City Council - Regular Meeting

We'd like to welcome everyone out to the Pleasant Grove City Council work session on April Tuesday, April 14th, 2026 at 4:30. We have a quorum. We have council member Anderson, Phillips, and Williams. Thank you for being here tonight. And we'll waiting for other council members to arrive. Yes. Okay, let's go. Um, we're going to start with Laurel Cunningham with our historic commission. She wants to give you an update as to what they have going on. Uh right now it shows on our agenda that we'll do uh the water conservation. Uhhuh. We're locking council members out now. That's how we operate here on time or we're trying to lock out council member Leone. Try to keep keep you out.

Yeah. Welcome council member to the meeting. So what I'm saying is we'll do budget second and then we'll do the water conservation program after that. Okay. Third. All right. So with that we turn it to Laurel. Thank you. Welcome. And Denise, congratulations again. Okay, for those that don't know, um I am Laurel Cunningham. I'm the chair of the Historic Preservation Commission. Denise Trickler is the vice chair of the Historic Preservation Commission. Um in total, there are currently right now 10 of us, 10 volunteers, and we're adding two more tonight. So, we're excited to have up to 12. So,

that is a really great number for us. We've got a lot of activities planned and the more people we have to help, it really helps not burn out our volunteers. So, I just wanted to take an opportunity to tell you guys what we did in uh the calendar year 2025. Um, we've got a couple new things coming up in the fiscal year 2026. And I'll talk about that after I got done running through what we did in the past. Um, I put my notes in front of you so you'll see exactly what I'm talking about. And I'll talk about the invitation that's also there too in a minute. Um, you'll see on the handout that our commission is divided into four subcommittees. And most of you who have been our city council rep know that about uh I think we've had all of you except for just Dustin. Yeah. So um you're familiar that we have four subcommittees. We have preservation, archives, history and publications, and community outreach. And each one of those subcommittees has um a major project that they're doing within the year. And then the committee, there's one person that's in charge of each subcommittee and then the whole commission just helps out when we um do that major project. So the major project for preservation this year was to um help Pleasant Grove get enrolled in the Utah Main Street program which is sponsored through the state historic preservation office and we were really excited to be accepted to that program a year ago. It was May of 2025 we were accepted and in the meantime um Daniel Cardinius has been the point person with that program and we are really hoping to get to tier 2 status in September of this year which then makes us eligible for um $60,000 worth of grants for our um main street um property owners. So that would be an exciting thing if we hit what are some things they could use that the property owners could use that money for? Um it's for um facade restoration, um building restoration, like if their roof is failing or if they um it's mostly exterior, just things to keep the buildings in good shape.

Like if they had if they had like a banner and needed like a permanent sign, that could be something that I'm not 100% sure, but something along those lines of like the the exterior. Yeah, it's um well, we'll be able to send out information once we reach that tier.

Yeah, I'm not 100% educated in that. Daniel might know know more than me so he might want to speak to that but um mostly that money is for historic preservation and just community um revitalization of that area to make sure it's a viable area. So yeah, I don't want to get anyone's hopes up that it's going to pay for things it won't. But um I think really the key to revitalizing downtown is putting money into downtown. So that would be an exciting thing to get to tier 2 status. um our archives subcommittee, their major project this year was video recording our older residents and Cherylyn Halcraftoft, she is professionally trained in that. She's an archist with the LDS church archives and so she's been spearheading that and working with Daniel Webster who is the son of a commission member and he is the Utah State videographer. So between those two people with their expertise, we've been able to interview is it three to four I've lost track. At least three. Yeah, three or four of our older residents. And the end of mind with that is to pres preserve oral history, take a transcript of it, and be able to capture um our residents that are nearing 100 years old or close or 90. So, um we know that that's something that has to be done within a certain amount of time or we lose that history. So, that is an ongoing project. Um Cherylyn, who's spearheading that, plans to have that be an ongoing project. and she's willing to take names. If anyone has a recommendation for a resident that has a great story or longtime memories of Pleasant Grove, let me know and we will get get Cherylyn and Daniel.

You don't have to still live here, but they have to Yeah. have a great story. And so she'll go and like video record them. Yes. Yeah. She interviews them and Daniel um video um he's a videographer so he does a good job with that too. So yeah, I think there's a gentleman in Brigham City we've been interviewing who lived here. So yeah, that's a good point. That's awesome. Yeah. And they just kind of tell stories of growing up and things like that. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So that's been a fun project.

Um the major project for the history and publication subcommittee has been researching our walking tour guides. And I'll talk about our walking tour program in the next section. But um whenever we have our walking tours, there's a booklet that goes with it. And um we research um the homes that go with our walk-in tour so that people can take that with them and understand the stories of the houses or if they're not able to attend those are available for sale at um city hall afterwards just for the cost of printing. So we've done um in the last in 2025 we did three walking tours. We start in June and we go till August and each one has a walking tour with it. And so I think we've done four years worth of walking tours. So that's about 12 books. Is that right? Yeah. And is there still new tours to be done or do you repeat or rotate?

This year we're going to repeat one. So yeah, in the past our only repeat was Locust Avenue, but in the um in the last four years we've been doing it. They're all new tourists except for this year we're going to start looping for people who missed it and want to see. Okay,

