City Council - workshop

We're gonna open our work session meeting today, Tuesday, July 21st, 2026. And we have just a few items for our work session. We're gonna discuss looks like parade policy and the city's cost for strawberry days, Scott.

We'll start with the parade policy this came up after strawberry days and we said we'd put it on as a work session discussion The history is is last year. We had some feedback from the public to the City Council that people were asking if there's a way to keep the city right away from People putting out chairs and things like that before the parade we were seeing things a week or two in advance with that was going down into the right-of-way and So the response was, we did some research, talked with other cities and our proposed policy and the one that the city council adopted was that you couldn't put anything into the city right of way until three o'clock the day before the parade, which would have been the Friday before. What we did in preparation for that is we got kind of the campaign sign signs and we put those in the right of way so that people were aware. Our parks department was the group that for the most part, there weren't a ton of issues until Friday morning. There were some people on Friday morning that started that started putting some of their stuff up. And so we took, I don't know, Dionne told me we had probably about 50 or 60 chairs that we just put in the Sally Port. And most people have come and picked them up, not all. And the sign was clear, we would take your stuff, we would remove it if you'd put it in there. So when we talked after Strawberry Days, there were a couple concerns regarding the policy. From the staff perspective, it worked fine. We feel that if we keep consistent with the policy, people will get better and better at understanding not to put your stuff out till three o'clock. If the policy stays intact, we'll do the same next year. We'll put our signs up a couple weeks before, and then hopefully people get the idea that when they put a chair down before Friday at three o'clock, we're gonna come pick it up, and then Friday at three o'clock, they can put their stuff down. So that's what the current policy is. If there are questions, concerns, thoughts of changing it, then let's have the discussion.

Council, do you have any questions?

I don't have any questions. I have some statements. I would love to see us extend the parade route and forego with the signage. I think there were a lot of places where we were four or five people deep, and I think it's time for us to extend the parade route. I think we go all the way to Cook Park. i think that'll alleviate some of the angst of people setting out their stuff earlier because there'll be more places i think the only reason people are doing it is because number one that's tradition that's where they've sat for 30 years um i i don't like the policy at all and so i um friday at noon and at two and at three it wasn't nice on saturday morning it was not nice And I think we're better than that. And I think maybe an extension of the parade route may alleviate that.

So you're suggesting we don't have any policy people can put up whenever?

The rule is that you don't. I mean, the city, that space between the sidewalk and the curb and gutter, that is city stuff. I can only think of one place where people crossed the sidewalk in saving places, and that's at the church on Second and Locust.

Yeah, and that church is behind the sidewalk. Correct. That's private property, that's not city property.

But I have seen people try to save. The conversation with parks, and I know it's costing us money to enforce this.

It's time, for sure. Yes.

Okay, the only place I've seen where people have saved places over the sidewalk is that church.

So they're behind the sidewalk. The church is right up to the street.

The people have saved.

You're talking about the planter strip.

And that's the only place that I've seen that happen, where people have taken a ribbon and crossed over the sidewalk onto the city right away.

So from what I recall, maybe I'm wrong, church property, sidewalk, road. I don't think there's a planter strip on that church property.

So they were saving then the, you are correct. They were going over the sidewalk. Were they putting it on the sidewalk? Yeah.

I got great feedback. The two people that called and said their stuff was missing, I said go check at City Hall. and they did and they picked it up because they put it out too early. I think the homeowners appreciated it. The feedback that I saw on social media is that other people appreciated it. I didn't get any negative feedback, and it was clear and clean up until 3 p.m. before the parade. What I was seeing before that were chairs literally in a sidewalk that if you were going down that sidewalk on a bike or a scooter at night, you'd run into it. It's a safety concern mostly for me, and intruding into people's yards and if the wind blows, those chairs are going everywhere for two weeks up until the parade day. I think we just educate them and we train the public on how this is gonna work and as long as, Scott, you said we're consistent, I think they're going to know that this is the way we do it and it's for safety is my main concern. is having everything out for that long. I mean, because it'll just get earlier and earlier. That's what we've seen. Before it was the day before. Now it's a week before. Then it's two weeks before. If there's no policy, there could be chairs a month out and it will happen because we've seen that over time is that there'll be continued to save spots earlier and earlier and earlier. And for me, it's a huge safety concern to have that many things out in the roadway. And they do blow into the roadway. I've seen it happen because I go up and down 200 South every day and I didn't get any negative feedback.

I mean, I know Diana had a personal experience. I mean, there's no two ways around.

And I'm also concerned about the safety of the residents.

But that personal experience, I hope, was isolated, and hopefully not more than one or two.

I've heard of other people having the same thing on Saturday morning.

