City Council - Regular Meeting

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National everyone to April 21st, 2026 city council uh work session meeting. Uh as our our meetings are public and you are welcome to join us in person or by watching the council's agenda page, Zoom or YouTube, we hope you'll join us in whichever manner you feel most comfortable. This is a work session meeting during which there is no public comment. Please join us tonight during our 700 p.m. formal meeting to share your comments. We of course welcome your feedback anytime by mail to PO Box 145476, Salt Lake City, Utah 84114-5476 or by email at councsil.commentsslc.gov or via our 24hour phone comment line 801-5357654. Comments we receive on agenda topics are shared with council members and posted to our website slc.gov/counsel. GV/counsel. The first item on our agenda is uh updates from the administration where we'll be joined at the table uh with by Weston Clark and Andrew Johnston. Johnston. All right. Good afternoon. Um got a few engagement updates for you. Uh let's go ahead and go to the first slide with your monthly reminder to check out Shape SLC. Um encourage everyone to go

there, register for your favorite projects um and interests so that you can be alerted to things that you might want to engage on in the future. Um and it's where a lot of these projects will uh have updates um going forward. Next slide. We're going to start with our public lands for an update. Jefferson Parks uh shape SLC survey has recently closed and the results have been published to the site for the public's review. Um construction for that project is anticipated for later 2026, early 2027. Um again, go to shape SLC and sign up for updates on that. Uh at Allen Park, uh the construction for the water and fire line is processing or progressing on schedule. They are anticipating reopening the park in miday. Public Lands is planning a community engagement event to celebrate the reopening and share phase 1's refined concept. A design concept for the future of Fleet Block. Um its open space has been unveiled and is on Shape SLC if anyone would like to go check it out. There was a public survey on there that just recently closed and the feedback is going to be soon incorporated into the project. Um and so again, encourage you to go shape SLC and check those out. Uh at Pioneer Park, you've probably noticed construction is already underway and is expected to be completed later this year. From our sustainability team, the next round of landscaping equipment exchange program opened on April 15th. Eligible equipment includes lawnmowers and handheld tools, trimmers, leaf blowers, etc. Applications will stay open until the funding runs out. Program details can be found on sustainability's website, which is the rslc.gov/sustainabilityscaping. Next slide. Uh the draft of the avenues community plan is now available on shape SLC and uh an email update also went through um the list serve for those who had signed up to be notified. Phase three of community engagement for the plan is now underway which focuses on refining the

draft through public input meetings and hearings. The Capitol Hill update plan is ongoing. Um, the feedback gathered during phase one, which was an online survey and some outreach events, is currently being analyzed to identify the themes that will inform the plan. So again, check out Shape SLC. There's a theme here, right? Uh, to learn more uh, and get those updates. Uh, in the mayor's office, the Love Your Block program has awarded nine mini grants for the current cycle supporting communitydriven small-cale neighborhood improvement projects across our target areas, Ballpark and Westside. Um, Ballpark had three projects, Fair Park had one project, Glendel two projects, and Popular Grove three projects. All funded projects are scheduled for completion by July 31st, 2026. And looking ahead, the annual mini grant application period will be open for the entire month of May, uh, with award announcements anticipated in July. Grants of up to $3,000 will be available to support local residents and community groups in implementing neighborhood improvement projects. Um, and then just to highlight a couple of spaces where you can find uh my team, the mayor's outreach team. If you have any questions or concerns, you'd like to speak to us, we'll be at the Westside Coalition Community Celebration this evening at the fairgrounds from 5:30 to 8 or you can catch us at the Rose Park Street Festival on May 16th. So, we hope to see you in those spaces. And then finally, the last slide for me, um, I just want to give a great shout out to our out arts council team who curated an incredible community arts event for our city through Olifer Elison's a Symphony of Disappearing Sounds for the Great Salt Lake, which took place over 9 days in Memory Grove. 20,000 people attended um over that time and three major national news articles covered the project. Um, was such a unique and special experience. So, congratulations to the public arts team and thank them for their work. That's all for me. Next slide. Uh, the utilization rate at the top

there is actually a little out of date. I apologize. It's at 94%. Uh, it's gone down a little bit. This is pretty typical during the spring when transition from the winter beds to the spring and summer beds. So, uh, I anticipate that will remain pretty consistent going forward. The encampment impact mitigation work and rapid response teams are still very active. However, um to our previous discussions over the last several months, we have seen a significant uh increase in the response time of our teams to get to cleaning projects. So, when they get a request online, they can usually get to it within a day or two, which means uh they no longer have to necessarily schedule out two weeks in advance. They can actually on the fly during a week respond quickly to different areas of the city as needed. So, I don't necessarily have a full schedule going forward to those things. And then the encampment mitigation work with the bigger uh camp cleanups are pretty rare these days. Um, a lot in the foothills periodically, but not necessarily every week everywhere. That's why you see some changes there. Any questions on that? Okay, next slide. uh resource fair on our April 10th occurred at Library Square was co-hosted with HART and the Utah Department of Corrections and Salt Lake County Office of Homelessness and Criminal Justice Reform. Um Hart is doing a great job of organizing fairs every month in the city and partnering with external organizations to co-host them. So there's a shared in the planning um and costs organizing etc. which is a great move on their part. Uh in this particular one, there was 350 folks attended at Library Square with 25 providers and 10 volunteers from the county. The next fair is May 8th. Um this one will be at Library Square and co-hosted by Odyssey House. And then a community corner, which we opened last year as a pilot project in the fall at 7th West and Second South. Uh we're planning on reopening that. The hard team again is organizing that effort to bring usually smaller other providers of homeless services to that location in lie of going out to public parks or

other public spaces. Um it's great for them in the sense it's consistent. Uh we're allowing use of that space. It's safe, it's clean, it's contained, etc. It also helps the providers to find folks who are there and they know how to get there regularly and it's consistent for everybody involved. So uh they'll reopen that in midMay probably Mondays, Tuesdays and Wednesdays again in the afternoons. We'll have more information as we get closer to that. And then the Weeden Center uh will be hosting the Salt Lake City Justice Court on May 1st in part of their mobile court outreach work. And then my last slide, if you can move forward one, in our last discussion last week about uh the new proposed no camping ordinance, we talked a lot about uh a city ordinance is important to have consistent enforcement and expectations, but it alone is not what's going to help us deal with uh the situation we find ourselves confronted with lack of housing services, a lot of people without a place to live consistently. What you see here are some some uh statistics from resource fairs just this year in January through April. Um HSLC is the housing authority of Salt Lake City uh donated dental and dental core are dental providers and then the justice court is our own justice court. Now they're going to these resource fairs and this is some of what they're doing there. I highlighted the justice court because in our p past discussion it was about what are the penalties if you violate our no camping ordinance and things. We do need uh consequences for those ordinances. However, that's not what actually moves the needle. What moves the needle is when somebody has a violation and they can come to a resource fair or um to a resource center in these cases and the court will come to you to resolve that. And the goal of the court is not necessarily to get the fine. It's not necessarily to get somebody jailed. Their goal is actually to get them diverted out of the criminal justice system into services. And this is what they're doing with this is hundreds of cases they've heard in the last four months. And these are unduplicated I'm told. And so those are cases that were probably for a lot of the violations we're talking about which

are being dealt with in a different way than perhaps we would assume that somebody's getting punished. Our goal is to try and get some folks into services through this avenue. So we can provide more of these, but you'll also see that the housing authorities there trying to get services and getting them signed up for housing uh for other enrollments. And then donated dental is something we don't talk a lot about. We have the Fourth Street Medical Clinic and other providers do some medical outreach with general medical work. Dental work is something that sometimes falls through the cracks. It doesn't get paid for by a lot of providers. We overlook it as sort of maybe not a critical essential piece. Um but problematic dental issues actually lead to really poor health outcomes for folks. And this is something that I I think they take a lot of pride in in being able to offer these services. and they have an estimated cost next to those that donated um that way. We need more of this. Uh but this highlights some of the efforts of the heart team in the city and other city resources to bring other providers together to try and fill in these gaps we're seeing in systems. So it's not just about enforcement, it's about enforcement towards getting help for folks. Um so hopefully that helps you put a little more context to that discussion we had last week and we can keep having those discussions going forward. That's all I have chair.

Awesome. Thank you, Andrew and and Weston. Council members, council member Petro, can you more clearly what what are the benefits outside of housing that the housing authority when you said the benefits enrollment? If you go back to the other slide perhaps, um, so often times they're going to try and sign up for other public benefits. So, uh, a navigator can get them through the paperwork of signing up for Medicaid, Medicare for instance. Okay? So, they'll they'll do complete wraparound wraparound services. A lot of times with the housing authorities when they get into housing, they want all the things done anyway and so they can actually have folks facilitate some of that paperwork. Where does Do you know where the housing authority draws that funding from? Uh I can check on that for you.

I just I just want I would love to know for future reference as we're strategically looking ahead how stable that funding source is and if we need to be prepared to help adjust that that feels like it would be a huge thing for us to lose. I'll say generally they're going with existing federal and state benefits. Okay. And so it's just uh for anybody can sign up for them anytime they want, but a lot of folks who are unsheltered um it really helps to have somebody walk through through the process and then help monitor that going forward and explain what it is and why. Okay. And then even to do the benefit sometimes it's about getting the paperwork and the IDs to get that done. Thank you. Any other questions?

Thank you so much. We'll go ahead and move on to our next item which is uh Fortune Road partial street vacation. will be joined at the table by Brian Fulmer, council policy analyst, and Cassie Younger, uh, senior planner.

Thank you, Madam Chair. We also have Kelsey Linquist, the planning manager, with us today. This is a proposal from the Thatcher Company to partially vacate or give up ownership of a portion of Fortune Road and the Cassie will get into the location of that. Thatcher owns all the abuing parcels and their intent is to consolidate all of those with the street uh property and make it part of the Thatcher campus. If approved, the company would be required to purchase the land from the city at market value. And I'll turn it over to Cassie.

Thanks. Thanks, Brian. All right. As Brian indicated, sorry, you can go to the next slide. Thank you. Uh Thatcher Chemical Company is requesting a right-of-way vacation for Fortune Road from the intersection at Wallace Road to approximately 2040 Fortune Road where it dead ends into Thatcher property. Next slide. Thatcher owns all of the property adjacent to this section of Fortune Road. The properties are zoned M1 and M2, Light and Heavy Manufacturing. Thatcher's campus has been at this location west of Redwood Road for several decades and is bounded by I 215 to the west and the canal to the north. Next slide. Thatcher is a chemical manufacturer and distributor that deals with hazardous substances. Thatcher wishes for Fortune Road to be vacated so that they can close off public access to the majority of their campus, arguing that this security measure would improve public safety. Because this road is surrounded by and dead ends into all Thatcher owned properties, it already functions more as a private road than a public one. Since the only users of this section of road are employees and customers of the company. Next slide. When routed, transportation, utilities, urban forestry, and the police had no issue with this request. The fire department wishes for the road to be maintained as a fire access road and that the hydrant along the street is maintained and accessible. Engineering also wishes for any future utilities installed to have easements to city engineering. These are all listed as conditions in the ordinance. Next slide. Staff found that this petition meets the standards outlined in the city council street closure policy and Utah state

code. The applicant will be required to purchase the property at fair market value from the city. Next slide. And then on January 14th, the planning commission voted to approve uh the vacation with the listed conditions. And I do believe the applicant is here. And I'm also happy to answer any questions. Council members, any questions? Okay, I think I think that's it then, unless there are any questions or desires from council members to hear from applicant. The applicant? No. Council member Lopez Chavez.

Thank you. Um, for the applicants, I've actually been to this location and I know that there are other easements. Is the train rails, are those part of this easement at all? Let's have the applicant step forward and I think you have up to uh five minutes to to um answer any questions or share anything you'd like to with us. And if you could state your name uh for the record, please. Yeah, sure. Uh Dave Johnson. Thank you.

So, yeah, the railroad does not run along that road at all. It's just simply we own the property as she said all the way around. um the only traffic that goes in and out of there is our own traffic. And so we're looking to merely close that off, keep it as a road, you know, for emergency access and things like that, but we want to put a gate at the front to further protect, you know, the hazardous chemicals and things that we have on that site. Yeah. No further questions. Thank you. All right. Thank you so much.

