City Council - workshop

Chris Blake, who is here in the audience today, will be available for answering questions as needed. We went with them for several reasons. They are very well known up at the Capitol, known among our different legislators, and will give us a presence up there that I think is much needed. They have a lot of experience, as you've seen from the From the issue paper that I put out, they've had contracts with AT&T, Delta Airlines, Hogle Zoo, Rocky Mountain Power, among others. The thing I've appreciated about working with Chris is integrity and willing to work hard for us as a city. He's also part of a firm where two other partners will be able to step in if Chris is not able to be around at certain points over the coming year, and especially up at the Capitol. We'll have a firm backing us instead of just one individual who may be out, which I think there is a real value to it. And there is also, it is a good contract, and I think it's a fair contract to that we can get out within 30 days as well if there's any issues with it, which I do not foresee any issues. That's what I have. Chris is available to come up and answer any questions that you have, or if you have any questions for me, I am happy to answer them.

Do we have questions for Sam or Chris?

We are planning on him also presenting down the road in front of you for council, just so you can become better acquainted with him and be able to answer any questions about the coming session. So we're looking to do something in November or December as we're preparing to hit the coming year.

Thanks, Sam. Thank you. Resolution 26-113, Chief Jacobs. to discuss authorizing the city to enter into a memorandum of agreement with the Department of Justice.

Good afternoon. I was trying to string together as many letters as I could and still haven't made sense. And I'm disappointed with myself because I could have added DOJ to that. DOJ, DEA, TFO, MOU. This is a Department of Justice Drug Enforcement Administration Task Force Officer Memorandum of Understanding. This is a long-standing task force that we've had for decades. We've had someone there. This is going before you today because we put a new person up there, therefore we needed a new contract. Oddly enough, the new person has been up there since April of 2025. but this contract comes from D.C., so it's taken them this long to get it to us. The contract would be from October 1st of this year through September of 2031, so a five-year contract. Either party can terminate within 30 days. It commences to an officer for two years with a 30-day termination, if we desire. We provide the full-time officer salary and benefits. And then they reimburse us for any overtime that task force officer incurs during his time up there. That is it in a nutshell.

Okay. Any questions for Chief Jacobs? All right. Very good. Thank you. Resolution 26-114. Authorize the execution of an inter-local cooperation agreement with Summit County. I invite Craig back up. The refreshments included in this one, too.

What's that?

The refreshments included in this one, too.

We do have free giveaways with this one, yes, if you would like some Naloxone kits. They might not be very palatable, but... In many ways, this is an extension of the previous grant we brought to you a few weeks ago from Salt Lake County related to opioid settlement funds. This is an additional funding. They are offering us $40,000 a year for the first year and second year and then additional $20,000 for the third year. The funding is very flexible. Not a lot of strings to it, quite honestly. It's kind of strange, but we're very happy about that as well. So some of the goals related to this piece of the grant are really the community readiness assessment, the opioid misuse assessment, strategies, prevention strategies, campaigns, distribution of naloxone kits and supplies and materials, and then just the education, again, surrounding opioid misuse within the community. So it will complement the other grant very well. They play together. So our intent is to hire an intern as well as purchase materials and supplies needed for that individual to do the job.

So when you say goals,

These are from the county.

That's their goals for us. But it's really maybe uses of the grant money. For me, that makes more sense.

Yeah. So everything that Stephanie is doing around the budget that is required as part of this is focused on these kind of six key areas within the grant.

Any other questions?

I'm just curious if the... Is that separate from what our city first responders have? Do they also have kids that may respond?

These are kids that are from the public. They're a different style of kid, I believe, as well. They're super easy to use. They don't require training. I'm assuming the police department's kids are a little bit more vibrant.

Questions? Okay. Thanks, Craig. Thank you. All right. Resolution 26-115. I invite Dan Johnson to come up and discuss an award for contract organ pavement maintenance for the 2026 Mastic Service Treatment Project.

