City Council - Regular Meeting

step into this that room that's outside here and tell uh council member Phillips we've started. Yeah, that it's like the attorney meeting room or whatever it is. Um but uh welcome to the council members that are here and those who are joining us soon. So um work session. Oh, okay. That's right. But welcome everyone. Sorry, Daniel. I forgot that you were presenting first. So,

we're on. Okay, we're we're live online. So, welcome those who are watching from home. Um,

all right, director, time is yours. Thank you. Second, for the record, uh, Council Member Phillips has joined us.

Dustin, that's a story about Is that all it takes? A couple late meetings and we're released.

Okay, fantastic. Um, let me just plug my computer and we'll fly from there. Scott, can we ask you a favor? Oh, there. Never near. Could you grab that backpack from down right behind you? Oh, there. Okay. That's top secret stuff in it.

I'm waiting for my wife to walk in.

Did you get their official official first game official.

Great. Mayor, council. So, I was tasked by I received direction from the city council to review um what the requirements are for uh what the requirements from the central uh Utah Water Conservancy District are in order for our citizens or residents to qualify for some uh money to flip the flip the curve. It's not called flip the curve anymore actually, but let me show you a little bit what I what I found out. Okay. So, I have this presentation for you guys. Uh, let's start by telling you that right now, right now, PG residents, any PU resident qualifies for some money. Okay. So, as we are right now, without passing any ordinance, we qualify for the following landscape incentive program details. Okay. Loan replacement. That's what it used to be. Flip the curve. So any resident right now of Plen Grove can go and apply. There's uh here's the website. Let me see. Have a website right here.

Director, can you send that to the council? Yeah. Okay. Thank you. Here's a here's the website. Uh uh Utah Water Savers. Dave, I there we go. Okay. So on that website, actually, we just scroll down a little bit. Uh when we go and click on program eligibility on page two, we're gonna see our fantastic city right there. Okay. I'm sorry. I'm I'm I'm following you, Daniel. Where where is the where was your available cities? Um on Utah Water Saver. Uh right here. This is the main website. Yeah, I'm there. Okay. If we go right here about landscape incentive. Oh, okay.

Learn more. And then we go right here. We scroll down and Um this is right here the click here to see eligible cities. We're going to see a list of cities and then actually we go to page number two. We have right there plus city. Is that too fast? I'm I'm in.

Okay. So let me go back to this. So, like I say, right now everybody qualifies. If they if if uh one of our residents is just uh trying to apply and goes through the program, what they're going to receive is a $1.50 per square foot of uh park strip replace. Okay. Now, there's also another program uh it's called switch to drip. That's for uh existing planting beds. So if they want to remove those or work with those, they will get 50 cents per square foot of that. Okay? And there's something called a treebait and they want to receive $50 per tree per tree that they that they that they get to plant or stuff like that. Okay? So anybody right now within our boundaries can apply. There's a process that they they have their own processes and that's what they're going to go. Now, what they're saying is, "Hey, cities, if you guys adopt the following standards, and here's a list of the standards. That the lawn shall not be less than 8t wide at its narrowest point. That the lawn shall not be installed in park strips, paths, or in slopes greater than 25% because there's a lot of runoff and there's not a lot of water utilization. And this one I think is the most impactful that the lawn shall not exceed 50% of the total landscape area in the front and side yards of new residential construction. It used to be 30%. When I presented to you guys a couple years ago, it was no more than 30%. Now they expanded it and say now 50%. Now if we adopt those those qualification, if we adopt those new rules into our code, now instead of qualifying for 150 50 and 50, if we adopt those, then that doubles up. Okay. Then

that would be a citywide new future lots to be developed. It's for future. It's for future for future lots that everything that stays stays, but it's just something that we have to adopt in our code. What about what about residents that redo their just want to redo the front yard? That will apply. That will apply. They they will have to do only 50%. And I'm going to show you. So yeah. So what what would qualify as a I I'll be there. I'll be there. Thank you.

So now this is what I again if we adopt those or if we adopt those regulations and put them into our city code. Okay. Now they're going to double the amount that they can get for the rebate. The lawn replacement goes to $3 per square foot. The switch to drip $1. And the tree bait, that one stays the same. That stays the same. Okay. But the other two double up. So now that's the the the method. That's the situation what we're having. I'm going to show you I'm going to show you a couple of uh what I did. I went and look for some homes and I'm going to show you what 50% is of sideyard and front yard. Okay, let me show you that really quick. I have these homes. They're these homes are probably in the last 20 years. They're they're semi- new. Okay, and you guys can see on this list of homes that I'm showing you right here, one, two, three, four. They all qualify by themselves. I mean, that's that's existing except one home. This one has 59%. Okay. um is very typical now of new developments that they do really wide uh drive approach. Okay. But again, if we take a look at this one, this is a great example of someone who does and put some trees and of course they have their driveway. They do a little bit of a landscape uh uh feature. I don't know if it's a water feature or something like that. The corner right here is gravel. This home has 44%. So, let's say that that home is brand new and they want to install some lawn, they will be able to do what they did. Okay, this one right here is even better. This one is only 27%. So, that one will uh qualify as well. This one 32%. That one is a like some people like to do some uh uh different landscape features on the front yard and stuff like that. And this one will

qualify. Now, this one for example, this will not. This is the classic home that just has just the front yard and just with the exception of the driveway, just landscape, just grass. Sorry, grass. That one is a little bit uh above the limit. These two homes that I'm about to show you, they're brand new homes. They're actually they just barely received their certifications of of occupancy. Okay, this one brand new home is above the limit 55. For example, if we adopt if we adopt these regulations, this this family wouldn't be able to do this strip of grass right here.