So I'll interject just really quick. I would hope, because we have chief, and maybe you can help me here, Chief Brown, is we have officers at pretty much every intersection that if a resident has an issue, I would hope that they go and grab an officer to say an individual's out of control. I don't know.

Well, if I can clarify, there's Friday at three o'clock when people can start putting their stuff down. anything Saturday morning is now people just being not good neighbors, right? So Saturday morning, if people see chairs and stuff in the right-of-way and they're taking the chairs and moving them, in my mind, that's a different issue than people being allowed to put their stuff down at three o'clock the day before. And so that, that to me is an enforcement thing and something where if we have incidents like that, we can get the police involved. We do have a police almost on every intersection. Yeah. And, um, well, no, that's yeah. I, I think that's right.

But the question I would have maybe for Diana is, you know, you talk about the tradition, you know, people have said, well, I've sat here for 30 years or my grand grandparent, whatever had this corner. if we stretch the parade route.

The new people.

Well, yeah, maybe the new people, I guess.

The new people that have moved in, that don't have a traditional spot.

And I wanna keep, and maybe this is the point I was trying to make. Strawberry Days is, they run the parade, it's not Pleasant Grove City. I know.

We could make a, we could strongly.

Yeah, we could have a discussion with that. I just want to make sure that it's not like we can say, okay, we're going to do this, we're going to do it. We need to make sure if something like that's going to happen.

I actually like the idea of ending it at Cook Park. It gives a little bit more parking area for, I mean, for people that are shuttling cars back and forth and I don't know.

Yeah. I mean, I, I guess my just question was just, would that solve it? Maybe it would, maybe it wouldn't. I, I honestly think time, whatever decision we make will help solve it as people either a learn the signage and you can't put it out or be, if we stretch it out, it'll eventually.

So interestingly, the same people have sat on my, on the place where we sit, the same people have sat there for 30 years, the new people that came in and were not kind. we've never seen before.

Probably from American Fork or something.

That's what I'm going to say.

But your people, Friday at 3 o'clock you had your spots, right?

Correct.

And so what happened Saturday morning was somebody coming in and saying, I want to sit here, I'm moving your stuff.

And totally independent.

To me, that's independent of the 3 o'clock the day before.

But it was crowded. And every event that we have is getting more and more crowded, which is wonderful. So I'm just thinking, if we have more real estate,

should thin it out a little bit but in my mind we keep the policy intact at the three o'clock on friday we sit down with strawberry days and say hey let's have a discussion about maybe extending this so that we can thin people out according to that because i sit at the very end of the parade on center street and the stuff i'm hearing that you guys are telling me up on second south like where they're just wall-to-wall people and it goes back 20 deep. It's not that way on Center Street because there's more room, to your point. The right of way on Center Street is probably 30 feet. Like it is from the curb back to the sidewalk is a huge amount of space in front of Thornberry and even across the street where those duplexes are. But to extend that around the corner, that could be helpful as far as thinning stuff out.

I think this year, a lot of people want to be at the beginning of the parade route because that's when all the candy is.

You're exactly right, because I said at the end, the candy is mostly gone by the time it gets to me.

I still had Tootsie Rolls for you and your family.

You did, and all of you did. Thank you. Because my kids still get plenty of candy, even though we're at the end of the parade.

I actually, as the discussion is going through, I like the idea of maintaining the policy that we started this year and seeing if we can extend the route. I mean, it may just be a natural... kind of an accommodation on both ends. Yeah.

So if council's okay, for the time being, we'll keep the parade policy intact. At any time, if there's three council members that want to change that, just let us know and we'll revisit that.

Todd said he's watching. He wants to keep it intact. Okay.

So there you go. So with that being said, but if you're okay, we will engage with Strawberry Days and have a discussion about the extension of the parade row.

And with that being said, move on to the next item there.

