'm hearing you right, we could bond for, we could say the first thing we're going to do is buy the property. $17 million. So the first thing is $17 million. And then we could sit on that for a bit while we dig in, we get more input, whatever, whatever. And then what I'm hearing you say is as we then determine what what else, if anything, we want to do with the property, so long as it falls within the scope of what we define and the language we put on the ballot, we can then move forward with executing and moving something from vision to execution. Doesn't mean we have to go up to the 30. if we find alternative sources like grant money, philanthropic donations, whatever it might be that offsets once we are putting our, okay, here's more than just our vision. This is kind of what we're thinking. People get excited about it. We qualify for grants, whatever. We might end up having money to do some of what we thought we were going to need to bond for and then end up either not bonding for any more or bonding for less than what we are authorized. Am I processing?

Yes, I think you've distilled that, I think, exactly correct. I think it could also be done in separate bond referendums too. Now I don't know that that is as efficient maybe as authorizing the full 30 million and having that capacity to go up to that but not obligated to do so. But you could also authorize 17 million through voter referendum and then go back to voters later and ask for the additional money. I'm not necessarily recommending or suggesting that, but nothing would say that you couldn't do it that way as well. But I think our kind of best advice at this point is it would be good to have a broad description in terms of what you want to accomplish with that, recognizing what I saw in terms of the option A1 or whatever it is, all the way, the four main options that I understood were out there, you may want flexibility for all of that with the maximum amount. All of that, though, is really dependent upon, I think, the council policy direction in terms of what you really want to put on the ballot. From an efficiency perspective, it makes more sense in our minds to get the maximum at that dollar amount that you might use and then not use it all.

Thank you. Yeah. Go ahead, please.

And I would just add, it's not a legal constraint, but politically, when you have your voter information pamphlet, which is going to be broader than the ballot language, that's where you would describe Right? Maybe there's some flexibility, you know, maybe we would look for grants and not do the full amount. But you probably want to give some color. This is political, not lawyer. You guys are better at this than me. But you might want to give yourself some room in that voter information pamphlet so that a voter knows, I know I'm going to get the land. I may not know exactly all the other pieces that come together yet, depending on other sources, et cetera. Now, that's not illegal. There would be no legal claim. We just got the ground. We didn't build the election center. But it's a political consideration.

That was actually my next question is how much of that are we able to put in. I know we can't put on the ballot but in the information packet are we able to say really educate about the whole you are authorizing us doesn't mean we're going to like everything is just like what. It's common. Can that go. Sorry. No you go.

It's common to give expectations and to have your voter information pamphlet have priority, right? I mean, this maybe is a land plus, and so our priority one is the land, and our priority two may be these pieces. So I don't think it'll be hard to write the election ballot to give you the flexibility you need. it'll more come into making sure that voters have a good picture of what they're voting for before they go in to read that, right? And that's the right place for that, in addition to the organized hearings and other meetings that come.

The reason I ask that is because I'm thinking about, and I know we're going to, I know Mr. Mecham has like a whole plan, so sorry if I'm derailing things just a little bit, but like in the survey results, there was some, some really interesting numbers around when we ask them how much would you be willing to pay in terms of an increase, there was support for the 30 million, there was support for all of the tiers including of course the don't spend any money on it. And so I'm trying to process what does it look like to help them see themselves in that packet? That sounds weird. In the education, which we cannot advocate, we cannot persuade, but we can inform. But if in the information we provide, they sort of see themselves, like if they were one of the people that said, I mean, obviously, If they were one of the people who said $30 million, they're off to the races. But if they were one of the people that came in between the zero and the $30 million, and they saw that the authorization is up to and the fact that based on things that we don't yet know might happen and fall into place for us, we might actually be able to come in under the $30 million. That's why I asked that question.

You'll be able to do that. Just keep in mind that the statute will require the full tax impact of the maximum amount. Does that make sense? So a voter's going to see that maximum amount. Now, we can add information in addition to what the statute requires. How does this phase in or what if it was lower? But whatever number you pick as your maximum, the ballot language will have to have the full tax impact for that 30, what we're using now. So keep that in mind. But dropping it, knowing it's discretionary and the council's discretion as it moves forward in the project, Absolutely appropriate.

Okay. I was going to add to that. I've seen a few recent general obligation bonds. St. George in particular was one of those that went for a kind of a master plan park and recreation trails, open space. And they went with a maximum amount, which then they also put in, well, if this were to be issued, then what would be the property tax impact on residents, what would it be on commercial. And then in their voter information pamphlet, again, not advocating, but just showing if we do priority A, B, C, and D, this would be the full maximum, and that would match up with what we've got in our maximum referendum. And then they also delineated, but if we determine that it's better and more advantageous for us to just do A, B, and C, this is what the tax impact would be, and then A and B, this is what it would be, and then A, this is what it would be. It's informational again, but again, what we're relying upon is what's the voter proposition. They're either voting for the issuance or against the issuance. We need to set the parameters. So I guess the risk of looking at it as, Building on it potentially and just buying the land and then Evaluating it is then we'd be stuck with that as the maximum the other options be C or D would be future propositions not included in this one, so Very helpful that clarifies several things for me.

So I appreciate the extra time you spent with me. Thank you. Oh Yes, miss Sharkey

Randy, so the voter information pamphlet. You know, as far as I know, we've only ever done in Sandy one other GO bond, and it was just a couple of years ago. So I should remember it with greater precision as to how it went. The voter information pamphlet, though, does state law indicate that the legislative body, so in our case, the city council, would approve the language in the voter information pamphlet, or does state law... dictate the process for creating that.

I don't believe that state law clarifies that the voter information pamphlet is approved by the city council. You may very well elect to do that and be part of your approval process. I would have to go back and look to see if that voter information pamphlet formally approved by the council. State law does require bare minimums as to what has to be in there and then the extra things that we've kind of been hinting at become strategic and no information pamphlet looks totally like another one because of that.

I would be curious to know whether that is defined in state law or whether it's not.

I'll go back and look to verify if that comes back to you. Great. Thank you.

My recollection on that, I don't know either. My recollection was that it was ambiguous. It really didn't say is it an administrative item, is it a legislative item, it just says the city must provide this information and this is the type of information that you should provide. I don't recall it ever having to be approved by the city council. That's what I remember.

I'm in the same boat. But I know of council members, councils that have approved it. I'm just not sure if that was statutorily required.

I remember the fire station one was presented to us. I don't remember if we approved it or were just informed. I'd be curious. That's a good question.

