City Council - Regular Meeting

Recording in progress.

Madam chair we're ready when you're ready.

Alright. I'd like to welcome everyone to the Sandy City Council meeting for today Tuesday February 24. We are lucky enough to be joined tonight by Scout troop five thousand two hundred two. So thanks to Scott Tasker as the troop leader and all of the boys for joining us today and we've given you special tasks to perform in our city council meeting tonight. We appreciate your taking that on and we appreciate your being here.

Let's go ahead and go into our normal procedures, and that starts with a prayer. And I understand that Andy is gonna be leading us in a prayer. Would Andy like to come down to the podium? And, Andy, just come down to the podium, pull one of those microphones close to you, and lead us in prayer. And we will appreciate you doing that for us tonight.

Heavenly father, thank you for this day. We thank thee for this opportunity to be here, and please bless that we can have safety here. And please bless that the mayor can and please bless that the please the city council and please bless that we can make good decisions for our community and thank thee for everything we have with all and every Jesus Christ.

Thank you, Andy. That was Andy Denzer, you guys. And Strider is going to join us in the presentation of the colors and you will lead us also in the pledge of allegiance. So you ready to do that for us? Come on down and lead us in the pledge.

Color guard, attention. Audience, please rise. Scap, salute. Those not in uniform, please place your right hand over your heart. Color guard.

Guard forward march. Callegard Halt, please recite the pledge of allegiance. Flag of The United States Of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible,

with liberty and justice for all.

To car guard allegiance posted a vlog of The United States Of America. Car guard posted a vlog of the great newsletters. Color guard honoring the colors. Audience, please be seated.

Thank

you. Thank you so much. We appreciate you troop five thousand two hundred two and they're gonna stick with us guys so we're gonna have them throughout our meeting. Alright. Let's do introductions. Mister Fratto, would you like to start?

Of course. Thank you madam chair. My name is Dustin Fratto. I'm with the city council office. There are a couple other council staff members in the back of the room. Justin Sorensen and Liz Theriault.

I'm Tracy. I'm council for the council.

Chris Edwards with the council office. Chris Nichols, Sandy City Council District three.

Cindy Sharkey at large. Brooke D'Souza at large.

Erin DeKaiser at large.

And online, would you guys go ahead and introduce yourselves, please?

Brooke Christensen District 1. Allison Stroud District 2. Marcy Houseman District 4.

Mayor Monica Zoltansky. I'm Shane Pace city administrator.

Jeff Robinson sitting in for Lynn Pace.

Alright. Thank you everyone. Alright. We have a fairly short agenda tonight. Two information items, a consent item, and then as usual we will take general citizen comment at or as close to 6PM as we can fit it into our agenda. Our first item is an information item on the Sandy Amphitheater, and we are lucky enough to have birthday boy Merle Marsh doing our presentation. Happy birthday, Merle.

Thank you very much. I

was kinda hoping there'd be donuts or cake or something, I guess I had to bring that myself. Is that how that goes? Okay. I'll remember that next time. Hey. Thank you for having us here. It's actually been a while since we've been able to present. We are we normally do it every year, but we actually didn't get doing it last year. So this is kind of a wrap up of 2024 and 2025. And just as it shows on the screen there, we are very proud to say we are, you know, four time winners of the best of state award, twice for the best entertainment venue and twice for the best performance venue in the public realm.

So very excited about that and proud of it. We've a great team that does a lot of great work. I also want to make sure I introduce Nicole Atkinson who's here with us. She is our venue manager and one of the great members of our team that helps make this all possible. So here's just a quick rundown of some of the numbers to give you an idea of where we're at. Our average attendance per show over the last two years has been twenty three fifty five out of a venue of twenty seven five. That's pretty darn good. We were happy to say that we sold out every in house production, meaning that any show that we produced over the last two years, we sold them out every time. That's that's a good record for us. We're happy to be able to accomplish that.

Our social media presence is climbing like crazy. We're around 34,000 followers right now, and we've got about 15,000 individuals on our email list. Now to be on the email list, you have to say, I wanna be on your email list. Right? This is for the people that are looking for an opportunity to take advantage of the pre sales. So 15,000 on this. And by the way, the Sandy Arts Guild has about 14,000 and some on theirs. So we have a lot of people that are following us very closely. Exciting too about the Google rating increase. Out of five stars, we went from four and a half to 4.78.

That's really climbing. We're working very hard to make sure that we're providing great experiences for people. And overall, the total number of reviews, not just five star reviews, but overall reviews has climbed. So we're proud of what we've been able to accomplish. A sample of some of the reviews that we get online. Yeah. I'd love being that guy that reads for you. But just quickly, you can see that people have enjoyed it very, very much from the sound to the staff to the experience they've had. I enjoy the reference here about the Sandy Amp Services red carpet. And that's true.

We work very, very hard every training session with the volunteers. When we have staff meetings, we talk about how we make the experience better for the people that are coming to the amphitheater. So that's just a sample of some of the reviews we've received. Love to tell you what's coming. There are some things that are already on sale. I can run down them for you. Metric is on sale. Nitty Gritty Dirt Band's on sale. You can also see the diverse programming that we're doing. The Dead South, which is sold out already, just unbelievably popular. We had them two years ago. Jimmy Eat World, which is a very big deal that we got that. That also is nearly sold. We're working very hard to see if can get a second night out of them. The Brothers Osborn was just announced yesterday.

Death Cab for Cutie, that's one of those that sold so fast that it was hard to have anything left for the public to go on sale because the artist sale was so big. I had people calling me that, you know, one of those like, oh, didn't we go to high school together? Can you get me tickets?

You know what

I mean? So it's a challenge to do that. And so we worked really hard and managed to get second night out of death cab for Cutie. And just to give you an idea how complicated that is, the problem was when they're traveling from Denver to Utah and then to the Bay Area or something as they're doing that, because of the tight turnaround, it required two overnight drives. So to be able to do a second night at Sandy, they're gonna have to fly in extra drivers for the buses and the trucks to finish the tour out because they can't have the same drivers do those back to back drives.