that's been a lot of fun. And then also in that subcommittee, we maintained a Facebook page that tells the stories, shares pictures, shares stories, a lot of history of Pleasant Grove. and that um page has grown to almost 2,000 followers in the last um three years. So that's really a fun way to re to reach the community and also tell keep our our past alive within community outreach subcommittee. And this is really our a very large undertaking, the community outreach. It takes a lot of a lot of manhour, but it's also the one that we really love the most because we get to meet the public who also love Pleasant Grove history. Um and as I mentioned a minute ago, our historic home tours has been a really fun project. Um our our biggest tour was attended in Starberry Days last year and we had about 90 90 people come to that one. So that was our heavily most heavily attended one that was Locust Avenue. We also did one in Monkey Town and we did one on Second South and we're planning to do do those again in 2026. Um the second thing we did with community outreach was we helped um with Heritage Festival to a small degree. Stacy Martino has been fabulous with that. We've always staffed a table there again for community outreach and just to tell the stories about the eight founding families that came through Pleasant Grove and just to do an activity and reach children and people to really give them a touchstone with our history. And the third thing within community outreach has been a really fun event that we've done for three years now is our Victorian Christmas at the old town hall. And I think we've seen all of you there and it's we've just loved that and it's grown every year and we plan to do that again this year. And the end in mind with that is just to get people into that beautiful historic building and just see the the beautiful restoration work that's been done there and also to educate people about what Christmas was like in Pleasant Grove the year that building was built, which was 1888. So that's been a really fun project that we plan to keep um going. On page two, you'll see that we also reached out to our counterparts in Lynen and American Fork. And we have teamed with their um historic preservation commissions just to make sure that the three of us um can

help each other with projects. We can each do best practices and share resources. And we're really excited to partner with Lynden and American Fork in the next year. We plan to have a meeting with them every six months. We met with them in January. We'll meet again probably in July and just kind of keep in contact with the other two um historic commissions. Um, we will hold a brainstorming session at the at the beginning of the new fiscal year. So, we'll have a brainstorming session on in our July meeting to talk about our fiscal year 2026 goals, but there will be five that I'm sure we will continue from last year that we'll also do for next year. And that is continuing our um our walking tours. Our first one will be in June um during Strawberry Days on I think it's the 17th of June and that one will be Little Denmark. And that's one we have done. That was one our first year we did four years ago. We're doing that one again. And then we're going to also be doing Second South um down to the rail from this building down to the railroad tracks. And we'll be doing one more that I can't remember.

Oh, 300 East.

Anyway, one more. And I'll make sure that you all get that schedule so that you can see where we're going uh this year and hopefully you can join us. Um a brand new thing we'd like to offer is microrants to our owners of historic properties um just so that we sometimes we're frustrated when a really insignificant building is demolished and we'd like to help by then it's too late to preserve that history. We'd like to be proactive and be able to help our homeowners um maintain the ex the exteriors of their buildings. And so that would be um something that we would need funding for and we would we've made a request to have a little bit of funding thrown that way from city council. So that's where those micro grants would go and we're we're thinking a smaller undertaking not anything huge but you know they had like a historic window or historic doors or things that needed preserving. That's why we're calling it a micro grant. Another thing we're doing is we attend um training offered by the state historic preservation office to make sure that we are informed on best practices and we're as educated as we can be. We're all volunteers, so we don't have professional training, but we do attend um these training events to make sure that we're plugged in with resources at the state level, plugged in with our colleagues um on city levels, and to make sure that we are doing the projects that have worked with other groups and that we um can move forward. um and not reinventing the wheel. Um and then let's see, we're also doing I'll skip down. We're also hosting our Christmas event this year, our fourth time. But then the second to last bullet on your list is we're also hosting a spring lecture. And I wanted to make sure you were all invited to that. So that's that invitation in front of you. That'll be on um April 27th. were hosting a lecture about Alma Christian Jansen who was a photographer at the turn of the last century and he took nearly 700 pictures around Pleasant Grove. 300 of those were portraits of people um like families or graduation portraits, but the remaining 400 was just pictures around town. He took pictures of the first firefighters, people digging the Murdoch um canal, um a thresher that tipped over, children um

sledding in Monkey Town. So, it's prolific. This is like what time period would you say? Yes, he started in 1912 and his last um picture was taken in 1925. Oh wow. So, and all those pictures are being held at the BYU archives and we are partnering with them to be able to exhibit his his pictures and also um I'll be giving a lecture about who he was and why he took the pictures in the background of where the collection is, how it got there and it's really fascinating. I've looked at all 700 pictures and they are just an amazing piece of Pleasant Grove history. So, So, will that be shown that night? Like some of those pictures? Okay. We can't obviously put all 700 pictures in the old town, but we're doing kind of a sampling of the things that were notable. So,

Laurel, I I think it's already on my schedule. Scott, did you already send this out or did you send it out? No, I don't think anyone knows about it. It's on my schedule already for some Maybe I'll have to send that to you. I don't think I sent that at the time. We have Scott send that to us and he'll be I don't think he knows about it. I'm derelict and letting everyone know, but that's about two weeks away. So, I'll I'll send it right now. The only thing I'd recommend is I've never attended a lecture that was positive because they all came from my mother. So I don't know if it's a marketing thing, but inviting us to a lecture just kind of We should probably retitle that happy talk. Yeah, something like that. TED talk. Yeah, TED talk. TED talk or TED talk. Todd can rename it to something. Something that doesn't have that association of my childhood getting a lecture from my mother would be awesome.

That'll be fun. Is there a way that we can have access to the 700 photos? like if someone was interested, how how could they see those? I have an index of all 700 um a find they call them a finding aid so you can see who's listed in each picture. Unfortunately, BYU has all of those pictures and they're kind of locked away and I'm working with the curator John Murphy to um I offered to help scan digitize all those and he said he'd be willing to let me help. So hopefully because he said in the past it would take about two years to get those digitized and I said what if I help? We cut that time in half. So, I'm going to work with BYU to get those images accessible. But,

I do have a print out of an index and that'll be available that night so everyone can see if their family is represented in in the in these pictures because they they're valuable pictures. Why have 700 pictures that no one can get to? How did BYU get them? The family donated them um in 1990 and they've been inaccessible ever since. So, I've been working with BYU and the state um records advisory board to get those accessible. How did you find out that they had I just think this whole thing is interesting. How did you find out they had them?