Thank you for that. And I will second that. I have interest in that. I'm just curious from the other council members. I would like to explore both things. One, what does the statute say? And two, whether there is majority interest in formalizing a process by which we engage in approving. I would be interested in that. I'm seeing.

open to that yes yes okay so we would love the statutory another piece in addition to the voter information pamphlet is there's a process for a pro and a con argument and then a rebuttal. The council will influence that. You'll select someone to write the pro, and you may likely select, or someone will need to select someone who writes the con. That does not need to be a council member, but it can be for either one of those. And that will be part of that moving informational process to the hearing that will occur before the election.

That does not have to be done by August 11.

No, thankfully.

August 11 is simply yes, no.

we're going to put this on a ballot and scope right the amount oh we do need the ballot language which is scope right it is yeah okay it's the project with whatever flexibility you want and then the financial terms and the tax impact that that meets or matches up with the par amount August 11th is your self-imposed deadline so far. We need to have that election resolution to the lieutenant governor's office and to the county by August 20th.

Okay. I like the 11th as our target, though.

It does.

It does. And I think Brian has indicated on the timeline that there are two hearings associated with the ballot proposition. If the resolution were to be adopted on August 11, then that would set in motion right now. Preliminarily, we've talked about September 22 as a public hearing. And then I think the transparency Element hearing was October 6th or something like that, but those are fungible depending on They're not completely fungible. There's deadlines. Yeah, but that's what we're Assuming for planning purposes right now are those dates?

I would expect us as a team to have that to you before August 11th, okay Miss Christensen, okay.

So sorry. I just need to say this again. So we By August 11th, two meetings from now, you need an answer on amount, what option we want, and that. So then you will, people will write it, and we have to have all of that information to the lieutenant governor by the 20th after that?

Yeah, I would just back up, though, a little bit. We want you to approve that ballot language in final form or substantial final form on the 11th.

Yes. So I think that's the purpose for August 4th is to come back once you've now had some time to deliberate, think about this. Our hope was the 4th we'd get more direction on that with the idea that we're that much closer. Then we'd come to August 11th to set it. And that would be the definitive. Okay. Yep.

Other questions for bond counsel and financial counsel? Oh, Mr. Jensen.

I just wanted to add that Wendy Downs excuse me checked with the county recorder or that the county office as well on the bond language. They would like it as soon as possible. We told them August 11th and they said that would work for for this language in order to get it printed and on the ballot. So we have verified with the county as well.

Yeah, that's a good point. I think we skipped over the fact that it not only goes to the lieutenant governor, but it actually goes to the, in this case, it would be the election officials, which would include city recorder and the county officers that would be in charge of that.

Yeah, they will run the election for the most part. And you'll accept their – there's a canvas. But, yeah, the county has an important role in running the entire election. This is one ballot proposition on the entire county election process.

Okay. I think that's all the questions we have on this. Thank you both so very much. Thank you. Appreciate it. Very helpful. Okay, so as Mr. Mecham, I think you're next, right? As he comes up, I want to summarize just sort of what Councilman Christensen just said. As we are hearing, hopefully, our questions answered through Mr. Mecham's presentation, we are gathering information around those three things. Yes, no on are we putting this on the ballot? What is our up to amount that we're asking voters to authorize? And what is the scope? And we heard, again, it can be in phases. It can be done out over time, et cetera. But what is the scope? So as you're walking through your information, my hope is that It helps us connect what you are sharing to those three questions that we need to answer. I would love, if at all possible, for us to at least provide a signal by tonight on just the where we are relative to yes, no. We're not voting tonight. We're not even voting next week. relative to just that first yes, no, because if there's a majority that is signaling we're not interested in putting this on the ballot, then there's a whole lot of effort that's going to be expended for no reason because we're not putting it on the ballot. So that's all. I'm just asking is, as Mr. Mecham is sharing information, if it gets us to a place where we could at least tonight signal where we might be relative to a yes or a no of putting this on the ballot, I think that could be really helpful to staff.

Yes?

My thoughts on?

I think that's your thoughts, your summarization on your thoughts. I don't think you're including the entire council's thoughts.

So they just reiterated the three things.

No, you did.

No, we just heard it from them. And Councilwoman Christensen said it back as well. Those are the three things that we have to know for the ballot. No, to the things we have to vote on. We have to say yes or no, and we have to say how much are we going to bond for, and we have to agree on what the scope is.

I disagree with your summarizing.

OK, that's fine. I'm working to facilitate the meeting so that Mr. Mecham knows how to present this information to us. That's what I'm trying to accomplish. But you can disagree. Any other thoughts on that summary? Okay. Mr. Mecham.

Excellent. Thank you. And that's where I'm going to pick up. That was the conversation that we had before, talking about those in these three chunks. So I'm going to give a little kind of introductory comments, and we'll talk about the should we or should we not. Then we'll pause, be able to discuss, and then go on from there. So we'll pause as we go through this to be able to answer any questions that come up. And I think I'll just kind of pick up where our bond counsel and financial advisor left off. really the question is to preserve or not to preserve that that's in essence the question before us because we know for a fact that the school district has two other offers and so you know if we don't do something to preserve we know that the school district will sell it to another party so it's just as simple as that so we just want to you know that's the basic question before us and what they said is exactly correct we can make that decision now And we could make subsequent decisions later on. We don't have to know A to Z right now. The main thing before us is to preserve or not to preserve. And we'll take it from there. All right. So with that, just a couple introductory comments and just kind of reframe on the public involvement process where we've been so far. As everybody knows, we've had two meetings at the school itself on the 8th and on the 15th of July. We've also had an online feedback form that has now been active for about a month, at least three weeks, three to four weeks, that's been on the city's webpage. We've had in-person public comment cards primarily at the two events. We've done a flash vote survey. We're going to talk about that extensively tonight. And we've also received unsolicited feedback, emails, calls, and so on. So just to sum this up, and this was done at the time with the information we had. So there was approximately 250 people that showed up at both nights. We have 111 written feedback cards and 166 online feedback form submissions. And you've received all that information as well as AI summaries of that information. What I would add to that is now based with the survey, we've had 329 survey responses that came in from that FlashVote survey, you've also received an AI summary of that, and then you also have access to those direct comments. So the packet that was distributed tonight has the FlashVote AI summary of all those comments. So in total, we've received 606 individual comments. So that's just reframing where we are. And then the dots on the map that you're looking at here are dots of the comments that were received from the two open houses. And so that's all that represents. It doesn't represent all of the other comments that have come in. So that represents the 111 written feedback cards. That's the map that's showing to the right. All right, so just in summary right here, these are, again, the 277 comments. These are the AI generated summaries right here. I'm not gonna take time to read through them. You've had the packet and been able to take a look at the comments. And what we'll do with the surveys, we'll talk about them as we go forward in response to the chair's request that we treat this in chunks. So the first question is to preserve or not to preserve. And obviously, the statute gives us the ability to take this before the voters. That's all this is saying here is we can go to the voters and do a GO bond. No one is disputing that. And the basic question is, should we Or should we not vote for the preservation of the property right here? So let's go to survey question number one. Sure.