So it's a really big deal when they have to figure out how can we squeeze in a second night, but that gives you an idea of how how excited people are that they're gonna be here. I think that's also one that you might see on the secondary market some ridiculously high priced tickets. It's important to understand we don't control the secondary market. Utah is very strong about, hey. If you bought the ticket at your property and you wanna sell it, you can sell it. So, anyway, that's a challenge. But I will say there are many scalpers that when the second night got announced went, oh, no. Because now there were another 2,700 tickets available at face value. Anyway, so that's really good for death cab for cutie. Lee Bryce OAR, those have been announced.

So it's still coming to be announced, Mount West Ballet. I think there's room in Kapalea this year. We'll be in the snow sometimes in May. The high School Jazz Band Fest, the American West Symphony Chorus, and Moving to Park, three of our free events we'll be doing at the amphitheater. We still have 11 dates that have been confirmed. We just can't announce them yet. When you have national tours like this, the artist is in control of when they announce that they're coming, and so we can't I can't even go, oh, you know, he looks like or anything. I just we have to give that to them. And then we also have 12 other artists that have dates on hold that are looking to come that haven't confirmed yet. We hope that they can get them here and a few venue rentals also.

So it's a big season. We're kinda excited about what's coming. Now what are we trying to do to make it better at the amphitheater? Right? One of the things we're working on now is the idea of premium experiences. This has been happening at many venues, not just the amphitheater, many places around trying to find a way to say, how do we take what we have to offer and sweeten it? How do we make it, even more? And so the goal we have here is to try to start working on some suites at the Sandy Amphitheater. The good news is where we're trying to put them right now does not involve removing any other seats. This is not reducing capacity in any way, any seats that already exist.

This is moving in and around some spaces that we have available. The idea about what can come with some of the premium suites are things like premium access and parking, reserved parking, special entrances, your tickets are reserved, a concessions and merchandise concierge, is great, like in seat service from the suites. And then a premium lounge will be part of have a full service bar as part of it. You may remember we just did some new expansions at the amphitheater, and we have that upper plaza level above the new concession space. And then there is an opportunity to put that lounge.

And it is true. It might be reserved for suites some of the time, but it might be open to everybody other times. It kinda depends upon what the demand and use on the suites is about. As far as the impact, like I say, we won't replace any existing inventory. There will be some additional staffing requirements, but fortunately, none of those will be city staff. That's gonna be, the catering team and the merchandise team that work with us that are partners at the amphitheater. So our goal is to raise the venue's profile and to raise some additional revenue. Just quickly on the personal seat license so it kind of understands what that is. That's kind of like being able to go, I wanna buy first right of refusal on that chair. And then that means that you can buy the ticket in that chair.

If you choose not to, then it's available to somebody else. But it gives you the first right of refusal to buy that ticket. So it's a way of reserving a specific seat. So, again, it doesn't take anything out of the inventory but makes it possible for people to go like, that's my favorite chair in Row f or whatever it might be. Right? Okay. So what is possible to do? Right now, what you can see here, this is an overhead of the amphitheater. And those areas that look like swimming pools we're thinking maybe putting a swimming pool, but the little blue areas there, that's where the current light poles are. There's that those two giant light poles, I think you're familiar with them, that are right in the middle of the venue.

That's there. And the plan right now is to just put seating in and around those light poles. In the past, they put some captain's chairs and some things like that there, but this the goal here will be something much better, much more elevated that will be in that space. And then that space behind can serve as kind of a extended area of that. That's available right now without us having to do any construction or anything.

That's only furnishing it with the furniture that would be required to make that happen. As we move forward, hopefully by next season, the area in pink there is what is called the Sound Bunker. Now we built this amphitheater long, long ago. In that box there, you had to have a lot of equipment and gear that was functioning for the building. But as times change and and needs are different, right now that's basically an empty chamber inside there.

And so if we take the roof off of it, we can do two levels of seating that can go in there and create suites in that space. Boy, dead center, prime, prime, prime. Those would be the first to go, I'm sure. But anyway, so those that'll be a really fantastic facility in there. And then our other goal is eventually to take out the light poles.

And if we take out the light poles and replace them with other needs because the the ability to find people that are willing to make that climb to do the spotlight work is becoming harder and harder. So in a way, poles just aren't functioning as they were originally designed to, so there's better use of that space. So we're if we take out those light poles, then you can flush that out more. And the blue space behind it that you see there, you can actually put tiered levels in there that will provide other seating and additional suites in that space. So how are we gonna do it?

The good news is we don't have to do any money upfront. Our programming partner, Postfontein, has offered to do the cost of the construction and the furnishing of the space, and then we will be able to work out over five to ten years a payback on that that will come from the revenue generated by the suites. So, again, it won't come from our coffers. It'll come from the gross revenue that's generated by the suites. There'll be a portion of it that will go first there, and then we'll be able to reap some other benefits from that.

So furnishings, construction costs all covered by Postfontein. The gross revenues will help cover that investment. Any additional expenses from staff and materials will come out of that. And then there's a team that works with Postfontein that has done this at venues all across the country. They're actually like the premium experience team is kind of what they're called. So they will take a percentage of the first year, again, out of the gross, and then a much smaller percentage. And over time, they will take no more percentage. But it's gonna be their job to sell it. They're begging us to hurry and get going because they've got people going, I want I want in. I want in.

Right? So we're doing our best to get moving on that. So there is a team that will get some money out of that. And then what's left from that, the net revenue will be divided based upon who produces the show. So these suites will be available for the shows that we produce also.

So those five to six shows that we produce during the year, we will be able to keep 100% of the net revenue from that show when it's our turn. Right? So that's a way that we're gonna be able to generate additional revenue at the venue, be able to get more out of the venue, and create a high end experience at the amphitheater. So I'm not Britton Mahoney or Peach Pitt, but if you have a question for me here, please I'm happy to ask answer any questions you got. Or if you got some for Nicole, she'll be happy to answer also.

Miss Nicholl, so how many total suites are you thinking? And are they going to be phased?

Right now to start with because of construction, it'll be two suites with kind of an elevated experience behind that's available. Over time, we're hoping to have those two suites plus one, two, three, four. Let's see one, two, three, four, five others so seven with the bunkers and then back behind two each. So nine to 10. We will also work out either at the ADA seating that exists or a space just on the east side that they can have flat access to an ADA suite.

Okay. Awesome. And but we're just planning on two for this season? Or

We can do two now without having to do any major construction.

The light bases? Correct. Just, like, do some roping around

like a wood table sort of around the base, right, to turn it into a space. Okay. Now if it turns out we can pull some miracle off, right, and get them out. But right now we're planning on just those around the pole.