Okay? Because uh one of the rules is that you cannot put grass in areas that are not uh that are not wider than eight feet. If you guys can see, eight feet will be right here. This is probably six feet. And they have the reasons. They're they're saying that the sprinklers don't usually there's no great utilization for that. So if we remove this right here, this strip of land right here, then the home will probably qualify. But this is what how it will affect a home in Plen Grove City. Uh similar right here, this home is a corner lot. This home is a just right there. It's a 51%. Okay, so pretty much is there. You guys can see that they didn't do grass in this side. Uh but on this side yard they did. And it's just usually just a a large amount large area right there. They did a little bit of a square right here. That one it will be almost there. This one they will need this one will not be permitted in order to qualify. And finally I did some newer bigger homes that we have in this area right here. And to my surprise, what I'm trying to tell you is that a lot of the homes in Placing Grove without having to apply these rules qualify. From all the homes that I show you, only one is outside the threshold if we had adopted it.

So the homes you're showing and from a roof line, maybe it's hard to tell value of the home or economic market they're in, but they appear to me to be higherend homes. Do you have a sampling of homes that might be more starter level homes? Um maybe doesn't build any of those. I don't know. But do you have a sampling of homes that might be at a starter level that that may distort your data?

Yeah, probably. What h So when I was talking to the to just to answer the the question of council Williams is uh when I was talking to them when we include this code into the in when we include this regulations into into our code is for future homes for future homes. So, we don't have a big area right now for starting homes, if I can say it like that, or or zones that will allow that or uh an R110 type or R18 even something like that. Yeah, but that that shows you kind of like the the similar area like let's say if we can do something really quick. Let me find you an R1A right now

because I I would think at least there's the potential that it could affect that. This is not a good example. Let me find the size of lots. Yeah. Does the regulation have to include like multif family homes like town homes as well? Yeah. And I'm thinking of like down behind kind of Evermoreish area there's some town homes going in and like the sideyard seems like on those they would almost always be greater than 50%. Is it different for Okay. Because we would want I would think more green space for the multif family since smaller. It's smaller.

It just says new residential construction that this is the actual law. This is what I got from them. This is the actual law and is but it says something right here there under E. It says multifamily development not to exceed 20%. Correct. Now we already by code we already by code require them to have open space on those areas for example of of 25%. but doesn't mean that everything needs to be uh grass. So, and they struggle to provide the 25% because what they want to do is to utilize to the maximum the area for units. So, we require 25 if they just do that 5% of uh uh flower bed.

Yeah, I'm going to say some planters or I mean if we go to the extreme if they go with some sercape then they'll be able to meet that. doesn't sound like the 8 foot width minimum for any grass would apply to a multi family either, right? Because I could see some multifamilies having just a little thin strip kind of as you walk sidewalk. So when we adopt it into our code, if we adopt into if we um so then we would be requiring them on behalf of this incentive program that they would now need to follow. It's not a it's not a suggestion. They would be required to do this now. Correct. And we would have to enforce it. Yes. When we review it, we review the

building permit or whatnot at that time because it's new. It's new builds. Okay. Correct. Or or remodeling. I'm interested in your remodel question. Yes. So for remodels, it won't apply. It won't apply for it's for for all new constructions. Also, they could get the incentive, but we're not going to enforce the code on that. It's not retractive. So I'm not going to go to every home in Plen Grove right now and say, "Hey, you know, you're you don't meet the qualification. It's for new constructions. I think that's fine. I mean, because with the that planter strip, I'd rather have that rock anyway.

I mean, it's hard to maintain. It's hard to get water to. I mean, there's just some things where this this is just an incentive and makes them kind of think outside the box for, you know, different landscaping. I think yeah I think the difference between 30 and 50 we saw how many homes would fall in non-compliance just in that ban. So now that it goes big yeah so going up to 50 seems I mean I think it makes sense. Well the fact that we pushed back and they doubled it doubled the incentive and even added you know added added 30% for our residents now

20%. Uh yeah and then and then yeah this is this is a little more pal palpable. So is it possible that this is similar to our recycling program where once you opt in you could never opt out or if we opted in and changed our mind or we thought maybe there's some repercussions could I don't think there's penalties to opt out. I mean instead of what we're going to do is just drop in category. Instead of getting the $3 we'll probably go go to 15. The benefit would just drop Yeah. So again, can I ask you Daniel? Uh what happens if we fail to enforce? Let's say something squeaks through and it's more than 51%. I is the

Are there any are there any statutory penalties to the city? No, I don't think so. So, you know, there's not a lot of teeth to that then. Well, I I don't Maybe they say, "Hey, you're not really

That's what That's what I'm thinking. They they may have some inspectors. They'll come here and take a look at it what we're doing. Maybe there's some audits. I don't know for sure. But I can tell you that if we go from 50 to 51 because we made a staff mistake or something like that. It's not going to it's not going to affect what's going to happen is that we're going to require the applicant. We're going to require the applicant when they present their building permit. We require them already to see a site plan. Right? So we see where we see an aerial view. We see the location of the building. And now we're gonna ask them to add, okay, show me your landscape area where you're gonna put just grass because that's what we want to see at the end of the day. The 50% is for grass. This is on this on new construction. Yeah. For new construction. So that's what the checkpoints in place. Mhm.

And so they know they have it in writing. We have inspector go out upon the building permit whatever. So that it shouldn't be missed, but if it is, and then let's say in a year we try this program, we pilot it, whatnot, and we decide to pull out, we as far as you know, there's no repercussions. As far as I know, there's no repercussions. It wouldn't hurt to try it and give residents an option if they It's good incentive. I mean, $50 a tree, that's if if does do do residents have to come and get a building permit to change their sprinkling and change their uh lawn or No, sir. Go into this if they want to do this, they they wouldn't have to. No, I think I've already sent like just for landscape just for landscape or chain sprinklers. No, they don't need a building permit for

I've actually sent I met with a few residents and sent them here and they they're excited. I mean, they're trying it out. Here's my question, though. Let's say the council adopts this. So, because I've already been telling residents they can just go here right now and research all they want, right? So, does the city go out right now and promote what's currently doing or do we or do we do both saying we're this council in the next meeting or next two are thinking is thinking about adopting that? I'm just trying to think how does the city get the word out right now because right now the citizens go here right now and get the mis there's a misconception that we we didn't do it. Yeah. So then if we the council adopts it didn't because but there was reasons for that.