If I could just Because I know there's a lot of questions about the survey in particular. So can I just – is that where you're going? You're going to start unpacking survey data?

Yep. I was just going to introduce it.

Okay. I just – I want to share some thoughts and – to just set the stage for the survey. It's more focused on the email that was sent out to the community reporting the results of the survey and giving the link because I just, I feel like this is the right time to kind of share this, if that's okay. And then you can go into the survey, but I think there's, I just, yeah, I gotta share this. So I think so much of what was said in that, I don't know if we want to call it a newsletter or an email, I think a lot of what was said in that was correct, but I think there were some things that, because we're trying to establish, I hope, a shared goal that everything we push out from the city is not seeking to influence, it is simply providing information, I just want to call attention to a little bit of it that I feel like perhaps could be interpreted as persuasion rather than information. So I feel like the timeline was right. The tax range was disclosed. I really, really like that the messaging, and again, this came from administration. Nothing was shared with... with any of us. I really liked the line that was in there. It said, residents, whether you support it or oppose, it's important to learn about it. Tell us what you think. I think that's nailed it. I think that's really important. And again, I'd rather have that kind of information going out than no information. As feedback in moving forward, so even as you present the survey results tonight, I just want to make sure that we are focused on a couple of things. The newsletter says that 58% of Sandy residents identified preserving open space as a priority and also not having the school district sell to developers. But that's not exactly what the survey questions asked. When I dug into this, what it says is that 58% of member panel respondents either somewhat or strongly supported the city purchasing the property, but just that. But it felt like in the newsletter we were connecting that 58% to a bit of a declaration that they don't want us to sell it to developers. So I want to make sure that we... are very explicit. Now, when I saw this, which I just saw when I got here, this representation seems to be accurate right here because it's aligned to question one. So right here, it is clear. But in the email, I feel like it wasn't. The other thing that was in the email newsletter, whatever we want to call it, it did, I like that, and I don't know if it was just me, but I like that the default filter was to the panel. And I like that that's how you are making sure we understand is the panel consists of verified Sandy residents who have agreed to participate in our surveys. So I really, I appreciate that you're reporting that. But it doesn't report what this panel said when asked to choose among the priced options. So like what I said earlier, there was like 31% who said, of the panel respondents, who said don't buy the property. And the other segments, none of them really crossed like the 20% threshold. So I'm not saying we were trying to keep that hidden. I'm saying when presenting... how the panel responded to things, I think we need to be a little more clear. So my hope by saying all of this, and I know you're about to go into sharing survey and I know there's other questions, is I really hope that we will be very intentional as we are talking about this survey data, making it very clear what The panel said, those are the people, and I know you know this, the residents are the one who will pay for this. So even though there was all kinds of feedback provided and all voices, we hear that there was a lot of response. But in terms of the decision we're making, it affects taxpayers in Sandy. And so I appreciate the effort to go to the filter and say, This is our panel. But it felt like some of how the numbers were presented were not like just stick to the question and how it landed. So I hope that we will be more focused in communication that comes out from here on forward as we unpack those results. And same thing as you're presenting tonight.

Madam Chair? Oh. Oh. You said something. Is the panel participants, are they verified? The panel participants?

Are they verified?

Of living in Sandy?

Flash, so Flash Vote has a pool of 900, give or take,

People that are there sandy residents that are they are those I don't know the answer to that because that that's what they're representing to us so I Know they are saying they are residents and they are opting into receiving our survey But we don't actually verify if they are indeed resident.

Yeah, that's not our information, right? This is flash votes information This is the same pool of people that we've done. I think this is maybe our 11th or 12th flash vote survey and and we've used the same pool each and every time. So nothing has changed on that.

Does FlashVote verify?

I don't know the answer to that question.

Can you get the answer to that question?

I can ask.

Okay. I also heard Ms. Shirky.

I have trouble giving credibility to anything in this survey. The fact that it was mailed out, emailed out, texted out, whatever the mechanism is, to 888, which FlashVote sent to. And I'm assuming if these are people we've used before, we've asked them demographic questions that's identified them. Who are you? Do you live in Sandy? What voting district do you live in? In this case, only 48% of verified respondents were part of the FlashVote database. 575 others, the majority, accessed the survey through an open link.

If you'll just let me introduce this, I can answer a number of these questions. So I'm not, so I know, I'm not talking, I'm only talking about the panel. Every number that you're looking for here.

I'm going there too. Why are we putting out survey results as a city that are not statistically valid? Why aren't we only putting out survey results within the margin of error? We don't even know if these people live in Sandy. We don't even know what district they live in. We don't know if they represent citywide. We don't know any of that. Why are we putting out any survey results other than the ones that we know exist within the margin of error? That is what we should be doing as a city. Otherwise, we are not adequately informing the public. We are misleading the public in these survey results.

Council Member Sharkey, that's not accurate, what you're saying. And if I can introduce, I can.

The average participant, we have never had more than 500 people participate in a flash vote.

Madam Chair, I'd like to have the presentation. This is off to a terrible start. I'd like to see what's to be presented, please.

Nobody's stopping him from presenting. Nobody is. We're setting the stage for, and I think validly so, for what problems we see and what we're about to understand from you.

But go ahead. So now you've got some context for going into the presentation, and hopefully that helps as you go through, you can answer some of these questions.

Most certainly. So again, we're being accurate. with what FlashVote has presented to us. So as I said, FlashVote has a pool of 900. This is the 11th or 12th time we've used this same exact process. So this is nothing new. The 900 people.

Wasn't there an open link also available for taking the survey?

Correct. And if you'll let me get there, I am absolutely distinguishing It seemed like you had a question. So I'm distinguishing between the 425 that are in the pool. There were 575 that were not in the pool. The results that we're looking at are only from the 425 that are in the pool.

That's not what we sent out, though, to the public.

I'm not sure what you're referring to. The only thing that I'm aware that we've sent out to the public have been this information here, that is talking about the 425.

Well, would you like a description of that? Because here's what we got. We got that there are 1,000 participants that answered. And we got that there are 10 different filters we can apply. And the only filter that is statistically accurate is the member panel filter. But all of them went out to the public in terms of the flash vote responses.

So that's what flash vote does, right? So when you take the survey, the link goes to the people that participated. The city didn't send that out. That's what flash vote sends out.

Sandy City has also posted it on social media channels.

Sandy City has posted the accurate information the 425 that we're talking about tonight.

And the same the same thing I just talked about the email that went out to everyone about the results are in here's what it says that was also on social media. And so the link that you click on takes you to the survey results where everything is available.

Okay, that is, there is nothing different that has happened here that hasn't happened 10 or 12 other times.

Except we're making big decisions around bonding.