Okay, should we get into strawberry days? All right, it came up after strawberry days is what is the city's contribution on a financial sense for strawberry days. So I'm gonna talk about the agreement that we have with them. And this was agreement that we put in place 2017, so about nine years ago. And in the agreement it says this is the responsibility of the city. This is the responsibility of the strawberry days association and then We'll talk through what those numbers mean to the city. I So the city agrees that we will, as far as funding, we're gonna, our contribution is mostly in kind, meaning it's the time of our people. According to the agreement, it's not to exceed $60,000 in a given year. So for us, mostly it is police, fire, and parks over time. That's the number we calculated. Now, our parks department, the week of Strawberry Days and probably even leading up to Strawberry Days is probably mostly focused on Strawberry Days. Some of our parks workers are still maintaining our parks. in our city, but we do have some that are focused on whatever's going on. But I think a lot of the expense is probably more tied with overtime in the sense that we have events that are after hours. Carnival things like that where people are taking care of the garbage specifically the parks Police are in full force because we have a lot of people in town and we have them all over the place rodeo parade carnival Are probably the three big ones and then our fire department is also specifically to the rodeo very present there and then there's other places that they are as well and So our ballpark number for overtime this year was probably about $40,000 in overtime for those three services. That does not account for like our rec department because as part of the agreement, We provide public safety services. And then we also provide other departmental and staff support, which is mostly the parks department. But we also run a few rec programs. So we do a volleyball tournament. In fact, it says in here what our responsibility is. We have the princess party, baby contest, pickleball tournament, volleyball tournament, free swim night, the queen's tea. I don't know if they still do that. We provide the fish for Huck Finn Days, Strawberry Days handles the event themselves. And then it talks a little bit about the float and the pageant. Now, in this agreement with Strawberry Days Association, it doesn't list costs because our agreement with Ms. Pleasant Grove is a separate agreement. Okay, all this says is that the city is gonna be involved in that event as far as it being part of Strawberry Days Association. Now, the... not to get off on a tangent, but the Miss PG, including the Miss Teen and the Little Miss, right now we participate at $30,000 a year. And that was something that has evolved over time. I think initially it was 10, or 20, and we did 10 for the float. And then the request was a couple years ago to start the Miss Teen program with the understanding that we wouldn't do the float anymore. So I don't necessarily want to get bogged down in that discussion. We've already have had that discussion about whether we're going to do a float. But for strawberry days in particular, when it comes to money out of pocket, we spend, I think, $1,000 for fish for Huck Finn days. And then we have just incidental stuff. We have some lights for a couple events and things that are at the city's cost. This year we spent money on the signs. It was a couple thousand dollars for about like 150 signs for notifying people not to put their stuff in the right-of-way. Probably about 2,000. It might be a little bit more than that.

We did.

We saved most of them. There's a couple that got trashed, but for the most part, we didn't use all of them to start with. And we specifically made them so that we could just put them up every year. So we just said Friday the day before the parade. We didn't put an actual number on it. So we have our city-sponsored event. Also part of our agreement is they can use our property, which is the rodeo grounds. They can use our parks. And we also provide server space for them for Strawberry Days. What they provide is they provide a rodeo. They provide insurance specific to the rodeo. Scheduling, they handle all the scheduling. They do the carnival, the brochure, the parade, sanitation services, and then they have some independent events, golf tournament, 5K, car show. I mean, some of these are in conjunction with honorary colonels, fire department, but these are things that are under the umbrella of the Strawberry Days Association. They also, as part of that, our city logo is going to be, it's in the brochure. We have a mayor's letter in the brochure. And then the city does get rodeo tickets that we distribute to the employees as part of this agreement. So out of pocket, oh, the one last thing is, and this is new since we did the agreement, was the Main Street concert. I think we started that five or six years ago. The city pays for it, and then the Chamber of Commerce is the one that manages it. So we, I mean, we signed the agreement. It's, including the stage, it's $11,000 for the band and for the stage. And then we have Chamber handles the food trucks and all the other stuff. They take care of the band. As a city, essentially, in fact, the Chamber is the one that arranges the band. We essentially just pay for the band. That's our response.

And the green M&Ms that they do want.

The free M&Ms in the green room for the band. So that's so that's our responsibility So we have the 40,000 which we call it in kind but that is the overtime and things that we're paying It's it's mostly those services. We provide $11,000 for the concert and then we have what I would call incidentals Huck Finn days some signage some lighting which is less than 5,000 and then we have the miss PG pageant, which is really a different Discussion and a different entity as far as what we've been there.

I

Personal opinion, and I came from a city where we had a special events coordinator and we paid somebody to do all this. We are getting a heck of a deal in Pleasant Grove with our Strawberry Days Association. These are volunteers that do a lot of work. They save, if the city were to run this event, It would it would cost us a lot of money. And so me personally, I'm sure you guys feel the same way grateful to have The Association to to handle this and they spend a lot of hours You know doing that the city I feel and I mean with this agreement. We're a partner in this event But they are the engine that drives the event and it's awesome that they do that Any questions then about the expenses for strawberry days council any questions for Scott?

I Councilmember Lamont, anything? Councilmember Phillips?

This is my first experience being on this side of the table with it, and coming from a point of ignorance, assuming that the city always ran it.

Was doing all of it.

Yeah, and I would suspect at least half the city population probably, yeah, thinks that way. Conversations I've heard really just revolve more around not necessarily are we getting a deal or not, but is there a lack of participation by the city or say in how it goes or the ability to continue and maintain, like if we, I guess contractually, given over complete control to our word, the mercy of the association.