Mhm. We're moving in an efficient manner tonight because we've got special guests joining us for the youth state of the city later on um in our session. So we will now move on to the third item which is uh regarding Mansel Manor zoning map amendment. Uh Brian Fulmer will stay at the table and Cassie Younger I believe will also remain at the table. Uh this is a proposal to amend the zoning map for properties on Jefferson Street and Jefferson Circle that Cassie will outline from their current MU11 which is mixeduse 11 and RMF35 or moderate density multif family residential to MU8 or mixeduse 8. The housing authority of Salt Lake City owns the properties and intends to construct a multif family residential development on the site. I'll turn it over to Cassie. Okay, thanks Brian. You can go to the first slide, please. All right, this is a request from the Housing Authority of Salt Lake City to reszone two of their properties to MU8. This includes 1726 Jefferson Street and a portion of 1750 Jefferson Circle. They are currently zoned MU11 and RMF-35 and there are 20 existing units on the property. Next slide, please. For some background on this petition, the original request from the housing authority included a portion of 1790 West Temple as shown on the left, which is undeveloped. Um, the request by the applicant was for the MU5 zone. And in January, the planning commission recommended the reszone of these properties to MU8 instead, stating that this zone was more appropriate for the area than MU5. So, because 1790 West Temple is already zoned MU8, this property has been left out of the request and the proposed ordinance and um the applicant has

stated that they have no issue with this zone change in their petition. Next slide, please. So, the MU8 zone generally allows buildings up to eight stories or 90 ft tall. The building forms permitted are rowhouse and multifamily storefront or mixeduse. Single family, detached and two family or twin homes are not permitted in this zone. Next slide. RMF-35 and MU11. The existing zones on the property are very different from each other. The RMF-35 zone is a moderate density purely residential zone while the MU11 zone which was formerly CG or general commercial is a more highintensity mixeduse zone. So the MU8 zone lies between these two with a range of uses allowed and heights up to 90 ft. Um and that is one of the reasons for the reszone request. they want to consolidate and redevelop these properties and since having three different zones among these properties um was obviously problematic um and so it's just an easier way for them to develop their property under one zone and they are currently underway with a subdivision application to rearrange these property lines for redevelopment and ideally have them all be the same zone. Next slide. The proposed community benefit for this petition is that 15% of future units will be rented or sold to those with 80% AMI or below. And the applicant does not have development plans at this time, but anticipates around 160 to 200 units with a mix of bedroom types. Next slide. Since there are 20 two-bedroom units currently on the property, if these are de demolished as anticipated, the applicant would be required to replace these units with the same bedroom count

at a similar rent. And they are also required to provide tenant relocation assistance, including application fees and moving expenses. Next slide. On January 28th, the planning commission recommended approval for the MU8 zone with the conditions listed here. and I'm happy to answer any questions. Council member Petro Petro, do the units that are required to be replaced through the housing loss mitigation, do those count towards that 15% or is it in addition to the 15%. That would be in addition. Yeah, they cannot count. Thank you, Council Member Dugan.

Yeah. So, the 22bedroom units that they're required as replacement units, that would not be a part of their 15% of the affordable units that they're proposing as their community benefit. So, 15% plus a 20. Yeah.

I guess I'll jump in with my question. Can you talk a little bit about um the reasoning regarding uh the planning commission's decision to zone towards MU8 versus the applicant recommend applicant requested MU5? Yeah. Um the planning commission didn't really elaborate too much on it, but it is um surrounded by MU11 on the west side of those properties. All down 300 West is zoned MU11. Um, so they just believed that MU8 was more appropriate as like a step down between um the MU11 on 300 West and the single family residential along West Temple. Um, and obviously one portion of their property is already MU8. Uh and the applicant has stated in my conversations with them and I think they might have shown up um that they you know they don't have any um objection to the MU8 zone but they probably will not utilize they don't really plan to build that high because of uh the cost associated with that.

Thank you. Any other questions? Okay, I think that does it.

Thanks. Thank you. All right. Our next item is a required public hearing for significant parcel uh conveyance for Mountain View corridor construction. Um at the table we will be joined by uh Brian Fulmer who will remain at the table. It is the re reoccurring star here. Um Logan Hunt, real estate services manager, Chris Norland, uh project engineering construction program and projects manager. And Mark Stevens, city engineer. And it doesn't look like they're here yet. Yeah, it doesn't look like we have the ah just in time. Okay, so this is an initiative to transfer city-owned right ofway to the Utah Department of Transportation for construction of a portion of Mountain View corridor. The proposal calls for UD do exchange property of similar value it owns for the city property. And that is my introduction. I'll turn it over to you. And I'm sorry, I'll have to wait for um Mark Stevens, the engineer, to talk about this a bit more, but I do know that this has been in process for uh a little over 10 years. Um and so this is part of the sign significant parcel noticing um that we are required to do as part of city code. Um, as part of this, uh, cooperative agreement between Utah and Salt Lake City, um, under state law, the state is allowed to, um, uh, dedicate uh, city right away for the purposes of uh, state highways and, um, through this process, they're also exch We still need to go through our significant partial noticing process which includes a public hearing.

All right. So, I know that we don't have all of the presenters here yet. Are there any questions about the overall process of the public hearing before we All right. Yeah. And I can uh if we just skip through the slides, I'll show you which properties we're talking about.

Okay. Let's go ahead and proceed then. Sounds good. So in red, all the red rideway is what the city is receiving from UD do and the green ride ofway along um the Mountain View corridor is what we are conveying to UD dot. And then the next slide um you can see that in a bit more detail. The red again to the city, the green to UD do. Next slide. Um, and then this uh portion connects to a shared use path trail head as well as a parking area that the that UD do is transferring to the city. Um, and I believe that's our last slide, but yeah, happy to answer what questions I can. Any questions coming up? All right, we're a quiet group today or it's good work. We're moving quickly. We're moving quickly. Excellent. Thank you so much.

And it looks like um we are going to be moving on to the next item or if we're ready for it. Um item number five, local historic uh district signage. Uh Brian Fulmer will remain at the table and Julie Krookton from public services will also be us.

Thank you. Uh this is a proposal to create standardized street signs for local historic districts. These would replace the standard signs that are in these locations. The council initiated a legislative intent asking the administration to explore options for historic street signs and we have Julie Krookton here to share what they've come up with.

Hello. Thank you Brian. So, as Brian shared and as um was in the staffing document that was sent to you, um there was a legislative intent to explore historic or street signage for historic districts and standardizing that. So, working with the um with CAN, we looked at a few of you know what the policies exist um and then we developed a few different designs that we took to the historic landmark commission. And so they provided some feedback um and we took that feedback and then um have a proposal for you today. So if we can go to the next slide. One of the biggest reasons we wanted to do this is because currently there isn't a standard. As you can see, you know, the Westminster Historic District has regular street signs. Yalerest did do a CIP application a few years ago and so they got something special, but that was just very, you know, centered on Yalerest. Um, Central City, you know, is another example. Most of them are just using our street signs. And one of the reasons we feel that um, signs designating an area as a historic district can be important is that it raises awareness for the public as well as residents of what actually is a historic district. Um, it helps create a sense of place. It highlights the cultural assets of the city. And there are often um confusion for property owners if they're in a historic district or not. And being in a historic district puts certain, you know, guidelines and rules on how you do your buildings or things like that. And so, um, we all felt that having a marker for that could help those property owners gain better understanding, you know, of what it means and that they are in those boundaries. So, if you go to the next slide, um, currently those are the historic districts in the city that have been officially adopted as well as the number

of street signs per district. Now, the design that the historic commission landed on, thank you, Brian, is this one right here. So, we printed an example street sign for you. So, it's a very similar design to our existing street signs. It's just a special color. Um, it will name the local historic district on it so that it will call attention to which district you're in. And this color is a fairly common color for historic districts throughout the nation. So, it'll, you know, be in keeping with other cities. If you know you have a visitor, that color will be easily recognizable. Still says that it's Salt Lake City. Calls out that it's a historic district. Um, our streets department can create these signs in house. So going forward, maintenance won't really have an impact because it'll be just the same amount of maintenance that we do for our regular standard street signs. Um, as you can see here, we did, if the council um wanted to pursue this, there's a couple options for installation right now. You know, there's existing street signs, most of which are in good condition. So if we wanted to do the installation in house, the ideal platform would be over the next two to three years as streets is doing maintenance on those existing signs, they would replace them with these historic district signs. So they'd probably pick like a neighborhood or two, you know, a district or two a year and replace those signs. So it would take a little bit of time. Um that could be done with in existing budgets. if the council desired all historic districts to have their signage replaced at the same time. We did receive a quote from an outside vendor both for um fabrication and labor of those signs and as of January of this year that was about $75,000. So, you know, there's a couple options on implementation. That's really all I had for you today. So, are there any questions? Council member Young and then C council

member Dugan. So for Yale Crest because they have like the hyphenated would it just be Yale Crest or are we looking because like at least one of them like Plat A like is that really going to fit?

Um that's a very good question. I think because the official name is that hyphenated one, we would use that on the sign. If you want to hold up the sign again, Brian. Um, there actually is a fair amount of space and so plat A I think we could make fit. You could just maybe scale down a bit. I we can ask our street staff exactly if they think existing size would fit on that sign. I think it would, but we can confirm that for sure. Okay. I would appreciate that. And maybe that's just a question I have more broadly for the other council members like is is there value in that, you know, versus like just the clarity of,

you know, what they've applied for for the purposes of the street sign, right? I know on the city website when you you know, there's a map of all the historic districts and it does break out all the Yale Crest ones. Um, so Okay. Thank you. You're welcome.

And thank you. That's a great question because also like would it just not just say Yale Crest and not all the other one little ones? But the the question on that one is also there's a number of street signs they have there. There's zero. So are they planning on increasing or putting streets on those? Because you have 723 signs here, but there's a number of these historic districts with no street signs. So is it 75 counting? Are they going to add one street sign there or not? I think what that would indicate is that the historic district doesn't contain an intersection because our street signs are at intersections, but we can confirm that because that would seem it'd have to be an extremely small district to not have an intersection. So, we can confirm that data. Um,

yeah. And then the second question is the uh the third party uh bid was at 75,000 but was a city still installing those street signs? No. If we wanted to get every single district installed within like the same month, street staff wouldn't have the bandwidth to do that and so it the initial installation and fabrication would be included by that third party and then streets would do the maintenance from there on out. But so the in that includes the installation. Yes. Yeah. That is a total cost. All right, Council Member Wharton. Yeah. Um, City Creek and Memory Grove has zero, too. That seems weird. My thought there would be that it's

I mean, I can just the canyon in the park and so like they may not have a street sign, but we'll confirm that for sure. Great. Thanks. Yeah, you're welcome. Maybe they're like counted in the avenues ones because some of those like on outside the park our avenues but anyway okay yeah that could be thanks other questions comments so what's the next step on this then for us to vote on it we got a straw poll right here so it looks like we have a straw poll here

yes and so I think the first question um if the council is supportive of the recommend commended local historic district sign design shown above. Show your feelings. Is that show your feelings? Great. Um and the second item is that a public hearing is not required for this proposal. Does the council wish to schedule one? I guess how how would we do? If you wish to schedule one, indicate with a thumbs up. Uh no. No. So, I'm hearing that the council does not wish to schedule a

would we I know we're not required to, but we we normally for this not not typically. And I think you could one could argue that the next question which asks about um allocating uh or or approving a contractor at 75,000 would need to be handled in a budget amendment that will have its own hearing. Right. So, that would check that box. Yeah. I don't think we need one. doesn't doesn't sound like anybody feels strongly about one. Okay. So, then the last um straw poll is, is the council supportive of hiring an outside contractor to install local historic district signs um in one phase at a cost of approximately $75,000?

I'm a little confused about this. So, uh, this would be, so, uh, the alternative if we say no is they'll just be phased in as opposed to all done at once. Correct. Correct. So, we would streets would have the bandwidth to pick like a couple districts each year and over the next two to three years those signs would be replaced, but it wouldn't be all districts within the same year. Okay. But it's not like they're gonna just do it like as the signs are damaged or something, right? It's like they're going to do like a grouping at a time. Yeah. Yeah. Okay.

It would just, you know, if one district was like, "Why did they get in, not us?" It would be an explanation of, "Hey, you're being phased in." That I'm fine with the phase. All right. Just to reiterate the straw poll then. Is a council uh supportive of hiring an outside contractor to install local historic street signs in one phase at a cost of approximately 75,000? Show your feelings. Okay, sounds like the the phased approach it is. Thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you.

And it looks like we are moving quickly through our agenda. We could move to the uh transfer of development rights report since we've got some folks here. Council members, um are you okay with that? And then we'll move towards a break. Okay. All right. So, we're going to move ahead. We're going to jump ahead to item eight, which is anformational transfer of development rights report. Uh we'll be joined at the table by Nick Tarbet, council uh deputy director, and Nick Norris, planning director. So, so just a quick um introduction to what this is is um in 2025 the council initiated a legislative action to consider creation of a transfer of development rights program within Salt Lake City. What happens after that is planning staff went and did research and some analysis and have some recommendations for the council to consider. This is not up for a vote at this time. This is very early in the process. If the council is comfortable moving forward with what you hear today, that would then go through the official zoning process, which includes the 45day early notice, planning commission hearing, going into community councils, and ultimately a council public hearing. So, with that, I'll let Nick give the presentation, which it's about 15 minutes. Is that what you were thinking?