I should have put that in its little acronym, but I couldn't get it to spell anything fun. This is an asphalt pavement treatment project. We try to do this annually. This particular product is a sprayed asphalt sealant that goes on the surface of our newer pavements. intended to prolong the life of the pavements. And so we like to put this down on newer pavements before we even do the slurry seal. The slurry seal starts adding thickness to the pavement. This does not. It essentially acts as a sunscreen and a water sealant to keep the water and the sun off the pavement to keep it from oxidizing. And the product that we've specced out is a product called Onyx. And there were two bidders to this contract, and the lowest bidder was Morgan Pavement Maintenance. And we are asking the council to give us authorization to award this contract to them. A little in the amount of $205,000 plus, and then also to authorize the public works department to spend up to $230,000 in potential change orders if we determine that there's other streets that need to be treated that were not included in the contract. So that is my report.

That's 209 on the slide.

209. Well, that's incorrect. It's $205,490. That's my mistake. I'll answer that.

So I'm guessing it's the blue lines?

It is the blue lines. We included a PDF. You can zoom in a little bit better on the PDF.

So how new of asphalt is this?

Within the last five years, generally, yeah. There doesn't seem to be something else. Sorry.

Oh, go ahead. They've done business with us before.

Yes, we have. We've done quite a bit of business with them in the past, and they've performed quite well.

So after, if it's over time, is there a slurry?

We'll even do a couple of these, depending on the condition of the pavement. If it's wearing well and it's not cracking and it's not deteriorating, it's totally acceptable to do a couple of treatments of this, just to keep the pavement thickness from growing here. Because the slurry seal is a more robust treatment that adds a little bit of structure and also provides the same sealant benefit. But we like to do as many of these as we can before we have to start with slurry sealing them.

That's my question. So do we do a couple of sunscreen applications for the slurry seal, a couple of those maybe, and then... before we have to start mill and fill.

Yeah, generally, we're hoping to get 30 plus years out of a neighborhood road before we have to mill them out and pave them. Mill and fill is kind of the last case, the last after we've treated them and we've got reflective cracking and too many things that are just... that are not fixed by a slurry seal. And oftentimes we're finding in many of our, I'm not finding it, it's just a thing that's happening in many of our older neighborhoods where we've slurry sealed them for 30 years, we're starting to get a bit of an edge. And so we're getting high enough that we just need to go and take some of those out.

I also noticed with the most recent slurry seal, which I had in my neighborhood, those little rocks are darn more of them than ever. And I don't know why. Is there a reason? They are everywhere. Are they?

I'd like to have a look at that.

And I've noticed, too, the lips on the edge.

Yeah, the lips start developing. Yeah. Because they have about a quarter to three-eighths of an inch every time you do it. Yeah. And the rocks, we've got...

stuff coming out and we'd be curious to follow up on that but I'm not aware of the reason why it would be different than what we've done in the past but we do like to sweep them back a couple of times after they've gone down a couple more comments so one day when I was walking they were doing the slurry seal in front of some houses and one of the owners came out and asked them to go right up in the gutter and they did is that okay for them to do?

They did it, but it's not necessarily our standard practice. I don't know. Yeah.

It's not happening much. Yeah, I was. I want to mention to your.

That's good to know. They probably shouldn't. I might follow up with you later. Yeah.

I was going to call and complain to you, but that's not on the agenda.

You're all welcome to call. Anything else for Dan on this item? We've got four items on the consent agenda for all the usual real estate purchase agreements and acceptance of deeds and easements. Any questions or discussions on these items? Would the council like to add any or all of the four resolutions to the consent agenda for the meeting on some territories? Okay, we'll do all. One more. Here we go. Tom's nodding. Okay, we'll do all. We got to the best part. We get to have Nicole, the Nicole show.

Let me just try and share my screen here. Okay, so a little while back I had a conversation with IFO about the possibility of bringing a passport acceptance facility here to West Valley City Hall. This is something that other cities have done and was something that I thought would be a really beneficial service to our residents. So over the past couple of months, Harold and Lauren helped me look into what this might take, what it would look like, and if it would be something that you guys were interested in. So I'll just start off here. So currently there are no passport acceptance facilities in West Alley City. These are the closest ones to us and the majority of them are appointment only, so they book up really quickly. The demand is high. We obviously have a lot of residents in West Valley. Around 41,000 residents-ish are under the age of 18, which shows us that there's a lot of families that are in need of this service. Also, renewals for children under 16, they have to renew every five years instead of 10, so it's more frequent. Then obviously, we have a lot of households and in 2025, there was 27.3 million passports issued in the US. I just feel like a passport acceptance facility would provide a really high demand to one of Utah's largest cities.

Take my kids to West Jordan.