Well to to if you remember the history they approached us a few years back three years ago we said no they just changed this where they reduced it in half and everybody qualifies. That was like six weeks ago. That's what I'm saying is that's something brand new that's out there right now but as a city how do we properly market this saying we are actively this council is actively discussing this and about adop I I can't speak for the council but thinking about adopting it and then then we do we put this out right now hey this is available to you right now but the council's thinking about adopting this stay tuned in my opinion current residents aren't going to care because they this is all new construction

and so for them they're they're going to say go ahead and and and put that in place. But I want But but the incentive is in the conversion, right? Not in the Right. No, I understand. But but the the lifting is being done on the city's part. We're the ones that are now going to create an ordinance that is going to be more ownorous on on inspections. Will like it potentially incentive. Well, that's what I'm saying to the residents. They're going to say yes because this is nothing to them in in regards to what they have to do. Oh, I Oh, but I want I want to advertise it to say don't apply yet because you might get double because we're considering I think that's what the mayor is saying is yes,

yes, we can say, hey, you do qualify right now, but we want to make sure everyone in the city knows that this codeex amendment might be coming up in the next couple of weeks. So, hold off on applying because you might be entitled to double the amount that you were going to get. So, we want to keep you informed of that change because don't apply in the next two weeks because you only get half of the incentive. Steve, we talked to that exhibitor down St. George right before we we sat on the table. It was like a

analytics guy engagement kind of thing. I mean that that I don't know cost but could be an effective way to get it out to the community at large and get their feedback but also to your point. Yeah, in my opinion, if if the city's like, "Let's do this." Then we can put it out on social media tomorrow. Our intention is to do this. It's going to take a minute to change our codes. It's going to take a minute to get this put into place. If you're considering flipping your strip, if you'll just hold on for a month, then we will have it in place where you can qualify for the full rebate. That's a message we can send out.

So, I know Denise is chomping at the bit to come talk about the budget. She have quite a bit. So is there anything else we want to ask director Cardennis? the the most important thing s I don't mean to inter is I I would like to receive direction like say start working on the code or hold it on and then I'll start working and then based on what what we once I start working we can go on social media we can put it on our website and I can say hey we're going to take it to planning commission this day I need at least a couple weeks to work on it because it's we it's all entire code so it's gonna take me a little bit post it go to planning commission bring it to city council but I would like to receive direction and say hey Daniel start working on is with the uh with the idea of bringing it to city council for approval in the future. And that's what I that's what I

So council what what are you saying? But why does it have to go to planning commission? Because we're amending the whole code. I have I think the most helpful thing you could do for res is just an FAQ because we with how many questions we had and we've been discussing that here. I think it doesn't have to be too in depth but just some some FAQs. I think Daniel grabbed the F FQs off their website. That answers a lot. And then present that in a sheet to us. What we're asking is do you want to proceed for me? For me, yes. If you want to proceed, then we'll we'll turn Daniel loose and get Daniel. That's what I'm trying. Yeah. You've been turned loose. Okay. Thanks, Daniel. My pleasure. Thank you,

Director Roy. We're looking forward to this version five. about right there. While Denise is handing this out, um Denise is going to review general fund uh operations uh general fund capital. Uh then I'll take a minute to talk about the proposal for the property tax uh when she's done with that. Okay. Thank you. Green and try. Excel isn't quite as handy as but I tried. Um, so the first page is just our one pager. And so on the left side, I put it in green. That was a positive thing of

So that came in a bit more than we thought.

Yeah, we just got um our sales tax last week. And so we're at um this is about 4%. Um from where we are currently in um 2026. And uh Scott and I met this morning. We feel pretty good about that. Um, so, uh, I move that, um, to 423 363. So, our sales tax will be, um, budgeted just over 11 million. We're at 106 right now. And then the next line is admin allocation. And the biggest thing of that is that the utility departments pay back the general fund for services that we offer. And I've been working with Neil on that. And so um just tred that up a little bit. So that's at 155841. So that went up about uh 24,000. And then in reviewing that allocation um we have some employees that get paid 100% in um utilities which is our utility billing person and our front desk is a percentage. And so u made some changes there. And so, uh, those were the biggest things there of, um, getting where we needed to be. And then on the right hand side, the historic preservation committee, I put that in red, actually, um, move that right now. All of our culture arts, um, which is the arts commission, historic commission, um, PG players, we're actually funding them with the transfer from the care CA care tax monies. And so, um, I just increased that transfer from the care tax to the culture arts. So, that came back out of the general fund. So, it's not included in that million, but I kept it on there so you could see it. So, I

That's the 2500. Yeah. So, that's the red. And so, now that's being paid for with the care tax. Yeah. So, that that is still going to happen. It's just not going to be out of the general fund. I agree with that. So, hopefully that's um good for you. So, then let's go. Axelon was who? what acts on contracts. They're the body cameras. Uh body cameras, tasers, and car um cameras. And so that was a request. We've got those moved in as an operational ongoing. Um

so so the next one is our um supplementary for uh our one-time monies. And so the change there, um I did it in green, it's not showing up very good on the ambulance replacement. Um we've marked that to actually um fund that this year and then we move the library pavilion down just below and to use care tax to fund phase one for that. We still have the prior year funding which was general fund plus um the grant from the county but the additional 342 will come out of care tax monies. Um so that was a change that we made and um Scott and I looked at that this morning as far as being able to um do that.