Okay.

And the personal seat licenses. Admittedly, I think those will sell last. The suites are much more desirable, but we can also start the personal seat licenses right away because that also requires no construction.

So the the private suites or whatever they're called, they're gonna be varying in size like maybe from eight to 15 people or 16

people. It might be four seats in one, six in another. Yep.

K. Exactly.

Are there sponsorship opportunities to, like, name those suites maybe?

Or

Probably not naming them. They're you really have to be careful when you're in a concert venue because you you really have named sponsors inside the venue because then it looks like the artist is supporting Sprite or whatever. Right? So normally naming things happen outside the venue or the name of the whole venue. But one just as an FYI, one of the companies that was looking about removing the poles, as soon as they knew what it was for, they said, we wanna buy the suite. Nice. So he was ready to say, I'll take it right now.

Very cool.

Yeah.

I know that Red Butte has some opportunities like this, but it's not it's not really infrastructure. They just rope off. They'll lay the white seats out, you know, and you can sit there. Yep. And those seem

to sell out pretty good.

Yep. Does it take any way anything away from the amphitheater experience of just being, you know, grass seeding, that type of thing?

Yeah. I mean, I personally don't

think so. I think it elevates the experience. Right? It's not in front of anybody going like, well, now I can't see because that guy's in the suite in front of me. Uh-huh. And like I said, we're not reducing capacity at all. So the way we're working very hard to design it is it will just be an addition, not in any way subtracting from what we're trying to do.

And all the interior renovations were made like green room, those things to bring us up to where artists want to come to the venue and that type of thing.

We have some more plans. There's never enough storage. Does anybody have enough storage in their world? Mean, there's never enough storage. We have some more plans about what we wanna try to do, but we're just doing it piecemeal as we can raise the revenue and do it.

Okay. Thank you.

Yeah. Welcome.

Miss DeSouza. Thank you. You guys are doing an amazing job and I love I'm on the email list and I see the social media and I did miss opportunity to purchase the first Metric or

Dev

Cat for Cutie show but I was excited when there was another show announced because I did get tickets to that one and I'll be at Metric so I'm excited. My bank account maybe isn't as excited but but I have a question. A little while ago, we had talked about the need to maybe repaint the stripes for the stairs and the numbers because the the paint was fading and it wasn't reflective and it was hard for people to see in the in the later season shows because it gets darker earlier. Gets darker. Yeah. And I'm just wondering if any of that is coming up, if we're able to consider that.

I believe so. I mean, we'll we coordinate with facilities all the time. And so when those things get to that point, we we try to bring them back up to, you know, spec. So we'll be working with facilities on that.

Okay. Sounds good. That was my only question. Thank But good job. Keep it up.

Thank you.

Thank you so much.

Thank you, madam chair. Yeah. I just wanna say I love this. There's no bigger fan than me of taking out the light poles. So that's super exciting.

Thanks, Aaron.

And I didn't know council member D'Souza was so hip going to the Metrix show and death cab, which I thought you were going there, but I'm going to. I'm putting dibs on that ticket just so you know if it's available, Chris. But I'm not too familiar with the history of the provider. If you work with Postfontein or the administration does, how that goes down. But I just wanna say, as an avid concert goer, I actually returned from a festival this last weekend in Tempe. And I I know that they are putting up some of the best acts around. Yeah. And so kudos to whoever's working with them. Great job contracting with such an amazing provider. They're doing an excellent job.

Thank

you. And appreciate all the work you're doing. Thank you.

Thank you so much.

And Ms. Houseman has a question.

Not exactly a question Madam Chair but thank you for the opportunity. Just adding on to what's already been shared. Thank you for this update. Thank you for the vision that you continue to bring Merle. Even though I know you said you've not been able to present to us. You you pack such a punch when you do. I love I love when you come. I love what you share. I especially want to just acknowledge publicly some conversations you and I've had as a result of last season and just some feedback that was shared. You and I were able to visit.

You really shared the depth of behind every key decision that's been made with the renovation and just you've always been very responsive and it's exciting to see you empowering people and the fact that this kind of new addition is being done through a partnership effort. I'm just a big fan of collaboration and getting things done through partnerships. So thank you for your leadership, for your vision, for just always looking for the best programming, the best user experience, all of the above. Thank you for all you do and for the Again, our volunteers are phenomenal and none of this happens without them. So please pass that on to them as well.

We'll do that. Thank you so much. Thank you.

So Merle, I just have a question about the contract with Postfontein.

Yes.

So what does this mean? If they are making an investment in infrastructure in our facility and over time there's going to be a payback in terms of a revenue share with them. Do we go out to RFP for this service and is okay?

Right we're currently in the last RFP And to do this with this expansion, we would recommend expanding the length of that contract that we have now. It's usually five years at a time, but we'll see if we can get it out, you know, another to eight or ten years to work out the payback. And also because we're really starting to work so well together that it's if we can just keep building on this

It sounds like it's been a good arrangement. I just wondered what did it mean. So we won't we'll have to we'll do an extension rather than another RFP. That's just what you're foreseeing.

We're working on the deal points now to say what does that mean. Right? Because this is a big enough change. It would it would provide the opportunity to look at the contract again.

So that means the length of time that we'll have that we'll have a partnership with them will go with this extension that you're talking about. How many more years with post Fontaine before we go out to RFI?

I'd say potentially ten, but we're like we're in the second year already. Eight more. Do you know I mean? Just because right now it's five. But if we do a really short, you know, extension, then the payback's bigger. Right? What you're taking out of the gross revenue. Whereas if can spread that out over a little bit more. And then it also helps us maximize infrastructure changes that they're making. So they don't necessarily do all the investment and then see you know what I mean? So we'd love to be able to let them help keep working in partnership with us to make those improvements.

And the contracts contracts lock lock in in the the prices to the extent that even with a longer relationship with them, we be at a disadvantage?

No. In fact, we actually don't pay them any money for this partnership. We earn revenue with them on the partnership. The things that can change, for example, the rental fee for the venue, they pay that for each show that they produce. And over time, as we've been doing some work on that, that has changed. And so that becomes part of the contract. So if anything, the costs for them have increased over the time working with us.

Okay. Alright. K. Any more questions, counsel? I don't see anything else.