We'll see how it goes. Feel free to jump in with questions along the way, though, if you

All right, let's go to the next slide. Thank you. Um, so I think you all know what a transfer of development rights program is. Throughout this presentation, I'm just going to use the term TDR. Um, but basically it's a land management tool that allows us to transfer development potential from one area to a different area. Next slide. Um, based on a bunch of analysis, best practices, we've looked at hundreds of different TDR programs across the country. Um and we think that we've identified some of the key things that make a TDR program successful. Um one is they have to be very simple to use. The more complex, the more costly, the more time consuming it is, the less likely they will be used at all. They have to have predictable outcomes, particularly for the entities who are purchasing development rights. If they're making that purchase, they have to be guaranteed the ability to use those rights somewhere in the city. Um, you need to have adequate administrative oversight, which I'm not at all concerned with this. If the city were to adopt a program, we we can fit this within our existing resources. Uh, they have to be economically viable. And what that means is that the amount of transferable development right has to actually benefit the receiving area. So it has to be great enough that there's an economic reason for a property owner to want to purchase those rights instead of going through other processes and other asks. Um the goal is to protect the land in the sending areas. That's the overarching goal and the purpose of having a program. It's not to stimulate development in other areas. Um the receiving areas do have to be able to accept that growth. They have to be large enough to accommodate all of the potential transfer within a sending area. That doesn't mean every property

incending area is going to actually go through the program, but you have to prepare yourself for that to occur. Um there have been programs where they have where um the receiving area hasn't allowed enough development and they've maxed out. And so cities then come through and have to essentially expand those receiving areas into other other locations. Um and there has to be sufficient interest in both the sending and receiving area. So property owners have to want to participate. These are typically voluntary programs. There are some where they require a participation in it. Those are usually at a county level and in land that is very very challenging to develop. Meaning there's no roads, there's no utilities, there's nothing. Um, next slide. Uh, a couple of key points. All the transactions are private. So determining how much someone pays for purchasing a development right is just handled between the purchaser and the seller. The city has no role in in that amount. Um the code needs to have a formula for determining what can be transferred. Most of them are very simple. They'll you get four dwelling units per acre. You can transfer those to these zones in this amount. But because most of our zones that we can actually transfer development right to don't use a dwelling per acre formula, that won't work in Salt Lake City unless we start adding these to our R1 zones. Um and so what we've looked at are specifically are those programs that create essentially a different way formula for transferring that. It's usually a square foot of land protected for a square foot of development right and various ratios in between. Uh there's obviously a

restrictive covenant that runs with the land um regardless of what happens. Um only the city can remove those restrictive covenants and that would happen. There are programs that allow that. um most of them don't uh the projects in receiving areas are usually by right so that means there's typically no public process um and re like I I already mentioned this but receiving areas must be able to accept all the development right next slide so what would it might what might it look like in Salt Lake City we can jump to the next slide um there's basically what we've looked at are what are the potential sending and receiving areas. How do we determine what the development right value is that can be transferred? What the approval process is and then how do we track the use? Next slide. Uh so this probably is a little hard to read, but the process that we've come up with is very linear in nature. The only deviations from this are if an application is not complete or they need corrections or something like that. We did add a loop in here that shows if there's other applications, sometimes somebody might need a subdivision for um to either um develop or sometimes people want to subdivide off um the land that they're transferring from so that it's not linked to their where their home is or something else. Next slide. So we have a number of uh sending area possibilities. Many of you are going to be familiar with these, but there are a couple of things here that are listed and some of these are easier than others to for this program to work. Um, one thing I wanted to point out is one, you can and there are programs that apply to historic properties throughout the country, which are harder to calculate what the remaining development potential

is, but it does allow a transfer there. And in Utah, we can actually establish a TDR for areas outside of the city. So, for example, we could look at pro at a program that looked at our watershed areas and allowed private property to transfer that development right into the city. That requires the local government of the sending area to also agree to adopt an ordinance identifying sending areas. Next slide. Why would we want to do that?

Well, for example, there may there may be a lot of significant land say in one like in Big Cottonwood Canyon that's private undeveloped that they may be pushing to develop that may not be appropriate. And so we could come in and say, "Hey, if you if you want to um develop in Salt Lake City and put a restrictive covenant on that, you might be able to sell those to somebody and get some value out of your land instead of going through the expense of developing." Okay. Um, most TDR programs actually are countywide and they have those types of provisions in there.

Um, just to follow up on that, how would um, water rights be factored into that? Because I think right now a lot of the development potential in the Cottonwoods, right, is kind of uh, stifled with the water rights conversation. So, that would be one way to address, right, that lack of water.

Great. Um, a couple of sending area considerations. One, they're typically voluntary. If a property already has significant development potential, they are highly unlikely to participate in this program. Um, so the in addition, the higher priority areas should be identified. So we probably, and you'll see a slide in a little bit, we probably couldn't do all of those sending areas and have enough land in the receiving areas to accommodate that. So, we'd have to prioritize where this would apply. Um, and one other key point is the allowed uses in a sending area do not transfer to the receiving areas. So, for example, if you had a sending area that allowed certain like light industrial uses, those would not be able to transfer to like a mixeduse zone where those wouldn't be allowed. The the receiving zoning will still dictate the land uses. So the the receiving areas zoning cannot be isn't changed.

No. So if it if it's like a MU11 zone, you can't change it to an M1 zone. That's right. Okay. It's just the rights of the other descending can be transferred but not the development potential is transferred. Yes. But not the zoning must not must stays the same. Right.

Okay. Okay. That's Yeah. Next slide. So, um, when we look at receiving areas, there's a couple ways to go about them. Some programs will just identify specific zoning districts. Some will define a geographic boundary of where those receiving areas are. Those are situations where there may be eight or nine zoning districts in in that receiving area, but they all have um some transferable right within it. Um, I'm not sure that map being a specific area necessarily works in Salt Lake City just because of how our city is zoned already, but it could be a potential uh direction. A couple of good candidates and things to consider is that um the best receiving areas are those areas where the development that's occurring already is maxing out their development potential. So those are things, you know, I listed the MU5 and MU6 here. These are usually where we get buildings that are going up to their maximum building height. Um, and they're they're just maxing that out. Um, and then some zones where they're transferred right can increase the building heights above 180 ft. That's where you start seeing the cost of that change of construction type start to make more um financial sense and be be more economically viable. doesn't always mean it will, but that's kind of the minimum threshold for those things to happen. Next slide. Uh, so one of the things that we've we've done is we looked at how much land is in all of those sending areas and then how much land is in the receiving areas in the city. And a lot of people don't necessarily realize this, but the land that is our mixed use zones makes up a very small percentage of our overall land in the city. And you can

add those up and it's less than I don't know 4% roughly maybe. Um, and then if you look at some of the sending areas we listed, and some of these are too challenging to figure because individual parcels are going to have different amounts, like the Riperian corridor and the landmark sites. Um, but we're at roughly 6 12% of the city in just three of those zones. And if you look at, for example, the northwest quadrant natural area, not the part that can be developed, um that is a sizable chunk of land in the city. Um some of that is already publicly owned. Salt Lake City is own owns quite a bit of land out there. Um but this would apply to some of those private lands where they can benefit potentially from protecting their property. And it's land that all of our plans and policies want to see protected. Next slide. Uh so this is just um about receiving areas and things that are not good candidates. So this picture is actually a project that sought a um a modification to the minimum height allowed in the zone. This is a D1 zone. And so we showed this to show, you know, the downtown zones generally are not great zones to to accommodate this because people really are not coming close to maxing out their development potential. We do have some, but most of them are not. Um, another consideration is areas where uh increased development is just not supported. We probably don't want to see an MU2 zone, for example, go up to five stories, right? that the community is probably not going to appreciate that and I don't think anybody actually would. Um, and so that that's another significant and then areas that would need significant additional building height to make a pencil. So if you were in like a MU8 zone that allows up to 90 ft to get up

to that 180, you'd have to go up a whole another 90 ft, double that building height. that makes it very very challenging um to offset the potential impacts from a development that size in those zones. Next size slide please. Um so one of the things in our in our kind of model code that that we put together is um various numbers and we're going to get to this on the next slide too but this slide is intended to show you what happens when the transferable ratio um is at different points. So if you require one square foot of land to be protected and in exchange you get one and a half square ft of um transferable right that receiving zone could get 45,000 square ft of additional development. That could be pretty significant and it changes you as you either go down and then we also went the other way. What happens if it's 10 to one? You know you don't get any real transferable right? hardly anyone, if anyone at all, would be interested in purchasing 3,000 square feet of additional development, right? It's just not going to work. Um, and so the idea is that more sending area required um typically equals less transferable um transactions that occur. Next slide. And so in our model code, we put together this table. And I want to make it very very clear that these numbers are absolute placeholders. They were put in there based on some other areas around the country. Um but in areas like Salt Lake City that are mostly urbanized already. Um what we found is that these numbers are significantly lower almost closer to one and almost every instance. Um so again

if the TDA if a transfer of development um amount is requires too much land it's hardly going to get used. Um and if we limit land in receiving areas it means that we either have to have significant height increases in those areas or larger receiving areas. So that gets back to the receiving areas have to be able to accommodate all of that potential future development. Next slide. So, this is just an example of a of two buildings in Salt Lake City. So, the image is of I think that's a fivestory building. Um, and you can kind of see what happens with their footprint on their lot and um what could be allowed with that five-story building. They'd get 75,000 square feet. Um, next slide. Can you go back on this one? When you talk about property A retains uh or the zoning allows five, sorry. So that couldn't be an MU2 zone.

No, this would be an MU. This is an MU5 zone right now, right? And the property A, what's the zoning on property A? Property A is in one of the protection zones. So it doesn't necessarily matter what its base zoning is. Let's just say it might be in that northwest quadrant.

Okay, it's in the northwest quadrant. it's open space, whatever protected, and we're just going to transfer rights to to build on that property to somewhere else. And and that is what we're doing here. We're going to allow them to build one for one. So, we're going to get to this on the next slide, how this might how this works. So, if they want a sevenstory building, they need a two additional levels. If their footprint is 15,000 ft, they need to purchase a total of 30,000 ft of a TDA. That's a transferable development amount. If they approach property A and property A has an acre of land, so that's 43,560 ft and they want to buy 30,000 ft of it. Property A is like, "All right, I'll sell that to you." And then they go through all that. Property B gets his sevenstory building and property owner A restricts 30,000 ft of their property. the remaining 13,560 ft remains developable. Um most of the codes will have a way to prioritize how that 30,000 ft is applied. So for example, if you are along a like wetlands, it would apply first to that border of the wetlands. So it protects it the intent is to protect the most sensitive aspect of that property. Next slide. So again, I'm going to just reiterate some of these we've already gone over, but if it's too expensive to participate in a program, now this is where the property owners determine this. And so if people think that their land is worth more than anyone's willing to pay, regardless of what program we set up, it's unlikely to be used. The most likely scenario in those situations is when the same owner owns property A and property B, right? That's that's the

most likely scenario where those things will happen. Uh if we require too much land to uh to transfer, then a lot of people will not be interested in purchasing that. Um and this is this next one is a big one. If map amendments are viewed as being easier, people are still going to go down that path. Um because one, even though it may be longer, it's typically much cheaper than buying land. the cost of what happens when you're buying additional land is that it's increasing your overall land cost for development. And that has to pencil across not just what you could build within the zone, but what you can transfer. And so if if it's not enough, it's just not going to pencil out. Um, and then discretionary processes are when with these programs, they're not predictable and they rarely work when there's a discretionary process for approval of a project. Next slide. I think that might be it. Yeah. And again, I think this the the important message to drive home is protecting land in the send in the sending areas is the purpose of doing this. It's acknowledging that you're going to see an increase in development in your receiving areas that you have to be comfortable with and okay with. Um that doesn't mean that those receiving areas might not have or need additional infrastructure improvements that developers are bearing and everything else. Those will still be there, but this is this is the purpose of the program is to do this. And so I think there has to be, you know, if the city goes down this path, there has to be some acknowledgement that this is the goal. And that is all I have.

All right. I see. I know we've got a few questions. Um, uh, you know. Okay. Let's go to Council Member Wharton and then, uh, Council Member Dugan and then Council Member Young.

Okay. I'm glad that you did this report and I think this is a, you know, regardless of whether we choose to create some program like this or not, I think it was important because a lot of people have asked about it and we've never really had a serious discussion about it. Um, so thanks for doing that and I don't want any of my comments to be construed as me not appreciating that. However, to me, and I correct me if I'm wrong, I would love to be wrong. It kind of feels like this might have been helpful if we'd have done something like this before we upzoned a lot of things. Like to me it feels like this is we kind of went ahead of this in a lot of ways in in terms of um making a lot more you know increasing the density in a lot of our zones and a lot of our reforms have kind of I feel like gone further than what this would do. I've so I don't know if that's correct or not. Please tell me if it is. But to me, it just kind of feels like I can't think of an example of where I was like, man, I wish we'd had this before.