Well, it I'll Yeah, I will I'll probably talk about this a little bit the lecture or the TED talk and it was really fascinating just the the terms. I just I found one picture that said um photography by Alma Chris Jansen. So I went on Family Search to see is he dead alive? What's his era? And then I found a family member before COVID and then just started doing all this soouththing work to say, "Okay," then I contacted them and I said, "Where are these pictures?" And they said, "BYU." And then I called BYU and they said, "They're in cold storage. They can't come out. Sorry." And I said, "Well, how do we get them out?" And then it's just been this big

yearslong process to get to the point where we now have pictures that are accessible. And I've gotten um copies of all 700 pictures of it. So, it's been quite the journey, but really worth it because these are wonderful pictures. So Laurel, I have another question really quick. Okay, back to Heritage Festival. I had a great interview with Alicia Tucker. Uh Todd, Council Member Williams had a great idea and I think they kind of talked about it and she shared about it about uh her bringing in the America 250 to the Heritage Festival. Is that something she's talked to you about? Yes, in an email today. Yeah. All right.

We're not in charge of Heritage Festival. That's Andy Vinker. So I referred her over. still run stuff by you and help and help out and I think it was a great idea by Council Member Williams and Alicia. So, yeah. Yeah. So, I connected her with Andy, so we'll see what comes from that. Yeah, that's she's a great resource for that. We're excited that she's got such knowledge about those kinds of things. So, great. Yeah. Okay. Do you have any questions for us? Council, any others? No, just I I just don't know if you understand like how important this work is. It's fun because how would anyone have known about these 700? That's a lot of photos and a lot of our history from a long time period. And so I just appreciate the work that you and the commission, you know, do. How many people would you say is on the historical commission right now?

There's 10 right now and there will be 12 by the end of tonight. We're getting two new members. Very soon. Yeah, there'll be 12 very soon. It's just awesome. It's a lot. Very, very soon. They were great interviews, by the way. They're excited to serve and they've been coming to our meetings. Yeah. And so we've met them. Yeah, we're excited about it. Yeah, they were coming as members of the public before they were confirmed today. So, yeah, we're excited about that. If you ever have any suggestions for us, please let me know. We're really happy to integrate anything, any projects or any areas of concern or needs or anything, just let me know. I would love to be in touch. I mean, while you're in front of us, I did have someone ask, and I don't know if you know the history of this. Um, there's a street, you know, the Indian streets up off of Nathaniel.

There's a couple of them. Yeah. It'd be interesting to know the history behind those. I don't know if you do or if you could send that to me, but she was asking specifically why it's Navajo NAV A Ho instead of NAV AO. And I don't know what made her think that, but I knew I while you're in front of me, I just want to ask that, but you can message me later, but I just didn't know if you knew the history of that. I do know a little bit. So, I'll get I'll talk with you. Okay. Thank you. Sounds good. Okay. Thank you for letting us come today. Yep. Thank you, Scott. We're going to do budget. Yes. Okay. I'm gonna introduce it and Denise and I are tag. All right, Denise.

Okay, Denise is gonna start handing out um so for tonight uh focus is going to be on general fund uh and the uh uh potential proposed property tax increase. So Denise is going to review general fund operations and the onetime capital budget and then I will go through and we'll have a discussion on the property tax um of which we'll have both the chiefs will take a minute as well and talk about the needs that they have in their department. Um the utility rate uh discussion we are going to pause for now. Our intention for that is if we are going to adopt those would be in late summer so the end of August. Um we are in two weeks going to talk um a followup on the secondary water specifically um and we'll continue to have a dialogue on the rates but we're not going to spend a ton of time well no time on it tonight um because our urgency is not right now with utility rates it's more so with general fund. So um we do have a tenative budget that we need to adopt on uh first meeting in May May 5th. Uh and that is um I mean that does not uh put everything in stone that uh is something that we then release to the public so they have a chance to review the budget. Um, and then depend on what we're going to do with taxes depends on well, we'll have a we'll have a public hearing in June and then adoption of the final budget all kind of conting is contingent on what we're going to do with property tax. So, um, that's just a basic overview, but I'm going to turn it over to Denise and let her uh, work through general fund operations and capital. Scott, can I just say something about secondary water because you mentioned it's going to come up. I know we had a discussion and I just want

to make sure we're looking at the classifications at the county level for green space and for a potential uh those potential uses, agricultural uses within our city and maintaining green space. We had a discussion. So, you and I talked but about a potential program that's run through the county. I haven't looked at that. I didn't Sorry. I my assumption was is you were taking a look at that. Do you want us as a city? Well, I don't need you to take a look at that. I want I want you to take a look at the rates that might be able to be worked into to incentivizing maintaining open space and agricultural uses in our in our city.

Okay. So, just so I understand, we're looking at taking um properties that are a little bit larger that would use more water and have potentially reduced rate for them. That's not how that's not really what we're looking at. What I'm talking about is there's two there are two programs that are available through the county. One is green space which requires five acres. The other is called urban farming which requires a continuous one acre that the majority of the the the property produces something

and the purpose of the property is to produce an agricultural benefit and the county has guidelines for how you qualify for those classifications. I think, you know, kind of given our our our city makeup and kind of the policy that I see as one that's important in maintaining green space and the availability of maintaining those agricultural uses, might be wise to tie in a rate that relates to properties that might qualify on a county level for those two classifications. Okay. So, green belt and the urban was it called?

Urban farming farming. Okay. Do you want us to look at I know what the green belt program is. The urban farming I'm not super familiar with. So, do you want us as staff to research that and see what that entails? I'm assuming if if a resident's going to qualify for urban farming, they have to apply themselves, right? They have to apply it to the county. Yeah. I don't want the city to administer any kind of definition or anything like that. So, they'll they'll administrate that. And then the question is is what will what are we going to do with rates specific to those types of designations if there yeah how they implement yeah how can we implement maybe something that kind of meaningfully establishes a policy to maintain green space and agricultural use within our city. Okay.

Sounds like a conversation with you and Ezra. Well, no. I mean what what what council member Rogers is saying is there's a program out there. Yeah. If residents apply and qualify now we just are going to make a decision what that means as far as the rates are concerned. How do we incentivize right now we just have one from a water perspective how do we enable them to be able to maintain those as opposed to just encouraging urbanization of those green spaces. Yeah. Yeah. No. Okay. I'm with you. All right. Okay.