Could do that this year with the tax? Yep. Yeah. So we can we can do that with uh um in 2027 we can do that with care tax monies. And so that amount being used for that use does that take away from any other organizations that are currently expecting funding from the care tax?

No. No, that's above and beyond. We have the Ruth that we're funding out of there 300 that will stand. Um in the current year we're doing the Battle Creek trail head. We're doing half from there. Um finishing up the shade covers but they're done. And then we just have some of our ongoing we fund um additional monies for parks projects um additional uh the library gets some out of there but it's not going to affect any of those. They'll still be able to get those dollars. Our conversation I think you even mentioned there's kind of a care reserve. Yeah, we have some fund balance in there. So there's fund balance and then there's our ongoing money that we're getting for fiscal year 27 and we're

we are holding some money back. We haven't made final decision on uh as we redo the Discovery Park tennis courts whether we're going to transition those to pickle ball. If we do that, then we will need some care money because that whole cost will not be absorbed by the contractor because that's going to be an add-on for us. So, there is some money held back for that just in case that's an option that we want to do. But that was the discussion Denise and I had. Is there enough money to do all of that? And the answer is yes. Yes. And has there been an increase year-over-year from the care tax when it first started? Yeah, we were we brought in 859 um last year and I think our original numbers was probably 450

450 and then it's just been gradually going up. So that's been very beneficial. And how much in reserve? Um we have if we didn't spend this we have like 700 uh,000 at the end of FY 2027 is my estimate. So, um, and then we have a small reserve fund for maintenance, I think, at the cook. We put, uh, 25 that'll come and I'll I'll keep track of that. Yeah, we're in good shape. We did that last year and so we'll do that again. So, yeah, I feel like I feel like that we can do that and still 20 to 25,000 annually for Coke Park. Yeah.

Well, we set aside for maintenance. So if we have very little maintenance now that carries over so that if we have to redo the surfacing on the playground we don't have to come up with 100,000 we're over we've saved it over time. So yeah not that's our intention there and that's earmarked with its home project. So, and so that's the biggest um thing on here. And then I just included this again. This is just the personnel and operational and um just give you updated um narratives. I moved the the Axon contracts from capital. So now it shows on the operational narrative. Great.

And it it was here. So that is the biggest things. You guys have any questions? Denise, thank you. You're welcome. Takes a lot of work. Thank you. Yeah, we got we get there. And so next Tuesday, um we'll present the tenative budget and it'll be about 55 pages. You'll see not just the general fund, you'll see all of the other things. You'll see a care tax and um there will be a page for each fund that we have in the city like we've had. There will be an executive summary and some things like that.

Yeah. I just would like to say I've had separate offline com conversations with Scott um about the budget and I really appreciate you guys taking our feedback and kind of going back and getting this to a place where I really I really appreciate your hard work and and getting the funds from the the places that most benefit the city and are kind of earmarked for those projects. So I like that looks great. Well and it's it the feedback is really good. Sometimes we're just, you know, doing that and the feedback feedback is good for us to go look and look at other options, too. So, but yeah, so I feel good about this. Like I said, you'll see a bigger document next, but not much difference.

All right, Scott. Okay, if you pull out this handout that Denise gave you. Oh, that she will be giving you seen this before. So, this isformational. Um, this this is something that we want feedback from you on. Um, we will eventually make this ready for public consumption, but at this moment, we want feedback from you as far as if we are um making sure our message is clear as to why we are requesting a property tax. Have you made the changes to this that we talked about or is that yet to come? No, no, we made the changes.

All right. Thank you. So, if the ones that we had were a page and a half, we're now down to one page and there were some numbers on there that maybe weren't quite telling the story that we want to tell. Um, and so we

we decided that we would uh we wanted to make sure we um had something that was efficient and made sense so that people could look at it and have an understanding. So, I want to walk through the fire department numbers and then the police department numbers. Uh, and then, uh, we're going to have Chief Ingamman uh, give the narrative. He's going to explain better than I can the why. I can explain the numbers. He'll he'll go a little more in depth than that. And then we'll have, uh, Chief Brown do the same. So, on the fire and the police, both of them, we started off with our effective property tax rate. So, um, with, uh, our property tax, every year that our assessed valuation goes up as a city, our rate automatically drops. If we want that rate to stay the same, we would actually have to go through a truth and taxation hearing in order to keep that rate the same. If you look at 2022, that's when we did our uh, property tax increase three years ago. uh and that you can see that the rate didn't even really go up because the evaluation that year had gone up so high that even though we did the tax increase um our rate was probably pretty close to staying about the same. So since then it has decreased. It's now under 0.001. That's the lowest at least since I've been here in 16 years. That's the lowest rate that has ever been for Pleasant Grove City. So again, this is uh part of this is going to be education. Uh particularly with our public. When we did this in 22 and also in 2023, um we would we did open houses. We did an open house where we invite people in and we would have these discussions so people get to understand uh how the proper property tax works. The fact that when you get your bill, the city's only 15% of that. We're not the full rate. the bulk of it actually does go to the school district and things like that to help people understand um what's happening. Um the numbers under that it

