City Council - Regular Meeting

Thank you.

I'm sorry that I couldn't be with you in person tonight.

I'm in St. Louis for a track meet.

Exciting.

Are you competing?

Small question.

I am not. What do you mean? No.

The amazing son is who set three records this year, Quinn. Really?

Right? Oh, that's awesome.

Wow. He won the 4A 800 mile and two mile. No one does all three of those events, wins all three. That's super cool. It's very rare. Going to Stanford, if you didn't know that as well. Didn't know that.

My goodness.

Great kid. That's great. We've missed a time there, too. Yeah.

It's the Hoka Festival of Miles. He gets to run in the top 15 mile race in the country tomorrow. So it's kind of fun.

It's exciting. Which facility they're running out there?

It's at St. Louis University High School track.

Nice. Awesome. Okay. Well then, we will go ahead and Are we unmuted for the mic? Then we'll go ahead and call our work session to order at 4.31 p.m. on June 3rd, 2026 in the council conference room here at ORM. And we've... That did kind of open. Open. So, yeah. We can go back to, if we have discussions on tonight, like maybe we should start with tonight, if there's any question or discussion we want regarding the meeting tonight. And then after that, maybe we talk about, kind of get back to that priorities conversation that we were having before.

I know that, I know Matt's going to be joining us soon. There he is, for example. I know the planning, the staff report on the FEMA item, on that firm maps item, little thing, because I'm not the expert on it. Matt is. He was out for the week, so. we have the other item back on the uh city zone change is

In law school, I actually had to write a paper on accretion planes and who owns them. The navigable waterway is through the state, and then through sedimentation, an alluvial plane appears who gets them. There you go. So if you can't sleep one night, give me a call. I will give you an explanation.

That will help. Oh, definitely. I don't sleep anyway, so it sounds good. We'll make it. We'll set it up.

Don't wait up. Don't wait up.

So anything you guys, it's up to you. Whatever you feel like is the best use of the time tonight. We can talk about priorities.

I just think that the next thing was just a regulatory thing that we have to do or we're not.

You taught the message. That is the core message.

Cost the residents a lot of money.

Yeah.

That could be the presentation, right?

Really, that could cover it. It's something that they came up with the verbiage. They sent and said, this is what everybody is adopting the same thing.

So we've been participating in the National Lifeline Insurance Program for 40 plus years. We already had an ordinance adopted. They have reclassified or re-studied this whole area, Provo and Orem, and updated the maps. And with that, and a lot of that had to do with levees in Provo, actual map changes in Orem are very minimal. But with the adoption, they came up with some new standards about flood... wave action on lakes and other types of tidal floods and then just general updates to their model ordinance. And so with this, we were required to update our ordinance with the current model ordinance that matches the maps and the new designations in the maps.

So there's nothing you're concerned about in there. I'm assuming you've poured over that.

Yes. Yeah. Ernie, Aaron's looked over it. Yeah, there's a lot in there. I don't even pretend to understand it all because we don't do a lot of floodplain permits. I will understand it when I get a permit I have to deal with. I have issued one, but I didn't deal with all of it. So there's so many different things in there. Other duties are assigned to me, so it's something that I take on when I need to. But yes, it is following the federal standards. Keep us authorized to participate in the program. There is one additional standard where we opted to... make the base flood elevation for buildings a foot higher than the minimum. And that actually decreases rate by doing that will actually further decrease rates for, you know, and federal flood insurance. And the only thing that really impacts is new structures. And since we have so few areas in floodplain anyways, it really is a negligible impact for new buildings.

And just for reference, I updated it once before when I was on here. These things, these tax amendments come, I thought there was one a couple of years ago. Yeah. Something along the same lines.

It was a smaller amendment.

Yeah. But they happen from time to time and it's pretty much just to make sure we can get the federal money. So any other questions about items on tonight? I mean, it's pretty straight. We've seen the item before. Yeah. Okay. Then let's turn our conversation to priorities. I will get my notes up.

Hell yeah. As we get into that, let me, as Madeline fishes that discussion out, talking about over the last couple of months, really. One of the things that we're going to be bringing to you soon will be the attached accessory dwelling units. We have a mandate from the state to add attached accessory dwelling units to our code. So right now we allow internal ADUs so you can rent out a portion of your home. But now the state is saying we have to come up with a plan to allow detached units. So guest houses, casitas, whatever you want to call them. The rules of them, there are a few parameters, but they're both largely up to us about how setbacks and things like that will all work. So we're starting to research other ordinances. There are plenty of cities that have that already. We're going to close kind of a matrix of good ideas and bad ideas and what's working, what's not working, and what kind of fits for us. Orem's pretty diverse in lot sizes and things like that. So it's going to be to make it work everywhere it might need to be. So we'll be bringing that to you soon.

Get it done during this.

There's a couple of other things we're working on. The modern housing plan, we have to buy effectively for the year. We have to report some numbers, but we don't have to update the plan at all. So you get a break from that next year. We'll let you know when those reports are filed by the end of the month. You know it's done. And just update you for the numbers just for fun so you know. A couple other things going on too. We're looking at some codes for possible codes for changes between subdivisions, boundaries of subdivisions for new lots as infill lots go, how much we can deal with grade changes between lots and things like that to couple with our type work instead of doing that. And And then just as a quick update, too, so you know the math on the height ordinances that we did, it's more complicated than I had hoped. But still, it's workable. An analog version of it today is easier than your digital version. We can do it. It'll be tough, though. So we'll keep you updated as we keep seeing some of those come in and see how they're working. I thought we could bring you a couple of examples just to show you how it's actually working in real life. And that might be fun for you to see. I think those kind of things are fun anyway. You know that's too bad. You're going to see it anyway. Okay. I'll set it up and let Madeline.

Yeah. The detached ADU, I think, is one of the big things because we haven't talked over first. So that's only what?

Not very long.

Six or seven meetings.

It needs to get to you guys during July if we're going to make it in time. In my view, we need to bring you drafts in July so that you're looking at it. Time for it to go to council so there's not any hiccups that could potentially put us out of whack. So we'll keep it as simple as possible at first. And if we need to make adjustments to make it fit all the different kinds of possible situations, we may not be able to anticipate every situation with the time frame that we have. But we'll do our best. So, yeah, I would expect we need to bring it to you guys during July.