Denise, is it your time? Okay. Um, so I passed you out couple documents. I did put a date on them because they kind of look like the ones I gave you last time. And so, uh, we'll just kind of walk through that a little bit, just kind of tell you where we're at with some of our stuff. So, the first page, we call it the one pager. Um, on the left we have the revenue and then on the right, uh, we have the expenses that we're looking or uses. Um, so revenue, um, got another month of sales tax. So right now that sales tax amount is, um, 3.5% more than what, um, I've predicted to, um, collect in this year. And so we'll still be looking at that. Um, we just barely got January's, so that's a 60-day thing. So keep, we're still looking at that. Um, charges.

So So Denise, did you did you So you estimated increase. We were just 3.5% more than you Yeah. Um it's about it's about um a half a percent more than the last page you got. Okay. So, I'm saying it an overall. So, if you compared it to the last one I give you, there's a few things that changed. Okay. Yeah. I'm looking at the last one. I know that sometimes in my in my other life that takes up more time than this. I sometimes what we'll do is we redline it, right? So, we show what we put in before and what we've changed. And that way I don't have to maintain two separate people I'm trying to go after. I wonder if we should do that so we can kind of track the changes. Yeah, I can do that for you

because I think it's a positive that we're up, you know, about 60 grand on our sales tax from what we estimated, right? That's what I'm seeing. So I think yeah, in the future I can I'll give you, you know, I'll just redline and then you'll have the new numbers. I can do that. That would be great. And so the next one, the only other one I changed was the charges for services. And I think that'll be talked a little bit about when um we talk about the fire department and their calls. Really seeing an uptick in our ambulance um the ambulance uh fees that we re uh receive and Gold Cross actually bills for that and so I did bump uh charges for services because we are seeing a lot of use of our EM um EMS services.

So that was the only thing I changed on the left. Um,

the admin allocation changed just a little bit as um Neil and I are working through um our admin allocation for the enterprise funds to reimburse the general fund um for the services we provide for them. So, we're getting there. Um on the right hand side, the only two items that changed from the last time is um I added the event coordinator making that part-time to full-time, which was $60,000. And then we had a discussion about the Axon contracts, wanting them to be um part of our operational budget and not on the one-time um general fund money.

Does that look good, Council Member Rogers? I think that's I think it makes more sense. Yeah. Yeah. So, those were two things. And so, if you look at um right now um our unallocated amount basically that's what we're still looking for. Um we have we're just negative right now almost 140,000. So, still working through those things. So, those were the only changes on the right hand side. And then did you do you have the information regarding the it of how much we're currently playing Jeremy and everything? Okay.

Yep. So, uh, actually put together a spreadsheet for last calendar year, um, for it what we paid. They're now Tech Legion. They were Rock Mountain Tech. Um, so basically every month and Sierra and I worked with this and we spent probably an hour or two with Jeremy uh, Roose. He's the um, he's the CFO of that company. So in 2025 we paid them approximately I'm just going to round number $187,000 and of that $187,000 only $53,000 of that was for uh service agreement hours and project work. Everything else we would need to pay regardless if we even went away from them. just example um cloud backup storage um we have Adobe accounts that we pay for and then we have our Microsoft uh suite that we have whether it's premium or exchange just for emails. So of that amount only $53,000 was actually labor that we paid to them. So really felt like that we're getting good value for what we're paying. Um and we discussed that a little bit with Jeremy. He really felt like we would need um probably four to five people at least to

you know because they have a a broad range of services that they offer. So it may be just getting our computer going. Another person may be more network firew walls networking. I mean there's a lot of overhead and so

so uh felt really good about that. like I said, um broke down the bill and then we visited um pretty intensive with uh Jeremy and the services and we're working through them with a lot of things um as their their company's growing but also some things that we're we can do better too. And so hopefully that information is helpful of um I think we said it would cost us 120 just to have a like a full-time person and that wouldn't be enough for us to be able to get away from them because they offer kind of more of a broad range and so

and that and that 120 includes benefits but our I mean as staff our recommendation right now is not to hire an IT person. the services we're getting through Tech Legion is they do a good job for us and I think they meet our needs and they give us a wide breath of abilities. When's the last time we did a bid on that? Oh, I don't know. It's been years. It's been year. I I mean, we have contracts with a lot of people. If they're providing good service for us, we generally stick with them. If the city council says, "We want you to rebid this," we can do that. I I don't feel like we need to, but that's that that's my

there's probably maybe another few different companies that could provide the institutional knowledge across the broad spectrum. But yeah, but I mean they are providing great service. So the other thing that um well along those lines, I don't think they've raised their rates with us correct for a long time. That was discussed on our call. Last time I talked to Jeremy, he's like, "Scott, we need to talk rates." I don't think we've raised the rates for 10 years. Yeah. Well, because yeah, that's where I'm coming from when it comes to that.

So, the other thing that we visited with Jeremy a little bit about um they are actually implementing um reports that they would give to us so that we could get a report from them monthly of what they did for us that month. Sort of, you know, this many hours were spent, you know, fixing just monitors or computers or whatever. they have a system in there um and they'll be able to send us monthly reports that we haven't been getting. So, I think that will be good um too. So, I think the conversation was really good to have with them and get a flavor for what they're offering and um you know and that we can get some information for them to hope get do things better too. So, is there is there a breakdown of what they do for us?

Yeah. Where is that on? Oh, it's not on there. But I mean I could I can prepare something. This is like my spreadsheet, but I could do um what they have for servant agreement hours. And that would include anything from me calling saying I can't get on my computer to um you know doing our um yearly charge outs and stuff like that. The report they're going to start providing for us will provide that information. Okay. So in the future we be able to run a report and we should know that 40 hours were doing this that type of thing. So, we haven't been getting that in the past, but that's something they're going to be providing to us.