I understand that. Honestly, I'm not sure where the confusion is. The numbers that you're looking at represent the 425. It's that simple.

It's one-tenth. That is one-tenth of what came to us and what went out to the public.

Council Member Sharkey, honestly, I'm not sure what you're referring to.

Ms. Christensen. So this data is the 425 verified panel members that live in Sandy that we send out. No, they're verified, right?

No, he just told us that.

Flash vote.

Flash vote is telling us these are Sandy residents.

These are Sandy residents. Like when we signed up, we had to put in our address if you wanted to be part of the panel.

Can I just give a clarification on that, please? Flash vote will ask anyone interested in subscribing to receive surveys for an address. Yes. Then they also ask for an email address. Then they... write back to the person that submitted, and then they'll just verify that that email address is valid. As far as the address itself, a home address ideally, it's not confirmed to us. But we're relying on the fact that people have a street address that they're giving. Not we're relying, Flashfoot is relying on that.

If someone's going to go lie on FlashVote, there's nothing we can do about that. It's not our issue. And my point is it's not a new pool.

This is the same pool.

This is the 425 people that we're saying live in Sandy every year. For every survey we've ever taken, the 1,000, you can't worry about that. It was an open poll. That's what I'm saying. Yeah, you can't worry about the 1,000. We're only going to look at the 425. We're only looking at the 425.

I'm not sure how many more times I can say that.

Yeah, that we're saying are Sandy residents. So statistically speaking, this is a valid... survey based on the sample size and the address distribution of Sandy residents.

That is correct.

We're not saying it's exactly the same, but statistically, this is accurate.

Correct.

And Ms. Christensen, I agree with you about, like, I agree. I understand what you're saying. I think what I have tried to express, and I think what I'm hearing from a couple of others, is this is not the only information available to the public. By pushing out the survey results, the public has the full results, the 1,000, and they may not recognize that a large number of that population of those respondents may not be from Sandy. So that's why I said what I said in terms of we need to be crystal clear in what gets sent out. And I don't think it was intentional, but when you, here's the survey results, and it's showing 1,000 respondents, and 61% of those respondents said bond. I think we just need you to hear that messaging went out that showed the full response.

Understand. And that's the vendor's responsibility. That's what the vendor does.

So feedback for the vendor.

And I think also feedback. These are great questions for FlashVote. But we also use FlashVote for Alta Canyon and Fire Station 31. They didn't have these questions. And they did have that share with others. So this would be something that I think that we look at. And maybe we question in the future If we want to lock that down where residents don't have the choice to share with their husband or their wife or their neighbor so that that information just doesn't come out. Or when we share, then it's eliminating all of that. It makes it difficult. But we took the information from 11 other surveys, including 31 and Alta Canyon.

without This level of concern, you know, so it may be something that we look at in the future, you know If you knew this information today on the fire survey would have Would if you would you have looked at the survey differently? I

I look at surveys and I filter out District 2 residents. And so those are, you know, which is coming, and that's how primarily I look at that. And then I do look at, and when I filter through, and I look at for those that are in the city. Because I noticed on the first survey that FlashVote sent out that it could go to other sources. Because, I mean, I'm sharing and I'm like, who could I share this with? I could share it with a lot of them. For me, I kind of filtered it out from the very beginning. And I did the same thing with this one as well, especially noticing that there were that many responses. But I can see that others may not have. But I think that that's something for us to be aware of.

I think the goal here is to provide feedback. And it sounds like maybe take it back to FlashVote. I don't know. Digest what we've shared. But the fact is that the survey results at large tell a different story than what we're looking at tonight. And I completely understand and appreciate that what we're looking at tonight is the panel. But as we move forward, and I think you make a really good point, but as we move forward, we need to be crystal clear. All right.

Great.

Thank you.

Thank you. Okay. So, um, on, on question number one, back to a point that you brought up council member Houseman, the, the, the language of the question does involve, um, the property and what happens if we don't get the property. So you are expressing that we should be accurate in the communication. I feel like we have been accurate in the communication because it says that the city declines to purchase the property. The school district has developers ready to buy the property. That's a fact. And so what we're representing in that statement is what was represented in the question. So again, of the 425, 28% of the 425 panel members are against purchasing the property. And so those are the strongly or somewhat against purchasing the property. 58% are in support. That's the strongly plus the somewhat. 58% in support of the basic question that is before us is should we, should we not preserve the property? And 58% say that they were in support of, 11% were neutral, and the 7% said they didn't know. All right. So, Chair Hausman, you wanted to kind of chunk this up. And so that's the information feedback that you asked us to give you about should we or should we not. And so you wanted me to pause, allow some time for deliberation before we move on. So I'm pausing.

And I think, thank you for that, and I think we just had a lot of deliberation around the survey, which this is only one question of the survey, but I understand that this one does inform a yes or no question. Any thoughts on this one? Okay. Thank you.

All right. Okay. Then moving forward, the question then is how much should Sandy bond for right here? So now I'm going to go to survey question number four, which addresses that question right there. So survey question number four is, again, what you're looking at here is only the 425 of the panel members. And the question was to purchase the Crescent View Middle School property, Sandy would need to issue a bond, which is a loan paid back from future tax increases. There are several concepts for an overall project, which one of the following options would be your preference for the average property owner pays and what the city does. So 31%, I think Councilmember Hausman, you referenced this a couple of times, 31% said $0. So the 31% are the people that are saying, no, I'm not interested in paying anything at all. 53% were supporting at least $17 million. And I gave the breakout right here. So 6% said $17, 12% said $21, 15% said $24, and 20% said $30. So when you add all those folks up, that's 53% are willing to pay at least $17 million. 12% were not sure. 4% had other amounts in there. So going to the question of what should we do, that's what the 425 panel members are telling us, that at least 53% would be willing to bond for at least $17 million. And it's disclosed in the question what that means for a per month basis and an annual basis on each one of those. So I'll pause there to see if there's additional conversation around that.

I wanted to inform maybe the people listening. We got this information today around 3 o'clock. It is not in the packet. So if you're trying to follow along in the packet, it's not in there. Mr. Arkey.

So what you're assuming, or what you're asking us to assume, because this is supposedly data by which the council can make a decision about whether we should put this up for a bond vote or not. I don't know if I can... You've grouped everybody together. You've asked one, two, three, four, five, six, seven different questions and grouped... four of them together, the largest grouping is the 31% who has said in this survey, and I will grant you this because looking at it as a member survey is the only way to look at a statistically accurate survey. So the majority has said that they would like Sandy City to buy Crescent Middle School. And the largest single group, has said among all the voting options that they would like to spend zero in a tax increase to do that. I don't know that I can assume that the 6% who said they would be in favor of a $17 million bond would be in favor of a $30 million bond.

I agree with you.