Everyone has to go to West Jordan. So if you're not familiar, this is how you would get a passport. So first of all, you fill out a form. You have to provide evidence of U.S. citizenship. So you have to bring the original and then the photo, the passport facility will photocopy it for you. It has to be a U.S. birth certificate, a valid U.S. passport, certificate of naturalization or citizenship, any of those, as well as a photo ID. You have to have a passport photo, which you can bring yourself, but they're very particular on what those photos look like, so most passport facilities provide that service for them. Um, and then these are just kind of the charges. So a passport book is 130 and then the facility acceptance fee would be 35 and that's everywhere. Um, there's passport cards. These are used for like, if you go to Mexico or Canada, they're just cards. They're not the actual books. Um, those are $30. So if you were to do both, it would be $160 right now it's four to six weeks to get a passport two to six, two to three weeks for an expedited service for an extra $60. So here's kind of what we're proposing. So we're proposing that we become a passport acceptance facility. This would provide a needed service for our residents. And we would also want to be a walk-in facility because there's a demand for that. There's so many places only accept appointments, but not walk-ins. And as I said, the appointments woke up fast. This would increase traffic to City Hall, and there's potential to generate significant revenue. So we're proposing that we have one full-time and two part-time employees to start Monday through Thursday from 8 to 5, and then with the potential expansion for additional employees and hours, possibly to include Friday and Saturday as well. So this is kind of what the cost and the revenue looks like. So on the cost side, we'll have the employee salaries, the required training and certification, we'll need secure storage and records management, cameras, photo equipment, your regular office printers, coffee supplies, the renovation fees. So Harold looked into this really thoroughly and we estimated that there's approximate $100,000 cost from the general fund for the remodel and the purchase of equipment. and then an ongoing employee cost of $136,000 annually, and this is just estimated, as well as a $25,000 ongoing budget just for office supplies, photo supplies, equipment maintenance, ongoing training and certification. Um, that type of thing, so here's how we make the revenue. Um, so the fees, the passport application fee itself is paid directly to the US Department of state. So we, as a passport acceptance facility would not keep that money. However, the passport acceptance fee is 35 dollars per application and that would be our revenue. And that's set by the U.S. Department of State, that cost. So passport photos, the typical charge is between $10 to $20. And then there's also optional services that we as a city could provide that other cities do. Money orders, because you can't do a passport with your credit card. It has to be a check or a money order. We could charge for copying. We could charge for document printing. Lamination, not for passports themselves, but that's just another service that we could provide. We could provide notary services. Some facilities do fingerprinting for background checks or concealed weapon permits. That's something that we could also look into charging. So just looking at if we were just to do the acceptance process, the passport facility charge as well as the photos and money order. We're just saying, hey, about 70% of people want that photo. About 75% of people might need a money order. This is kind of what we're looking at. So if we were to process 20 passports per operating day, that would cover our costs. Anything above that would be revenue. I will say when we were looking around, West Jordan would be the closest walk-in facility to us. So they did 159 passports a week last week. So they make significant... Last year, their revenue was $566,247. So they make significant revenue. And they did say that it took them a while to get to that point, but... yeah, they're really successful with their passport program. So what we're looking at is we have this break room over here that's not really doing anything right now. We looked into what this could look like. Jake designed this. So basically, this door would be employee access. We still have a sink, a microwave, like, utilities, a refrigerator. And then this would be a secured access into the passport facility office. We would have three bays here, two desks for employees to work. This would be where all of our equipment is. And then we would do photos out here and have a waiting area out here as well as overflow in this hallway here. And again, we looked at the cost of that. It's about $100,000. So I submitted the request in May to the Department of State just to see if this was a possibility and they did approve us So if the council's in support of this Jake can begin the remodel Immediately it would take about two months to complete. We then just have to hire our employees and submit our paperwork for the agents and then complete the training. And then the U.S. Department of State would send us the supplies that we need to open as a passport office. And that's my report. If I have any questions.

Any questions from the Council?

So this is for first-time passports because renewals you can do online.

Yeah, you can do renewals online under certain circumstances, but yeah, it would be primarily for first-time passports, but you would be able to do renewals as well.

Okay, and as far as optional services where there's money involved, would that be paid to the office out there?