Because it sounds like um they provide repair services or something goes wrong, but is there a way they can like there's proactive services where like we've talked before about security cameras, who does that? Like where does it I guess I'm confused about who does what with technology and that's why I was wanting to see a breakdown. I understand they might be inexpensive, but sometimes I think you get what you pay for. I'm not saying they don't do quality work, but could we be paying more to get more services from a company that can handle things like security cameras in the park? So, we've discussed that for years. Is there a way that we can have a pro a more proactive service? Because I'm willing to pay for that. I understand they haven't raised their rates, but the reports seem pretty standard. I don't know why they're just doing it now, but maybe it's time to look at some other companies and see if they can. Maybe it's not a full-time staff member, but is there other companies that can provide a more robust service?

So, can I ask you this? Are you hearing that we're having issues with our IT uh across the board from like I just wrote it down. I hope to ask end user infrastructure management, cloud management, vendors, cyber security. Are you seeing issues with that? That that's maybe I'm personally No, I personally haven't heard from anyone. I'm just wondering with the size of our city, the number of staff, how much we've grown in our discussion regarding being proactive with cameras, security, things like that, if we should be looking at more robust services in this area because of where we're at with the size of our city.

Well, I think if we want if we want them to handle that, then we would we would throw that onto their plate, I would assume. Well, no. Here's the thing with security cameras. It's not Tech Legion that's holding the system up. Well, that that's that's break down because I don't know who does what and what we're paying them for. Yeah. So So let me clarify that one specifically. Um that that that's up to us as administrative staff. So we started on that and that's something that is just on the priority list all of a sudden dropped down so that we haven't got that done. The cameras the cameras at Discovery

and so now that's back on our radar. We got Sierra working on it. We're going to Tech Legion's with us on that. But that's driven by us. that's not driven by Tech Legion. They're not going to just proactively start putting up cameras. We're the ones that have to and I'm not asking them to do that, but we've had the discussion for a couple years. And so if that is that something they would manage if we asked them to or

Well, I'm not expecting them to come in and say you need cameras at your parks. We've discussed it for like two years and I'm just wondering like where we're at. I don't know what Tech Legion does. That's why I even brought up the the full-time staff member because I don't know who does what. I'm not hearing complaints. I'm just wondering if there's a more robust system given the technology, the year we're in, the size of staff we have, the the needs we have that can handle it. And honestly, I don't care if they're the cheapest. That doesn't matter to me. What matters to me is that that we're getting a quality service moving forward with technology that can not only someone that can only repair a computer when it goes down, but has ideas and can bring them to us with our needs because to help make our staff their jobs easier. from police to fire to rec center, whoever it is. I'm looking for a company that can come in and help us do that.

Yeah. And they are doing that. That's what I guess that's what I'm trying. Maybe what we have you and Jer Jeremy do is and you can even just grab this off their website. I mean, show all the different everything that they do from A to Z. I mean, I listed out four or five, but list those out and send them out to the council and say, "This is this is what comes along with this contract, and it's going to be pretty intense." Well, and again, sorry, the because I think some of the what's driving this I could be wrong. Some of what's driving this is that we don't have security cameras at Discovery Park. Yeah, that's Pleasant Grove City. That's us, not Tech Legion. The reason those things aren't up today.

And I'm I'm very sure Tech Legion, if we asked them to, would be more than happy to to to help us out or give us some, you know, some knowledge. So, uh, Sierra and I met, his name's Tyler with Tech Legion. I can't remember Slappy. I don't know. Something

So, we met, um, Sierra and myself and Dion met with him out on site at Discovery Park on Thursday, Thursday morning, and he brought in a camera vendor that other entities have used. We actually have them in our city, and it's called Vicotta. And so, and he brought their rep down. We are going to have a camera out there um a demo to see if it's going to work for us. One of the biggest challenges is is Wi-Fi and internet. So, we spent over an hour out there. So, they're helping. We're looking at that and we're working on that. The other thing is they brought in another company. I can't remember right off the top looking at our phone system. And so, I think we're going to get there and they have a lot of those things. I think it's just a matter of us getting out there because they're more than willing like Tyler probably for a couple of months we've just been moving with a lot of things. He's their um product sales um person. So I feel like they've got we just it's a matter of us to be proactive. They're going to they're we're going to demo this camera. We already have those cameras at other uh at the well sites. What I think I hear that Sid saying beyond the cameras, obviously that seems to be a focus, but what I think I hear saying beyond that is

does Tech Legion provide maybe a consultative type of approach to us as well. I know there's a million things I don't know about tech and and don't have the knowledge to to suggest things or where could we improve. And so to me, the question I'm hearing is do they offer that? If they do, that's fantastic. I I would have I think that's a great service if they are doing it, but are they doing it? Am I Yeah.

Yeah. And here's the hard part. So, sorry that like I'm not Mr. IT either. Okay. And so I have to trust people that that we're turning to to provide this service. Um yes, Tech Legion just not too long ago, cyber security, we want to beef it up. Here's a proposal. Here's what we think we need to do. The state's going to pay for 95% of the cost. They have a grant program. They brought it to us. We didn't even know about this thing. So, they I I talked to Jeremy the other day. They manage 20 cities. They manage a bunch of businesses. They have, I think, over 60 full-time employees. Like, this is a company. This isn't like a twoman shop.

So, I'm going to do this. I'm just going to pick because we we're not going to hear from you tonight. Might maybe it's a good thing. Neil, public works director. Does Tech Legion give you good service? You got We'll give you 30 seconds. I'm timing. Can't say his name. I know. I'm just testing.

I worry about a lot of things in this city. Okay. A lot of things keep me up at night. I answer texts about things. One thing I don't worry about is our IT. Um, we have had nothing but good interaction and we have done amazing things with it. come down to our office and I'll show you the things that we have done at public works through SCADA and through security and and we make a call and it's done. We have a problem, we make a call, it's done. They come in after hours. We don't see them. We have our computer swap out. I show up, there's a sticky note that says, "Here's your temp password." I start up and and we're done. So, I would almost beg you not to disrupt a 20 city company. That for me isn't a concern. If I have to go through someone at the city that may or may not be as competent or have the skills or the breadth of their skill set, um that that would be challenging. So, that's my two cents.