And I don't know that someone who said they'd be in favor of a $21 million bond would be in favor of a $30 million bond. So what do I make of that information? of grouping them together to say 53% approve of a bond, while that is true, it doesn't help me decide as a council member what that bond amount ought to be.

I understand, but that's not what I said. What I said was that 53% are willing to spend $17 million. Right? Because everything else is greater than $17 million. So if you take the 17 plus the 21 plus the 24 plus the 30, that's 53%. So that's exactly what I said just a minute ago. 53% are saying that they would pay $17 million. And that's all I said. I didn't represent that they would pay more. I said 53% would pay $17 million.

So in terms of a recommendation... So what would you put, if you were sitting on this council still, and you were making a determination or decision about what should go on a ballot, what are you thinking, based on the data that you've just reported, would be the right answer to that question?

Thank you. I have my own opinion. I work for the mayor. The mayor's not expressing opinions, so I'm not coming forth with recommendations before the mayor comes out with a recommendation.

Questions? Mayor, do you have an opinion?

Like based on the data? I'm not going to shoot a number out tonight. I'd like to get through this presentation.

All right, the next round of questions were, we talked about educating, what have we done so far to educate voters as to, what have we done education-wise with public engagement? So we've got a list here. of making sure that the city's providing residents with a comprehensive, factual public education process, an explanation of the purchasing opportunity, about the basic question, which is to preserve or not to preserve, a clear explanation of the proposed bond, historical operating cost facility. We're going to talk about that next. Continued public open houses, tours. So these are all things that are going on to educate our residents as to what is going on. So I'll transition into a series of questions that were presented. So Dustin put together a list of questions, and he sent that over to us. And that's the list of questions that we've been working on to put into this packet right here. All right. So one question that came up was, what are six years of the Canyon School District operation budget and the maintenance cost? And this is just a copy of exactly what the school district gave us right here. So you can see the school year. You can see some of their explanatory notes about why the numbers changed. And so we went a little bit beyond the question. The question was about utilities. This includes utilities, but it also includes repairs, parts, and supplies. And then there was another question that came up I think later on about further detail on that and that was then emailed to the council about what those Repairs parts and supplies are but this is the six-year average so one way of thinking about the problem is is if we did that scenario where we just voted or we just went ahead with the preservation. So whatever the number is, hypothetically, the voters approve whatever that number is. And then $17 million of that is the stuff that we would need to go forth immediately in order to secure the property so that it didn't go to development. So if we went that far, then the question becomes, OK, great. Now we've got a piece of ground. Now we've got a building. what would it cost in order just to do nothing, just to sit on it? And that's what this answer is right here. Utility-wise, last year they spent $188,000. They put another $46,000 worth of stuff to fix, and so that was $234,000. So that's one way of thinking about the problem is, What if we did nothing but sit on it so we have no programming revenue because we haven't decided what program or anything? This is what it would cost just to keep the facility going. All right. And, you know, utilities would likely be less than that. There aren't people using water in there. It would just be electricity. But, you know, if people aren't in there, I would anticipate the electric bill is going to be a little less. The water is going to be a little bit less. So this is kind of a worst-case scenario. All right. The next question that we were asked is then what are some potential funding options for O&M, for the operation and maintenance of the building right here? So what you're looking at here is a scenario of what could produce an ongoing $465,000. So the first one right here is the Parks and Recreation. That's the current Parks and Recreation building. The $165,000 represents the utilities and then the same thing, the parts and pieces that we spend to keep the building open and operating. That's the $165,000. The $200,000, this is so every year we budget. There's ongoing money that we intentionally budget for one-time uses. And so if we took $200,000 of that, then in the fiscal year 27, that would leave us with about $750,000. So instead of having about a million dollars of ongoing money that we use for one-time expenses, we would take $200,000 of the ongoing money, and that would leave $750,000 left to be able to use it for one-time expenses. So that's an option. Revenue growth, primarily sales tax revenue growth. So every year, sales tax revenue growth comes in on average about $3 million a year. If $100,000 of that $3 million was earmarked for this, you could come up with, like I said, another $100,000. And that's obviously a budgetary decision. So another way to think about this problem is those last two items right there, which are already funds in the scope of our control, that produces $300,000 right here. So just ignoring the current Parks and Rec building for a minute, just set that aside. The $200,000 plus the $100,000, that's $300,000. That would meet the obligation of what the school district is telling us that it's the $234,000. So under the scenario that you just buy and hold, you have an option here. to buy and hold with the bond and then to operate with the existing money that you've got. So that's a way of tackling the problem about how would you meet the O&M costs and what would those be.

On the 16th, you presented numbers like this before, and the reduction, the savings in parks and rec was $99,000.

Yeah.

What's the change?

That's just what I said. The $100,000 is the utilities. The other $65,000 are the parts and pieces that go into the building. So just like we put on here on the school district, the repairs, the parts, and supplies were $46,000 on the school. We added in the repairs, parts, and supplies to So you've got utilities plus repairs, parts, and supplies. That equals up to about $165,000.

I thought that was included in the 99, but thank you.

Yeah.

Ms. Sharkey?

I'm glad Ben Hill is still here because this is the number we need to eliminate the Alta Canyon Taxing District. Any questions?

Great. The next question was about the roads. So the only contemplated road is the connection of 230 East right here. And that's only under the scenario, that was only ever presented under the scenario, the $30 million scenario showed a map that had those roads connecting. That's part of what those extra funds would be used for. So unless we bond for money, there is no money to connect those two roads to create kind of a loop around the property. Right now, there isn't a loop around the property because both of those are stubbed into Sandy Elementary. And so that's the only road change contemplated, and that would only be contemplated if there was enough money in the bond to be able to do that. All right. Next question that was presented is, can the O&M cost be included in the GL bond? The answer is no. It doesn't qualify. Only capital costs can go into the GL bond. Okay, this one we've already talked about, about the ballot, so we already had bond counsel talk about that quite a bit. So I'll just skip that. And then the next question was, is there any movement in the price? And the simple answer is no. The school district has replied to us and said, we already have two other offers for 17, so you can take it down for 17 or we'll sell it to someone else. So the answer is no. So that brings up the question about past appraisals. Past appraisals, in essence, become moot because that's what the school district is willing to sell it for is $17 million. So that's what they think they can get from the marketplace, and that's their response to us is, no, we'll sell it for $17 million. All right, last informational slide up here. We've already talked about bond councils up here going through the dates. And so the reference to the September and the October dates are right here. It's got more detail around the public bond hearing, the target mailing period, the Transparency Act. So all those other details are right here that would do the soup to nuts, step to step, of what it would take to get from point A to point B to get this into the hands of the voters. And so the last slide is just the, we showed this before, but it's the current purchasing summary right here. So with that, I'll pause and see if there's additional questions we can answer.