Because I think the setback issue is going to be the big issue is how close... to the line and like everybody's backyard is different. Like ours are, like in my neighborhood, we're like long. A lot of us have these long rectangles. We're not very deep. Would that preclude us if, you know, I'm just saying there's going to be a lot of thinking.

What we've seen in the past is based on square footage of the lot and on a certain percentage of allowable building space, that was usually pretty easy because it was set in whatever percentage we wanted to set.

So And that's a good opener for it. It's going to have to be sized by lots, right? Percentages make sense. We also have currently our rules say that your accessory structures on any given lot can't equal more than 8% of the total lot area. So a lot of that sometimes is taken up by people's garages and things like that. 8% of a 10,000 square foot lot is not a whole bunch of land to put it in. So we might have to modify that if we're going to make this work. But then we've got some latitude, again, in the statute, so we'll... Just curious, I'm putting my lending hat on.

People are going to want to finance those ADUs, and one of the problems that we have is we have people locked in interest rates at 2.5% who don't want to give that up. And so there's this whole question about how do I... I finance that as a separate structure. I know that in other communities, people have been turning the plat into a condominium, like a site condo. I'm curious. Financing purposes.

Yeah.

And so is that something the city would even consider? And how would you even execute on that?

The problem with that for me would be that that fundamentally changes the nature of the ADU as an ADU, as an accessory to the primary because it's ownable separately that way. If it's just for purposes of finance, I don't know how you could do it to allow for financing for it and not open yourself up to somebody else owning it.

Small parcel, yeah. Could they not just come and do a HELOT fund? They could. They could. They're just going to want a fixed rate at a better price.

Well, there are a lot of things. But it is what it is.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. They just made me SOL. I'm just curious to think about that. That will come up. And so I'm just curious.

That also ties into one of the things that we've been talking to about with all of the Oh, illegal, you know, wellings situation. Because now if we have people that are like, well, hey, I can get two more renters if I put this in the backyard. It turns into a real nightmare. I know.

There was some limits. I think there might be some limits in the state statute about how much, what can be rented.

A lot of space.

Or if you have one, you can't have it.

Yeah.

It's been a few months since I rented it.

I don't know that it precludes you having more, like if you have an internal, like right now, most of the city's codes say you can have one ADU. And if you have an internal ADU, the cities where I've worked before that allow them, usually allow one or the other. If you have an internal ADU, you don't get a detached ADU as well. I don't think it's precluded by this.

But that's a limitation we could put on it. Yeah, I'm throwing it out.

I think it doesn't tell us we can't do that, though. We have pretty good discretion to say it tells us lot sizes. Lots of such and such a size will be allowed. And so we can, below that level, we can restrict it and say we don't want them on 5,000 square foot plots or within townhomes, attached homes, within condos. You don't have to have it used in those kinds of attached situations.

um what is the motivation for the state to provide work okay and so those will all be reduced it's probably yeah yes with the spirit of what they're doing yeah that would be most that's that's the attempt is to create just more housing it's up the parking can of worms it's the same parking issue They're internal. Internal requirements. It brings up the whole Airbnb question again, right? Because it's the perfect thing to Airbnb out.

Gosh. We license ADUs, so we'll control that somewhat regulatorily. That's a real work. Don't look that up.

I don't know if it's real, but you can make this stuff up.

We do license ADUs so we can control that somewhat. They're supposed to be, you know, to the extent that people fly with contracts, licenses. But that would be our only recourse there would be to say you're supposed to be renting this for more than 30 days at a time. We only catch people the way we catch them. People call on it. We'll find out. Our goal is to have it with you all during July so we can make the deadlines. Not long until July.

I believe it's already June. I feel like it just happened.

June is always really busy.

Other things we've talked about is the flaglot deep log problem. I think there does need, and I think also in line with external ADUs, I think there's some level of, I think there is some relations to siting. Because I mean, that will change because people want to sell the lot versus if they can develop the lot and not have to split their property.

Well, the question becomes then too, though, should flag lots be eligible for ADUs? If it's already a flag lot, should you have an ADU back there? I don't, the code, if it's the right size, state code's going to tell us we have to make those available.

Some of those flaglots are that big. Lots of marks.

They'll still come down to that percentage. Whatever percentage. Same for this size. Yeah.

Other things we've talked about is food trucks, but I know that one's kind of in limbo between... Is it a... land use issue or is it a business issue?

I think the decision is it's almost done, but we haven't treated as much of a zoning issue yet, but that's kind of the direction we're going.

Yeah, so I'll give you an update on that. What we're going to do is this issue presents a lot of interesting, difficult issues. Some are land use, some are a licensing regulatory scheme that impacts existing brick and mortar businesses, um how long can they be there do you have semi-permanent places where they congregate and so it's quite a complicated thing uh or complicated issue beyond just a food truck. There's licensing and tax revenue and all of these issues. And also, you know, believe it or not, sometimes these places dump into the storm drain system, their wastewater and things like that, that we have to be aware of and deal with. So just this morning, we talked in our executive staff meeting, and we're setting up an interdisciplinary departmental group, and our economic development director is going to head that up, and it'll probably take a while. There will be a slice of this that'll need to come to Planning Commission, but there'll be a lot of other issues. wouldn't necessarily need to come here so that one for now um i don't think you need to worry about it but we at some point in the future and it may take a year uh come back and really uh dive into the land use portion of it with you because the land use portion for us is if we wanted to establish like food courts like yeah a business land use for... Yeah, or if you have an existing business, we make it as a land use issue. You know, some food trucks out in the parking lot is almost like a mall with a pad. You know, it really kind of functions that way.

That's how a lot of businesses have been doing it.

Yeah, and how do we get our arms around doing that? Because I think they're here to stay. Clearly, people love them. It's a great thing. And we want to... allow it, and we want to let innovation go, but we want to do it in a careful way that we don't damage brick and mortar. That's one thing that you'll hear is, oh, geez, I have to upkeep, and I have a parking lot. These guys come and go, and they go on a vacant lot. They make as much in a day as I do. So it's a complicated issue.