We would be able to take it in the passport facility.

okay so we'd be secure places to cash could imagine there'd be that we could we could look into that option and it may even work for them to just go down for a money order they're probably going to bring you cash yeah yeah we would have to i think that's why a lot of them have like the secure um yeah so yeah i have some concerns about that for sure you have the right controls there um I think notary services is great because I've had a lot of residents ask if there's notaries. In fact, I even had asked you once if you could go notarize something. So I like that. I thought we already did fingerprinting here.

Yeah, evidence does. It would just be another option here at City Hall rather than having to go to the police department.

So whoever we hire is obviously going to need to be trained.

Correct.

and one employee's part-time is going to be enough.

We're thinking to start just to see what the volume is, and then if we need more, if we're getting a lot, we're going to increase that as well.

And a lot meaning?

It could be.

What's George doing? $159 last week. Well, that's $30 a day. And to break even with it, $20 a day. So what's a lot? Is 20 a day a lot or is 30 a day a lot?

I would say 20 a day is a fair amount. And it depends because if you think about it, if you have a family of four that comes in, that's four passports. If you have just individuals, yeah.

I'm just trying to think. Okay. And 20 a day if we have one employee and two part-time employees. And then do we have to hire another full-time employee at 30? We don't know. But that's going through my head. It's like, okay, we may barely break even at 20. Then we have to hire another employee, which means now we have to do 40 to be able to break even. So just thinking about that.

I would also be certified as well to be able to go and help out as I'm able to as well.

I think the positive for this – One of the positives going in is that we have some examples that have done some really good research on these other cities that have gone through that phase. So they have already been through the start and kind of have told us when they broke an event and when they had to make the move. There's some of these cities that, you know, as a government entity, it's hard for us to talk about going out and looking for ways to make money, right? Because our goal is to zero out and provide the service that matches the fee. But there are a lot of cities that have benefited. Our residents go there and pay the fee and There's some really interesting stories in these last couple of years from West Jordan or holding off tax increases because of the revenue they've received from the passport office.

And I will say it's not necessarily, for some cities, it's not about the revenue. It's about providing a service to the residents that's a needed service and somewhere conveniently located for them.

That's what I would see it as, just something else to provide our residents.

Yeah, that's what I would see as something to put me right.

Right. I think that was kind of the main motivation is just what are we lacking here that we can provide to the residents, and this is something that could.

Do you want some thoughts tonight? Sure.

That would be great. And then we'll come forward with an official resolution to for next for next time. But if we get enough, yes, I think that we can start at least the construction.

Yeah, access from this employee door, then be a public door.

It'll be a secured access from there. And then we'll still have to have handicap access. So that'll still be. No, no, they would still just access it. Yeah.

Yeah. All right.

Hey, thank you.

Is that your first presentation?

Yeah, that was like the first longest presentation. I'm much used to being on the other end of things.

All right, Chief Jacobs to talk about automatic license plate readers.

Good afternoon.

There has been a lot of attention in the media lately about LPRs and FLOC, and many of your constituents have reached out to you regarding the subject. So at your request, we're here to provide you with information about LPRs, and I have brought with me Sergeant Fox. He's currently the sergeant over our intelligence unit, and he is my current subject matter expert. So I will turn the time over to him and be on standby right here.