Thank you, Mr. Mecham. Ms. Sharkey, yep.

So I had one more that doesn't look like it made the list, but I think it's germane, and that is... So this building is 132,400 square feet. We just bought the arbor building at 66,000 square feet because we needed more city office space. This would give us so much more than we needed Would we wind up in acquiring this having so much more office space for city use than we needed that it would render the purchase of the Arbor Building unnecessary? And should we sell the Arbor Building?

Yeah, thank you for the question. A lot of ways to approach that. I mean, the Arbor building right now is a net gain, right? We bought it under the premise that the leases were going to pay for the bond payments. And so one question I would ask is why would we sell an asset that is producing a net positive on the leases? So we may want to address that question if that no longer becomes the case. But that's something that I don't have an answer to other than future events will certainly play out and do that. Martin, I don't know if you have anything you want to add.

I think you said it well. If the city does acquire Crescent then there will be the opportunity to look at the considered uses of the Arbor building. Right now we are still actively trying to lease and fill that and If we can rent it out and lease it out generate additional revenue putting park staff in Crescent or arts in Crescent to free up additional revenue for the Arbor building that would definitely be a priority.

One of the things it seems like we discussed is we wouldn't be buying it and the recommendation was not to buy it if we just wanted to hold it as an income property that really we would want to be we would purchase it in order to use it for city needs. Um, and it looked, I, as I remember when we talked most recently about which departments to go into that building, we talked about recreation and arts guild, and now we're talking about those two departments potentially going into Crescent if Crescent was put on a bond and were purchased. So it does, it does make me wonder whether we are purchasing more than we need. and by a significant margin. And I guess you're saying if we wind up doing that, then we'll have to rethink everything we've done, right?

Not necessarily. I didn't say we'd have to rethink everything we've done. We can only make decisions with the information that we have at the time. And so Crescent is a new variable and it will allow us the opportunity to make a decision and make a determination of what's in the best interest of the city. That'll be our goal.

Other questions?

Sorry, other questions? Okay, got a yes or no question.

So when you met with Canyons, and we just haven't heard back, is there discussions on anything else that was there? I mean, any sort of, you know, trading of things, or... consideration of other properties?

There were options that were discussed. The question that we were asked to bring back is, is there any movement on the number for this property? And the answer is no, $17 million. So yeah, there were a range of things that were discussed, but that didn't change the price of the property.

And they haven't updated you on any information other than that?

Yeah, the conversations we had were today.

And both the mayor and- I think we've got a closed session later tonight.

OK. Madam Chair?

OK. Ms. Nichol. On 616, you had included a possible $3.5 million with the Parks and Rec building as a trade. Is that still on the table? You'd put that in the documentation in the presentation.

You're correct Councilwoman Nickel. The parks building is a factor or it's a variable that could be used and negotiated as we went back to the school district had a conversation with them about lowering the price. Excuse me. They have responded directly to us and said no they don't want to lower the price from 17 million. involving the parks building is something that we could consider the estimate of 3.5 million. Yes it is open. We've talked about that we've shared that information and we we can consider that as we move forward. But it was not brought up as a negotiating tactic.

So I continue to be troubled by the fact that we did get appraisals that were considerably lower than the $17 million number. And I understand what you're saying. that since they have two offers at $17 million, that Canyons District is unwilling to negotiate the price. The offers, though, are conditional. And one of the offers, both of them talk about, they're non-binding, right? And one of them even talks about a feasibility period. So that would mean that the developer would sit down and pencil out whether they could make a development work for the price of $17 million. And it's very possible that they may not. So what happens in that case? Would the school district, does that first right of refusal clause that is embedded in state law, if... If the price comes down, if we have said, for instance, we're not willing to pay it or our voters have said that, whatever the situation is, right? And the price later comes down with a developer Is there any responsibility on the school district's part to come back to us in that first right of refusal language in state law to run it by us again if a lower value is negotiated later on.

I get the sense Dan wants to answer that. Can I fill that one?

Good evening, everybody. No, the right of first refusal, they notify us that the property is surplus, and then we have a specific period of time. I think it's 90 days to let them know that we want to purchase it. That happened last summer. So that statutory right, we do not get back if they reduce the price.

Madam Chair, I have one more note. The claim that there's two offers I kind of take issue with. Letters of interest that aren't signed by two parties are not binding contracts, and one of them actually expired in February. So I just want to make that clear. I think of it differently as a traditional offer in which you're saying because it's not binding and they're not signed.

Sorry. Thanks. And I understand that. And I guarantee that all of those issues that you just brought up in those last two questions were discussed with the school district. So all of those, you know, kind of if then, what if, that was discussed and that was their answer.

Okay, so we have first right of refusal. That's expired, basically. Other entities have first right of refusal on school district property as well. Have those also expired? Or am I mistaken about that? Yeah. So after municipalities, it's charter schools. So if we refuse this, do they go to the charter school community and they get their 90 days for first right of refusal? That didn't pass.

I don't think that passed. It defines, the statute defines eligible entities and the city is an eligible entity. I would imagine they would have gone to all of the eligible entities, but I'm not an expert in that. So I can tell you. That does not apply in this situation. Okay.

OK. And all of mine have been answered. So I'm not going to ask them. Then I think we're good. Thank you very much.

All right. Thank you.

Thank you. OK. So coming back to the council, I recognize there are still a lot of questions. But I want to just do a bit of a, you know, Signal this is not a vote but a bit of a signal so that staff knows at least Preliminarily are we good with them coming back next week with some bond language? Do we have majority support to put this on the ballot again? We're not voting But it does inform the efforts that are going to be made between now and next Tuesday Any thoughts to be shared? in terms of a yes, I would like to see it on the ballot, or no, I do not want to see it go to ballot. Don't want to have voters weigh in, or however you want to say it. Put it in your own words. We need to kind of offer some insights.

I don't think there's any extreme effort going into creating some bond language. And if they bring back the bond language, then maybe we get an answer to the question as to what the administration recommends for the amount of the bond.

I agree. I definitely think that's going to be the language that hopefully is being brought back for us to consider is how much. You're right. Ms. Christensen? Well, you guys got to be really clear on what you want. I'll do this this time. OK, thank you.

And I actually have a couple other questions. And it wasn't necessarily pertaining to the survey. But one is, if we could get, with the information that you come back, the pamphlet that you guys sent out for Fire Station 31 before to see, to kind of go over what that looked like as a refresher, because it's been a couple of years. And if you could identify on there what is required and then what was part of the narrative, that would be helpful. if you could send it to me, but it may be helpful to have on there so that we have that. And then the arguments of the pros and cons, whatever it was that went out in the ballots, but that could be helpful. I mean, if that's OK to request. I mean, I would like it, but it may be good to have with the council. Mr. Joseph.