says full-time firefighters per 1000 population. Um this is the area where we're lacking and this is this is the main reason we're making this request. If this property tax is funded, it would be three new firefighters. So right now we have we have three shifts. We have uh five full-timers on each shift. And so um we want to have seven um firefighters on each shift. So we have two part- timerrs generally speaking on each shift. Now I'm going to where it says open shifts. This is where we have a shift where we can't get seven. So we'll have either we can't get any part- timerrs to schedule. So maybe we're running a shift of six or five is the minimum we go. Um and and so we do have times where we're just not fully um uh yeah, we don't have the full people here that we need. Now, generally speaking, we can run with five. Five means we can run the engine and we can run the ambulance and we're good to go. When we have seven, then we can pick up what we call a stacked call, which is when we get two ambulance calls at the same time. So, if we only have five and we get a stack call, then we're calling in American Fork or um Lone Peak or whoever else and they're going to pick up that call for us. Now, they'll get the revenue that's associated with that. Um but that that doesn't necessarily cover their operations. America, we use American Fork quite a bit. They've had dialogue with us saying, "Hey, we're picking up more calls than we should in your own city." And that is uh due to the fact that we have just the lack of numbers that that we would hope to have. So, sorry I jumped around a little bit, but the full-time firefighters per thousand you can see in relation to other cities were low. On our open shifts, you can see that um we just were running at 348 uh shifts that where we were not fully

staffed at seven people. Um, our stack calls also continues to increase and so that's just a matter of getting two calls at the same time or three. If we get three, then we are calling in an outside agency. Now, we we respond if other places are getting stat calls, but as you can tell, they have more personnel than we do. So, they have less of that than than we do. And then uh just on the bottom is the total calls per fire station. Need my glasses. getting those out the full fire. And I I know we talked about not putting that on here, but I think just for the conversation standpoint, even with the the added

uh staff that we're talking about, I don't think we'd even we'd still be the lowest. We might be. And I'm finding out as we talk to other cities, there's a few cities doing truth and taxation specifically for public safety in Utah County. Yeah. And so, uh, where we are in comparison to other cities is one number. How this one affects us specifically. We are trying to do the math and we haven't we need to follow up on that. That's not something we'll put on here, but that's something that we can get the Scott. Yeah. on the ORM and like say Provo and American for is that an average between all four stations that that's a typical average what a typical station

would run they have four so let's take ORM they have four stations 1984 is an average between all four yes okay is that means they're doing 8,000 calls a year okay yes and American Fork I think's building a third station here coming up correct Now, are we one of the discussion points we had was are we sure that like each of their stations, our station, we try and have seven firefighters on? Yeah. Are each of these stations are we talking seven firefighters per station?

Well, they're they're fully staffed, meaning they're g they're these are full-time people. It's not like they just have three people in a station. They're they're going to have a full crew. Drew, would you be able to answer that? Do I mean, generally speaking, are these other stations would they have a crew of seven?

So, let's So, let's take American Fork. There are two stations. They typically at least have five. Five to seven or Yeah. Come on up. They stack one of 10. They run two crews out of one station because they're getting ready to build a third station. Out of those 200 calls up per station, roughly this last year, 1,400 of those calls came out of the hospital for transports. So those are not emergency those not emergency calls that you call 911 from the hospital.

So you can take off those five something thousand calls, 1400 calls out of that. Then you can take those calls. That's what the emergency calls. They're running probably 3,002 3,300 something like that. I mean, get the numbers up. So, they're running that right now. They're looking to hire 13 because they're going to build a third station right now, which will take some relief off station one. They'll put down their third station, but they're looking at hiring 13 for another for another station. You'll be anywhere from four to five a shift. They want more, but I think they're start out with this is American. American fort. Yeah. Do you know if they're doing truth and taxation? I don't know. I'm not 100%. I know Saratogi is Saratoga and ORM are both. Um,

just so you know, I'm polling the city managers to try to figure out who's doing truth and taxation this year and why because in our meetings uh last Monday, the question was asked who's doing truth and taxation and probably 50% of the hands went up. But why? I don't know if they were doing it for public safety or for other reasons, but I mean that that in fact while you're up here, Drew, do you want to minutes and just talk talk the council a little bit through this.

Yeah. How you guys look at it? Just barely got that. If you have any questions looking at it, we kind of went through most of these numbers on our when we did our budget, you know, the budget uh first meeting we had, you know, early in the year. But like uh uh like like Scott said, you know, we're busy today. I've called American Forkin three times already today for calls because we've doubled up that many times today. I've had eight I've had nine calls since two this morning and it's just consistently going and we just get behind and we we need their help and it's just kind of hard when you have six guys on duty or five guys on duty. When you drop down to five people in reality that's not even enough to fight a real house fire with just five people and it's getting you know technically not supposed to send anybody in on a house fire when you have five people. I need backup. I need you know other departments coming there. Um a little while ago AF was busy enough was busy enough. I know we had a meeting with Scott at the station, but they called Lone Peak ambulance to come back do a call in our city because we're there so busy. AF was busy. No one was busy. So, we're waiting for an ambulance from Lone Peak to come all the way over here. Luckily, our guys cleared the hospital quick enough, came back and took that call. But that's how busy all these cities around us are getting. We're we're we're the same as every one of them. You know, we're just getting busy. They're building stuff. You know, AF's built all those apartment complexes. We're going to be building a bunch more off 220 than out by the freeway. We got a bunch more coming. Not that it's going to increase, you know, 100 calls a day, but it is going to make it busier. Influx of traffic coming in and all that kind of stuff. It's going to make a difference for us. Um, you know, open shifts, it's just hard. Part-time people are hard. You have to treat them kind of nice to make them come back. Is this not like, you know, if you get mad at them, tell them you can't come in, they just, you know, it's difficult to keep, you know, part-time staff where right now I only have 26 part-time staff. That's not even enough to fill up all my part-time shifts. I've got 60 part-time shifts a month that I've got to fill and I've only got 26 of them right now. I just

hired two today which will bring me up a couple. I usually have right around 35 to make that difference up. There's not a lot of guys out there that are that are wanting to do part-time or are qualified to come in and do part-time for us. So, what we're in that department were a little on the on the low side right now. Also, um yeah, stack calls that's kind of, you know, open that open shifts. Same thing with our um way we do that stuff. Calls per station. We put I put that in there just to show you that even these departments that are divided up even west valley some up in Salt Lake City we still run more calls per station than some of these bigger stations. They may have 10 eight stations but you divide that up we are still running more calls in some of these stations as we are. We're just getting busier and it's it's taxing the guys. my guys right now, some of them, they're probably averaging 70, 80 hours a week, just keeping filling shifts, making sure they're coming back. Um, keeping the ambulances open and it's tough. Haven't had to mandator anybody come back for overtime, but I've come it's been super close to to doing that. I hate doing that because it's not something you like to do. It's not great for family life, just mental health, all that stuff. So, it it it taxes the guys quite a bit. So, that's kind of a

chief. So, I have a question for you. Does this graphic tell your situation good?