Am I wrong? North Point. North Point. Okay. Exactly. Okay. So, tell So, tell can you walk me through an example of like where where I'm wrong? Hypo hypothetically, I'll I'll come up with a hypothetical. Yeah, an owner or a lease allesie of a certain maverick adjacent to a park might purchase land in North Point to preserve that land might purchase the development potential in North Point

and be able to build more height than is currently allowed by zone. Now if that hypothetical, right? So if that hypothetical land in the receiving area, it could not do that. But that's why deciding where your receiving area is and what your receiving area is is so important. And I think that last slide was a a great example that it's important to think about both what is the land you want to preserve. But in in my mind, especially from the seats you guys are in and and the fact that it probably won't be a discretionary program, you need to think about where you are okay saying that the development can receive more height without um discretion of the council without community you know

yeah being frustrated by it. So I guess my question like kind of stands I don't know if you can I know you have to like a requirement of this question is that you have to know what my position would be on something like that but like I guess I I'm trying to think through an example of like where the council or like a majority of the council like either all of us or a significant group of us a majority of us wanted something wanted a change and we're like uh you know If only we had this tool. I can think of lots of examples where developers might have liked it. I can't really think of one like where the city was like I I mean I I think that if you got one

No, but can you think of an example where a developer might have used it or needed it because there wasn't something else? Like I I think your first point your first point is still where I am, right? where we're this feels like a great opportunity in places where zoning has been maxed out. Yeah, I'm I'm struggling with that part. So, if we're going to answer, could we? Yeah. Okay. I see a lot of folks jumping in. So, let's have you answer the question and then I want to come back to Council Member uh Dugan and then also Council Member Young and then Lopez Chavez. So, I I think I think it comes down to like I mean I would have some clarifying questions to yours but

Yes. But for example, um you know, if if when you say before we upzone things, if you're talking about like the zoning consolidation that we did, we did not actually do a lot of upzoning in that, most things were within 5 to 10 ft of height. There were some specific areas like the Sugar House Business District that were upzoned. Uhhuh. Um whether or not those got those properties up to a spot where they are now feasible to develop at that height is yet to be determined. But um most of that consolidation was not upzoning.

Okay. So maybe upzoning is the wrong word. I I'm trying to what I'm trying to say is like there I don't think there's any debate that we as a council have made it like expanded the development options pretty significantly in pretty significant ways. So like it to me it seems like we've we're giving developers a lot more options than they used to have already. That's kind of what I mean. So maybe maybe upzoning was the wrong word. Yeah, we we probably are giving more options, right? We definitely are. Um, but I don't know that as a city we've looked at how to fully protect the more sensitive lands in the city.

And I think that's the missing piece to that conversation. All right, let's go to Council Member Dugan and then Council Member Young and then Lopez Chavez.

Just kind of going on top of what uh Council Member Warden was talking about there. So the we has as a city council we need to determine the receiving areas and so in the the example you show there where the developer wants another 30,000 ft. Say you wanted the full 40 acres so 44,000 square feet and uh and that was at an MU5 zone. So we are going to allow him to build three extra floors, go another 30 ft, say 40 ft, whatever that is above that MU5 without really going through the planning commission or any other development side of the house. Allow them to go add those three stories to that site. So that's goes back to the the responsibility on our part to know where those receiving areas are so that we are feel comfortable with allowing those extra uh height to that building in this case. Uh do we do we put a a limit to how much a building can go up in those receiving areas?

Yeah, you you can. Oh, you can. Okay. Yes, absolutely. You don't you don't just lift the cap and let anything happen. you don't lose the cap. But that's that's what we're doing here is we're taking that one acre of land and we're saying that's a buildable spot even though you can't build on the whole acre because there's, you know, setbacks and stuff and we're going to say, "Okay, you can build take that 44,000 ft, add it to your building, and build three floor highs." Yeah.

Yeah. And, you know, and I think you you Yeah, you're you're right. I I also think consideration of if you just have it be as every property in a specific zone, there's some nuance there. There are some places in the city where you may have an MU5 zone directly next to lowdensity residential. That might not be a great spot which leads to that mapping part where you map it maybe not so much uh it's MU5 zones in this part of the city.

That does result in limiting the receiving areas. And so that means that you'd have to prioritize how much of those sending areas you to actually be um in the program. Okay, just on. So, I'm the owner of uh No, Sarah's the owner of property A. She's got this acre and I'm saying I want to buy your acre acreage and you're going to give me, you know, a buck a square foot. So, I'm going to pay that acre at $44,000 and I'm going to take that I'm going to buy that acre and she's going to take that $44,000. I'm going to put it on top of my building. Now that that acre that Sarah sold me, Council Member Young sold me, uh, is now we're gonna restrict any bill and it's going to be open space, whatever. Just is that

Yeah. So, basically, the the sending property is restricted and it can be restricted in a number of ways. So, you can still allow a minimum amount of development. Let's say there's already like an existing house on that property. They would they get the right to keep that. You can put in there. They can expand it. They can do other things. They just couldn't like subdivide off and redevelop the rest of it. So programs can can determine how much development right remains. It's usually based on it has what's there or if it's like in an agricultural zone, you still allow all those agricultural uses to occur. They just couldn't go through a process to redevelop it as something else.

So big here for us is the the receiving areas. We have to be very deliberate in the receiving areas. Absolutely. With a capital A. Thank you. That's that helps out quite a bit. I'm not quite there all the way through, but I'm I'm learning a little bit every day. Thank you.

So, I really appreciate this. Um, and for me, I think one of the reasons that it resonates with me is that right now, to the earlier point, if we're saying there's land we want to protect, you're banking on the fact that there are individuals who that is their core value. Because right now there's no way to monetize unless you're prepared to sell and usually to sell to the purpose of development, right? And so like that to me is one of those I will say generational values that I'm not sure is going to be here at the same level it has previously historically been here over time. And so having tools and mechanisms in the city to say we've got a solution for you. We're not just relying on the fact that like you believe in protecting these lands as well that there could be opportunities there. And that's why I'm interested in like what a solution could look like. I appreciate all the cautions and I share in the concerns related to we wouldn't just want to be like it's a free-for-all. It's going to be great, you know, but that it really does prepare like, you know, require a high degree of detailed attention related to sending and receiving and like how those pieces translate. I will say you you mentioned that there are solutions out there related to historic properties. Um, I'm very interested in that. um because it's certainly another aspect of the city that I know we've tried to figure out solutions around. Um so I just wanted to put that out there that that that is also an area that that I'm interested in. Um, but I do think that

there's an inherent opportunity even starting with a smaller footprint, you know, not going like again across the city all at once, but to be able to explore what the opportunity is and whether or not there is a market related to, you know, individual property owners wanting to participate in this type of space. So, I'm interested.

Yeah. And I I think so in in that model code we created that for Salt Lake City, we included a way to calculate for landmark properties. Now whether you want to expand that to other historic properties, that's obviously an option as well and it would be the exact same kind of formula. Um so there's that option. One option that I didn't include this slide that has actually gained some traction across the country now too is actually doing it with affordable housing. So, somebody who has housing that they want to lock in, say you're a house, a affordable housing provider, and your 30-year term is expiring. If you have a program where they can protect those for longer in exchange for more development rights somewhere else, then you you're eliminating the inevitable threat to our affordable housing when the ter when they term out, right? we all know that that housing goes away once it turns out. So there's other programs out there too and that the the idea is that we as a city we just have to prioritize which what we want to do. Um, and I I will caveat like while this presentation had a lot of cautions, this I think that we generally are supportive of a program, we think that it should probably start as a smaller trial area to figure it out before we allocate money to do economic studies and everything else. Let's find something that's maybe a little more manageable and see how it works and learn from it before we go big.

Yes. And I'm for what it's worth super supportive of that approach um in terms of you know taking small steps in that direction as opposed to planning for a big step that that could backfire. So so I want to go to council member Lopez Chavez and then council member Petro for comments and questions.

Thank you and thanks Nick. I I was just curious to see because immediately I thought of the TDR to be used for Kilby Court um and thinking about the grainery or other places that could receive more. If I'm not mistaken, can you just repeat in elementary terms so I can understand this is to max out the current density that the zoning of the receiving property can hold. Is that correct? Well, so it's not necessarily to max it out. Um, one, the purpose is to protect something like a Kilby court and in exchange for that, giving somebody that ability to purchase that and transfer it. If they own it already, great. They can transfer it.

Um, but but the idea is that if they're in a zone where they're not maxing out their existing zoning, it's unlikely to be economically viable to transfer it. Sure. So that's the caveat, right? And now in some places like the area surrounding a Kilby Court property, they're already allowed to go up to the 150 ft. So they're really, really close. So that might be an area, a receiving area that a program like this could work.

Okay, that's great. I mean, I immediately think of um certain historic areas um that we have left over in the downtown that could be protected. I also think about grainery being a great place that we can receive. I had two other questions. Can TDRs be used for other attainable individual assets or just multifamily assets? Uh they basically can be used for anything that's allowed in that zoning district. Okay. So, it could technically be used in residential as well. Oh, yeah. Absolutely. Okay. That's interesting. Could it be in that case by right could they develop um within residential you know let's say a quadplex you buy multiple blocks or town homes they could maximize that density as well.

Yeah there are programs that do that especially in areas where it's single family only zoning. So they'll allow a they have a formula. It's a lot easier formula um where you can transfer it and they put a cap on how many dwellings can be there and then they also allow those to be basically in any housing type that can accommodate those number of dwellings. So it could be you know a sixun apartment building, six town homes, six detached small single family homes, any of those combinations usually.

Okay, that's interesting. I mean, if you have any more research on that, I'd love to see if this is the right tool to think about in being inclusive of attainable housing as well. And then my last question was just can an owner can a seller and receiver be legally different entities but held by the same shareholders?

Yeah, probably. What we're looking at through this is just restricting the sending land and then authorizing in the receiving land. So ownership almost doesn't matter as long as everyone agrees that this sending property has restrictions on all future development in perpetuity or until a future city council changes the rules. Interesting. Okay. I was just thinking about how many land bankers we have in the city and if this is a tool to try to stimulate them to develop.

Okay. Thank you. Is a transfer of development rights the same thing as um air rights? Buying air rights? Um yeah, it can be. Yeah, they're they're similar. So if you're purchasing air rights isn't um you know, we've had properties actually do that in the city, but mainly to get around our approval processes. Um, and it was just a one-off kind of negotiation, but it's a very similar tool. Yeah,

I'm interested in that as a community wealthb buildinging attribute to especially as we watch the power district develop. Um, allowing like the little Nico stand to stay there by selling off what would go above to to give to someone else around there who might want to take that extra, you know, fee and then that infuses them with cash. Um, for me, TDR has is the North Point area. It's always been like that thing that I wish we could solve for to preserve the natural area. Um, I don't know that we can create the demand like like you said, like no one's maxing out now. So, so it's it's difficult to say, hey, you do this out of the goodness of your heart. We we know that every the goodness of a heart aligns with the balance sheet very frequently for for developers. And so it's it's kind of hard for natural land, but I as a community wealth building tool, I'm definitely deeply interested in that sort of concept. And and um if we do a TDR policy, I would like to see it explicitly inclusive of air rights concepts so that those lower profile family-owned businesses in the places that are rapidly gentrifying could be more protected.

Yeah. One of the things to think about with with that kind of a program is that's a situation where often times a sending area and a receiving area are within the same geography. And so there's ways to develop a program that deals with that. Um but yeah, it's certainly possible.

All right. Um, I think you're seeing that we have a lot more questions about this and curiosities that seem to be surfacing from the council on it. Anything else? So, just so so I'm on the same page with with the council is um from what I'm hearing is we'll continue to move forward with developing a program and an ordinance. Um, we'll do the research. will probably start small and we'll keep the council updated on that as it goes through the process. I think that's what I'm hearing. I think that's what that's what you're hearing as I look around the room. Yes. Perfect. Thank you so much.

Sorry, one other just addition. It sounds like it'll be especially important for the council to know like in that starting small, where are the receiving areas? Because it sounds like there's pretty large consensus about what sending areas might look like. But obviously there's details to be worked out with that, but the receiving areas I think are going to be um really important to kind of dial in. So yeah, I I think we'll bring several options out as we move forward because I don't want to make that call for for the council. So excellent. Thank you so much, Nick. Thank you. Um let's go ahead and take a 20 minute break and come back together at 3:45. Does that work for folks? Great. Nice.

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back everyone. Um we are now going to move to item number seven which is a fiscal year 2026 2027 proposed uh budget for the department of airports. At the table, we've got Nick Tarbett, uh, council deputy director, Bill Wyatt. Thank you for being here. Uh, director of airports, as well as Sean Anderson, airport controller. I'll turn it over to you, Nick.

Okay. Thank you. I'll just give a super quick briefing or intro to this. Bill will then kind of give a high level overview and then Sean will go through the presentation. Um, this is a the budget briefing for the Department of Airports, which is an enterprise fund. As most of you know, and for the public enterprise funds, there's a city program funded separately from the general fund operated like a business. So, all the expenses are covered by revenue generated from user fees or charges at the airport. Bill, I'll let you go.