Thank you, director. You know, you uh you had me at SCADA. And if any of these people to my left could define SCADA, okay, supervisory control and data acquisition. Correct. Yeah. No, it's we do it with we capture data. It's how our water guys know exactly the flow elevations of all of our water features and and it's been amazing what what we've done over the past few years. Okay. Thank you. Well, thanks D.

I guess what I wanted to just add was I I'm not sure because I'm not in it dayto-day. So, it sounds like the people who are using their services are satisfied with the services. It sounds like there's some holes in whether it's things that we want to accomplish technology-wise and are not getting done or or something to that nature, whether it's security cameras or other things. And so maybe sounds like Sierra's working on it and maybe that transition between Kyler and Sierra, there was some stuff that was maybe left on a back burner and that's now coming back to the front is and that and I I guess that's what we maybe want to prevent from happening is if we have a company that's able to provide us with great service and they can do it. We just want to make sure we're asking them to do the things that we want done.

And that's the thing, we didn't ask them. And so this is not a tech legion thing when it comes to those security cameras. That's the That's me. That's me dropping a ball of all the things that we are doing as a city on the priority list. That one got put on a back burner or whatever whatever needs to be said. I I don't want Tech Legion being the one that's blamed for something that I've done wrong. And when when we have somebody that again we feel is providing a great service to us, we have a request from a council member to look at this. I feel like we've provided the information to you and our recommendation as staff is we don't feel like we need a full-time employee. We feel like what they're doing is good service.

So I and if if the council wants to do something different than that, then I if it's more information, if you want a list of every single thing they do for us, we can provide that to just go to their website. You'll see what they do. But here's my question. Maybe it answers Sids. Council Member Leone is I think we some of us got a little frustrated when we would hear a report from Director Giles on damages being done at Discovery Park or other parks, you know, and we have this great utopia system sitting in our city with available fiber sitting there that we've asked for maybe for a couple years and it just like you said, it wasn't

the ball was dropped. And so it I think what I'm hearing is we'd like to see that ball picked up and focused on and taken care of so we have the needed security in place at these parks. Yeah. And they met with them this week. I mean after the retreat that bumped right back up on the on the priority list and we've been actively working to get those cameras up because it is frustrating to hear another 2,000 or $3,000 was done to a bathroom or or graffiti. And I I think we would be the first ones to love to see who did that and then go take that bill to to that individual, right? And say, "Let's fix this." So,

it just this seems frustrating because I I feel like I'm asking questions because we've been at the same company for years and my job is to try to figure out if we're receiving the best service for taxpayer money. I have never seen a list of what they do. I don't know. I was asking the questions based on years of discussion that we've had regarding security cameras and I don't know what what Tech Legion does. I'm not blaming them because it wasn't their idea to have the cameras. So, I feel like I it makes me not want to ask questions when it feels like I'm being shut down for asking questions and I don't know what they do and I've just here they do a great service and they fix computers. I don't know beyond that. I'm not here every day in the offices to see. My job is to make sure that we're again not only fixing computers and repairing them, but we're moving forward with technology in 2026 with the size of our city, our department needs, trying to make our lives easier for employees and staff. And I don't know if we're getting that service from them. We've never bid anyone else since I've been here. I I don't know. That's why I brought up a full-time staff member, but if everyone thinks we're doing a great job and there's no reason to look any further, then that's what it is. And so that's why I brought it up. I feel like that's my job is to ask questions to make sure that we're using taxpayer money for the best quality service that we can be receiving. And I don't know if we are. I still don't know.

It's good. It's good. I I share I share I mean I come from a tech background so I I share the the the question. Uh I just uh I just Googled Tech Legion. Um they they perform IT services, cyber security, uh Azure migration and consulting which is Microsoft uh cloud services, backup, uh email, Microsoft 365, fractional CTO, hacking service, ethical hacking service, IT staff augmentation, and VOIPE. Um for what was our what was our contract amount total? In uh 2025, that's including all of our cloud and Azure including cloud infrastructure help desk

sec. Yeah. User security. It's 50ome thousand for the service they provide like they're out and is that the specific services that they provide to our city like every all the cities that's what they're doing. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I I think one thing that I would echo councilwoman Leone's statements are is I think there are opportunities to use technology that's being developed to our city's benefit. And when when council member Leone brought it up, I I actually viewed it more as a look into not somebody maybe providing all of the technical background, but more of the people who maybe identify some of these gaps and make sure we're filling those gaps ahead of time.

Ahead of time, not just, oh, you know, we knew about the cameras. I'm not harping on that. Whatever. I totally get that. What I'm what I'm thinking of is though other ways public works is a great example of uh of a of a department that we have made a significant step forward in our use of technology. And I just want to make sure that our other departments are also looking at ways that we can implement technology to provide better services to our residents. we can do a better job, we can be more efficient. And and so when I took when I what I understood the IT ask and I guess maybe I was getting a drink during the time you guys talked about this, but I I I understood it to be more of like, okay, you know, we get these technical services and if we're getting a good rate and a good and they're doing a good job on it, great. But are they filling the gaps? Are they helping us push our departments forward with technology? Or is there somebody whether it's a consultant or a full-time employee that can help us maybe look at where we could use technology to be more efficient and provide better services?

Yeah. So, that's more of my view and I don't know I think I think there's been some things in the past the cameras we talked about it. Okay, that's being dealt with. But I think that's what I'm looking at is I don't know what you guys are all struggling with dayto- day. what systems could be automated, what systems maybe could be enhanced through the use of technology. And so that's what I was looking at as far as a full-time employee, not necessarily like, oh, they come and swap the computers out, but they are the ones that are managing the technology that could be implemented and maybe helping us manage um filling those gaps. So that that's what I envisioned it as. I guess that's well no be because I think this is getting to the crux of it. What I heard from council member Leone on the initial ask was I I would like for us to consider another an in-house IT person. What are we paying Tech Legion and how much would it cost for us to do? That's that was my takeaway specific to the cameras out at Discovery Park.