I think it it portrays it pretty decent. I It shows you where we're at. Shows you, you know, we're the standard, you know, the national standard. A lot of cities aren't quite to that point. You know, it's it's it cost a lot. It's one per thousand people. You see where we're at. We're way we're way below that. But even that, we're still way below everyone around us. You know, our counterparts that that are around us. um you know we should be I would hope you know up in these you know if we're 6 something like these other ones which you know now you're talking seven eight people that would make that difference up and that's not going to happen overnight but it's something I think we need to look at and keep building because we're not going to get any slower I think we're going to continue to grow and keep busy and that's just kind of where we're at. I think it's a pretty decent depiction of what's going on how we're doing it. Um, so

can I can I just ask you, Chief, how would like if so if we were to fund three additional positions, how do you envision that changing these numbers and your station?

Grant is that that point 4%? Yeah. Is it going to change a lot? Probably not. If we can get, you know, one person on now, which will give me six full-time people, and then if I keep my two part-time, that'll give me eight. That gives me the flexibility of at least hopefully keeping at least seven there all the time where I could almost run two crews. I need eight or nine people there every day just to run two crews if I was going to do that. If I was if I was going to double staff a station, I'd need a minimum four per crew. Two on the engine, two on the ambulance, which is still running light as it is. A lot of departments use like a Sandy and West Valley, some of the other uh Orange tried it, but it's hard. But it's they try to run three people on an engine to just just to man an engine just for strictly house fire because there's a number of things you got to be doing. You're picking up a hydrant, you're doing all these different things with two people, it's kind of hard. So there's there's a lot of things. It doesn't change the numbers hugely, but I think as we go through and do this methodically and kind of build this up, I think it will make a difference in the end. Yeah, but it's like it's not going to change things overnight, but hopefully it'll be a good start.

I think the numbers that are on here, except for the one in the middle of fulltime firefighters per thousand bodies don't affect these statistics. The same number of calls are still happen. I think it just enhances our ability to cover those calls.

Yeah, it will. Yeah. No, you I could have I could have 20 guys here every day. That doesn't mean I'm gonna be able to cover every single call time. There's going to be situations where it's going to happen where it just, you know, we're busy doing something and a call comes in. But as we increase this, yeah, I think, you know, our as a city, we would want to do everything we can to cover our own citizens, cover, you know, our own calls that we can as much as we can as opposed to waiting 5 10 minutes from somebody else to show up over here and and depending on what it is. I mean, a great question. Uh, I know we've talked about, you know, the 90 seconds you're out the door, you know, six minutes to site, right?

When somebody else has to cover our call, how does that impact those numbers? It it the times increase a little bit. Um, thankfully with this new dispatch we started a few years ago, you know, we're up at the county, you know, we do that stuff. If we're busy, we're out on a call, they automatically goes to the next available engine, but it's going to be AF somewhere or going to be from ORM somewhere depending where they're at. It's, you know, so you could anywhere from three to five, eight minutes, you know, longer to get there, you know, depending what it is. So, yeah, it does it does kind of it's a level of, you know, and that's what that's what it is.

Yeah. I mean, you look you look at budgets across most these ones, at least the ones in the county that I've done research on. As for us, Pleasant Grove, we spend the least amount of public safety on budgets for the budget for public safety than anyone else. We're on the bottom end of that whole on that whole uh thing there. I mean, it's, you know, it kind of shows me you got point four, you know, Manning, you know, to to cover that. you got 40,000 citizens live here and you got seven people protecting that, you know, or during the day, I don't know what the influx is. You get influx coming in when you have five people, you know, that's hard. So, it's it's not the easiest thing sometimes when you're trying to juggle keeping the guys, keeping shifts filled and stuff like that. So, this stuff I think it it depicts pretty decent. I think I mean, I feel comfortable with it.

Denise, at that table, you've got the word effective in that property. which we talked about, but I don't see any kind of reference to like a definition of what effective means. Because if I'm a regular citizen, again, we talked about, you know, how complex tax rates are. I look at this as average Joe and I says, you know, my taxes have gone up every year. And what I was hoping for is some sort of definition that would say effective tax rate astered as in relast

because I want I want Chief Brown to get a minute too before we end our work session. But sort of helps them in this city without an understanding what it means. Yeah, we'll do our best to define that with I mean sometimes that's hard in a graph to say this is what this means.