It is. Next, we talked about double frontage lots. I think there's been some discussion about needing to update the, had a number actually lately, double frontage lot related.

We have, and I'm not sure how to, double frontage lots are the age-old problem of subdivision codes, how you deal with them, and everyone deals with them in a different way, and all of those ways are inadequate. There are some modifications we could make that might make it easier or give more guidance to us when we're looking at certain situations as opposed to... It's easy when you're just doing big subdivisions. You expect on an arterial road to have some noble frontage lots, and it still doesn't turn out well because no one cares for things, etc. You have those same problems. But where we're really struggling is in lot combinations that create them outside of our normal lots that we would never approve in a new subdivision, and We're allowing them. We have allowed them all over the place as not combinations. We have no real dealt with it in a couple of ways. And we might want to codify some of that. So that's really what we're talking about.

And then kind of some of the bigger things we've talked about commercial and commercial zoning and ORM and needing to really start writing down and looking at some of that. Also the general plan. which we haven't really gotten to at all this year because of everything. Bringing that back. I'm just listing things that we've brought up as priorities. And then we've also talked about livability and what does livability mean and do we want to define livability? So those are the main ones I have. We've had some time to think. Is there anything else people have started noticing or have been thinking about that you'd like to...

I think one of the buzzes that's been in the final meetings anyway, and also just with the, you know, there's just a general push on. We probably need to start discussing legal processes of making sure whether it's, you know, with accessory apartments. Now, it's going to tie into everything, whether or not we're going to stand by what we've usually done in the past, which is if it's a single-family home, they can rent out the whole home. That's fine. But if it starts getting four or five or six people living in that house and needs to be occupied, how do we handle that? How do we regulate that? And how do we make it so that it's a benefit two ways? Number one, cleaning up the neighborhood, but also the administration of doing that. The city needs to be compensated for doing what it has to do to go through that process. you know, whole process. So I know that's a hot topic with everybody that I live in my section of the area because we have a lot of them. And so I was counting through it the other day, just in my little neighborhood behind Target, we've got upwards of 12 to 15 or we've got at least five different families living in those homes.

I know that it's interesting. When you do the modern income housing data, you see the number of rentals, the numbers of the census estimates for rentals versus owner-occupied units. And everyone kind of generally, I think, is always surprised that it's usually 60-some-odd percent in favor of rentals. Even in single-family neighborhoods, a lot of properties are rented, more than you think.

So just to be clear, you're talking about legal process for the number of renters in a home.

Yeah, my main thing is if we have, because we have a lot of homes specifically in our area where there's a lot of them that are not over-occupied. So are we going to treat it like it's an apartment? Are we going to tax it as an apartment? Or are we just going to shut it down and make the neighbors happy and make the community happy and say, okay, if you're going to be renting to multiple heads, somebody has to be on time.

Very simple. Right now, we have the rule that says I'm going to get the number wrong because it's different in different places. We say three. Three unrelated people not related by blood or adoption or marriage can live in a home and it can still be considered a single family. So are you saying beyond that?

I just think it's... I'm not really sure because I don't know exactly how the city has it set up at this point.

That's what I was going to ask. Is this like food trucks where it crosses between some level of business or other area compliance with this actual end use?

Well, it's both. So one thing that the city is considering, as you know, the council's working on a short-term rental. And that is necessarily beg the question, what do you do with a single family home that is just rented? Do you license them and they have to get a business license? And then you go through and there's possibility of doing a disproportionate impact analysis to how do you, what's the fee and regulation for that? And a lot of communities, if it's a rental, whether it's short-term, anything, if you are renting it out, you have to get a landlord license and meet certain requirements. And part of those requirements would be the appropriate parking and occupancy, and then it becomes an enforcement issue. And at some point, there's the possibility of losing your license to rent if you violate the law continually. So I know Provo has one. If you have a rent, if you just have your home and you're gone, or you own it, grandma, grandpa dies, the kids all own it, they just rent it out. They have to get a rental dwelling license and go through a lot of licensure for that. They do have some exceptions for temporary absences, two to three years. Think about that one for a moment.

Is there a downside? Having a licensing advice?

Well, the downside is, one, it's a change, and it's always hard to deal with change. Two, if you start going in and really licensing and regulating, people expect you to license and regulate, which means you need to do enforcement. And enforcement's not cheap, nor is it easy.

Right. No, and I think that's one of the things that we need to know. It needs to be, I hate to say it, but I'm going to say it. It needs to be an income generator for the city of Orem so that it's not sucking up the tax base. So it needs to, whatever we do needs to have some element in there where it takes care of the city's cost financially and maybe even make it, you know, a bonus for the city of doing that. Reason being is, the one thing I'm hearing a lot of, like we've all heard before, we've got a lot of neighbors that are going, you know, the housing values are going, because now sort of, you know, that one neighbor that doesn't hold them on, now there's five neighbors that don't hold them on. We've even got one situation where we have the guy tore out the backyard and put a parking lot in the backyard. So it's not out in front, but he's got five, six cars parked in the back of his house every day. So we've got a lot of neighbors that are upset, and I've got a lot of neighbors that are saying, well, what's the city thinking about that? And I'm like, well, we're working on it, but I don't have a definitive answer for you as yet.

We're about 20 years behind Provo. Provo, around 20 years ago, passed ordinances dealing with how much of your yard can be taken out and put into parking for those very reasons, and what neighborhoods are rental, and what neighborhoods are single family, and what kind of rules you put in. And that's always, if you've been watching the short-term rental conversation, that's been a difficult conversation. It's not an easy issue. This will be as difficult and just as not easy.

It would have been easier 20 years ago to have this discussion, probably. Yes, it would have. Very emotional conversation.

Well, it is. Well, no, absolutely, because there's a lot of people who are affected on both sides. I mean, realistically, do we have enough housing?

Probably not.

Do we have enough housing even with the situation with the homes? I don't know. It's debatable. And so you're going to have the neighbors that are more long-term neighbors that are sitting there digging their heels and saying, I don't like it. I mean, we have a lot of traffic down in our neighborhood just going to the elementary school. but it goes both ways. And it's just finding a way that we can stand up as more on a legal basis, making sure that we're not infringing on anything, but at the same time setting out guidelines and rules that are fair and make hopefully, nobody's going to be happy, but hopefully everybody's okay with it. That's the magic question right there.