May I just say quickly? I know I'm being a bit of the brass section here tooting our own horn, but really it's about staff. The team is so amazing. Nicole does great work as our venue manager, Kelly Molinari, our house manager, Elise George working on all the social media that you saw. It's a great team and we're so grateful for the support we received from you.

Since we're all customers as well, we know what you're talking about. We see it ourselves and we so thank you Nicole and thank you for being here too. And I must say with Marcy the volunteers. Do you ever have a shortage of volunteers there?

No. In fact that's the problem is like how many want to volunteer. There's actually waiting lists.

Thank you for all the work we really appreciate it and this presentation Thank

you. Great thank you thank you very much.

Alright next item on the agenda is council reviewing our draft city council budget priorities and Mr. Frato you're going to present for us on this.

Yes and in case I need to

pull up pull it up I hope

you guys don't mind if I just stay over here. Sorry for those of you who are online but you'll have to me instead of see me if that's okay Madam Chair. I don't have a lot to present. We did our best as staff to take Justin and I furiously took notes during the budget priorities workshop. We took photos of all the sticker exercises that were done and then we came back and we sat down and put our heads together and came up with what we hope captures the conversation that you all had during the budget priorities workshop.

So this is a draft. We provided you with a red line of last year's budget priorities so that you could kind of see what's changing. And then I also included a clean version so you can read through it and see exactly what we're actually proposing. Like last year, we separated it into three separate color coded sections so that anyone who's reading it kind of has an understanding of what we mean by each section of each priority. And so really what we're looking for this evening is just your feedback. Did we get it right? Is there something that we missed? Is there something you'd like to remove, add, change? And we'd like that feedback tonight. And then once we have it, we'll go ahead and make those changes.

We'll put this on a consent calendar next week or two weeks from now or, you know, as soon as we can with a resolution to get them adopted. When we bring it back we'll also have a one pager, an infographic that we'll we'll do our best to encompass what we've outlined in the actual priorities document and that one pager will be will go inside of the budget document the upcoming fiscal year. And so with that I just turn it back over to you for any conversation questions or recommended changes.

So counsel any comments, changes, questions? Miss Nickel.

I did notice one thing you guys didn't get in there.

Dog park.

Okay.

I don't expect it be in there but

Yes.

Saying dog park.

I would be happy to put that in if the council wants it in there. I think it could fit somewhere. Just saying.

Thank you.

Any feedback for staff guys? We're good? Miss DeSouza go ahead.

I was just gonna verbally say I feel like this is representative of the conversation that we had.

Miss Stroud, go

ahead. I was just and I think I brought it up a little bit during the meeting, but gotta pull it up kinda switching back and forth between the screens. But looking at the priority where we have the fiscal health component to it, now it went away, of course it did. But adding in where and we combined the employee,

let me

pull it back up, You know, where we were at the employee satisfaction. And I thought that we would have a little more of a blended, you know, with that fiscal health. You know, primarily because 75 to 80% of our expenses are employee related. But I think keeping in competitive wages, including professional development, retention strategies. So I thought that was going to be a little more in there unless I'm missing that.

But I guess I'm hoping to have that put back in there reinforcing with our employees that they are a priority of ours and to make sure that they are well compensated, fairly compensated and that we are invested in their professional development. I thought there was maybe a little bit of a discussion that we had but maybe I'm wrong.

There's a phrase in there, are you looking for more? See that phrase that says investing in our human capital is essential to long term efficiency and stability. Were you looking for more?

Yes. Okay. Yeah. You know, that I I guess a little more, you know, we we had we elaborated a little bit more last year. And that's I I mean, it does a great job of kind of summing it up. But, you know, it it was we had a lot of discussion over the past couple of years of maintaining competitive wages. And I don't want that to be just assumed with that language. I do want to make sure that we are you know remaining cognizant of that.

Dustin, do you have any questions surrounding that?

You know we're happy to try to go back and I'm I'm going to use a really a really technical word here pump that up to talk about employee satisfaction a little bit more if that's what the council would like us to do.

Or maybe use something from last year if we've Yes. Edited it

understanding from the conversation was hey let's try to kind of take that and spread it. And so there are a few statements, a couple of statements throughout that mentioned personnel right and community safety we also note that providing well trained personnel is important. And so we we it was clear to me that the council felt that that was still a priority but didn't necessarily need to list it as its own priority and we were supposed to try and find other places to locate it within the priorities that you did identify. So like I said, I'm happy to to go back and add a little bit more onto that and fiscal help help if you'd like me to. I've heard council member Stroud's recommendations.

I don't know if anyone else has thoughts on if anything's missing there.

On that specific item Dustin?

Sorry Madam Chair yes on that topic.

Looks like not but we have a commitment to wordsmith a little bit Mr. Oud so let's see what they come up with. Ms. Houseman.

Thank you. I don't have feedback specifically, especially in terms of like wordsmithing. I agree I feel like it very much captures our discussion, and really emphasizes perhaps what is uniquely our focus this year which I think is something that's valuable. What I do have in the form of, I guess an add to that but I don't know if now is the right time so I'll ask you Mr. Frado.

I have thought through something I'd like to share tonight that I feel like actually is an initiative that hits across like would advance four of these five priorities and I'd like to just sort of share it as an example like why does it help for us as a council to think through our budget priorities. It helps us to then also be thinking of initiatives that could potentially be funded or recommended for funding and then as we receive the tentative budget then of course this becomes the lens through which we are evaluating, budget requests that come to us. But I think there's also an opportunity as the budget authority to lead out on indicating, some things that we are hoping to see, inform the tentative budget. Again it's not that is the mayor's role to define the budget but anytime we can signal some things that we are thinking of I think it's helpful and then we can obviously discuss that when we receive the budget and ultimately adopt the budget that we feel is best aligned to our priorities. So I don't know if it's appropriate to share an initiative I've been, really thinking about working on for quite some time.

I feel like it aligns beautifully or if tonight's goal is to just give you feedback on this document, and then when it comes back to us for some type of formal adoption to then also share, an initiative that I feel like is a great example of alignment initiatives that align to these priorities that we've indicated are, ours you know, the voice of the council so to speak. So that's more of the feedback I'm looking for as far as sharing an initiative.