Correct. But also based on what Steve just said, that was the reason. I didn't I didn't get that from you from what Steve just said, but I guess I and maybe I didn't obviously say this well enough in the retreat because when the cameras have come up multiple times and we were asking questions that I feel like a tech company should be handling. I I I'm not in the tech industry so I don't know. I'm just throwing this out there.

It made me start thinking is there other gaps that we have started with the cameras but are there other gaps as Steve was saying that an house person could fill. Is there other needs that we have? Because I thought if they can't do this, are we missing other things? Now, I didn't say that in the retreat, but that was where my mind was going and why I went to the full-time staff member because I felt like if they can't do the cameras or the Wi-Fi can't get figured out, that seems somewhat basic. I don't know. Again, I'm not a tech person, but maybe it's more difficult than we think out at Discovery, but in other areas of the city. So that made me start thinking if they aren't able to handle that for the size of our city or our needs, should we start looking at other organizations, other companies that could handle that? So that's why I'm piggybacking on Stephen. I didn't express that. Yes, it started with the cameras, but that made me think, is there other needs that we have other than the cameras?

No. And I appreciate that's helpful because that's two different in my mind that's two different questions. Scott, so maybe we just here's your solution. maybe invite Jeremy to your next staff meeting and have an open dialogue with Jeremy with the your directors and say, "Is there any way that how else can you utilize us in helping you like public works has done or with the police or with the library, you know, put them put them together." I I mean, I can sort of answer that question that Steve just brought up. We go to conferences, we we are part of things where we get vendors that approach us. Hey, I've got this ID it or AI tool that can help save you time on this all the time.

Okay. And so we have salespeople coming to us with with different products and then we can vet them and we take a look at them. We see if other cities use them. We do our due diligence and if there's something that makes sense then we'll we'll purchase it and we'll move in that direction. Are we on the cutting edge of AI in Pleasant Grove City? We are not. Okay. Are other cities way ahead of us on that stuff? Maybe. Probably. Do we need to get better at trying to figure out some of these things of ways to create more efficiencies using technology? I think the answer is yes. And could Tech Legion help us with that? They could. We don't maybe specifically ask that question to them. And that's a question we can ask them. Hey, what are you guys seeing with other cities? What are they using that some of the AI probably has nothing to do with Tech Legion. It's a software that you buy and it does its thing.

Well, you're reviewing one that was brought to me. I think Sarah's looking at it, right? I mean, we'll see if it fits. If it doesn't, it doesn't.

I mean, we just had a meeting today where we the police are looking at something. Wendy's looking at something to help with city recorder stuff. And so, yes, there are things out there that we are vetting that we're trying to figure out ways to create efficiencies. Are we the best at it? I don't know. we're the best at it. But these things aren't lost on us. I mean, we are trying to figure out better ways to do things. So, I I know this is kind of spun out way different than what we initially were talking about. And and I don't want any council member to feel like we're not answering questions because I feel like we were answering the question that was asked. I don't know if we were fully getting to the breadth of what everybody wanted to know in regards to our IT. I can provide we can provide you a list of every service they provide to the city.

I don't know what you're going to do with that list. I mean, as as staff, I I feel like as staff, that's our job.

I would just encourage just like Todd did, just go out to their website and you'll see the full range of services they're offered. I guarantee we're using pretty much 90% of those. I it IT services is one thing that we deal with as staff. We deal with the hundreds of things and that we have to vet these every day. We have to manage these every day and we have to under have an understanding of how all these things work. And if city council wants to get to that level of detail, we'll provide it to you. But for the most part, I would hope that you just look at staff and say, "All right, let's make if what you're saying is let's make sure our IT is providing us a good deal, then we'll we'll vet that. We'll take a look at that and make sure the tech because we've already had that discussion. I mean, Jeremy was in my office 10 days ago and we're working through some of this stuff." And that's when he brought up, Scott, we haven't raised your rates in, I think, 10 years. We probably need to do something about that. I mean, I would like to know the breakdown of the services they provide, not in detail, but the cost because you said 187 and on the sheet it says 120. That's a pretty big difference.

No, no, no. Sorry, sorry. 120 is the cost of a new person, one person with benefits. 187 is the cost as to what they provide.

But that's what I would like to see is the difference in that like where is that discrep discrepancy, but where is the gap coming? So that's what I'm asking because that is a big difference to me and it and tech that is a big deal to me. It's safety. It's efficiency. It's it's moving us forward. It is a big deal to me and I want to invest resources to make the jobs easier again for our department heads, for our staff, for the security of our citizens. There's a lot of things that can be done with technology that I'm willing I'm as a council member willing to pay for. Maybe no I don't know where everyone else stands. I we're 100% with you.

But that's what I'm trying to figure out is where we're at currently and where we need to be. And so I'd like to see the difference in those cloud everything on the website, the cost to that if Jeremy can provide that. I don't need I I can I can show you what we paid them. Yeah. So So I can prepare something like that. Yeah, we'll prepare and we'll send it out to you. We'll show the breakdown of the 187. We'll show the breakdown of the 120. The 12 because for me it's here's 120. We pay 187, but it's good service, so don't worry about it. That's what I feel like. The 120 is to just add a person. I know you guys don't, but that's what I'm feeling like. She's She's just going to tell you what the difference is. Right. I'll just I'll Yeah, the 120 is just

one person, a staff with benefits. I one person with benefits. The 187 is their people, the the people that we utilize plus iCloud, all of our um stuff. So, if we get rid of and I wanted to see the breakdown of that. I can Yeah, that would be great. I could do them versus us and I can give you that dollar amount. That would be great. That's

what you'll see is and coming from this background, coming from the city of ORM and other cities is you're going to see if you hire one person, they're going to get bogged down into one lane, one silo of taking care of, let's say, help desk when there's 10 to 12 or 13 other items that it's going to get backlogged and he's going to end up having to call tech legion and move forward. And so provide that information to council member won't to all of us that will that'll be yeah that's it's just it's going to be a simple breakdown. You're going to see that this person will get siloed very easily very quickly. Yeah. And you're going to easily take

you're going to easily use up four to five technicians. You if you really want to get this solved you'd hire four or five technicians broad background of various services provided and then you'll have tech legion easily. So, and we'd still have $120,000 of these email fees and everything else on top of it. Correct. Missing when I detail that is that even if we got portion this still have the break down. Yeah. Yeah. Sorry D have five minutes to get through everything.