Great. Thank you, Nick. Uh, great to see all of you. Um, once a year, if not more. So, uh, this is a kind of a big year for us in a lot of ways, but not least of which is during this next fiscal year, the airport redevelopment program after really 14 years of construction will conclude. U, and we're really excited about it. I mean it's uh it's quite a a period if you uh imagine this council 15 years ago um approving this project uh and then kind of one year after another and finally here we are and um you know this uh airport will have gone from an airport that had 52 jet bridges to one that uh will have 94 at the end of the day. Uh we have a very long-term lease uh with Delta Airlines, which is important because among other things, if we for some reason uh have a challenge paying our bills, they step into our shoes and do that for the city. Uh it feels great. Although I guess I would say if we're having trouble paying our bills, they're probably having trouble paying their bills as well, but that's, you know, another matter. It feels good nevertheless. Uh and I think what you'll see in the budget uh that John will uh present here is um is an indication of the continued growth that we're experiencing in facilities to manage. And so we'll be uh growing uh into that. We'll be adding in the fourth phase the total number of new gates is 16. Uh and that comes with obviously all of the staff required to uh to manage that, the additional uh janitorial staff required to clean that. Uh and we probably spend more on janitorial than most airports in the United States. And I would just say

that is reflected in passenger feedback. Uh who not surprisingly really like to have a clean airport uh to either depart from or to land in. Uh so it's incredibly satisfying. There isn't anything really surprising in my opinion um about the budget except that you will see uh we're beginning to uh pay all of the debt now and so that number is pretty substantial. Um airlines tend to look at airports in in term for cost purposes as what they cost per implaned passenger. And when we're done, and I think Sean will probably have a chart or two in here reflecting that, we'll be in the uh early 20s, early to mid 20s per passenger. And that puts us right about in the middle of a large hub category in the United States. And most of those who are lower than us are just beginning uh major capital programs. And so uh we started at the bottom. Um, and ultimately I think we will gradually uh go down to the bottom as our debt gets paid off and as those other airports uh begin the kind of construction activities that we're now uh concluding. So I feel like we're in a a really strong position. It's a very weird time in the world of commercial aviation right now. I don't know that that's a surprise to any of you. uh the you know the situation in the Middle East is definitely having an impact. Uh currently that impact in the US is on fairs uh that ultimately does affect uh the number of people who travel and that could have some impact on our budget and we will account for that to the extent that it occurs. uh but you know if things don't get resolved pretty soon there are areas of the world not ours who will actually run out of the molecules the fuel itself uh

in the US uh that's not a uh a particular challenge but u jet fuel is priced on a global basis and so the prices will go up to reflect whatever those shortages turn out to be. uh and it's just another day at the beach in the the world of commercial aviation. We'll find a way to to uh work our way through that. But uh just a reminder that it is a very volatile uh business. It always has been. Um, and this airport, I think, historically has a reputation for being really good at addressing those uh things quickly and obviously we'll be in close touch u with the council if matters develop in such a fashion that requires us to take um action. What you're doing here is authorizing expenditures uh not mandating them and if we need to, we can obviously uh make adjustments. So, uh, this is Sean's first budget experience. Go at him. You know, whatever you whatever you need, he's there for it. Uh, and he's done several of these already, and so we're uh we're very uh happy that he's with us today. Sean,

I can take this one.

All right. Well, it's good to be here today. Uh, this Bill said, this is my first time in front of city council, not first time doing the budget, but uh first time here. Um, and it's a good opportunity. I think we have a, you know, a good story to tell with the, uh, airport project wrapping up later this year and, uh, how we're managing our costs. Um, if I could have the next slide, please. So, the first thing I wanted to highlight is just a few accomplishments the airport's had over this last fiscal year. Uh, so back in July, we uh, did our final bond issuance to get us to the finish line of the project. Uh, that gives us about $4.1 billion in debt. uh we do share most of that with the airlines who uh as we'll see uh a little bit later on in their uh their share of the revenues that we generate. Uh we opened uh 10 gates in October of 25 with the final 11 coming later this year. So in uh 12 month span we'll have opened 21 gates which is to finish off as Bill said to get us up to the 94. Uh and then out at our uh airport and uh West Jordan South Valley Regional, uh we signed a new contract or contract with a new fix-based operator to operate our uh general aviation activities out there. And that was went into effect on April 1st of this year, which is a huge benefit to us. Um it was a lot of uh time and resources that we used out there to to kind of keep things going, but they'll be able to to do the full job and we can use the the staff and those resources uh back in Salt Lake City. Uh next slide. So some of the efficiencies that we found this year, one clearly being the FBO out there. Uh just to kind of give a little uh highlight there in our fiscal year 25 our uh we lost $3 million um do just doing normal operations out there and through December of this year we

were tracking about that same amount. We'd lost about $1.5 million. So, with a new FBO being able to operate that, uh, they will pay us, uh, a percentage of their revenue, uh, small fee to operate that, but, we'll be able to take again all those expenses and things that we we had out there and be able to reallocate them. And then as the project comes to a finish here uh in October um we are you know tracking to be on time and under budget with that have funds returned to the airport to be able to use for um either reserves or future CIP projects that we have planned. Next slide please. So our current uh on&m budget is uh for fiscal year 26 is 242 million. We have 670 full-time employees and 4.3 part-time employees. Uh so our request is to uh have an additional 17 million in cost an additional 19 FTEES and because the we are ceasing our own operations down at South Valley Regional. We had three part-time employees down there uh that we uh eliminated those positions which equates to one and a half positions. So that reduces our part-time number to 2.8. And again I have other slides we can go into the details of what that 17 million is. Next slide please. So just quick high level on what each of the the categories are uh where we're getting the the change for on and m and our capital expenditures as well. Uh and again I have another slide that will we'll get into details here. So next slide. And before we get into those details, I just want I like this chart because it highlights, I think, how well we've done at the airport, how well our uh commercial and properties team has done in generating non-eronautical revenue,

the effort we've done to uh control our costs even with uh inflation, with opening new gates and additional space. Uh you can kind of see that uh second to bottom line for operating expenses. Uh in fiscal year 27, we're looking about a 7% increase, which is actually our lowest percentage increase in the last five years. And while we've had some double-digit growth um in in these previous years in expenses and almost uh double digit over the five years, uh our revenues have grown at double the same rate, double the rate of our expenses. Uh and again wanted to highlight the non-eronautical revenue which is all of the revenue we generate from you know parking, rental cars, concessions and that's all revenue that the airport uh gets to keep and use uh for improvements. Uh all the aeronautical revenue uh a lot of those big increases is due to the debt service that the airlines help us pay and uh to to cover that big line item. Next slide. This is a chart highlighting where we're sitting at on our inplained passenger count. Uh so for fiscal year 26, we're looking at about 14.1 million. Uh which is about a 1 and a.5% growth over our fiscal year uh 25 number. And the budget that we've been given by the airlines for fiscal year 27 is 14.4, which equates to about a 2.4% growth. And Delta's given us a number that's that's pretty flat. Uh most of that growth is is coming from Alaska American and Frontier kind of showing their desire to continue to grow and and expand here. And a big part of that growth in Alaska is their acquisition of Hawaiian which started at the airport last year. Uh they'll be uh taking over that operation as well. Okay, next slide. So highlevel uh income statement. The

few items that I wanted to focus on here again with revenues and expenses. We'll get in the next few slides into the details there. Uh our grant level is is pretty stable. Um the bipartisan infrastructure law funds are coming to an end this year, but our AIP grants uh that we get yearly um will continue to be a source that we use for any of the CIP projects that are eligible. Our passenger facility charges and our customer facility charges are uh they they are very much in line with uh passengers. They fluctuate as passengers fluctuate. And so those you can see the forecast budget increase. Those are pretty much in line with where we're seeing the passenger increases. Uh interest income, a little bit of a decrease there. That's just mainly as we spend our bond proceeds. We have less cash earning interest. Uh and the fluctuation in interest rates as well. And then the bond issuance cost, we have the 2.8 million there budgeted uh because our first bond issuance all the way back in 2017 is up for uh refunding. Uh it can be called next year uh during this fiscal year depending on uh how the market is going and what uh the world economics are looking like. Um as of now we do plan on refunding those bonds uh and and finding some savings there. And then again on the capital and CIP, uh I have another slide that that shows some more of the details there. But overall for fiscal year 27, you know, we're looking at about $180 million increase to reserves um for the airport. Next slide, please. So these are our airline revenues. These are the uh categories that we generate revenue from directly from the airlines. Um, I'm only going to focus on the top two unless anyone has uh questions

otherwise. So, our landing fees and terminal rents. Um, and those are highly influenced by our debt service. Um, terminal rents will uh our terminal rent rate is actually coming down a little bit this next year. Um, but the overall balance is going up due to the additional debt service coming online. And we're a couple years away from hitting the peak on what that debt service will be. Um this coming year we're looking at about $260 million and we'll peak about between 280 and 285 um in the next two to three years. So that's where we're seeing those large increases in uh landing fees and terminal rents. Next slide please. So these are our concession revenues are our primary non-eronautical revenues. Uh the revenues that we generate at the airport. Again I'm going to focus on the top two. Um, and if there are questions again, I can go into more details on the other items. Uh, so parking is our largest single source of revenue and people continue to utilize um our parking garage, our economy lot, the employee lots very heavily uh during the weeks, the middle of the week, kind of Tuesday through Thursday. I don't know if anyone's been out to the airport recently, the the garage is closed almost every week in the middle of the week due to uh uh business travel and people uh using that that source. And so a couple years ago, we got uh authority from you guys to raise the rate to $45 when we saw fit. And uh we do see fit now to raise that from $40, the current rate per day to $45 per day starting on July 1st. And along with that increase in the garage, we are also uh plan to raise the economy lot from $12 to $14 per day uh just to be more competitive with some of the other lots uh that are close to the airport and the uh customers who utilize those.

and the car rental. The reason for the big increase, um, our initial contract with the car rental agencies when we opened all the way back in, uh, 2020 and and before when they started occupying the space, that has come to an end and we've negotiated new contracts with the rental car agencies uh, beginning July 1st of this year. And so bringing those rates up to market rates has really driven up the the revenue there. uh and plus bringing in another company into the counter in the garage space is bringing that up as well. So six will be joining the others directly inside the airport gateway. Okay, next slide please. So our operating expenses where we can get into some of the the details of what that $17 million uh increase is going to look like. So for payroll, it's about $3.1 million. Um the 19 new FTEES accounts for about $1.7 million of that. And then uh between COLA and insurance increases, that's the remaining 1.4 million. Uh our direction was to do a 3% increase across the entire ledger um of salaries and benefits. And doing the math with the increase to insurance, it left us with about a 1.8% cola. Um, and again, that's just an estimate pending what, uh, the mayor and city council ends up approving there. Uh, some of the other areas I wanted to highlight are intergovernmental charges. Uh, police and fire. Uh, police is going to increase about 400,000, fire about 500,000, and that's almost all exclusively due to uh, payroll, due to their uh, union increases. Uh, very little related to equipment and supplies in each of those budgets. Um IMS is increasing about 500,000 and the remaining administrative service fees is about a million dollar which gets us to the uh uh $28 million increase there. Uh

some of the large individual items, utilities is a $2.1 million increase. That's obviously due to the expansion, a lot more square footage to handle uh the heating and cooling of that space. Uh janitorial, we're looking at about a $3.8 million increase. uh that's to handle the salary increases of the employees uh and then the additional employees and equipment for the the additional square footage that we'll be adding as well. And then the last one I wanted to highlight that's kind of in a couple of these uh different areas uh maintenance contracts as well as materials and supplies is our IMS charges. Um IMS is going to be going up about $6 million. A lot of that is due to the cost of supplies. And again, we opened the first phase of the airport back in September of 2020. So, it's been almost 6 years that open. And a lot of our equipment now is due for replacement. A lot of cameras, a lot of servers, and things like that. So, we've uh developed a plan to stagger that so we don't have massive influxes of equipment need to be needing to be replaced at one time. So, that'll be staggered over the the years. And then we're also taking on some additional uh contracts that are uh program management team that's been uh overseeing the construction of the the facility. They've been managing these uh IT contracts. Um but as the construction com is completed, we're going to be taking over the management of those. So there's additional uh fees associated with that as well. Okay, next slide. So, this is where Bill is talking about our cost per employment. So, way back in 2019, uh, before we opened and before any of our debt service came online, we were at $3.90.

I might just add that's about the time I started. So, you see the impact. So, this is Bill's fault.

U, but the the good thing about this, this has all been uh planned out. Everybody knew what was going to happen, you know, with the, you know, city council, the mayor's office, the airlines, they all knew what it would take to uh finance this project and what it would do to our cost per employment. So, our budgeted amount for fiscal year 27 is 2347. Again, in a a couple years, we'll peak in about the 2380 mark and then we'll start coming down. And again, at that same time as we're coming down, like Bill said, all these other airports are going to start coming back up as their projects get into full swing as they take on the debt and start opening phases of their uh new facilities as well. So, we're still very competitive amongst other large hubs and uh uh the regional area as well. Okay, next slide, please. So, our capital projects, we have about 134 million planned for our capital projects. Not all of that will be spent in fiscal year 27. That's just how much we're budgeting for the project. Some of these are very long-term projects. The uh down at South Valley Regional, um we're looking at uh an FAA tower down there um which would be about $50 million, but that will be almost 100% grant funded if we move forward with it. We're doing spending about 500 million, excuse me, $500,000 this year to do a sighting study to see where it would make sense to to place that. Um, up on our terminal projects, we're looking at possibly uh expanding our baggage service office area, well, moving our some of our baggage service offices to expand the security checkpoint. Um, it's it's already feeling a little bit pinched there. Um we're currently working with the FAA uh sending in the plans to to see if we can get grant approval. Um those three projects on the the three uh bottom

projects in that terminal area would be about 10 $10.5 million. And if all goes according to plan, half of that would be uh grant funded as well. But the longer we wait to do that stuff, the more expensive it will be. So, we're we're really pushing to get this uh through to the FAA to get this in their uh current fiscal year to get that approved. Um airfield projects, we're just continuing with our taxiway uniform um which is uh to assist out in the by the cargo area to assist the movement of uh aircraft out there. We've got the two taxiways that are being developed and and constructed and that's a $20 million project, but again 15 million of that is grant funded. And then our big one down there in the landside area is the continuing construction of our uh south employee parking lot. Uh we plan on opening phase one of that in August which is about 2100 stalls and then uh continuing to with the the funding about 23 million to relocate the uh surplus canal and to continue construction out there. Okay. And then next slide. Uh so just as just a highlight of a few of our main uh asks and additions that we're looking at for the year. So again, our new uh FTEES and we talked about 19. I didn't get into much detail there, but that's primarily for maintenance and IT to handle all of the additional IT stuff that we've got coming on board and then maintenance for the to to handle the extra capacity. Um and along with that, our janitorial increase and utilities and our uh IT costs as well. Next slide, please. And so I just wanted to highlight a few things that uh that we've done to really uh show our effort to uh control the

costs that we have. Um it's it's a big number, but we we put in a lot of work to make sure that number is not even bigger. So our original original ask for FTEES was 23. We brought down to 19, which saves $500,000 a year. The original ask for on and m increases was $23.5 million which we got down to 17.1 which is a 27% reduction you know almost $6.5 million. Uh and keeping in mind usually once those get approved they often stay in there um unless it's a onetime expense that we we identify. So that would be an ongoing uh savings that we have. And then just again the need to to increase in general um just the CPI in our contracts. Um we are seeing some inflation pressures with with some of our supplies. Um but keeping in mind that fiscal year 27 is the last year that we're adding space. So we should be able to uh see a lot fewer increases related to uh construction and capacity issues. And again, just to highlight that revenue continues to outpace operating expenses and that, you know, we've never had a problem, you know, since we've taken on all of this debt, making our uh debt service payments and all of the other necessary payments that we have. And I believe that concludes things for us.