I am seeing this agenda item tonight as consolidation of this document that's going to be used for the budget rollout. Happy to hear your ideas maybe when it comes back giving some examples of how we want to see this sort of woven into the budget presentation might be a really good time to do that.

Okay sounds like.

All right any more input council members for Mr. Fraddle and staff. I don't see any more. So we're gonna am I is it, am I right in assuming that Ms. Stroud and Ms. Christensen are gonna drop off at six? Is that our, no?

I canceled conferences for parents till 06:30. I'm

Okay. Here at

Well I think you'll be able to laugh through the whole meeting if it keeps going this way. Alright. Thank you for doing that. Alright. We do have one consent calendar item and that's approval of draft minutes from January 20. Do I have a motion to adopt the consent calendar?

So moved. Second.

Alright. All in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed? None. All right. Let's go ahead and do standing reports. Are you ready Mr. Fratto to start with standing reports on behalf of the council office?

Yes, sure Madam Chair. Going to skip the agenda planning calendar this week though we will send that out on Friday. I just wanted to give you a really quick kind of update on the public utilities management study. Just a really brief overview. So it's it's going really well by all accounts so far.

I've spoken with Justin who's leading out on this from our staff. He's working with Tom and his team and I've heard nothing but positive feedback from everyone so far. Last week, public utilities was able to complete the data collection phase of the study which a, by all accounts, a really big lift. And I Tom, thank you so much to your team for doing that despite the fact that we're in the middle of working on budgets and everything. That was a big lift and a big milestone for the study.

So we really appreciated that. And then currently Matrix who's our consultant is working on kind of sorting through analyzing that information. And then they are currently they've currently provided us with a set of comparison cities. They've done a whole analysis of the cities in the Valley and outside of the Valley and which ones match up to us best and they're currently speaking with Justin and the public utilities team to narrow down that list and come up with the right set of comparison cities for that comparative assessment. And so I'm going try to give you this kind of update every couple of weeks moving forward but that is kind of what's happened over the last few weeks. And with that I'm going to end my report Madam Chair. Thank you.

Thank you. Just

a couple of updates. I attended the ambassador's meeting and they got briefed on on the city events that will be happening in 2026. Food truck night, movie in the park, farmers market, historic barbecue, fourth of July, movies in the park, balloon fest two movies in the park, Healing Fields, Heritage Festival, and Light Up the Carons are it's on the docket as of right now. And I also wanted to make sure that I got everything in here. I I heard Zach when he told me that the the committee wanted a little bit more meat when with their council member reports, so I did create some documents.

I think Katie's creating a time and space for both council and the ambassadors to to speak freely. And that was that on that. Legislature is is hot and heavy. Think that Cindy will update you on a couple. I'll take a couple of them myself.

There are some land use ones. It looks like a senate bill two eighty four and house bill four seventy seven may get merged in at some point but house bill 77 is specifically to land use and addresses planning commissioners. And we've we've really had a history of putting good planning commissioners who are specialized in the area of real estate and planning And it's there have been some instances where planning commissioners have taken up amongst themselves to rally the public to come in and protest about a specific item. We can't have planning commissioner showing biased in any way shape or form. So I think that it's it's I think our planning commissioners probably need to retouch on training and know that they can't know what they legislate and what they don't.

It's not the way they feel. It's what the code says and the interpretation of the code. So that's just something that I'm kind of worried about. And Cindy will probably update you on some others.

I know Ryan will have a full docket to report on. I do want to thank Ryan, Shane, ULCT. There was a call out from our legislators today kind of in a panic saying how do you feel about HB five zero one and how would you like us to vote on this. And so I thank everyone for speaking about it really quickly, getting together as quickly as possible and getting that question answered. Did it ever get uncircled Ryan or did it get? Okay. Right. All right. We'll find out more about that one. Miss D'Souza, do you have anything?

Nothing? Mister DeKeiser, no trip reports or anything like that? Alright. We have a mayor's report tonight? Oh, I'm sorry. Mayor, if you can hold on just a second, we'll get to Marcy. Thank you. Miss Hausman, go ahead.

Before I saw miss Stroud's hand up before mine so. Okay. Well I missed both

of them so thank you.

I will be brief. Thank you Madam Chair. Just a quick thank you to Katie. She's been hard at work organizing the working group. I appreciate the opportunity to be a part of that.

There will be a meeting tomorrow afternoon where we will receive an update on how we are continuing to assess the safety needs at the intersection by Alta High School. So grateful for that. Also grateful for staff and Ben for organizing a like small group tours of the recreation center, getting an opportunity to visit the construction site. Not yet things have never quite aligned with my schedule, to be able to do any of that including, visiting the new fire station. So I'm grateful to our department heads who continue to watch out for me and know that with my busy complicated schedule the tours or the visits that have been organized for others have not yet worked out but they continue to reach out to me to try to make this work so that I can get a visit.

So I'm looking forward to those upcoming visits at the fire station, Fire Station 31 and also the construction area for the rec center. It's an exciting time and I look forward to those visits. That's all I had and I was not able to hold baby Jane, during this meeting but that's why I'm here virtually is I'm in North Carolina visiting my son and his family and, baby Jane has been an absolute delight. So thank you for allowing me to join virtually tonight. That's all I had madam chair.

Thank you. Miss Stroud, go ahead.

Thank you madam chair. You know a couple couple things happened last week that I was able to attend. You know, one of them was also not attending Alta Canyon with Marcy. We were doing that legislative update. So hopefully, we've got that on the schedule and moving forward. Looking forward to that as well. CDBG had their had their monthly monthly meeting. The window has was open and closed for applicants. The committee is now reviewing those applications. We'll be giving them a score and then moving forward.

The federal government has not yet released the amount of funds that Sandy will receive, But hopefully, it'll be somewhere in the ballpark that we got last year, which was an increase from the year before. We had and I'm sure Madam Mayor will probably talk about this as well. A promotion within the police departments. So we had officer Bird, and he is now sergeant Byrd. I think we all are familiar with Ryan and appreciate what he does in communicating with the council the department.

And then also Trevor Leslie, who has been the animal control and been out on several ride alongs with him with our new director. So over animal services, that was a kind of an exciting swearing in and or a promotion ceremony. And last night, we had you know, I I think it was brought up by mister Pace last week. The ICAC, so Internet crimes against children. You know, quite a few people attended that and had a presentation with the attorney general's office with a lot of information, things that I think can alert all of us within a community to keep our eye out of what's online and what our kids are looking at.