All right. I appreciate the opportunity to address the hottest topic, it seems. So what I'd like to do is first provide some, I guess, enlightenment on how to view this topic. And first off, ALPR refers to automatic license plate readers. The reason why in the media you hear about flock all the time is simply because they are the biggest, most public name in the game, and they have been the face of this issue in the media. However, they are not the only provider of ALPR technology, and they are a company that we in our city do not use. And I'll get into the reasons why, but I just wanted to make that distinction that sometimes when we talk about flux, sometimes people are referring to the overall picture. Sometimes they're referring to that specific organization that provides up their technology. So what I want to do is directly address the primary issues that we hear all the time. So that way, when I'm addressing some of our solutions to these issues, you understand that we have taken a very direct approach to solve the problems that we hear from the community. So those three primary issues are going to be mass surveillance. People fear that they're being watched all the time. And there's also a fear, along with that, that we're creating a massive database which we can query out in the public at all times. We'll talk about that. Second issue is data sharing. This is where Flock became a hot-button issue in the media, is how they treat their data, how they use their data, who owns the data. And then number three is officer misuse. an outcry over the concern that this data is being misused internally by officers. And there certainly have been accounts of that. I would like to address that in this presentation as well to show you how we're avoiding that. It's not moving for me. Okay. So in a fair evaluation of the tool, this is how I would like, this is the barometer for which I'd like to use to evaluate this tool. First off, is it effective? I can share with you countless stories about its effectiveness in law enforcement. It's an extremely effective tool, and it's become a very meaningful tool. I could go on for hours about it. I have in other conversations. If you're interested in hearing stories, I could do that for you. Is it legal? We'll get into more of that, but I want you all to know that we are actually extremely fortunate because in the state of Utah, the legislature has already put forth a law that is on the books that governs the use of ALPRs. We consider us to be very fortunate in that way because lots of states don't have that legislation, and it's actually created kind of a wild west scenario. And I personally believe that that's where a lot of these issues come from because there's no legislative governance on how they get used. We have that. So that's one of the ways that we'll evaluate this. And then is it ethical, and can it be effectively and safely managed by our agency? So concern one, mass surveillance. So the state law says that we have, the state law says that you can have nine months of retention of the data that gets captured by ALPR systems. In West Valley, we have restricted ourselves further simply because we don't want to create a de facto database of this information. We simply want to have an effective law enforcement tool to help us resolve cases. So we have restricted ourselves to a 90-day retention. We have learned that If we need this information, it is generally within the first few days, maybe first few weeks, and then we have some cases that fall outside of that. But again, we decided that we were better off limiting ourselves, governing ourselves even further than state law. And then I want to make a distinction that a plate being read and stored in the system is not the same as a plate being used. The law has outlined, and I'll get into this more later, but the law has outlined a directive on when this information can be queried. So much like several other databases that already exist, like, for example, your cell phone or credit card data, it has regulations on how we can access that data. So the fact that it exists does not mean it's being used or even read. All right, so one of the arguments that's being made by the courts today, there are multiple court cases that have actually been ruled on this year. They refer to the officer on the corner precedence. Essentially, I as a police officer can stand on a public street, and anything that I can see or view from that public space is essentially legally obtained data. And to go even further than that, a license plate was designed by the legislature to be a plain view identifier of a license plate to identify a specific vehicle tied to a specific person to legally operate on a roadway. And all that does, all an LPR does is capture that data that the legislature intended for us to collect in the first place in plain view. The force multiplier. So what I mean by the force multiplier is it's the same thing where using a phone as a camera to enhance my memory as a person. Technology is allowing me to do things that the legislature, the Supreme Court, the appellate courts have all determined to be legal actions by law enforcement. So an LPR is simply a tool designed to enhance and be a force multiplier for a tool and a tactic that is already deemed legal. And then the other thing to note about the officer on the corner precedent is that it's only capturing exterior information. It's only capturing what I, as a law enforcement officer standing on the corner, can see. It gets the vehicle. It gets the plain view plate, description of the vehicle, and maybe even a bumper sticker. But essentially, it's not capturing any more data than what an officer standing on the corner could capture. Then there's the argument about continuous tracking. People talk about being tracked, and I think that this is... miss framing the issue because the courts have actually ruled on what tracking is. And if I were to put