Yeah, that again will be a multidisciplinary approach. You know, and one of the big issues is just our people don't often think about it, but our wastewater system is only designed for so much. And if you double the occupancy in every home in Orem, what does that do to our wastewater system? And how do we deal with that?

Not only for wastewater, how much water we actually have for the city to begin with. So, yeah, it's a multi-tier issue.

Just to give you a heads up as to what we're seeing when it comes to permits for houses, for over a year now, almost every single house that has applied for a permit has an ADU or a mother-in-law apartment. I don't think I remember seeing any house that hasn't. All new homes and buildings. And then on top of that, almost a majority of a lot of the permits that we're getting in that have to do with redoing houses so far includes them creating an ADU. Yeah.

Just for clarification, even like the new neighborhood build, like TriPoint's building, all of them have them built and everything?

Yes. Almost every single one of them do, or at least it's designed in a way so that it would very easily be able to be very... That's financial too, because I had a 60 lot development next to me that went in and...

in order for them to qualify to get a loan for the sheer cost of housing. They had to expect an income from the ADU to qualify for the loan. And so a lot of people are qualifying for a home based on the fact they have a... Quinn?

I wanted to make a comment.

Go ahead.

Oh, thanks, Jared. Yeah, I just wanted to weigh in on a couple of thoughts, maybe from my perspective and some things I've heard at City Council, just for you to consider on your priority list. And I like Madeline's list a lot. And, you know, as Micah was talking about the... The challenge with having too many people renting homes and the questionable legality of some of those homes, that is a big issue that's on a lot of people's minds. And that is partly a code enforcement issue. But I'd like us to be thoughtful about it. And, you know, whatever appropriate role Planning Commission can play in helping us think through how to manage that better, that's a challenge in a number of our neighborhoods. A couple of things that Madeline said that I just want to second that I'd love to see you work on. I really think we need a review of our zones. I mean, that's a big project. She mentioned the commercial zones. That's probably the biggest issue. I've mentioned before that I really think we need to just review all of the layers of our zones. Land use code and make sure that we are being as consistent as we can and resolving inconsistencies to the extent that we can. I would not want the next five years to be You know, every person that comes before the plan commission has to get some sort of special development agreement because we don't have the The vision for the right zoning for those things, it just complicates life for everybody. So that's a bigger picture thing. Also, big picture, the ADU discussion I think fits into a broader question of housing affordability. So the state is really pushing housing affordability. I hear about housing affordability all the time from Orem residents. It's in tension with some of these other things that we've been talking about. But in my dream world, I would love the Planning Commission to be able to have a clear vision of how we are addressing housing affordability and how that fits in with our general plan. That would be really lovely. I also, you know, this has been a bigger issue in the past, but it's still an issue for me and for many people, is the question, do we have the state street we want today? if we don't have the state street we want, why is that? Is it something that we can think more carefully about as part of our general plan in a way that fits the principles of the Planning Commission values? So I want to put that on our big picture, big ideas list as well. So those are just a few things that are I've been thinking about, and I know a lot of the council's been thinking about as we think about where you all can be helpful.

Great.

What was that last one?

The last one was State Street. And I think that one, as we talk about commercial, I know a lot of the conversations we had last year as a planning commission about commercial specifically and economic development in Orem, we spent a lot of time focusing on State Street. And University Park way less so, but a little bit. But I think that is the core of our business. core of our local business, core of a lot. So yes, I think that those are definitely things that we can address and work on. So thank you for sharing those, Quinn. Darren?

I'm just curious about this because it's getting, sucking up all the oxygen in Provo right now is the amphitheater. And all the conceptual drawings I see of it, or there is one conceptual drawing being circulated from the people proposing it, shows a pedestrian tossway over Provo Canyon Boulevard, which would be on Orem Space, right? So they're at Timpanogos Park. And are the developers talking to you folks at all about using parking at Timpanogos Park and or... what role might we play in this particular scheme north you want to talk about that a little bit why does it take the responsibility off of us to plan for that as part of all of this yeah to think about right what does that imply for us all the traffic and light noise and all that i mean eventually

Yeah, you're right. That concept shows a flyover pedestrian and bike path kind of thing. I don't think it's far enough along for us to know what they want from us or what they would expect our participation to be. Gary, do you know any more about that?

No, everything. I'll be honest, I can't believe it's going to Rovo's planning commission for a rezone when... You don't really have an actionable plan there. I don't know how they'll park it. I don't know how they'll get traffic in. I don't know how they'll get 8,000 vehicles into that area or something and not shut down the canyon, everything for a full evening. afternoon and evening. So I think it's still a little premature, and we don't have any definite proposals to us. We've all seen what you've seen, and that's about the extent of it. So right now, I think our recommendation to the elected officials in Orem would be i don't know you need more detail there a lot more detail and and frankly i'd like to to see provo hold off on it until there is more detail and i feel comfortable saying that as a resident not as an employee of orm

I live right at the mouth of the Canyon. That would be a nightmare from three o'clock on, on Saturday and Sundays until 9 PM at night. That interchange is an absolute nightmare. And I live, I have to come and turn on eighth North and we have accidents all the time. And I can just see that skyrocketing with the number of, You would have to totally. That would have to be.

Access management has shut down. Just their necessities and their needs and their inability to flex enough has shut down a large flower shop before. So their big hurdle right now is with HUDOT. That's what happens.

I think you're absolutely right.

Yeah, the traffic study is going to be, I mean, oh gosh.

It's a nightmare.

You can't imagine. There hasn't even been a traffic study done, even a preliminary traffic, to my knowledge.

With that said, knowing that you live right at the mouth of the canyon, I'm going to hitch up from parking. Canal Trail, you can park.

I'll charge you $20. I'll finish the $20 spot now.

Quinn, did you want to say something?