Very successful presentation and very much appreciated. So I know that that's kind of a series of what they're looking at last month over at Historic Sandy. So and now this this ICAC presentation. So you know, liking that that push on community outreach. And that is all, madam chair. Thank you.

Alright. Thank you. Back to madam mayor for the mayor's report.

Thanks. So it's been a busy week on the administrative side. I wanna thank the Utah attorney general's office for coming last night to present the Internet Crimes Against Children task force. Presented a lot of valuable information about how to keep children safe and how how to keep vulnerable people who are online safe from fraud. And I look forward to spreading that message and working with the Sandy Police Department to host more of those.

It's such valuable information that technology advances so quickly and there's so much that parents and guardians need to know about how to keep young children safe from online predators. Sandy Senior Center is holding tax preparation assistance with AARP. Weekly, every Friday, they well, there's tax preparers there. It is by appointment, so please call the senior center. You'll receive a kit with instructions of all your documents to bring but it's no cost tax preparation assistance.

It's not income qualified. It's not age qualified. It's available to everyone but of course it's helpful to our seniors because they have real live people to help prepare the tax forms. They can't do complicated tax returns. But the standard 10 forties, ten forty easy forms, it is a great service through AARP and it's free of charge.

So please call the Sandy Senior Center to set your appointment. Congratulations to our police promotion. Sergeant Ryan Bird promoted. He's not only an experienced police officer but a long time Sandy resident with expertise in firearms training and experience in both patrol and investigations. And our new animal services director was sworn in last week, Trevor Leslie.

He's also a Sandy native and has worked for the city since 2017 and earned many certifications on animal training through his work here at Animal Services. And then a big congratulations to our Sandy Police Explorers Post ninety five fifty for taking first place at the twenty twenty six National Competition XCon, that is Explorers Convention in Las Vegas. And they took first place in the Honor Guard Competition. I was happy to attend their meeting with Council Member Strauld last them, delivered some doughnuts and some praise and would love for them to come to City Council so the Council and the city could recognize their accomplishments. They've competed the last three years and this year brought home first place.

So they've shown a lot of growth in their program and so much the video their advisor showed, it's just something that the whole city should see and be proud of. So I would love to have them come in to present their good work. Attended the meeting of the South Valley Interfaith Council. This quarter's meeting is many faiths prepare for for Easter for for Lent, for Easter, Ramadan, Passover. This is a time when faith communities are very active in in our city and we're so fortunate to have so many communities of faith.

And I did want to mention how troubled we were as elected officials about the news of the shooting last night in Sandy at 700 West And 9000 South. And I wanna thank the council for joining in a statement asking our residents to please, if you have any information about the incident, contact the Sandy Police Department, (801) 799-3000. The Sandy Police are actively investigating this and pursuing every lead, and we are especially concerned about the individual who is the victim of because he is the iman at the mosque in in West Jordan. And we can't not recognize that this person at this time of year during Ramadan, there may be a connection there that our police are investigating that and wherever the facts will take them. So want to reach out to all our residents to encourage anybody with information to please report it to

the Sandy police. Thank you. Thank you. CIO report.

Thank you Madam Chair. Just a few things. First of all the health and safety fair for employees is tomorrow from nine to twelve in the Multi Purpose Room so if you have a chance to come over that'd great. The employee luncheon at Willow Creek Country Club is March 18 from eleven to two. Yeah, of course that's always just done completely by Willow Creek Country Club and it's a gift by them to our employees.

Lastly, over the last forty years Sandy has provided water into unincorporated areas of of the Granite Area. And during that time we required annexation. Sometimes those those requesting water couldn't annex because they weren't contiguous to the city. In each of those cases as a requirement for the water requested of them to sign a consent letter that they would annex in when they became contiguous. Well we've had a number of annexations over the last five years and so I asked the public utilities department to do an audit of that And we have at this point about 50 parcels that are now contiguous and can be annexed.

We didn't see the need to do it initially until Monday when we received a copy of the draft feasibility study for the incorporation of Granite. Surprisingly that study came back positive for incorporation. Have an extensive amount of concerns about how that feasibility study was put together. But because of that, we feel the need at this point now to move forward on those annexations of those properties that sign consent forms to Annek. So tomorrow morning we'll request from the council chair to put it on the consent calendar all the properties that we have that we know have already signed letters of consent to Annex.

That will start the process for them. So once that starts then we will of course notify them by letter. We'll also notify them by posting sitting on their property of the potential annexation. We'll then notify them of the planning commission meeting and the city council meeting where they can come and make comment on it. But it's important to move forward with these sooner than later because there will be a point where they will be locked into that incorporation process.

And we feel it's important to get. The only reason why we provided water in the county areas was because the intent that it would eventually annex into Sandy and most of it has. And so from our perspective it's important for us to move forward on properties where they've signed the annexation petition before they get locked into that thing. And so I just want to make sure you're aware of that. We'll keep you updated as we go along.

Undoubtedly, once we start this process, you will get some phone calls from people that you know who live in those areas. We'll a we'll get a we anticipate just you know a spattering of reactions and everyone from oh I thought we were going to get annexed in anyway so I'm not concerned to others saying I don't want to be annexed in to others that you know. But we definitely have a legal right to do this and to move forward with these.

So just to be clear we're going to be moving forward with properties that in the past already signed a consent to annex and we were unable to annex them at that time.

Yes that's correct because they were not contiguous now they are contiguous.

So everything will play out in the normal fashion. It'll start with the typical intent to annex. Yes. And then move through the normal annexation process.

That's correct.

I know, Was it? Okay. And as we start getting calls, I think I asked you this before but I don't remember what the answer was. What will be the deadline on this if Granite chooses to incorporate? Because they have to have,

do they

have to have

a vote on this now? Is that the process?

So what will happen is that they will have a public hearing based on the draft. They will finalize that draft and then they will hold a second public hearing to move to lock the boundary and move forward with a future vote. It's when that second public hearing occurs and they take that formal action is when the boundaries are locked in.

And we don't know yet when that date is.

That day is not set.

Do we can we even anticipate. No.

Right now they're in a thirty day period on the draft. After that period then they have to schedule up that public hearing and then.

And then a second. Yeah. Okay.