Thank you so much, Council Member Dugan. Appreciate it very much. And uh just, you know, I always love going through the uh blue tunnel You know, I have to say that first of all, I love music and it's always a joy to walk through there and sometimes like the other day we walk through and my wife we went through the other tunnel because we were Yeah. And uh cuz we were further out. She's like, "We're not going through the blue tunnel." I'm like, "Sorry, honey." Uh but so you had it to yourself.

Yeah, I had it to myself. Exactly. Um I appreciate that the budget. My question is really not so in line with what you just presented was more on the uh getting people in and out of the the airport and the uh bus services and tracks and how we're sharing the cost with or how we working on the cost with the airlines on getting people out there. The state we have next year we have u you know the the opening of the temple and 20,000 people coming there but there's probably going to be a number of people coming through the airport at the same time. the au the Olympics coming up and you know the demand for parking. You know we we we had long debates about the parking lot uh for the employees and how we are

uh I don't know say the words negotiating how we how we working on the on the transportation in and out of the airport not from the airport other places. Yeah.

What's how's that and how was that affect your revenue and expenses? So, um, you you mentioned both the temple opening and the Olympics and a couple of things to note there. First, we serve on the state task force for transportation logistics for the Olympics. It's kind of a slow start as you'd guess, but uh we'll be a very active part of that. We still have people at the airport who were involved uh in the O2 Olympics. Uh many of them kind of getting ready to retire. So we've appointed a group of people within the airport who just by looking at the photo you go I think they may be here in 2034 uh if you know what I mean and uh they are u quite active uh they've already reached out to LA for example we'll be going to LA u the uh folks in LA have been terrific about saying come on over sit with us watch what we're doing uh and then we will go to the following winter Olympics as well uh to do the same thing essentially and observe and I feel like uh a having done this once before having people around who've documented what occurred uh and having an active group of people who are also connected with the state with the organizing committee uh we're going to be ready um these big events for an airport are typically big on the last day people arrive over a period of time and they all leave on the same day, which is our experience with the uh NBA All-Star game. Last time, for example, um the airport and Delta collaborated and used their hanger as a ticket lobby uh overflow. Um the ticket, you know, that may or may not be uh available to us in 2034 because uh we actually now own their hanger. they're leasing it from us and it needs to go eventually uh

to build a concourse C, but it'll go somewhere. Uh and if we have to use a sprung structure of some kind or whatever, we will figure that out. I'm not really uh too concerned about u that. But we also have a group of people who are very devoted to this uh and are excited uh connected uh and going to learn. Um, I don't imagine that we would need to build much in the way, in fact, I don't think it would be a terrific idea to build um anything really significant solely for the Olympics. It's a short-term um event and we feel like we're equipped. We'll we'll be able to handle it. Um we're also we've had a lot of interaction um with the church. Our air service development people have actually traveled with the church uh most recently in South America and Brazil. Uh and we are talking with not only Delta and our existing carrier base but with other airlines about operating charters during that period of time. Uh which I think makes a lot of sense. I know the church is uh very um interested and we to be blunt see it as an opportunity to really market the airport to additional foreign carriers uh who might otherwise not be aware not know uh or be um interested. And a good part of this next year I'll be spending probably traveling to meet some of those carriers and to talk about uh what it means to provide charter service. Uh it's doubtful that anybody would start permanent service simply for that event. They're going to want to know what's here. And this is really a great opportunity for us to let them sample this experience. Uh Salt Lake has some very unique large overseas markets, places like Fiji, for example, or the South Pacific Islands that when you

first think about Salt Lake City, you might go, "Wow, really? Where'd that come from?" Well, for obvious reasons. Uh and so we're going to do what we can to tap into those markets and hopefully promote uh additional particularly international uh service. Uh the church is going as when I arrived here actually they had um shuttle service from the airport uh to Temple Square. Uh and ultimately I think they agreed with tracks to basically convert that into a tracks situation. I think they're going to do both uh this time uh which is uh to take advantage of tracks but also provide shuttle services. Uh the other thing about the temple opening is and this goes for the Olympics as well. We will see a lot of private uh general aviation activity sort of like a a a Sundance at large. Um, I think if you remember this, we closed the or we're in the process of closing. I don't know if it's actually closed yet. The short runway 143

July July 1432, which is a very short runway, one of the originals.

It was used for air mail in the 20s. Um, and we don't really need it anymore. We're going to close that so that it's also a very um hot spot uh for runway incursions. So, we're going to eliminate that possibility, but we're going to save the pavement for parking for large GA type events like the temple opening, like the Olympics, uh, and other um, activities of that sort, which I think the Olympics itself will generate. There will be lots of activities that are Olympics related, uh, that, uh, general aviation will play an important part of. Uh we've obviously expanded uh the FBO facilities on the east side of the airport. Uh most importantly um and I'd love to know if you all get very many phone calls about this, but Salt Lake historically was known for having too much small general aviation u propeller-driven aircraft. Uh and they're slowly going away down to South Valley, hopefully out to Truella. And what we're seeing is large corporate hanger construction which I think is a sign of what's happening in the economy um overall here but we'll be uh much more able to accommodate uh those larger GA aircraft that you associate with those big um events. In so far as tracks and UTA are concerned, our planning staff in particular has a very close uh relationship with UTA and as you know they're uh planning on expanding tracks in a way that will really provide additional service uh to the airport, more lines uh which we're excited about. We continue to talk with them about bus service to the airport and I know they're interested uh in doing that. They have their own uh financial constraints but uh nevertheless uh the relationship there I

think is very strong and I expect it to uh to continue. There's no reason why it wouldn't. It's a very robust uh kind of relationship. I don't know if I've answered.

Yeah, I appreciate. I was Thanks for the details on the uh the big events, but my real concern is the uh seven days a week employees going out there and having and and passengers going out there on a daily basis. And that's where the the buses and the tracks is really my push to Yeah. for you and also my push as the state legislators, but through you to get that services because that helps the uh back to the just the quality of life for the the employees and and people getting out there and and resaving the hundred bucks on transportation and parking because now they're just taking tracks there or the bus there.

So that's my push on that. One thing I I just wanted to raise too uh really at the at the behest of the mayor uh we've been working with Delta uh and we have a task force going right now with Ski Utah and with the uh visit Salt Lake and Utah for Tourism uh to allow people to book not only their airfare but also ground transportation as a part of their ticket. Uh it sounds easy. It's apparently incredibly complicated but uh we're going to work through that. Uh, and I'm hoping, you know, really by the end of the year, at least with Delta, and once they start, I could imagine other airlines allowing that uh, as well. But this is a place where that would work particularly well. It works extremely well uh, with convention business because if you're coming to downtown Salt Lake, the easiest, fastest, cheapest way to get here is to jump on tracks. Uh, and so we're uh, we're making steps, I think.

Thank you. Other questions? I Oh, sorry, Council Member Petro Petro.

I mean, I think our airport isn't just the best for passengers, but I think it's the best executed and I'm always really proud that it's in District 1 and that I get to hang out with you guys so much. Um, we've seen instability with federal funding in other places that we didn't expect under this administration. Is this a something that we should be nervous about or is I we know we know that TSA has experienced significant disruption and that they may have a reconfiguration coming up based on ordinance, but um I'm thinking more in terms of like FAA. I'm thinking in terms of those grants that help us pay for the large capital projects. Um are you nervous at all about the stability of that funding coming up for future planning? You know, I'm not really uh nervous about we call it AIP. It's the airport improvement program. Um which is part of the FAA trust fund, so it's not subject to annual appropriations. Uh and the trust fund gets its resources from the federal jet fuel tax. And like other trust funds of its sort, they spend about half of that on the intended purpose and about half of that on the federal debt. So, uh it's pretty steady. Um, and I wouldn't expect to see uh too many changes. Fortunately, um, you know, we've we've been the beneficiaries of a tremendous amount of federal funding on the airfield for the new airport, and we're we're done with that. Um, and our local airport development office, which is located in Denver, said, "Okay, you guys can take a deep breath for a little while because you're not going to see this avalanche uh continue forever. There are other airports in the in the Mountain West and we've have disputed that but uh to no avail. Uh but we will continue to get a steady flow of the AIP grants. Uh in terms of the staff funding uh you know the the Department of

Homeland Security part that we see is still not funded. Uh the little thing they did to essentially get everybody their paychecks was a one-time um we have it's almost a permanent pantry uh going in our office now which has been I will say incredibly successful and thank you all for uh proving that appropriation. We're about 70% or so through that. So that's about $70,000 that was spent made a huge difference. We really we had one day where there were long lines and interestingly um it was that day because people were reading the news going you better get there 4 hours early and by everybody got there 4 hours early and TSA is they know when you go through the checkpoint they know that your flight isn't until 10:00 and you're here at 7 or 6 or whatever and so they were able to determine that's what happened. Uh, and you don't want to tell people not to get there early, but it is what it is. Uh, so until there is a new at least one-year extension, uh, we're just always paying attention. I'm on a large hug call with other airport directors probably twice a week just talking through this. Uh that thus far uh is is the only service part that we get from the federal government that's been really problematic. You always worry about air traffic control. Um and for us that's two parts. One is directly affecting Salt Lake City. The other is um the Salt Lake Center which is across the street from the airport that controls all airspace between Canada, Mexico, roughly Denver and LA. uh and um they've it's been good, but this is a national airspace and so it can be just fine here in Salt Lake, but if you're

going to New York and they're closed, you're not going to New York. So we we with other airports approach this uh in in that fashion. And I would say it um depending on what your bandwidth for nervousness is, it probably ought to be there somewhere. There isn't a lot that we can do about it except what we have done and would continue to do. Uh in the event that um folks aren't getting paid, we're going to do whatever we can to u help them through all of this. Yeah,

thank you. And thank you for taking care of our people. I think for us it's been amazing to watch how it's another level of government that when they don't execute pushes it down to us and which inevitably pushes it down to our citizens and property taxpayers and sales taxpayers. Um but taking care of those employees and those working-class people I think is a a shared priority. So thank you.

I would tell you we had a huge uh community response this time too. It's weird to see people showing up at the airport with a case of beans under their arms, but we had a little of that. And then one day, somebody knocked on the door and said, "Hey, the church just delivered eight pallets of food." Uh, and yeah, lo and behold, they did. Uh, and you know, it was just very much a community response, which has been uh really heartwarming. Council member Wharton. Um, also just wanted to uh congratulate you on doing such a great job and um running um one of the best run airports in the world. Um and uh I had the chance to meet with some Delta representatives recently and they just had great things to say about our airport and working with you and so um I just want to pass on um their appreciation and uh and mine as well. So, thank you.

And I'll just close us out by just echoing um that sense of gratitude. I mean, you shared uh two or actually four words you never hear often, which is under budget and on time. And so just my gratitude to um to you, Bill, Sean, and all of the airport um staff that make our airport really, I think, one of our crown jewels and something that we're really proud of here in Salt Lake. So, thank you for your hard work and diligence. All right, I think that closes us out. Uh let's move on to our next item, which is anformational. It's fiscal year 2026 legislative intents and open intents from previous years following up or followup. Um we'll be uh joined at the table by Allison Roland, council policy analyst. And we've also got Mary Beth Thompson um and Randy Hiller Hillier um uh present to answer questions.

Thank you, Madam Chair. As soon as I share my screen, we'll be good to go. Um this is really just to finish off to finish off um your review of legislative intents before the budget comes along and um your attention is pulled even more directions. Um sorry I have to I can't talk and um do this at the same time. There it is. So, um the the remaining uh two items or rather two sections of the legislative intents for today are one item I believe now remaining in the public services department after it sounded like um it may be time to close and continue the neighborhood district signs in the in the uh public services department. The second one there is FY is the the famous old um FY15 maintenance of business districts item. Um I believe there may be enough for a briefing on this, but we do have Director Jorge Chamoro here for um to be able to respond to any questions. Um, so I guess we can take it from there.