Thanks. Yeah, I mean, I've just talked to some people about this and they're showing up on my calendar now as some potential small meetings to further discuss some of these details. My own perspective on this is that the plan as it has been presented in the media is just crazy. And that I can see no conceivable way that the numbers that they're talking about in that venue would work. And so even with a greatly reduced number, of visitors to that facility, we still have tons of infrastructure questions. And on the ORM side in particular, you know, we're going to be pushing for a great deal of caution about all kinds of effects that it would have specifically on traffic and We're open to the idea that we have a lot more visitors to Canyon View and Timpanogos Park. I think in some ways that could be a good thing, but we're just deeply skeptical about the logistics of the transport there. There's just gotta be so much more work before we get anywhere. I think we are nowhere close. To having an approved plan for this. I think it's going to be years out. But anyway, those are my thoughts.

I'm surprised that they spent that much money on the concept drawings. You go big or go home because that one, that size will never fly there. I just, I just don't see how that would have done a little more.

Never say never. Never say never.

I know, but I would have done a little.

You put the word Olympic behind something and you put the word, you put, get the state government behind something. We could be looking at something different than. And then like, I'm just using this as a hypothetical now to branch off, but like, then what does a responsibility, our responsibility come to plan eighth North?

I'm going to schedule a shooting party for a little bit during the performance.

Well, I can tell you, when I was working in Provo, concepts for that area came up all the time. And it's surrounded by Forest Service land, and a part of that was always the discussion of trading Provo property and other locations to the Forest Service to get that and bringing a secondary access from Canyon Road into that area to help relieve things. But to make this work, they'd have to get rid of the shooting range. They would have to be a part of this. And I'm speaking not as an employee of Orem, but as a resident of Provo. I think it's way premature. I can't believe they're going forward to a planning commission meeting.

Well, and I think they have a time clock, like a countdown to groundbreaking on the website.

Wow.

How are you doing, Matt, already? Anyway, they're enthusiastic.

Let's try and get investors. A lot of these pitches this early on are really just that, though. They don't have the financing and capital, and so they want to get a lot of exposure, a lot of media attention, a space to try and get free advertising to attract capital investment. Sometimes you see these big plans, same thing with that pro and mal, it took them like Here's getting traction on that. Because there again, they were trying to make some idea and get capital investors. So it may never happen. Even if they have all the clearances in the world and all the permits in their world, and UDOT comes through and permits it, if ultimately they don't get the capital investors, you'll never see the project happen.

I want to see the infrastructure estimate just from UDOT of what it would take to get people in and out of there. It's got to be in the hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars. That's crazy.

Yeah, I'd fly over southbound. Just that structure alone would be crazy.

Yeah. Okay.

Any other thoughts or last like five or one, one non, this is kind of, uh, or a member of the, uh, mission, uh, Shauna Mecham, uh, wanted to know she's all about bike or, um, and that, uh, she would, she's concerned about around the mall and and you know and you know making that you know transportation work down there on bikes but if anybody wants she'd like to do a bike ride sometime if anybody's interested i do i buy quite a bit but if anybody's interested let me know and i know that there is some work on an active trend or redoing the active transportation plan to make it a little more updated and to make it a little clearer so that will be like biking will be something that

The Transportation Advisory Committee is working on the active transportation plan now, and that plan will eventually come here.

Do we actually want to prioritize the list?

We can. I was going to say, yeah, I was just kidding.

Go ahead.

Yeah. Any more? Okay. Obviously, we're going to have to do ADUs, detached ADUs. Is there... Is there something we want to lump in along with that at the same time? Or do we want to just dive into commercial? I'm just throwing out.

Based on the things we've been doing with University Parkway thus far. It's just glaringly apparent that we need to have better subclasses. I would say that.

I feel like the EDU, it might be nice to see what city council decides on short-term rentals because there might be some influence from that.

Like we said, we're going to have to do the detached EDUs, but the other aspects of it, yes. Sure. Yeah. So let's just plan to start with commercial and the detached ADUs and go from there. Then if we have any other questions or any other things, then we will go ahead and, um,

Why is the word adjourned? It's the only word stuck in my head.

It's the right word. Gary wants to say something.

Well, one thing that might be helpful, as a planning commission, you often meet and you talk about things. we'd like to give you feedback on what happens after something happens, whether it's a subdivision that goes in so that you can see the results of what happened. If you've worked on an ordinance that somehow... We can interact with you, and I don't know what the right thing to do is. Maybe we go look at a subdivision that gets developed, or we come in and just have a presentation on an ordinance. Jared talked about the building height. And as we get some projects or plans in and we review them, there will be unintended consequences with almost everything that we do and work on. And so if there's a routine, if there's a development or an ordinance that we've passed recently and you want to see the effects of it, let us know or we can work with Madeline on just... routine things to bring up in like a work session when we're not doing other things to come back and show you the effects of, let you see the consequences of what you've Because look what you guys did. I was trying to say it not in that tone, but that's how it came out.

And we can't. If there's things we want to go see or we want to investigate, we can talk about doing.

We can do a field trip. We could go in and either meet out on site at something and take a look at a development. It's like, whoa, whoa, this is how it's developing. When they came in requesting the zone change, I never pictured it would end up like this. You have a case in point? I'm curious. No, there's always, you know, because people have subjective opinions about things. And then when it comes in, it's like, oh, what actually happened?

Fantastic. Yeah. It takes some time for lessons to play out, but it's great.

So, I don't know, I guess for right now, how about if we will just work with Madeline about those types of things and you guys feel free to talk to me too. And yeah, and if you, there's something that you think, oh, yeah, I know there's this been this new development somewhere. So maybe we should go take a work meeting and go look at it. We could go. spend a half hour somewhere, meet on site, and come back. It's okay for us to do that. We just need to do the proper noticing for it if we're going to have a quorum out there.

It wouldn't be a field trip without a school bus and a sticky floor. A sticky floor.

And if there are concerns and that becomes problematic to do, we can also, as long as we don't have a quorum, we could take... There were three members at a time if you're really interested in, hey, you know, there's this project going on here. Now, explain how this works and why is it like this? Help us understand because there's a lot of things that are land use issues. That are easy to get your arms around. There are other things that are utility issues that can impact the actual development of something, you know, because and what and the reason I'm bringing this up now is, is the. Plans that we're talking about from Provo, just up the canyon, almost everybody's seen those drawings. Well, you get a great number of people in a room and say, what will this really look like and what will be the impact if something like this were built? And then go back and look at it and see what really had to happen. A lot of people might be shocked at what really happens because of that development.