Have the boundaries been set? Mean is there a map available?

Yes there is in the feasibility study and we will make sure that all the counts gets a copy of that feasibility study. Thank We'll send it to Dustin tonight and he'll get it out to all of

you. Thanks.

Thank you madam Thank

you.

Recreation center update.

Hello. This last week, we had a bunch of steel delivered to the site. So for several weeks now, we've had several steel beams vertically in the ground, and now they are connecting those horizontally up high, which is really fun to see. Actually, it looks like it's gonna be a building someday soon Because they're up there with a very big crane swinging very big pieces of metal around, they did have a couple of weather delays last week with the wind and the snow but nothing that should affect their schedule overall. So that's great.

This week, they did have to drain the swimming pool a little bit. There is some new connections, new lines that are going from the new mechanical room to the swimming pool. So just reconnecting those. They have to get the pool down to a specific level so that they're not connecting lines that have water running through them. And then they'll fill the pool back up with water when they're done. So the naming survey is out. We are getting several responses from that. So that's been great. We'll continue to keep that open until March 11. So please feel free to keep sharing it.

When people do share it, it goes out in newsletters or social media posts. That's when we see a little bit of an influx in responses. And then we are excited to have several of you up to the center in next week or so. But as always, if there's a time you know, not a time that works with your schedule, Marcy specifically, if Allison, if it doesn't work, just let us know. We're happy to arrange a time for any of you to up really at any time. Just reach out to me or to Ben and we'll make it happen.

I just had a question, Debbie. Are you aware of the petition on change.org that's going around?

I am. Okay. Yes.

Didn't make the list but kudos to him.

Yeah.

Alright. Thank you. And mister Meakim, legislative report.

Thank you very much and good evening specialists. We're down to two weeks. So this week and next week, and just a special thank you to every single one of you, including those of you online. Everybody at this point has participated in either the legislative policy committee or in our Thursday afternoon catch up session. So just to thank you for your interest and participation, feedback. Every time we've asked for something, it's been immediately responded to. So thank you very much. Also, special thank you to mayor. I know that Lynn's not here, but but to Lynn and Deshane for also helping participate in this as well. So a number of updates.

Did have a chance. Mayor and I did have a chance to talk with senator Cullimore. He's our majority leader. We had a chance to update him on things that were going on in the city and talk about some of the things that he had helped us with in the past that he was not aware of. So, you know, the upgrades to Monroe, for example.

So we had a great time kinda bringing him up to speed on different things that happened within the city. A really special thing to note in the sense that in in the past, in in my experience with Sandy, we've had two senate presidents and a speaker. So, you know, we, Miederhauser, Al Mansell, and Greg Curtis have all been integral parts to what we do as a city. And so to have a a majority leader represent a part of Sandy is very fortuitous for us. So it's been a good relationship.

Okay. Let's talk about some bills and some issues going on. Let's start with homelessness. And this is this is something that we haven't talked about a lot because a lot of moving pieces have been going on to this. Earlier this week, House Bill five ninety six, which is called homelessness amendments.

This is done by representative Elison who also represents Sandy. And there's a number of things in this bill. One of the one of the items that is in the current version is it preempts land use on conditional use permits. Now this does not particularly affect us because we're a non congregate center, meaning that that even if they did take away the limits on the conditional use the number of people that can be there there are no services to provide to those additional people as opposed to say Salt Lake City or South Salt Lake or West Valley that are congregate centers meaning that they can raise the number of people according to the fire code who can be there and so that is in the bill. It's very concerning because it's basically the state saying that we are going to preempt the local land use for this purpose.

Now representative Yeltsin, to be fair, he is trying to accomplish a a goal. He's trying to make it so that that that the existing infrastructure is big enough to be able to absorb any additional influx. And so I understand, you know, from a policy perspective what he's trying to do, the way that he's going about it, I think is considered concerning for cities. Another piece that's in there is called the annual local contribution. Now this is what we've been dealing with for some time before we hosted the MVP center here in Sandy.

We used to also contribute to local fund. We don't since we've had that facility in our city. But basically what this would do is it would increase the limit and so this would for this next year would increase about 15% for the purpose of being able to help West Valley City who's had a facility that really has been used year round but they haven't been treated as such meaning that they have not received enough money to offset the additional law enforcement and EMS services they've had to provide by hosting that in their cities. So this additional money would help to compensate them. So right now the way that it looks for us, at worst it's neutral at best there may be a little bit more money to offset some of our expenses for hosting but it's to be determined.

Now the kicker in there is the next provision says that the following year in 2027 instead of going up 15%, it would go up closer to 50%. And the reason that's in there is to bring people to the table because different cities have different interest in this. And this is all about the local contribution. In other words, the state is not saying we're gonna step in and provide additional funding. But if you need additional funding within that system, the cities have to get together and figure this out.

And so the and if and if we don't figure something else out, then the existing provision state law will be to increase that by, like I said, by about 50% of what it is today. So right now, it's 275,000 that would increase to 500,000 or a percentage of budget, whichever one's higher. Okay. Let's see. One piece of good news, we do have a house bill four fifty seven.

This is a municipal annexation amendments. The the the the bulk of the text doesn't really have anything to do with us except for we were able to get an amendment in there that deals with some of our past annexations that we'll be able to well, I should say past and future because part of state law is we will there'll be a number of islands that will be coming into Sandy according to, you know, law that was passed about a year ago. We we we will be able to do that simpler now with this amendment. So it was it'll help us in that process. Alright.

Senate bill two eighty four. This is local land use modifications. This is a senator Fillmore bill. And basically what it it requires this part we already do it requires every city to post regulations or fees or land use applications on our website. And now that doesn't sound like a big deal but in in fact there are some municipalities in City Of Utah that don't have a website or they don't have an active website and so this will be a bit of a lift for them.

It it deals a lot with Planning Commission. Council member Nickel was talking about this a minute ago. The the Planning Commission if it's not timely then the the legislative body can take the item from the Planning Commission even if the Planning Commission hasn't made a decision about it. So it all has to do with timeliness. If they're simply not making a decision, the legislative body can go and do that, which it cannot right now.