a tracker on a vehicle, I could capture hundreds of data points per minute on the vehicle location, where it stopped, how long it was there. And if I did that, even for a few days, I'd have a pretty good picture of your life. With an ALPR system, if there is a read on your plate, I don't know where you came from. I don't know where you went after that. All I know is your plate, the vehicle, and a date and time. That's the only thing that it captures. So even if there was an ALPR right outside your work that you hit on every day, that's not going to tell me that you work at the building next door. So the courts have gone through this issue in numerous cases, and they have made a very, very vast distinction between an ALPR hit and tracking. So concern two, data sharing and privacy. This was a concern of ours about this time last year. I shared with you a presentation about moving from Flock as our vendor to Genentech for ALPR services and equipment. One of our concerns in that is how the data was being used and who owns the data. And I'm not going to get into the semantics of the broader issue. I'm not going to make any accusations about flock. However, we did see practices and concerns that were also concerning to us about owning that data and how it was being used. and there's plenty of media out there about the concerns with Flock. We didn't want to be involved in that, and we wanted more control of our data so that we know when that data is being used. We can audit it, and even if we help other agencies in their investigations, we're managing that data. We also know that it's not being sold, and we know that we have full ownership of it, and we decide what happens with it. So that's one of the many reasons why we switched vendors in the first place. So Utah-only borders. These systems allow agencies to share data all over the United States. This became another hot issue in the media with Flock on who this data was being shared with. We decided that best practice was that we want to be good partners in solving crimes. However, again, as I said before, not every agency around the country has LPR legislation to lean on, and we do. But we want to make sure that if we're helping other agencies that we are making sure that we're well within our law. So we don't actively, freely share with agencies outside of Utah. But we do help them. If they contact us, then we can ask them those questions and say, are you meeting the requirements of our statute? How is the data being used? And that sort of thing. Do you have a policy governing this? So when we share with other agencies, we've already vetted that they are requesting this data for the right reasons and within Utah law, regardless of where they come from. And within our state, we have also We do share with some of our neighboring agencies because we know that crime can quickly move across borders. However, we have stopped sharing and actively audited the agencies around us who do not have policies and are not abiding by the law. Every single one of them, it's just a simple matter of they don't know or they're working on it or they just haven't updated their records. But we have told them, as soon as you have a policy and as soon as you show us that you're following what's inside the state legislative guidelines, then we'll happily share with you again. But in this way, we are the gatekeepers of our data so that we can make sure that we are following law and best practices. I just covered this already, but basically that's what I just described, that we want to gatekeep our own data and make sure that anyone that is using this data to solve crimes are meeting the legislative requirements and not misusing our data. All right, concern three, internal officer accountability. So one thing that I want to first address is Some say that we shouldn't have this tool because it's being misused. The problem is every tool that officers have access to can be misused. It's how we govern those tools, and it's the policies and best practices, and how are we handling it when misuse is encountered. because every tool from even a cell phone or your car or your taser, every single tool can be misused. So we can't throw the baby out with the bathwater if we encounter this. We need to figure out a way to manage it ethically and hold people accountable. So, we do twice-monthly audits of the queries of our system. We make sure that every single query meets state law and policy. It doesn't take that long to do, simply because the system that we use is designed to handle these audits. And so it's not something that is a complicated process. The system is designed to allow us to do this process, which is nice. So we do it twice monthly. Any issues that we might find, we'll address. As a training issue today, we've never seen an ethical misuse of this tool. And any time we see... It is the policy that if we see misuse of this tool, that that user will have their account deactivated. So... 99, actually I'll say 100% because we've never seen ethical misuse, but 100% of any of the issues that we've encountered have just been simply a training issue and they've been addressed immediately and we haven't seen a repeat issue from any of those examples. These are the four statutory pillars that is outlined in the state code. To query the system, you have to have an active criminal investigation, outstanding warrants, stolen vehicles because no one has a right to privacy in someone else's vehicle, and missing endangered persons. So the system is never queried unless it meets one of these four requirements outlined by law and a few other statutory requirements. This is basically the meat and potatoes of when state legislature says that this system can be used. That was a very, I understand that that was sort of scratching the surface because this topic could be debated and discussed for ages, it seems, but I'd be happy to answer any questions that may still be burning.