Council member Young. So, I mean, I would be interested, I guess, in the briefing before we closed it. Um, I just it's still a question that I get repeatedly um, related to opportunities for both expansion of services, cost of services, things like that. I know Sugar House is working very closely with economic development on what that looks like. Um, but to me closing it I think signals to the community like we're good and I I wouldn't be able to reflect that for my district needs at this time. So I'd advocate for keeping it open.

And I apologize I didn't mean to um to imply that uh the maintenance of business districts one would be closed. Um, it's the previous one on the signs. Other comments? And I'll just share that I uh share your concern, Council Member Young, about um trying to understand what um the appropriate level of service in these business districts is.

I think um maybe a good next step would be a briefing. I think the administration's done some good um work recently give with um specific um business districts and might have a way to talk it through um that the council could be help that could be helpful for the council. I think with the budget schedule coming up, we may want to work with the chair and vice chair and the administration about the timing of that briefing just logistically. So, we'll just plan on that. Other questions and and concerns? Council member Dugan going once, twice. I knew you had one in there. I knew there was one in there.

I'm just I'm basically going back to the neighborhood district signs open, keeping that one open and probably just instead of scheduling a briefing, can that just be added to the budget discussion on that one, the top one about the signs. I mean, we kind of we just did discussion about the historic signs 30 minutes ago. Yes, we could we could include it in the budget discussions. Um we we we could always include things in the budget discussion, right? So instead of having a separate discussion is what I'm saying. Yeah. Um I think what I was talking about is a separate discussion for the maintenance of business districts. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Okay. So it sounds like uh close and continue um is the next step for neighborhood district signs and then legislative intent remains open for maintenance of business districts. Am I capturing that correctly? Okay. So, just keeping them both open. Keeping them both open. Then we could close them after they Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Let's maintain keep them open. Okay. And then the remaining Can I ask what's the function of keeping the signs open? Did you just want to do pending funding to finish it all? Really? Not just for the historic signs, but all signs in general and just have it part of the discussion of the budget and then we can close. Okay. I see what you Okay. Because it's not just historic. Thank you.

Yeah. Not to historic giant. Yeah. Yeah. Thank you. And then finally, there are four councilled intents. Um you may recognize them because some of them were assigned to departments earlier and then um staff realized that actually there needs to be discussion among all of you. The first one is FY26 police reporting and privacy ordinance. My understanding is that um council staff is working on convening a meeting with IMS and the attorney's office to identify components of this, but um I'm not sure if anyone else uh or if anyone wants to comment or you want to discuss any questions. Council member Petro.

Um I'm happy to talk. Uh, Council Member Pui and I had a long discussion about this and I know it this issue kind of took like came to a head with the license plate readers. Um, but it appears some of the people who came to comment that night are not our typical constituents who come out to comment. They were software engineers who work for these firms. And when those people come to me and say, "You need to know that the pressure in my agency is for me to get to market and the quality assurance isn't there and we're making promises that I don't know that our products can deliver." That does feel like a place for us to slow down. So for me in asking for this one um and what we did, I would actually like any place that we have a repository of digitized information about people who either visit or call this place home that is potentially a vulnerability in what we're seeing emerge as a surveillance state. Um, and so I think we do owe it to ourselves and to our constituents to be more forward-looking in how we not only um deal with this, but also how we prioritize it. I mean, theoretically, a library card database is digitized personal information. Maybe it doesn't tell you where that person is at any given time like a license plate reader would. So maybe it's a lower priority, but um I think the with the advent of the cloud, the advent of surveillance capability, we really need to and this to me doesn't feel like a couple meetings and it's done. This feels like a paradigm shift in the way we make policy because these technologies are here and are not going back. So that's that's my context for wanting this. Um and it was spurred by the license plate readers, but for me it is so much more expansive. It's business licenses. It's you know, all of it. Thank you, Council Member Petro. Other questions, concerns? Okay. All right. The next one is from

FY29 on council member compensation. Um the idea was to return to uh a discussion of the ordinance governing elected official compensation.

And I can chime in on the status of this one um since I'll own part of it. um that we had um some good conversations with council members who volunteered to sort of do a deeper dive thinking about it and um they have made a recommendation about a path forward. Staff hasn't had the um bandwidth given other um events that have um popped up uh to move that ball forward, but we have a good kind of scaffolding outline of how that might look moving forward. I don't think it will I can pretty much confirm it won't be ready for the budget. Obviously, the council compensation is automatically adjusted along with all city employee compensation and so at least it's not ignored. Um, but that is still a com a program we need to push forward. It just will take staff time.

So, thank you. And to be clear, we're not speaking about the council pay amount. We're talking about the council pay ordinance and the mechanism that determines what we're paid. We are not talking about amounts and increasing at this point. Right. Currently, the ordinance ties the council it it automatically counts uh calculates the council member compensation based on a percentage of the mayor's salary. And I think that there's a desire to look at different ways to um come up with what that amount is, not using the amount as the determining factor. Excellent. Thank you. All right. Next.

Next is from FY24, Legal Defenders Association. Um, this is one that, uh, the council decided they'd like to keep it open as a reminder, um, to consider sometime during the during the coming year. So, this is one that, uh, I believe still also needs more time, but, um, I don't know if anyone has additional comments on it. I think it's also accurate to say that there's a little bit of an overlap with this intent and the intent related to the justice system review in general and the capacity in the justice system in general. So we um are aware of that overlap.

Okay. And the last one is from FY23, the rotating outside auditing of each city department. Um Jennifer may have an update on this one as well.

Um so we are required to do our annual financial audit that um is presented each you know January or February by ID Bailey that continues um uh that continues. Um we have gone through a successful RFP process to select I believe five um firms. So we now have five firms on contract that we can go to um if we need um a deeper review. I was hopeful that we would have kind of a proposal for um you of um what might be a good first sort of crack at a review. I think in the past um it was department by department, right? you would do an audit of the fire department or of CAN. Um I think that's very burdensome on the departments and so um we were working with the administration to figure out if there are ways to um evaluate either um things that they're wrestling with and would like answers to that can be win-win or um ways to make it less burdensome. So again, it's kind of um been pushed a little bit to the side based on recent things going on. Um but it's not forgotten. Thank you, Jen. Questions on this item?

Okay, excellent. That's it. I think that that that means we're done. Excellent. Or this portion anyway. Yes. Thank you, Allison. Um I will now ask for a motion for us to enter into a closed meeting. And the request um to go into the closed meeting is for the purpose of discussing pending or reasonably in imminent litigation and attorney client matters. I'll look for a motion. Madam Chair, I move that we go into a closed meeting for the purpose of um discussing pending or reasonably imminent litigation and advice of council. Second.

All right. It has been moved by council member Wharton and seconded by council member Dugan. I'll now do a roll call. Council member Dugan, I'm looking. Yes. Council member Lopez Chavez. Hi. Council member Wharton. Yes. I Council member Petro I. Council member Young I. And I'm an I as well.

All right. We are now entering into a motion passes. We're now entering into a closed meeting. At the end of the closed meeting, we will now proceed with the rest of the work session. If we could ask anyone who is not here for the closed meeting. I don't think that anyone is here. Uh but if you are, please step into the hallway. Thank you. Hey, hey, hey.

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one. Um, I have to say I am very excited for the next item on our agenda. And uh, next item on our agenda is a U city state of the city address. And with that, I'd like to turn the time over to you city government who will present that U City uh, state of the city address. Over to you.

Hello, my name is Ash Ramirez. I'm a senior at West High School in District 4. This is my first year in new city of government and I can't fully express how grateful I am to for this experience. Honestly, my only regret is not finding it about finding out about it sooner. I joined because I wanted to prove to myself that I could grow as a leader and truly help my community. For a long time, I struggled with low low self-esteem and worried that I couldn't make a difference. Sometimes I find it hard to communicate with others and to often see the world a bit differently. But I decided those challenges shouldn't stop me. I pushed myself to step out of my comfort zone and now I'm doing things I never thought possible. One of the YCG event that stood out to me was the student unity summit to eradicate hate where students from different schools came together to address hate motivates violence and bullying. It was powerful to see over 100 high school students collaborating, sharing ideas and personal stories about about how to improve not only our schools but our communities as well. This year, YCG students also raised $5,925 for the Utah Food Bank MLK Junior Day of Service project. Enough to provide more than 18,000 meals for families in need. That's make that what's makes this program so powerful. YCG is gives us teenagers a chance to engage with real issues, talk to city leaders and elected officials and participate in meaningful service. The program empowers us to become the leaders our city needs. I want more teenagers to realize they have a voice and I truly believe everyone is welcome in this program. Thank you.

Perfect. Thank you, Ash. Hello, Salt Lake City Council members. My name is Yamato Lurwell. I am a senior at East High School this year and I live in District 6. I have only been a part of youth city government for one year, but my short time as a participant has given me numerous lessons and what has felt like years of experience. Being a part of YCG has truly enlightened me to the various pathways that lead to change within my community. One such event that had a profound impact on me was the National League of Cities Conference held in Salt Lake last November. It was incredible meeting students from all over our country that were passionate about their democracy and education. Giving tours of Salt Lake City and participating in workshops at the conference with delegates from Florida to California and from Washington to Texas led me to the knowledge that our seemingly different problems in our communities were not so different at all. One message that resonated with me that I continuously find myself thinking about was given by Mayor Victoria Woodards of Tacoma, Washington. She simply stated, "The youth are not our futures. they are present. And I had the opportunity to prove that during the legislative session this year. This February, Rebecca Cummings, a leader with Let Utah Read, explained that 32 books have been banned in Salt Lake in Utah, is cementing Utah as the state with the highest book banning rate in the US. The law should not take outlets of expression away from teens. Youth voices need support and love. Banning books can stunt critical thinking, reduce reading engagement, and impact academic achievement, which ultimately harms our future. After the disheartening news of the extensive book bands, I attended the readin at the Utah State Capital. Older generations embraced their tote bags.

Middle-aged adults chatted about important messages found in their novels. And finally, smiling children were everywhere reading, thinking, and loving books they had in hand. Education is so important and books are the backbone. Books serve as an opportunity for reflection and in some casing cases even lifelines. I urge you to create policy protecting freedom of expression like you did with those amazing flags behind you. I envision a future where youth know their importance and can speak their voices and know they are in fact the present and do not have to wait for the future. Thank you.

Thank you for that, Ymano. Um, my name is Elise Monk and I'm a junior at Salt Lake Center for Science Education in District 1. This is my first or sorry, this is my second year with you city government, and during my time here, I've learned several things like the operation of local and state government, public speaking, and resources available to the community. This is my first time addressing the city council, and I'm honored to be here. But that honor is mingled with the responsibility to bring to the council's attention a problem that seems to go completely unnoticed. On the east side of Salt Lake Proper, there are seven hospitals and west of I-15 in Salt Lake Proper, there are none. There's just one hospital in West Valley City, Pioneer Hospital, which is known for its poor quality. This lack of hospital access is then exacerbated by the fact that people on the west side are far more likely to suffer from preventable conditions like type two diabetes and obesity, pulmonary illnesses related to the poor air quality caused by industries and intent um and refineries intentionally placed west of the Jordan River. This is also worsened by the lack of availability of public transportation connecting the east and west sides. Depending on where you live, it can take up to 55 minutes to get from the west side to a university hospital. This is unacceptable. A hospital is not something that someone should have to wait for a bus to take them to. This lack of specialized and in some cases even primary care makes it not only inconvenient, but also dangerous for people living on the west side. It's been proven in studies that being further away from a hospital can greatly increase the probability of life-threatening injury and illness by delaying. I understand that there are plans to build a hospital funded by the University of Utah in 2020. This is a step in the right direction, but it is not a total solution, and we will need more than one hospital to bridge the gap. I understand that hospital placement is not determined by the city, but I believe that the council is in a position of power and can help advocate for better access. I trust that all council members, especially those representing the west side, will continue to make our city as equitable as it can be. Thank you.

Thank you, Elise. Hello, my name is Tommy Peralta Flores. I am a senior at East High School. I represent District 6 and this is my first year as a part of YCG. I joined because I wanted to talk about issues that don't get a lot of attention and learn how to stand up for others. This year, YCG received funding through the youth advocacy grant innovative uh from Salt Lake County, which focused our attention on public health policies. We were able to look at several issues that I want to tell tell you more about. Homelessness is an ongoing problem. We learned through guest speakers that range from people working as grassroot level to legislative level that high cost of housing, low wages, and poor policies continue to push more people into difficult situations. I believe homelessness is a problem we can solve. If we work to understand the cause and effect and development ideas such as more accessible shelters and community-based solutions, we can better support those in need. In addition to homelessness, we were we were able to learn about nlloxxone, the op the opioid anti-gen. Nlloxxone is not harmful to to administrators, even if it is given to someone not suffering from an overdose. YCG worked with Senator Jennifer Plum to educate other legislators about the bill, a bill that increases access to this life-saving drug. We were also able to participate in the lockxone training which taught us how to recognize the signs of an opioid overdose and how to respond in a life saving way. The training is a free available to and available to everyone through the organization Utah and the lock zone. bills like SB87 and the free trainings that we took Utah from being we took Utah from being the fourth highest in in nation for

opioid overdose in 2014 to the 42nd by 2024. From my personal observation in our city, there should be more awareness and greater availability of nlloxxone in public spaces to give people an even greater chance of saving someone's life. the YCG and the YAGI grant. I was able to talk about these issues in a national level earlier this year. I had an opportunity to travel to Washington DC for the 2026 Community Anti-Drug Coalition of America, Kataka. While there, I spoke with with Senator John Curtis and Representative Blake Moore where I was able to talk about an aloxxone distribution made possible by Utah Senate Bill 87 sponsored by Senator Jennifer Plum. That experience showed showed me that youth can play a role in real policy discussions and it made me even more committed to raising awareness here in our city. Thank you for your time and for listening to the issues that matter to me and to our community. We normally don't do a round of applause, but

two more. Two more. Okay, awesome.