I know. And I broke the mic. I mean, I don't know what's going on. I'm just kidding. So, nobody else can talk, Neil. Um, so, um, the other thing is is let's just go to the general fund onetime money. I think it's like three pages back. Um, and the yeah, the detail just says general fund onetime money. Sorry, I should probably I'll page number them too next time. Um, so the only thing I wanted to just talk a little bit about there as got a few minutes left is one of the items that we had on there. Um, we had facilities and we were asking for some lights at the senior center and that was a cost of $13,000. Um, I talked with um, Director Giles. We actually have some money um in our uh senior citizen fund that um we get from I'm not going to be able to name right now that they give us a grant to use on that building. Um and so we'll be able to use that.

Jacobs. The Jacobs. Yeah. And so we have some funds and so that would be a good use to do that. So I've moved that down um to use some different funds for that. The other thing that I took off of there was the um Axon contracts that's now in the budget.

That's now in the operational budget. So you just see those off of there now. And so then the other two the only three items that are on that um recommended funding that are just blank right now are the library pavilion and the ambulance replacement and then the ladder apparatus. So, those are things um that we still need to discuss and look at. So, those are just the only changes you're going to see there

when when we uh uh finish our budget discussion in the council meeting. Um I want to because right now we have we're recommending funding about $420,000 worth of things. We have a million dollars to allocate. So, that leaves us a balance of about 580,000.

And we have options. So, we have the three options listed here that currently aren't recommended for funding. We want to have a discussion specifically about these three items and then the the fourth option for the council would be to put that in our uh reserve account or in the fund balance, but we need to have a specific discussion about these three items. We were planning on doing that in work session. Obviously, we've run out of time. So, we will Stacy's here. We brought Stacy here twice able to get to her. She's the She's the expert on the library pavilion and what it means and all the things that um that would provide as far as two minutes. Yeah. Yeah, she can have her. Let's do that. I'll eat fast during dinner.

Yeah, we'll eat. Yeah, fix the mic so Stacy can talk.

Okay, thank you. Um the pavilion matters a lot to us. Uh, first off, we say it all the time, it's for the children, and we're not kidding. It's for the children. Second off, we understand how budgets work, and if it wasn't important to what we do, we wouldn't be asking. Our programming room is a lovely space, but it is not big enough for a lot of the programs we run. And I hope um fire chief is not listening, but we break fire code a lot because we bring in programs that a lot of our families need. We've got a lot of families in this community that are doing just fine. Their kids can afford to go to swim lessons and to do gymnastics and to do a lot of really fun programming, but we have other kids in this community who can't. And through our programming, we are able to level that playing field. We're able to bring in all of these different groups to provide them with the experiences that levels that out. When kids talk about, I went and did this, I went to the zoo, I went to the aviary and saw this, our kids can say, yeah, and the Great Basin Wildlife Refuge came in and they brought in a great horned owl named Jack. And we got to learn about Jack and how he's a foster father. And we learned about paragan falcons and a falcon that comes from Alaska because we're learning about Alaska this week. And then they bring in the golden eagle. And if you have never been in a room next to a golden eagle, they're terrifying. And our kids know that now without having to go through the expense of going to the aviary, we can bring these groups in and give kids experiences so they can share the same things that their peers are doing.

With an outside venue, we can get more kids and their families there. The way our room is situated, we have to put the kids in the front and the parents are in the back. I If you have ever been to a sporting event when something amazing happens either on the ice or on the court and you lock eyes with your kid and it's like, "Oh my gosh, that is the coolest thing that's ever happened." And you get to share that moment because of how we have to sit up our room to get the most people in there. Our families aren't getting that moment because the kids are in the front and the parents are in the back if they're even in the room. Sometimes they have to be back in the the rest of the library. They don't get that eye contact with an outdoor pavilion. They've got their blanket. They've created this island that they share as a family. And then what happens is that island then connects to the next island that connects to the next island. And they get to see all of them together experiencing all of this stuff together. when the magician is making them scream so much they are losing their minds

and they remember that together. We're missing that. We are missing that because we just don't have the space. So for you guys, it's a pavilion and it's a whole lot of money and we know it's a whole lot of money. But for us, it is how we build this community from our babies up. And we give our parents who are struggling an opportunity to share those moments with their kids because we are free. Because we can bring groups in that want these kids to learn and experience and grow and understand wonder and awe and curiosity. And then we can tell this is the next step. This is the UVU professor that we're hooking you up with. These are people from the high school that we're hooking you up with and they grow. That's why we want this pavilion and that's why it matters.

And I did want to explain it's not just a pavilion. I know that's what it says on the sheet. Um it is a it's um bigger than the one that's in the park. Um and it's but it's also going to be a grass bowl, you know, like a smaller version of shell, that type of grasp amphitheater. Yeah. Um it it won't be terrace. It's more of a bowl. Um and it won't have seat. Yes. Yeah. And um the library foundation has been working on this trying working on fundraising um and and came up with a name for it, Storybook Square. Um and

that's cute. And you I have two hats. Well, you know, in my t job title, library and arts, and we've got the arts side of it, salivating over that space, too. Um, so, uh, you can see from her passion, this is a project that's that we've been talking about for three years now, and we just really want to see it happen. Great. Thank you, Stacy, for hanging out. We were we almost wanted to make you wait for another hour, hour and a half, but we We can't do that. I know. I know. So, thank you. And Sherry, thank you. Yeah.

Uh, with that said, we'll get to Daniel later and we'll continue the budget later. But with that, I'll entertain a motion to adjourn our work session. May I make a motion that we adjourn? Motion by Council Member Anderson. Do I have a second? Second. Second by council.