Sorry, I'm eating the microphone. I had the same request this morning and we're trying to pull down information So as soon as we have it, it's we'll share the fire station 31 bond info.

Perfect And then there were a couple of things madam chair Can I so I actually was looking at that on our legislature site ten minutes ago. It's all in one agenda item I'm happy to just send the link to everybody great.

Perfect. Thank you. Mr. Pratt be helpful And then you know some of the questions that I've seen and I think it popped up here either text or email or phone I somewhere but I've had residents ask about so you know some of them I mean just curious and some of them questioning as well you know but parks in our open space you know if there's a way that we could get a map that kind of identifies what open space we have where the current parks are but then also asking about possibly and this is where I was asking a little bit of kind of the trading but throughout the city if we had land that we haven't used that maybe that maybe we could sell or that we could trade or looking at things like that things that that haven't been developed I mean and I'm thinking like kind of specifically on 90th we were talking about you know some development there and I know that that's RDA slash city but if there's other things that maybe we could be using to buy down this price you know if we sold some lands you know if we have some of these remnant pieces or other areas that you know maybe that helps if it's the comfort of the dollar amount if there's something that we could look at I don't know if there's a map if we've got a list I that once again that would be helpful for me but you know maybe something that we could look at or if it's if we went 17 but then we have these others that we can look at to kind of build up so it's not the 30 million

But is that – So are you looking for a map with basically an inventory of all the undeveloped land in the city? That the city owns. Including parks? Yes. Or parks versus just raw land that's not purposed for a park? Maybe both, you know, I mean, so that we could see where our current parks are. We just did the parks general plan update. So we've got a very comprehensive map about everything including the pocket parks and then if we Add to that have GIS add to that any city-owned properties or land land properties that we could look at they could So size wise there's like some small easements and things that wouldn't be conducive to this type of discussion. Anything that we could look at selling.

I know we just did one maybe in the last six weeks that we just kind of gave over. anything that we could possibly sell to get some revenue that may offset some of this. So whatever, I don't know if that's half an acre or a quarter acre on up, whatever that I'll leave that up to you, but that we could sell that could be worth, you know, and maybe, you know, Mr. Nelson could chime in on some of that. If that's okay. I know it's a request.

Yeah, we'll put it together and work with you kind of as we're assembling that information. How does that sound?

Okay. Yeah, that would be great. You know, I think kind of looking at that swap and then, I mean, I don't see any problem in having administration come back with suggestions with with council staff you know working on that of what this looks like the language obviously would vary you know looking from if it's 17 million but maybe there's something else that comes down I think it gives us a starting point to look at something because then we have a follow you know the following week to be able to look at it. you know and I'm gonna throw this out there as well and I've discussed this with everyone for there's one person I wasn't able to get in touch with but you know I you know going back miss nickel you know looking at a public safety building you know what does that look like is this something that now that we're talking about you know just looking out and letting residents weigh in on this we did this for fire station 31 we had them weigh in on it I think this is a great opportunity. It was pulled off before when this came up, but including what would language look like for that as well. And I know we don't have the study, because that was pulled off as well. But you did a lot of work on that. It's worth I think it's worth the discussion It's worth an evaluation to it You know for us to do our due diligence to make sure that anything that the city that that we need in order to make sure that we are operating efficiently and effectively with what we have, you know that this is this would be a missed opportunity so I mean I would like to have that as well and it gives us this chance to evaluate it and to look and see you know that was something that I was looking forward to you know of having that discussion so you know I would like to have that as well but I don't see any problem with them coming back we have the discussion on the 4th something like that those two dates

So you're wanting that to come back next week when they are providing some potential bond language?

Yes, ma'am. You know, to have everything that we could look at. You know, we can kind of, you know, then mesh something together or look at one, look at the other, look at whatever that is, but to have that as well so that we can discuss that and be, you know, have a robust discussion, you know, of a need that we've talked about for a while.

I would be ecstatic to have a public safety building at that site I think that is a necessity we've seen the building studies and it's a pressing need where I've been looking at studies that the city has done on parks and there's a need for a park there 100% but there's no need for a huge building for us to take on a huge building of that magnitude so yeah I would be amenable to seeing a public safety building put there with a small park and possibly sell the land to offset that cost, the excess land.

And so is that like you're a yes on putting this on the ballot? Or you're a yes on bring that back as well as everything else you're bringing back for the bond? What are you? I'm just trying to make sure we're giving some direction.

I think that should be a scenario. Yeah, so I'd like to see that scenario fleshed out.

OK. Ms. Christensen. OK, so thoughts. I think there's a possibility of getting a bond passed. I don't think there's any possibility of getting two bonds passed. for the next 10 to 15 years honestly maybe even longer and so i have the same concerns um that if we're going to bond we have these two competing priorities we have a police building which we all know we need and we have this crescent opportunity which is a really cool opportunity so i actually love allison's idea i think that we should increase the bond amount And we should put it on the ballot and have residents vote. And we start with the $17 million. And we just buy the property. And then we can all take a breath. And we can figure out what's going to go there. We don't have to do anything right now with it. I love the tranches idea. And then also, we have the funding for the secondary building. And I know you like it over there, but ideally, I see it going in the Justice Court, where we rent out the building and make it City Hall. It stays close to campus. And then we free up $500,000 to $700,000 a year in ongoing expenses by not having to support that any longer, which is a significant chunk of money to put towards a payment that may mean we don't have to raise taxes as much with the bond payment. I love that and I'm a yes to putting it on the ballot, especially if we can add in the amount for the public safety building and with the offset of $700,000 in ongoing revenue, that's a huge deal.

I did look at the court building and the court building, I think it was an estimated $18 million something to

retrofit the court building so just to give you an idea on cost i mean i was anticipating you know i mean seven hundred dollars a square foot yeah which would be like thirty thousand thirty thousand thirty million dollars but less is great and if we don't have to do it all at once yeah justice courts are apparently going away yeah it's just that's a lot going a lot of ongoing revenue yeah that we could save thank you

All right. Thank you. We've heard Mr. DeKaiser we've not yet heard from you.

Yes I think staff should continue through the process.

And you're a yes for ballot. I know we're not voting tonight.

I mean, yes, I fully support it going on to the ballot.

Going on to the ballot.

Okay. I also support going on to the ballot. I think voters should have a say, and I think I've shared this in other meetings, but this property was purchased, this building was purchased by taxpayer dollars. I think the taxpayers should decide if we are

going to invest in this property or not so I agree it needs to go before voters and I'd like to see it on the ballot so I can I clarify my statement of course I my statement was I am supportive of the public safety building going there not necessarily putting it on the bond right now I mean I want to see that scenario right but I'm not to the point where I want to see it put on a bond

A ballot. You're not ready to say yes, no. Okay. So I'm not sure who's taking point on Mr. Beekham. I think you are. Do you sort of, from our discussion tonight, do you have what you need to prepare to come back next week with? Okay. Mr. Fratto, any thoughts? Or Mr. Cadell, love to have... Again, same question as I just shared with Mr. Mecham. My goal was to make sure we had a robust conversation and provided some stimulus or guidance for next week.