Any questions from the council?

Yeah, I had a couple of questions. I appreciate the invitation. There are a lot of very passionate opinions about this and some of it is misguided and some of it may be true but um you know as an elected official we have to answer to residents when they come to us with this and i you know i wish we could invite every resident to see this presentation um it seems like there are a lot of safeguards are there additional safeguards that we could implement that we could use to reassure residents? One off the top of my head, and I don't know what else is available, but can you access the information without a warrant? If there's an active case, can you just...

Yes, the information can be accessed without a warrant. And the reason why that is is because the courts have over and over affirmed that this is information gathered from a public roadway, and the legislative branch has decided time and time again that they want officers to be able to plainly see a license plate displayed on a vehicle for identification purposes. The reason for the constraints on it is because they also recognize that while this information is just plain view information gathered from this technology is because they don't want to see misuse where there was a case back east that I'm sure everyone's heard in the media of an officer tracking an ex, right? That was deemed to be unethical behavior and misuse. We would see it the same, but that's the reason why it's not bound by a warrant, is because it's considered plain view information. There are cases in which a warrant would be necessary, but those are exceedingly rare. Most of it is going to be governance that the state legislature has outlined.

The twice-a-month audits, are those required by state, or is that...

The state only requires that we have information available for audit. So they require a retention period of this data so that if they wanted to audit, they could. I don't actually know which governing body would conduct that audit, but it could just be an investigation of misconduct. So we do that audit internally. And then again, the law just requires that the information is available for an audit if there were to be one.

I'm just thinking if there was a... Again, you just mentioned it. Who would perform the audit if we didn't do it internally? But if we had an external entity that maybe...

audited the twice a month audit it's just something to provide additional assurance but again that's yeah and i would say that who does the audit depends on where the inquiry is coming from right if if there was an investigation into misconduct it would it might be another agency who's investigating this misconduct it could be our own internal investigation into misconduct we also have but tons and tons of grandma requests for this kind of information to make sure that we are governing it, right? So the public is holding us accountable to this through those kinds of requests as well. It's a very popular topic right now, and we see that on our end, lots and lots of auditing from the public.

We're also seeing in the news of LPRs being damaged or vandalized. Have we seen any of that? We haven't seen that here.

We have taken measures to mitigate that problem to the extent that we can. That has a lot to do with how we place them, how we install them. We work very closely with UDOT to put them on poles that people can't cut down or drive over. So we do things on our end to sort of protect our investment, and it's worked so far. Any other questions?

So I had a question. Can private, so say, Valley Fair Mall, can they have a wall camera system around the mall?

Yes. So a private entity can manage their property however they want, and they can reach out to these vendors and get that kind of system provided within their property. What they can't do is turn that camera to someone else's property or public property, right? So it's really a matter of making sure that they're just capturing data on their own property.

So if they were doing that on their own property, it could be shared through...

Yeah, it can be. And that's probably one of the best cases where you ask about the warrant. If there is data that we believe exists on a private ALPR system, that's probably the most common case in which we would need a warrant to access that data.

Do you have any idea how many private companies in the city would have another LPR system?

I don't. I could say that there are a few notable examples like Lowe's and Home Depot. They've been in the news about it, but I couldn't give you a really good number on that.

There's nothing we can do about that.

I'm not an attorney, but with private property, I guess however they choose to manage it.

Do you have any idea how many queries we enter a week or a month?

I don't. It would take me about 30 seconds to answer that question if I called my guy, but I don't know. It's a lot. Because it's so effective, you know, if there is a reason to query that system, that helps us in a case we do.

A few months ago, I toured the real-time crime center. I saw the screen with the LPR working. It's amazing. No way I could transcribe all those license plates down, ever. So it works wonders, I'm sure.

Yeah, it does.

Any other questions or discussion in your council?

Not a question, just a comment to the council. We had our strategic planning meeting. We discussed public safety in our city and wanting to increase public safety. I think this is an effective tool. I do think that, I don't know what those would look like, but I would support tightening guidelines and guardrails to ensure residents' confidence. Like I said, you've already outlined several. I don't know what those would look like, but I would support just making sure our policy is tightened up and guardrails are in place to ensure confidence. I'm the only one voting on the council.

I'd be interested to know what further could be done to strengthen what we're doing now. I don't know what those audits look like, but we'll think about that a little bit and see what there's a review board. I don't know if they can look at audits on a quarterly basis and make comment on that.

Yeah, I mean, we can definitely look at what other guardrails we can put in place. These audits that are done, they're not spot check audits. They're every single query. So a lot of audits that we do throughout the police department with case management, body work camera and all that, there's just so much of it that we spot check it. This is such a valuable tool to us that we want to guarantee that it's not being misused, which is why we look at every inquiry. But we can explore other options for some additional guardrails.

That's a good point. Does the review board look at any of that?

They do not. It's not within their ordinance to review those.

So your audit procedures are just what you've developed internally? Yes. The state hasn't put anything out? They have not.

What's there? Yeah, let's look at the procedures. If we could look at your audit procedures, then that would at least tell us a lot of perspective of what you're looking at.

Okay.

Okay. Great. That's from the council.

It's just a hot topic that I think would be prudent for us to ask these questions about. I appreciate the presentation and the work you're doing. Councilman Harmon brought up a good point. We were talking about it and he said if this had been around when Susan Powell disappeared, who knows what the outcome could have been.

Yeah. And like Sergeant Fox said, we can't follow people with these cameras. We can just get a still shot of where they're at. To actually follow somebody, one, we'd need a warrant because we need warrants for trackers. But two, we would need... hundreds if not thousands of cameras with still shots every few seconds to know where someone's coming from or where they're going. So like I said, this is such a valuable tool for law enforcement. We're happy to answer any questions because we are completely on the up and up with this and it is a valuable tool for self-crime.