Then in the substitute that is coming up, then we can also remove a planning commissioner who's acting with the intent to influence a land use decision. So this is directly what council member Nichols just talking about that if a planning commissioner decides to take sides and the, you know, the case study that was presented is if the person goes gets residents to oppose something that's going on, that's not what a planning commissioner should be doing since they're acting in really kind of a quasi judicial role. Alright. One thing that we're very excited about that the league has been working with developers and others is House Bill four ninety two. This is about transportation infrastructure and housing.

One of the big things that's held back a lot of development is lack of lack of infrastructure. One example that comes up over and over and over again is Harriman has recently decided not to proceed in certain applications to bring them online because they don't have they have water rights, but they don't have water tanks. And so they need tanks in order to store the water to be able to bring on about 7,500 additional units. And so what this bill does is in Salt Lake County, it creates a 140 it it bonds for a $140,000,000 that is grants that can be used within Salt Lake County. And then outside of that there's statewide a $100,000,000 loan fund that can be used for infrastructure for drinking water, wastewater, sewer, storm water and drainage.

And it has a provision in there to prioritize owner occupied housing. So if you're applying for the grant, if you're applying for the loan and you're doing it for the purpose of owner occupied housing, then your application goes up is kind of the way it works. Last one I'll hit on is taxation. This is a truth in taxation. We've talked about this a number of times but it's morphed also quite a bit since we last spoke.

So House Bill two thirty six this is about truth and taxation. So if the if a city wants to adopt a higher tax rate than what what the the prior bill said that we had to basically have two budgets the the lower one without the tax increase and the higher one with the tax increase. Now it just contemplates one budget with the higher amount, but that we would need to keep funds separate. In other words, we would need to segregate any additional funds for the additional amount to come in. What they're trying to do is they're trying to make the city if you're gonna approve a higher budget, they don't want you spending that higher budget until the truth and taxation process which happens in August actually takes place.

And so the underlying concern is that how it's been done in the past. People are coming up and saying, hey, I've got this. I don't want you to do this tax increase, but we've already, you know, we've already have been spending the money in our case, you know, from July 1 till about mid August when we have the when we the hearing. So it would make cities keep those funds separate so that that when people come for a truth and taxation hearing, we're not living as if though we run a budget as if though we already had that money. And additionally, it would provide there's a provision in there that would have a kind of a one page sorry, doesn't have to be one page, but a notice that explains the difference between what is the, you know, what is the underlying without the tax increase and then what does the tax increase do and specifically what problems would that tax increase solve.

And so we would need to prepare that so that every time that we had a meeting that talked about the budget between the time that the either the budget officer or in our case, the mayor's budget comes out until one is eventually passed. We need to bring that out and make that available to people. Alright. I will stop there even though I could go on quite a bit longer. But as always, if there's any questions, please don't feel feel free to reach out and we will talk more.

Thank you. You. Appreciate that. Circling back to general citizen comment. I have two cards in the room. Daniel, come on down.

I'll be brief. Daniel Kovach, 1364 East 11205 South in Sandy. Here with couple scouts, my son Jackson, my daughter Maisie, and Ben from troop four eleven in Sandy. Usually here in a different capacity, so I don't get to speak. So I'm taking this opportunity very briefly. Amphitheater. I love that we're doing this through a revenue sharing model. I think that as residents, we've been bonded out the butt. We're done being bonded, not just city, but county, school districts. So to hear that we're doing that through a revenue sharing agreement is very exciting.

Going forward, I love mister Marsh's presentation. I love what he's considering kind of taking us to the next echelon. However, I I implore that we don't forget the events that take place there that make this special. The movie nights, the free concerts, the patriotic stuff. My wife and I attended our personal favorites, Pat Benatar, Bruce Hornsby. Those very inexpensive things that make you sit in those grass seats and look around and say, holy cow. I live here. This is available to me. They are moderately priced, and they make the community buy into something that is special and say that this is my Sandy. This is where I live.

These are the priorities that me and my council and my mayor and my community have set. So as we're as we're thinking about echeloning up, let's also consider those those moderately priced items and what we are bringing to those citizens who might not be going to OAR or or, death cab, but are considering those those items that are like, wow. You know, I'll skip coffee for a few weeks, and I'll go to these things because we can't afford the mammoth. We can't afford the jazz. We can't afford, the bees at this point. So those items here right in our community are very, very important. They make us feel connected. They make us feel important, and they make us feel proud to be here. And then we go tell our friends, and they tell their friends. And we're like, wow.

Sandy's a pretty awesome place. So as we're thinking about us lining up, let's consider and remind ourselves that that those are the kind of events that make Sandy a special place to be and a special place to live. So thank you.

Thank you. Alright. Nick. Hi.

I get to actually talk to you as somebody else other than you were asking for my computer help.

I am Can we do that too?

Yeah. I am here representing the Salt Lake Off Road Expo. I volunteer with them and I have for the last eleven years. It's what what it we, I wanna invite all of you to the expo. We are, big land advocates.

We partner don't know if you guys have heard of the Blue Ribbon Coalition. They're one of our biggest partners. And we advocate for keeping land open and keeping, land, clean and and usable. This last weekend, we, for the first our first annual, cleanup at 5 Mile Pass, we went out to 5 Mile Pass and cleaned up, two large dumpsters full of, debris and garbage. And in addition to that, another 63 tires that we pulled out of there.

Another thing that we were starting on an annual tradition of this year is, what we're calling the Sparks program, and it is highlighting new and innovative products into the off road and outdoor industry. And we're we're present we want we're gonna be presenting them with awards and a showcase, And there's there's exciting things. I have a little flyer for you guys. I'll give to Dustin, but I wanted to invite all of you out and hope to see you there. Thanks.

Thank you. And Dustin I don't have any more blue cards. Can you invite anyone online who'd like to make a comment to do so?

Happy to Madam Chair. And I'll just say I'm going to take the opportunity to express major appreciation to Nick. He would not the meetings would not happen without Nick. He's so great. Best IT professional I've ever worked with. And I think everybody all of you guys probably agree with me on that. So I had to take that opportunity. Yes. If you are joining us virtually and you'd like to comment on any Citi business, just go ahead and click the raise hand button on your screen now. And I'll call your name in the order in which you raised your hand, you'll have three minutes.

Not seeing any hands raised madam chair. All

right thank you we'll close general citizen comment and that closes our agenda. Do I have a motion? Move to adjourn.

All

All in favor? Aye. Any opposed? Nope. Thanks. Good night, everyone. Thank you.