Yeah, that's a good point.

So let us know. And then we'll go ahead and adjourn so we can set up for our regular meeting at 5.

Mark Benthien, SCEC.

Hey, we will go ahead and call our Planning Commission meeting to order at 5.30 p.m. on June 3rd. Okay, we're going to get started. It's June 3rd, 2026, and it's still 5.30 p.m. This is the Orem City Planning Commission, and we are meeting in the City Council Chambers, and we will begin with an inspirational thought tonight by Darren.

So, right. Yeah, I thought I would actually follow through and do an inspirational song instead of a prayer, though I haven't had much time to prepare it. So but I like thinking on the spur of the moment. And so last weekend I was in Mesa Verde, which was a kind of a lifetime bucket list for me. I'd never been before. And looking at all the dwellings there, I mean they're things of beauty and the running joke from some of the rangers was OSHA would have never approved this and I was thinking about well what would a planning commission do and talk about your nightmare scenarios there and a cliff dwelling and so forth but that's not my inspirational thought it's just kind of a fun thing but one of the points they made which I really did find inspirational was that don't just look at the structures which is kind of what we do as a planning commission. But imagine them inhabited. And imagine not just how the structures look and how their spacing is, but imagine the people who live there. And imagine the children and the breadwinners and the workers and the mothers and the imagine the everyday lives of these people and then you really get a sort of a feel for the place and I think I guess you know we definitely do that on this Planning Commission we definitely listen to the people and think about their daily lives but I guess I just hope that That's kind of one of our main criteria that we do as we undertake our decisions.

Thank you. Okay, we will begin with Item 3, which is our consent agenda, which includes Item 3.1, which is approval of the May 20, 2026 minutes, and Item 3.2, which is a plat amendment. Spoggy. Spoggy, Platte C. Thank you, Jared. Located approximately at 575 North, 600 East. So if there's any questions or if anyone wants to move anything out, or we can move to motion.

I move that the Orem City Planning Commission approve the consent agenda. Okay. Do I have a second?

I second.

Okay, Susan moved and Carl seconded that we approve the consent agenda. Jeff?

Aye.

Aye. Aye.

Aye. Aye. Aye.

Okay, consent agenda is approved. We have no items for number four. We have no action items, so we'll move on to item number 5.1, which is a text amendment. It's an update to Chapter 10 of the Orem City Code relating to flood damage prevention. And we'll begin with Matt giving a presentation. Okay.

So the National Flood Insurance Program, if you need to buy flood insurance for some mortgage purpose or you elect to buy flood insurance for any other reason, you have lower rates than you would have normally had because of this almost 50-year-old program. And the city's participated since the early 80s to – It's one of the most destructive and common natural disasters because sometimes we don't think of natural disasters as, you know, somebody... Just a rain event and then, you know, your basement flooding out from a rain event, you know, because you think floods are, you know, something coming down the street, right? My mom, about 10 years ago, an American Fork and... And heavy rains. And the subdivision was built to code. It was built properly. But she still had a flood in her basement. So she did not have flood insurance. So they had to deal with it other ways. But that's why I was surprised to find out this one in four chance of flood during 30-year mortgage. That seemed really high to me. But you think about these other non-traditional newsworthy flood events, there's quite a bit of flooding. 40% of flood damage occurs outside of FEMA's designated high-risk special flood hazard areas. And that is when, you know, what is a special flood hazard area? If you go to the FEMA web, you can Google FEMA firm maps. You can download special maps. These are flood rate, flood insurance rate map firm, right? And they're part of the program where it designates certain areas of the city and different classifications of floodplain. I already talked about, this program is actually a little older than I thought, but again, we've been participating since the 80s. So what does it provide for the community? It provides federally backed flood insurance and reduces rates for people. And then this is really the key part of the ordinance. The key part of the ordinance is to help the city design and build structures through the regular permitting process that meets flood reduction standards. So if you're in a floodplain or one of these special flood hazard areas, one I'm working with right now is a regulatory floodway, which even has higher standards along the Provo River. you would need to bring your bill up these certain standards in this code to help mitigate flood damage not just to yourself but to your neighbors and to the community around you because you think about a major flood event coming down the provo river what do you often see you see a bunch of debris and branches and if you have something in the floodplain all that can get caught up on that building water can and just builds and builds and builds and actually more than just the deluge of water it's actually the build-ups and the dams that substantially can increase the flooding capability and impact on the community so we want to make sure that structures in these regulatory flood areas are not necessarily impeding floodways as well as being damaged so that's part of the purpose um it unlocks the federal flood insurance rates mitigation grants too so there's lots of federal grants that say hey if you're going to qualify for this grant city you need your city needs to participate in this program so only that unlocks those grants disaster assistance. So if we do have a major disaster, we had just two years ago, some major storms are on the news and have really impacted some of our residents here in State Street. And if I remember right, there was some disaster assistance involved in that. And I think Gary added the Duran Duran reference. Or is that a Jared edition?

It's just to put it into context for you. I'm like, I didn't put that in there.

Okay. Yeah, FEMA completed new local maps in 24. They were certified this last December by the federal government and went into effect. And that puts in this need for this ordinance. It addresses changing flood risks. Like I said, also a lot of like levy and lakeside issues, especially in Provo, uncertified levies, shoreline revisions along Utah Lake. Even though our city doesn't actually border the lake technically, and we have... about a quarter mile of wetlands, a half mile of wetlands between us and the lake. You know, we do have structures that get pretty close to that floodplain in the wetland zone. So they're outside, most of it's outside the official map, but, you know, some freak event, maybe there could be impacts there too, but. And, you know, if a due diligence for your title company or a property under the due diligence, these maps are available to help make better decisions in what type of homes they purchase or a property they purchase. If you just have standard homeowners insurance, it doesn't cover flood damage and it's available to all home residents. We have an adoption deadline by the city council in 2030. That's actually not true anymore because apparently the... Oh, who's over FEMA? national security, NSA shutdowns and stuff. They didn't get the proper notice out to us, so they had to give us another 90 days. But we're not widely broadcasting that, so we really want this done on June 23rd. Just get it done. Any questions?