The only comment that I have is if you are expecting something specific next week, I think it's always best to give that direction via motion if you're just expressing hey you know we want to see bond language come back next week and great I think you've done that I think that was already the intention but if your desire is to see you know bond language that includes something outside of what's already been discussed and talked about presented something similar to what you know council member Stroud discussed then I'd probably make a motion to have that brought back. I guess that would be my only suggestion. If you want to go that route at least. If not, then I think you're fine where you're at.

I have a question. Madam Mayor. Do you want to see bond language with the $17 million purchase figure, we're not talking about the other options, reduced by the existing parks building with a $3.5 million? You want it tied together or do you want that the parks building brought into play to reduce the?

acquisition costs for Crescent That would help us decide whether you know how to present that So if I were making a motion I would say that we want bond language to be brought back for two scenarios I One with just the purchase of the building and, I mean, throw $30 million in there for now, even though we don't know if that's going to be the number, because we can adjust the number quite easily, right? That's fast. And then a second one with both scenarios of a public safety building and the Parks and Rec's building brought back. or not the parks and rec, sorry, the Crescent purchase brought back. So, does that make sense? Is that what you guys are hearing?

Okay, I'm clear on the first one, but the second one, the alternative scenario, so purchase the Crescent at a parks and rec, but Ms. Nails say just say that she didn't want that on the bond.

Purchase the Crescent with, just Crescent, with a public safety building.

So it would be a lot higher amount. But we're not saying yes or no to that. That would have to be two bonds.

They can be the same one.

I wouldn't. Maybe some version of that but I don't think I think a public safety building and that building is excessive for our needs 100 percent. So very excessive.

I'm just thinking in terms of clarifying questions.

Sorry. The public safety building are just want to make sure we're clear. If we brought back a scenario with the public safety building is it on the Crescent property or somewhere else.

TBD.

I'm hearing two answers.

No, it would be on the Crescent property. I wouldn't ever want it on the Crescent property. Does it matter? Heavens no. Does it matter for bond language?

It's just a dollar amount. Does it matter? I thought you were discussing having it on Crescent.

No, I hate it on Crescent property. I guess the question is, does it matter? Is it just looking for bond language because we're looking for a dollar amount?

I'm just saying if we're only going to get one chance at a bond in the next 15 plus years, which I think is really realistic. Why wouldn't we try and do it for both things that we desperately need?

My question to that would be, if it fails, we're not buying Crescent.

Yeah.

Because I've been asked by some residents that in the past, this kind of a vote was taken, did not pass, and the city moved forward anyway.

Yep, without a canyon.

So, well, no, that's not actually what was presented to me. But anyway, so we, I can't speak for all of you, but I can speak for myself. Like, if it fails, I'm not looking for another way to buy the property. We just, it's a huge gamble to lose the property by going that high on the bond. I think it's... Because it could fail. You double the bond.

I think it could fail. I mean, we only have 53% of the people saying they're willing to bond $17 million.

If it fails, it fails. I want to hear from voters. I agree. My concern is... Doubling the amount of the bond pretty much will fail, which then means we will not be able to buy. And we won't know if it failed because they were like, well, yes, I really want you to buy Crescentview, but I'm not interested in this over here. we're like we're merging things and we won't have clarity on what what actually failed all we'll know is we can't buy crescent i actually think and that's i can understand that but i actually think that it makes the argument stronger

Who's going to, I mean, District 1 is not going to, other than the people who live around Crescent, are not voting for a bond, period. Unless it's a police or fire bond.

District 1 actually had the highest percentage of supports.

But look at where they're clustered. They're all right around the building. But that's District 1.

Like you just said, District 1 would never support a bond.

That's like a sixth of District 1. It's not enough to carry it in District 1. So the other districts would all have to carry it. I don't think it's going to pass in District 2. I mean, this is real talk.

Why not think about putting a PD building at the Historic Parks and Rec building?

I would love that. But since we built the Sandy Club, we don't have enough parking lots. I explored that before. So I'm just saying, I think that it strengthens the bond. Because a park is not a need. It's cool, but it's in no way a need. And so it's a want.

I think that's an assumption I'm not willing to commit to. Yeah, totally. I think we have not yet visioned what the, and I don't want us to call it a park. I want us to call it like, for example, disc golf or... Outdoor like a walking path that's that's a Street like it could be so much more it can be trails and I agree So let's stop labeling at a park, but I think that's how it will be seen in general Other than the people who didn't go to. I agree.

So I'm just saying I think that the public safety aspect of it strengthens it across the city. Because Sandy residents in general are more than happy to support police and fire and essential services. And so I actually think that it makes it a much stronger bonding option. I think it pushes it higher.

We're going to have to vote on that? Yeah, totally. That's just my theory. So I think what I'm. I think she summarized it, that two scenarios come back, but ultimately we're going to have to land on an amount if we're even willing to put it on a bond. We're going to have to get to this point where we make some decisions. And so we need as much...

much language that you can bring back for us to deliberate around and I think options to it you know of what it looks like and then we can we have that it's something to look at and we can go from there but at least it's been presented we have we know that we're specifically talking about Crescent we also have a specific need of a public safety building And once we have suggested bond language, then we can look at numbers at that point. We can look at the need. We can look at how we put this, how we combine whatever it is that we're going to, what we're going to put on there, if it's just a building, just the property, what that looks like. But if we could have all of that information, you know, then we can boardsmith it next week. And it gives us another week to kind of think about this, to kind of hash some things out, you know, to look at, well, what ifs, you know, well, if we did, we have A, B, C, and D, what if we did A, C, and D, what if we did B and C, of looking at something like that. Okay.

Madam Chair. Yes. So Council Member Christensen had said if she were to make a motion, this is what it would be. So I'm curious if that was a motion or not.

Was that a motion, Ms. Christensen?

Yes, it was. To bring back those multiple scenarios.

So I took an attempt at writing down what you said. I don't know if you'd like me to read it. Please. Madam Chair. But it's not seconded yet either. Go ahead.

I'm still not clear on the public safety building location. Does it matter?

Does it matter right now? We're just looking for a dollar amount.

Oh, Mr. Pace says it matters.

I'm not an expert on this, but if what you're suggesting is this building is so big we could rehab part of it and make it a public safety building, that's a very different proposition than building a standalone public safety building somewhere else.

That's what I think Martin wants to know.

Yes and is Mr. Larson.