Um I I do want Chief Brown to to take a minute. If you look at the police numbers, we do have some similarities. We have the tax rate on there. We have the uh sworn officers per thousand in relation to where we are with the rest of the county. Um and then uh just pointing out that our assaults are up 30% since 2021. The domestic violence is 35%. I mean these are are more serious things that our officers deal with. And then the drug offense, as you can see, has been a little bit fluctuating from 2023 and Chief Brown will explain why with an understanding that we do have drugs in our city and these are things that we need to deal with and and having additional officers will help us with that. So, I'm gonna have Chief Brown come up and and uh he'll share um you know, his thoughts on what these numbers mean and and any other thoughts that he has in relation to the need for the officers. Well, Mayor Council, I'm I'm going to chop this information in half because we're out of time. But um um when Strawber Days rolls around, I I I finished 40 years in law enforcement. 40 years. And I've seen a lot of trends in there. And the the way we're trending now, you ought to be concerned. I'm concerned. The way society is trending, the way uh police work is is trending. Even in our town of Pleasant Grove, uh when I first started here. Uh we had a problem with uh retaining people. We still have that problem. Just had an officer two hours ago give me his two weeks notice. He's moving to another department. Uh so uh in order to handle shortages of manpower, we uh revitalized a reserve program. I did a reserve for uh BYU for 33 years. Our reserve program is uh you hire officers from other agencies, minimum of five years experience. uh they come over here with some veteran experience out here on the streets uh to supplement our

shortages in the schedule while we try to find and hire uh new officers. Uh I'll be honest with you, it takes three years for an officer to be to some degree competent and well-rounded in all aspects of police. Uh maybe closer to five at Pleasant Grove's pace and stuff like that. So uh um to have him out there working off I don't count as a full-time guy. We operate normally with a threeman crew. Uh and then you try to get a fourth guy to overlap half on days and half on graveyards. He's called a cover officer. Uh law enforcement tends to be reactive and a lot of times we'd like to be proactive and by that I mean this uh who would have known uh last year the explosion that ebikes have taken along the Wasach front. So now that ebikes comes out, here's something that we have to react to. Uh we want police officers to go look for ebikes and control the ebikes and stop the ebikes and educate the ebikes on the Murdoch trail, on all the city streets, uh around all the schools and stuff like that. And so it it's uh it's another priority for us. Who knew in the last year that we would have uh as many auto pedestrian auto bicycle accidents? We've had over a dozen. Three of them very high profile. One of them was a fatality. Who knew? And so in response to that, the citizens, and I've heard them, they've come here to this very podium and and talked about the need for um speed enforcement, distracted driving enforcement, enforcement on a dozen city streets, if not more. We want extra patrol for every crossing guard at every crosswalk, and every crosswalk that your kids cross and my grandkids cross. Uh you want those kind of services. And when we put our speed trailer out there that we got from the city and the colonels, there is a speeding problem in town. So with my threeman crew, when I'm not chasing ebikes, I'll go do speed enforcement, distracted driving enforcement on top of the calls that

come out. And these calls are concerning. You can look at your stats for drugs and it looks like it's going down, but they're not going down. Uh the level of these drug cases, uh I'll give you some examples. In the last year and a half in apartment complexes not far from here, we have uh remedied several big cases. One of them was a pound of meth in your city. The other one was five pounds of meth in your city with thousands of fentanyl pills. The last one a couple months ago was a marijuana packaging operation at an apartment complex that we raided and confiscated all the stuff. They'll probably set up shop again somewhere. The most recent one out by Cook Family Park was a um a lab doing bath salts. The guy says he does $12,000 a week in business along the Wasach front. DEA was very interested in him. So they come down and scooped him and they'll file federally on him. That stuff is happening in your city. Drugs aren't coming to PG. They're already here. And if we can only respond to them when we have time, when we're not at all these other places demanding our attention, we'll work on those cases. Um, our people are continually being asked to do more with less. The legislaturator has been very generous in saying institute the guardian program. So now we have to bring on 20 guardians. We have to train them. We have to supervise them. Do more with less. Uh, I just found out today in a legal update class I now have to go train somebody to be proficient in cryptocurrency. uh that's required now by the legisle. You didn't give me any money for it, but you but you are going to mandate me to train somebody. Uh in 2027, we were supposed to have fingerprint identifiers in every car, you know, biometric um equipment. You're not giving me any money, but you're demanding that I have it. Now, they've pushed that back to 2028. Do more with less. Uh it's it's a it's an old it's an old verse, but uh when you look at those stats and we can think that uh you know, things are pretty good. Maybe assault numbers aren't dramatically high. Maybe

aren't dramatically high. Maybe your drug numbers uh don't seem dramatically high, but I got to tell you, these are timeconsuming situations. The bath salt labs took took us out of circulation for hours, eight hours on a traffic stop, and then you got to write search warrants, then you go search a house, and then you got to deal with all the arrest. Your mental health cases, which are on the rise, they are time consuming. So this threeman shift, one guy can now get derail for the next six hours trying to find a place to take a mental health patient. Uh because nobody was taking him. There's no bed space. Six hours were tied up. He's out of circulation. A good DUI accident. There's such a thing as a good one. Uh a good DUI accident. You got one officer to do the DUI, two officers to do the action. There's your whole threeman crew before you have another domestic violence situation going on in town. And I got to tell you, domestic violence, those numbers are concerning. The trends are concerning. 25% of the homicides that occur in Utah are related to domestic violence. 25%. Pleasure is not immune from that. So, domestic violence concerns me. Domestic violence gets one tick mark on your stat sheet, but the magnitude of what that is is uh is concerning. Uh society is uh certainly more toxic than it ever has been. um our calls are more time consuming than they ever have been. But yes, on your stat sheet it looks like, you know, 50 DUIs isn't concerning until that DUI hits a family of three and kills kills them all. Then it makes a then it makes a headline on the evening news. One DUI concerns me 50 says you have a problem. You have a drug problem in here and we can't be proactive with a threeman crew and address all the other assets. And I get it. Their asks are important and we we respond to all of them. Extra patrol in the cemetery because they're stealing my stuff. Acts to patrol the crosswalks, the speed zones, the school buses. Uh