Questions for Steph? No.

Yeah, and I think just for the public, most of the ordinance is just updates to the standard language that the federal government has updated their model ordinance to.

And a lot of new definitions.

Yes.

A lot of new definitions.

Which is helpful for an administrator, especially somebody that doesn't have a background and you're just trying to figure out stuff. Like, okay, having the definition there, go find some obscure federal code. Very helpful.

Excellent. Thank you. so if we have no comments for staff this is a public hearing so we will open for public comment and so we will go ahead and open for that i will skip my spell because there's literally nobody here and then we will close the public comment and continue on so we can move to motion if there's no further or if there are any other comments

move that the orem city planning commission forward a recommendation of approval to the city council for the proposed amendments to chapter 10 of the orem city code relating to flood damage prevention okay do we have a second i second okay carl moved and jeff second that we afford a recommendation of approval to the city council and we will begin uh go to vote hi hi hi hi hi okay

Item 5.1 is approved for city council. So we'll move on to item 5.2, which is the rezone of 360 West, 1500 South. So request to rezone the property located generally at 360 West, 1500 South from public facilities, PF to residential R8 for the development of a residential subdivision, approximately 5.45 acres. And this is the one we continued from several meetings ago. Jared?

thank you yeah this is this is the item um that you were looking at the change of zoning to the r8 zone uh from a couple of weeks ago or two meetings ago was continued to tonight's meeting so we brought it back to you um i can run through the slides if you want if you have any other questions i'm happy to torture however you want we did um for comments we did receive a video from one of the residents there that wanted us to show that during comments if you were going to open for comments again we'll talk about that after but does anyone want the presentation

You want to just give us the super high level?

No problem at all. So the property is right here. You can see that it's in two different zones right now. The majority of it is in the PF, public facility zone. The rest of it is in the R8 and R12 zones. We're asking for a rezoning to R8. It's in the low density residential future land use category here. You can see that light yellow as most of the surrounding is. The R8 is an appropriate zone for that category. It's one of the named preferred zones. Again, it's the current zoning designations, public facilities, and then the R-12 right here. Some of the lots are already subdivided or they're approved for a subdivision called Acadia Heights. It's one of the phases. This subdivision plan, or sorry, this rezoning would accommodate a subdivision plan. They would modify a couple of those to make it work and bring a road up through Acadia Heights and into this property so that it could be subdivided. So these get modified a little bit, but they're already planned to be subdivided under a different subdivision. Those are the ones that are in that R12 zoning.

Jared, can I just ask one question here while we're on this? Are we changing only the portion that's PF or are we changing both of these? Both.

Both would go to the R8 to accommodate the changes that have to happen. It doesn't actually increase the lot numbers from Acadia Heights. It just lets us move things around enough to run the road up through. Um, so the, the new, the new lots, any, any really truly new lots are up here on the city's property that is PF, but it's a, it's a good distinction, Madeline. Thank you. So this is that R12 area. Um, those would all become R8 as well. The road would come up and probably cul-de-sac there were, we have two concept plans. Um, one would run the, the road all the way through the other would cul-de-sac it. The cul-de-sac was preferred during the neighborhood meeting. There were a lot of folks in the neighborhood meeting, um, and it wasn't a unanimous agreement on cul-de-sac, but it was a clear majority for the cul-de-sac as opposed. So we've sort of leaned into that as a, as a, As a city, as we're looking at designs, it does get 18 single fan. It does create 18 new single family lots. They're all single family lots. Sewer and water utilities can be extended with this kind of plan just to show you there's a utility corridor that we can an easement that we can run through here to connect sewer and water utilities. Through here and bring them into this area a lot of these lots as we spoke about last time. are on septic tanks and we'd like to have them off their septic systems or provide at least the ability for them to leave the septic system behind and connect to the city sewer. That might be good for them, especially if they look someday to redevelop these lots or develop new subdivisions on those lots, deep lot subdivisions. Access for abiding properties can be provided. The city's committed to work with folks that have these properties to provide access. There's an easement, a wider easement than normal along here that would allow for some of that access in the future that they could do on their own, but we could provide the easement for that. And then Lastly, this allows for that residential subdivision of the property. The PF zone, allows for lots of different things, public facilities, parks, sewer plants, et cetera, et cetera. The R8 zone also allows parks. I think that was brought up in the last public hearing that we had. Just as a reminder, the R8 zone does not preclude a park in this area, but the city's desire right now is to look at this as residential development opportunity and potentially put profits from that toward parks in the area that could be better connected or serve a greater number of people. That's really my presentation. Do you have any questions for me based on that?

Carol?

Just one quick one. I had this conversation with you before we started, but on the upper left-hand corner of the picture here, they're already developing in from that area, correct? There's a subdivision going in there currently, right?

There's a subdivision. Gosh, is this where Acadia is? Yeah. So, yeah, there's subdivision coming this direction, and then there's Acadia Heights potentially in here as well. But, yeah, there's subdivision happening.

So that'll connect to this Spur Street that's there currently?

I don't think that that one goes through.

I'm talking about the one down. Yeah.

This one would connect into the Spur.

No, but, yeah, I can't tell which street that is.

What's going north and south?

Yeah, right there, right there. Yes. Is that one intended to connect? It could potentially.

It does. It does connect.

All right. All right.

That was part of the whole thing when we did it.

Has the paving been done on that yet, Taggart? The road's all roughed in.

Yeah, they didn't have curbs there last time. Curb and gutter, and there's some road base, but no pavement yet. They're working on sidewalk right now.

Good question. Thank you.

So any other questions for staff? Slash the applicant, because it is the city. It's the same. It's not like there's somebody else to answer questions. Okay. So there was one submission for a public comment. Yes. So if we're okay, everyone's cool with that. We'll reopen for public comment so we can get that one into the right. What?

Hi. Really quick, it has just dawned upon me that most of you probably don't know who Taggart is.

Oh.

Taggart is our city engineer. So just so you guys know, if you have questions, he's here.

Sorry. OK. Thank you. Yeah, thank you. So yeah, we'll go ahead and open, and we will get this into the record.

And a video might be helpful to get some.

Oh, could you hear that?

Let me see if I can.

I guess that's true.