Okay, great. Thank you. Thank you.

council calendar any questions or comments on council calendar well i did have a question because we got some emails about the um sitting manager dialogue yeah so what is that oh yeah there's two of them

Yeah, and that's really for staff to answer questions, for me to answer questions with staff. I like to do that at least twice a year. I'm lucky if I get twice a year. I used to do it just throughout my career, quarterly. Sometimes I would have been good, but more, especially with larger organizations. organizations, you know, so we have a thousand employees. We would split this up. We're splitting it up into different meetings, but it's an opportunity to talk about HR policies, things that are coming down the pipe, even budget changes so that they hear straight from me and my executive team. But we always invite, I mean, you're always welcome to come. I think we've had, I don't know, since I've been here, maybe before. So this is just, this is something that I like to do with my staff. I think it's been, we had some specific questions. And so instead of doing it, you know, two big meetings, John and I actually went to each department. And so it took us a long time. And so we took a little break. But that's what these city manager dialogues are.

Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah.

Okay. What's that? And I'm sure you talk to staff all the time about our strategic goals, and that's probably an opportunity to sprinkle some of that in there, hopefully. Exactly. Any potential future agenda items? Council reports.

Well, if your marsh master operator calls in sick, Scott and I can fill in. We know how to run it.

What is a marsh master? It's the funnest thing you can drive. I heard you guys were really interested in that.

It's a very expensive... Stay in the still.

Weed puller.

Weed puller. Weed masher. Weed masher. In front of the friend line. Okay.

Yeah, we tested it out. You actually went on... The employee barbecue, they had it... Right on, yeah. Right on.

I had John text Dan and say, hey, get the keys out. So we brought the keys out and we... for a spin. It was a lot of fun.

It still works. You didn't actually go and cut down the... Oh, we did.

We mashed them. We didn't cut anything down. We mashed them. We were marsh masters. Well, it was just at the cultural center, but we drove out to the... Fragmites. Thanks, Dan, for letting us do that. Any other council reports?

Um, Yeah, I actually, I didn't know what I was going to. I don't know if you all know about this event at Granger Elementary. So it was Ken Garf Enterprises helped kick off a reading program in connection with the 2014 Olympics. So I went, not knowing what to expect, but they had two Olympians there for the three Olympics. And they're having a contest with their students for reading. And they had a torch lighting thing and a whole bit, um, A lot of energy. That's a really nice school, Granger Elementary. Really impressed with their administration and their teachers. But yeah, Fraser Bullock, who's the, you know, over the Olympics, he was there. And a few other high up people, higher than I would ever be. But yeah, it was a great event. So I was glad I went to it. Like I said, I had no idea what it was, but I'm glad I went to it. There's a lot of people who ran a school district there. Ben Horsley was there. Amen. They're called a champion school for reading.

Just an update. I went to the Chamber West awards gala yesterday. event as they all are. Thanks for representing us there. My daughter fulfilled her goal of getting me to as many NNLs as she could. I don't think we missed any. We went out one night for two and six. She just said, oh, let's just close here. Let's just go. It's a busy season. Did you have another one?

Yeah, just a quick update on the Veterans Day dinner. In connection with that, we're doing an essay contest. So as you're out and about with residents, high school students from Granger, Hunter, Cypress, Kearns, Taylorsville, APA, Roots, or Havana Academy, it's open to all high school students. And it's 250 years defending freedom, what veterans mean to me. So, yeah, the winner will come and read their essay, and there's cash prizes. They're going to read their essay? The winner.

Is there a word limit? 500 words. Well, Mayer was invited by Father Sebastian to come to their services last Sunday, and Mayer's out of town, so I went. And it was a great, great service. Bishop Solis was there, who's the Catholic bishop over all of Utah. There was another person there that sat next to me. He's like, you better be ready, because Father Sebastian will probably ask you to speak. And he did, and it was, so hopefully it was okay. It was a fun service to be a part of. starting their new curriculum for the church there. So it's a celebration of sorts. Anything else? No need for a closed session, I guess. All right, we've got one more motion for this study session. All in favor please say aye. Aye. We are adjourned.