Can we still give them a round of applause? I know we're not all the way done yet, but Good evening. My name is Evelyn Dava Martinez. I'm a senior at East High living in District 2 and this is my first year participating in YCG. I believe it is truly one of the most communitydriven experiences I've ever been a part of. I joined this program looking for ways to better understand my city, but it wasn't until I saw my community in action that I truly understood the power of young voices. In February, East High and Salt Lake City Schools walked out of class to protest federal immigration enforcement. In that moment, when I saw hundreds of my peers walking out, I realized that the youth representing our city are passionate, brave, and intelligent. Being part of this youth movement has empowered me to speak up and voice my concerns to those who have the power to create change. It hurts me and all those who participated in the protest to see a facility being sold to ICE in our city. Converting a warehouse into a detention center is inhumane and unsafe. The building was designed to store goods, not people. The community has voiced concerns that the existing sewage, water, and road infrastructure in industrial area cannot support a potential detention center. With a projected capacity of 7,500 to 10,000 beds, the facility would be one of the largest in the US. Not only will this drain public resources, but it will lead to civil rights violations, family separations, and the terrorizing of immigrant communities. Beyond their physical walls, detention facilities endanger human lives through systemic neglect and abuse. Reports highlight a lack of necessities, preventable deaths due to ignored medical conditions, and disappearances occurring when detainees are transferred without notifying their families or

legal counsel. My vision for Salt Lake City is one that is welcoming, humane, and grounded in dignity, not fear. I want to express my sincere gratitude to the mayor and mayors of the council who have expressed great concern about this issue. It is encouraging to see this body engaged so meaningfully with resident input and I truly appreciate your commitment to taking initiatives for our community. I believe that together as members of Salt Lake City, we can come up with better solutions. Thank you. Hello, my name is Avery McAfee. I am an internationally adopted immigrant who currently lives in District 7. I am finishing my junior year at Highland High School and my first year working with YCG, which I'm so glad to have joined because of all the opportunities to work on my leadership and speaking skills. I'm so thankful to YCG for also cultivating a diverse and welcoming environment, especially during mounting anti-immigrant attitudes. As I am sure you are aware, we are seeing increased arrests and hatred for immigrants across the nation. In our own state, debates over HB88 highlight a deep divide between legislators seeking to restrict undocumented immigrants access to public services and passionate community members like my classmates who strongly oppose such measures. I want you to know that my classmates are concerned about the effects of anti-immigrant legislation. A couple weeks ago, my school hosted our annual multicultural picnic. It's an event hosted jointly by all the cultural clubs of Highland. At this picnic, I had the privilege of sharing personal experiences with other diverse students. After meeting more of my peers, I've learned that many of my classmates and their parents have taken long journeys to reach Salt Lake City, only to be confronted with the fear of being deported and separated from their loved ones or facing inequitable treatment. Fear not, though. I also learned that my classmates are grateful

to have connected with people who share similar experiences and backgrounds. My friends are just as Uton as you and I are. And they shouldn't have to live in quiet fear of being mistreated or deported. Despite this mounting uncertainty and fear, I'm glad that in Salt Lake City, my community and my friends have made it known that I am welcome here. As an immigrant, our community has been so good to me. I feel seen and valued here. I am called by name, not by slur. I am a friend, not a foe. I am equal, not inferior. In 2024, Salt Lake City earned a certification for being immigrant inclusive. Now, we need to defend it. I ask you to not back down from these blatant infringements of civil rights and to oppose and act. I love Salt Lake City and I know you do, too. I love this place I call home and I don't want to see it ruined by hate and malice. Thank you for supporting YCG, Youth City, and other Youth City sponsored programs. They make a difference for all members of our community.

Yes. I'd love to open it up as we typically do to council members for comments, questions, follow-ups. Council member Dugan.

Sure. Uh powerful message and I appreciate it. I uh really uh am inspired by your desire to engage and by your desire to you know help out and promote the city. Uh I really like the idea that you know you you've as I think the first speaker talked about stepping out of his comfort zone and I really uh am impressed that your age you're doing that and you're going this far. Uh I was never uh at this level at your age and I'm it just it just uh warms my heart that we have upcoming leaders. I shouldn't say upcoming leaders, we have leaders of your caliber uh helping out the city, making changes at your school, but also making changes across the board. So I appreciate that. Keep it up. keep reading and keep pressing the boundary. So, thank you very much,

Council Member Lopez Chavez. And then I guess we'll go down the line because I think we all want to say something.

Thank you, Chair. I just want to say thank you from the bottom of my heart for taking the time to join Youth City, but also taking the time to educate us about the issues that concern youth in our city. And also wanted to give a shout out. I got to participate with the thousand plus students that marched from East High School all the way to the top of the hill and to really listen to the significant impact that it's having on families, friends, and our community. And although it might seem that you are young and in high school, it's truly you that lead us and promote an ideal place of living in Salt Lake City. A place that is welcoming, a place that is safe, a place that is unified across so many experiences. So, I just want to challenge you and ask you when are you going to run for office because I can't wait to help you and I can't wait to work for you one day. Thank you.

Uh thank you so much for presenting and for um taking the time to be here and for putting um such thought and care into your remarks to us. I feel uh really good about um the points that you've raised. You make you feel help make me feel like I'm doing the right thing because I share a lot of those concerns and I share a lot of those the positions that you um articulated even though some of those things are outside the city's control. Uh, I think it's still really important for you to to come and share that with us um because those are still part of of things that are happening in Salt Lake City. Um, I first got involved in like politics and government and things like that um in my last year of high school. And I'll just say that it's as you continue to get older and um do whatever you decide to do after high school and go into the workforce or go to college or whatever, you're going to have more things that are going to compete for your time and your attention and your talent. Um which is a good thing. Um, but I hope that you will, whether you decide to run for office or whether you decide to um serve the community in a different way. Um, I hope that you'll always keep this um desire you have right now to to speak up and to give back and to be involved and to help others and be a leader in whatever way that you choose for your life. um because like I said, you're going to have lots of other um things that are going to come up and and other paths that you you might want to take. But I hope that you'll remember what's keeping you um interested and and wanting you to be here at the table speaking to us today because you can help continue to inspire others in whatever leadership role you decide to take on. Thanks for being here.

Um so excited. This is like one of the best things that we do every year. Mostly because we don't have to listen to ourselves. We get to listen to you and listening to you is so much better. Um I this is like a really weird moment in time. I know you come here and like you're speaking to the council, right? And so we are council members. We're also people who are living through this moment in history. And none of us thought in the year 2026 we would have to literally convince people that putting humans in warehouses was a bad idea. we thought we would be, I don't know, like doing some great scientific advances and and moving in a forward trajectory. Um, and so it's really easy to get real discouraged. It's really easy to feel really limited in what we can do. And then you all come and you remind us that just cuz this is an exhausting timeline, this by no means is the end of the timeline. We have a commitment to making this city just a little bit better. Just moving the needle in the direction of improvement, of more welcoming, of more prosperous, of more sustainable. And then we're handing it off to you. And you're going to do the same thing. And thank you for coming and offering your energy because I know it's exhausting. I have a ninth grader whose bottom I am constantly trying to kick to make sure he has a future for himself. So you guys are in the thick of it. I know your your AP psychology class at West is intense. It's I know you guys are facing tough stuff. So, not only are you facing headlines that are scary, you're also at a really tough moment where you're having to make decisions for the rest of your life and and should have the freedom to and instead of just focusing on your individual future. You came here, you shared with us what your priorities are and you breathe a little life into at least this council person who is feeling like it's it's a heavy moment to tro trod through. So, thank you for for what you offer to me and thank you for the hope that you

represent for what comes next. I promise that we'll do as best we can. I'm with you. We're going to we're going to that warehouse. All right. So, thank you.

Yeah. I I echo the comments of my fellow council members. I'm so grateful to have the opportunity to hear from you about the issues that you're experiencing um and that you have concerns with here in the city. Um, a lot of times when we're making decisions, um, it feels like, you know, we're making a decision about what does tomorrow look like or what does Salt Lake City look like in a month or a year. And you really represent the importance of, you know, pushing me and my fellow council members to think on that. We're not talking about just what it looks like tomorrow. We're really talking about, you know, the future of Salt Lake City that you will inherit as our leaders moving forward. And whether that's looking at it through the lens of, you know, pushing yourself and wanting to belong to a larger community, looking at it through the lens of wanting to be able to go to the public library or your school library and check out a book that you're interested in, and not having two people in the state of Utah have the ability to limit that decision. whether we're looking at, you know, the future of being able to, um, make sure that our families feel welcome here, regardless of their backgrounds, um, and instead celebrating those opportunities to learn from people who have a different set of experiences. um as opposed to having those families worry about what it means when they walk outside the door or when they drop their children off at school whether or not they will be there when they come home in the afternoon. I also really wanted to honor your call for more health care um related to what we're doing holistically across the city. Um, you have some amazing champions up here who have taken a lot of time to make sure we all as council members are educated

about some of the historical inequities that continue to exist in our city and really inspire us to look at health care, to look at grocery stores, you know, to look at safe routes to school and sidewalks and making sure that those are holistically available across the city. Um, finally, I want to make sure that we um also call out your topic of looking at how we're treating individuals who are currently unhoused or who may be suffering um with, you know, various needs related to whether that's a substance abuse um or a need for housing. Um, to me, one of the things that, um, often becomes true of, um, individuals as they're in middle school and of high school is you start to look at it through the lens of what does this mean for me? And you really did an excellent job of turning that around and saying, no, what does it mean for the people around me? And I really want to create a space where we're looking out for the people in my community, not just for what your current like lived experiences. And bringing that to our congressional representatives is incredible. So, thank you for that. Um, two things that I would challenge you all to consider as you move forward. I think the first thing that um I love to hear from not just my residents but students and you know no matter what your age is if you see an issue in your community be curious ask the question who's in charge of that who's helping us you know to make that aspect of the community a better place because in a lot of ways it's not always obvious and it's not something where you're like oh I bet I know which elected official that is. So

by being curious and being open to you know the problem solving, the critical thinking and the learning, it makes you a better advocate. The second thing I challenge you is to consider the role you have through this amazing experience um that the adults around you and here in the city have fostered to also be an educator of your peers. Um, there are so many individuals who share your concerns and you have the opportunity to help educate others. Whether it's encouraging them to participate in public comment at the local level, the state level, or even the national level, being able to encourage them to engage in their local community organizations. but people will listen to you because you have that title of having served um with Youth City here in Salt Lake City. And so use that to help benefit the community around you. Last but not least, I just want to take an opportunity um to hopefully join you in thanking all of the adults who made this possible for you. It's not just our amazing leaders here in the city and the staff who have really created this experience, but it's also all the other adults in the room you see here who helped to make sure that you were able to be where you needed to be to participate in the learning. So, if you'll join me in giving those folks a round of applause, I would appreciate it. I echo the comments uh made by my fellow council members up here and I think I just want to express my gratitude to each one of you for sharing your lived experience with us for sharing your very real recommendations about what we can do differently and for sharing your

courage. I think that as you probably know already in your life, being a leader is not an easy thing. And by you coming up here and providing the state of the city, youth state of the city address to us, you showed some courage, not only in coming here, but in what you shared. And I want you to know that that courage is contagious. And your courage makes me feel a little bit more brave today to be able to tackle some of the big challenges that you talked about. And so thank you for your courage and I think my challenge is I'm looking for more of it. Thank you so much. And I think now we will move towards taking a picture

and we'll have all the students in city government. Come on up here. Just Yeah. Come on up.

Good. Come on, Erica. Too much. We'll go the other side.

I don't know where we're looking.

One, two, three. All right. Awesome. Can we all look at Phoenix really quick there? Yeah. We're not ready yet. We're not ready yet.

Nice. Thank you. Thank you. We're looking forward to dinner. So, we've got

we've got uh I believe uh two final items. The first is report of the chair and vice chair. And there is no report from the chair and vice chair. Um and second item is report and announcements from the executive director. No reports. Okay. The council work session is now adjourned and we will convene as a group for lunch with you city.

Thank you so much. Dinner. Dinner. Hate is loud. It gets clicks. It gets attention. Hate, however, is actually quite small. But love, love is the majority. Love fills our hearts, our lives, our every day.