The property really looks. So this is the road here. And it kind of comes to the parking lot area. This is our neighbor that has all this cool stuff in his yard. It's Kobe. And then here's the road, the dirt road that goes behind Verl's house, my house and the Lichty's house. It's really big. Actually, if you look, this area is pretty flat. Okay. So now we're on the dirt road halfway in the middle of the dirt road. That's my house, Verl's house and Jay Lichty's house that way. So this, you can really see how big it is and it's like a slight hill. Um, And this is the dirt track that the kids love to ride on. And then there's another track that goes through the trees. And then there's this road. So it's kind of great. Cause there's these bunch of, you can do a bunch of downhills loop back. And then the uphill to get back to the start is pretty short. This is a little further down the dirt road where it connects into Jay's driveway. We all have access to this road in the back of our yard. See, this is the dirt bike trails. That's the road I was just walking on. There's another trail here. And then this is the trail to Arcadia. So here's that open spot. That's the road that goes down to Sawmill and to Walmart. It's where we walk down. And then this is my favorite place to walk the dog because it's kind of through these beautiful old trees. So it's a great walking park. Walking up, let's keep going on the trail. Obviously there's more dirt bike trails. This right there. It's a little steeper right here. Through the trees. super pretty yep and then it'll loop back up and you'll see the grier's property and this is the grier's property that they wanted to develop and this is actually where it's the most steep it just goes back to the beginning that parking lot area so we'll go this way the jumps and normally this place has got at least two or three kids on their dirt bikes or their little um the electric bike things and what I like about giving the kids something like this is if they have somewhere safe like this to come ride they're not going to be riding on the streets and intersections are super dangerous so I'd rather the kids have somewhere just down the street like how cool I hope this helps. It is so bright out here. Have a great weekend. Bye.

Okay, I thought this was maybe good to show you.

This is the road, the little easement road that comes to my house. Verl, who's in his 90s house and another house back there. And this road is like very narrow and I don't think you can get a fire truck down it because whenever we have emergency vehicles, they always have to park out on that road. So...

Thank you. Yeah. So that was the one we had. So we'll go ahead and close public comment. And then it comes back to us for discussion. I want to reemphasize that what we're discussing tonight is not where the roads go, not... Not what's going to happen exactly, but whether or not these pieces of property should be rezoned are eight. That's the issue that's before us. Any of the rest of it will come before us in site plan. But let's discuss. Any comments? Any thoughts?

Go ahead. I was just, as I look at this, and part of the problem that we have in this area, particularly in the Provo-Orem area, is access to single family dwellings. And it's a supply and demand kind of thing. And the city has pretty much said this is not a great piece of property to develop into a recreational park. And as we just discussed, we already have other subdivisions that are doing single family dwellings that are close by. I think this is a great candidate for the number of lots that are going to go in there. And again, like I said, my kids are all aren't buying in this area because housing is so expensive and it's not available. So I would love to see more single family dwellings. So I'd like to see this become R8.

I was just going to say, I think the bulk of my concerns were resolved last time when we could have some discussion with legal. I personally would hope this would stay a bike park, but that does not preclude me from supporting the shift to R8, which...

will vote that way but so i think all my concerns are resolved okay good to know i do have one question for tagger just where is the drop-off like is the grade is the drop-off really between the pf and then drops down below to where the r12 is down and is being developed

Yeah, there is a drop off the Katie Heights developments down below. And right along the edge of that west property line is where there's a canal. They just piped open ditch, the West Union Canal. And it kind of drops off right after that. If you look to the north, that... Is that Lake Ridge Farms? That development right there, they have a retaining wall along there. So there's a natural drop off there that would extend all the way through there. So the homes that built in Acadia, they'll have, probably have retaining walls. So there's a drop off there. And then when you come up, it kind of flattens out and then it's, probably like 20% up to the top. And then the steepest part is like in the video, she said over where careers want to develop steep over there. And then right there at the very bottom South part's pretty steep where we could ease ties in right there. Yeah.

Okay. Okay. Thank you.

Thank you. That was one of the questions we've had the last couple of times as we've discussed is what the grade of the property is and

yes that probably goes more to future discussion but just to answer kind of there's there's also a significant grade from the east side of the city's property up to the properties to the east that's a significant uh great separation there so on the east boundary okay

Yeah, the private property, they're pretty steep, their backyards.

They're so steep that these are fairly deep lots that could subdivide. We've talked about subdividing deep lots. But without access down into our property, they would never be able to really subdivide that area up there.

Thank you. Any other comments or thoughts? Okay. Then let's move to motion. Anyone?

I move that the Orem City Planning Commission forward a recommendation of approval to the City Council for the request to amend Article 2-5-3A and the zoning map of the City of Orem by changing the zone of the property located generally at 360 West, 1500 South from PF Public Facilities and R12 single-family residential to R8, single-family residential, approximately 5.45 acres.

Okay. Do I have a second?

I second.

Okay. Jeff seconds. So Carl moved and Jeff seconded that we forward a recommendation of approval to the City Council to change this, change this to R8. Any further comments from anyone? Okay. Then Jeff?

Aye.

Aye.

Aye. Aye.

Aye.

Aye. Okay. Item 5.2 is approved and we'll forward that to city council. Again, this is, it will go to city council. City council will make their final determination on this at a future meeting. And this is just about the land use code. This is not about how it's going to be. done or if it's going to be done, whatever, that's all to come.

If it ends up rezoned and it is up for subdivision, that subdivision will come back to you all with much greater detail.

We'll see it again. So there'll be further time for probably comment and everything else. So Gary, anything else before?

Just want to remind you again next week, Orem Fest. So please come out. It will be a great time. We're expecting a lot of people. So if you're coming to the carnival, come early. And one of my favorites, Monday, is the car show at CIRA. That's always a really fun one. If you have not had the chance to do that, come out. It'll be fun.

Awesome. Thank you. Okay. If there's nothing further, then we will move for adjournment.

I move to adjourn.

Okay. Do I have a second? Second. Okay. Darren moved and Jeff seconded that we adjourn. Jeff? Aye. Aye. Aye.

Aye. Aye. Aye.

Okay. We are adjourned at 5.59 p.m. Thank you all so much.

You're right.