everybody wants the police officers um in a dozen place at the same time. Uh we are short-handed. We are um not retaining our officers as long as I would like to unfortunately. We'll work on that. I think the city's committed to working on that. Uh but we're we're uh we're barely keeping our heads above water. I'll be straight honest. I think the reserve program is valuable. Uh we got we got to have that. There's brings some experience here. Uh as good luck would have it. Uh I just hired one of our reserves full-time. So he's a reserve on Friday. On Tuesday he'll be full-time. So that's another way for us to test the value of somebody and recruit them over over to our our city. But u uh we are working hard to address things. They're out there speed enforcement that we average u uh we're average about 60 sites a week for uh moving violation enforcement in the city on top of all the other things. So I get I get the concerns of the citizens. I'm concerned. I don't like the trends. I don't like the volatility that society is taking us down and u uh if you have to respond to domestic violence, you better take some company because these guys are showing up with weapons. I mean, two months ago on a normal normal uh a neighborhood disturbance call, one officer's out there by himself and a guy pulls a steak knife on him. If he had taken two more steps, we would have dispatched him. I mean, we would have killed him. Okay? Two more steps, you're dead. I don't shoot the knife out of your hands. I shoot and I'm going to kill you. That's where we are. Uh they're volatile. The weapons are ever present on our traffic stops. People are just uh they're just uh some struggles out there and we we get to meet them head on. So, u uh sorry um I wish I had a little more pleasant news, but things are great. Uh PG is a great city. There's a lot of good things going. It's a small percentage of people

that create 90% of my problems around here. We'll try to address those. Um and I got to keep these officers safe. My duty is to make sure they go home at the end of the evening to their families and give them all the equipment. And the city has been very good. Axon cameras, flock plate readers, uh, speed signs, uh, weaponry, stuff like we have been given some great tools to do our job. Uh, and and and I appreciate that. I appreciate all the work he's done on our behalf to make us um have that fighting chance out there. My time is up, but thank you. Uh, do you have any questions for me? If so, we'll get to him at the end of the meeting. Well, no. I I prefer Let's take a few minutes with the chief up here

instead of pushing it to council. If you're okay, if you have questions for the chief, I'd prefer we just address them now. Are going to ask you mine. Are you okay with the the situation that your flyer portrays, right? I mean, are you okay the way or would you like to add anything? Well, um, that would tell your story better. The officers per thousand, even if I got two,

you're still below the mark. You're going to go from 0 79 to 083. So, you're not going to solve that problem. So, we're just it's it's a great step forward. officer a great step forward. Uh if you went by that average, I would need seven more officers or eight more officers if you're going to use that as a measuring device. So places pick and choose how much they want that measuring device to to be applied. I get that. Uh so I just throw that out the window. I just know that in our day-to-day challenges with the call volume that we have, the toxicity of the calls that we are seeing, not all the time, but with regularity nowadays, uh I think we have to be ahead of it rather than react to it. Um, reacting to a drug problem is a little late if if the person overdosed and died on fentanyl. We should get ahead of the fentanyl before they do that and confiscate it and seize it and uh and hold the dealer responsible. That's what we should do, but it takes time to put those cases together.

Great. Any questions for Chief? I have here numbers where the drug inces are down. Obviously that doesn't tell the story. I'll tell you the story because because Sergeant Henderson retired. He was our drug officer and so he retired and went away for a year and now he's back. This is designed for public consumption, right? I think it makes sense to put a little footnote there couple of words but but identifies this isn't a reflection of lack of drug issues. It's a lack of Yeah. And I also think specifically to the drug offenses, I think that

some of the busts that I know we've we've had even in the last two or three years, like you rattled off three in the last year, last quarter. Those maybe are more impactful than a graph that doesn't really capture what we're trying to say. Um maybe amounts seized in the last quarter. I mean, those th those things suggest to me they're impactful. Well, we have a problem. We don't just have even a consumption problem. We have a production problem here in the

DEA uh published a report. It was on KSO just a couple months ago that this year the the amount of drug sees in the state of Utah is the highest that it's ever been. We're certainly part of that. We have an officer on the major crimes task force. Their numbers are as high as they've ever been and they're producing on a regular basis. So, uh, some of those we we have to, uh, calculate the release of information because one investigation links to another and we'll we'll work those to go for the, you know, bigger fisher. So, but maybe some stat related to drugs seized in the city might be more impactful than seeing a graph go down for external reasons, not not because there's no drugs.

No, I agree 100%. And I do like the idea that there's a way that we can put almost narrative in there as opposed to a graph to your point. Hey, just this last year list three different the salts the fenol is a big one. It's huge. And so just something that just lets people know that this is in the community. So I think that's a good point. We're trying to show it in a graph and it's kind of hard because the is contingent on some of the one specific officer who was special. So we'll we'll before we release that we'll work on that.

Thanks Chief. Is there any more? Not not for Chief. Just generally on on the proposed kind of tax increase that we're talking about, Scott, I I mean, I don't know how the rest of the council feels and maybe we'll have time to talk about this in council meeting, but I really would like to engage with the public in a meaningful way, even if that's through an analytics firm or whatever, so that we get this information out and then hear what the public uh expects of us or how they're feeling towards the tax increase. so that we can sh up our public safety budget and how they feel about that because I think that's

the the last time the tax increase was proposed. I think that was a that was maybe something that the the residents didn't feel was done enough was enough outreach and I don't want to and and and you know the perception could be completely different than the reality. I totally understand that but I I want to do what we can to um partner with all of our residents in soliciting information so that they know that we're not just operating up here in a in a in a vacuum, but we're trying to take provide them with the information, answer questions, and then take their feedback to figure out maybe what's what's best for the city.

So, along those lines, there's a couple of things I want to cover, but if we can take a few minutes at the end of council meeting because there is a process that's changed, the truth and taxation process has changed. I want to walk the council through that and then we can talk about some of these ideas of the partnership with the public or surveying the public or how we want to do that. So, if we can push that to council meeting, we'll do that. Okay. With that, I'll make I'd like a motion to adjurnn from work session. Mayor, I'll make a motion to adjurnn. We have a motion by council member Williams. I have a second. Second by council member Rogers. And all those in favor? Right.