Well, the city's never had like, this has never been a city event to my understanding. There's always been an association that's run. It used to be back with independent. Yeah. With the wards. They, we found the agreement from 19. 46 or whatever it was. And it was like, the eighth ward's doing this. And it's like, okay, we're not doing that anymore. And all that stuff's great. There was a moment when the city administrator, this was before I was here, was also the chair of Strawberry Days. So things were probably a little bit more mingled in that sense. But since I've been here, I'm not the chair of Strawberry Days. And we have, I mean, we've had different chair people since I've been here. but lately it's Lisa Young, Scott Fugle. I gotta be careful, because there's a ton of people that are putting a lot of effort into this.

Do we meet with Strabayes to do a recap on how the event went? Because we are providing a lot as far as financially and then employees time property do we meet with them to do a follow-up to see kind of what we can do better how we can improve how we can help and is there do we have a seat at the board do we have any say like with bylaws or with moving forward like how are we structuring it to make sure that if something were to happen we yes we're two separate entities but I mean, this public doesn't know who's who. They just see it as Strawberry Days is happening.

Yeah, I think they're their own 501C, if I'm correct, and they have their own board and everything's set up that way. We've had them come in and report before. Yeah, we have.

I was just going to say that.

But that's different than like a sit-down with...

No, we debrief with them generally as staff. So that does happen? I don't remember if we did it last year, but Lisa and I had a conversation just right after Strawberry Day saying let's get something on the calendar. So we'll get Dion, we'll get our police and fire, we'll get us in the room, and we'll just talk through it. Okay, what do we need to be aware of? What's going on? So generally speaking, we haven't done that yet this year, but that's something that we need to get done. But that's generally how it works. If there's anything as a city that we wanna done any differently, then in my mind, we just revisit the agreement. I would say at the moment, the relationship is great and what they're providing I feel like is good.

Is the agreement like a five-year deal?

Yeah, it's an automatic renewal.

The automatic renewals end next year. So in 2027 we have to renegotiate and sign a new agreement. So it was a five-year initial term with five one-year rollovers. And so it's 10 years total. Yeah. And we signed it in 2017. So 2027, it's up.

So we'll probably start that this year to say, OK, is there anything we need to change in the agreement? We'd probably add the Main Street concert into that.

And does it make sense to have, whether it be chamber or city representatives in that maybe a member of the council or two or something?

We'd have to look. The chamber wouldn't be interested, but we'd have to look and see their bylaws and see if there is a seat for the city on the board. I don't think there is, but.

I don't know. Don't we have a rep that's assigned to the board? We have a rep that goes to the committee meetings.

We have a rep, but I just don't know if it's a board, a voting board.

I know I remember Steve saying he was involved with something. He might have been on the rodeo committee or something.

Steve was assigned to the Strawberry Days Committee.

Yeah, so every year I'll make assignments, and if you want to be on the Strawberry Days Committee,

Generally, in the past, we'll negotiate it as staff, but if there's a council member or two, we can't have more than two of you, if you want to, in my mind, the negotiation is going to be fairly simple because I don't think there's going to be a whole lot that we're going to want to change.

Yeah. I mean, I don't want any impression. It's an amazing organization that happens every year for 100 and however many years it's been. Yeah.

It's just getting bigger and bigger. And I think to be able to help them with what they need and make sure that we're being fairly represented as well with everything we provide. I guess we go over the agreement and get someone to continue assigning a council member, have a debrief. It's such a big celebration now that we just might need some more, not necessarily involvement, but just more of a seat at the table to make sure that we can help in any way we can. Sure.

I think it would be helpful if, before we have that meeting, if you have specific concerns, if you'll relay those to Scott. Because when you say talk about the contract, from the staff perspective, we're not seeing it. The contract's working. Yeah, it's working for us. So if there's things that you want us to consider and discuss, please get those details to Scott so that they can be on the table. OK.

So maybe just keep us informed of when that Conversation starts to happen in preparation.

Yeah, I'm hoping Sometime in August. We'll have the debrief with them and then we'll Because I had forgotten that the agreement is has one more year on it so we can start now on Hey if there's anything and that would be the appropriate time for council to share You know what you have on your mind if there's anything that you feel needs to be different.

I

Okay, thank you, Scott.

Okay, thank you. The only thing we can't change that's non-negotiable is the concert in the park with the free strawberries and cream on Tuesday nights. That has to stay in no matter what.

I don't think there's any intention of changing any of that.

We'd like to excuse Council Member Anderson. We'll wait for a moment.

Kind of hard with only three of you.

I know. While she's talking to the on yeah, what's up Megan you want come up and talk to us about the wreck.

Well, I think kind of like typical, we're swimming, we're playing, we're doing all the things. And I feel like I'm swimming. We've been down a staff member for a little while, but we've just finished up interviews. And so we have, his name's James. So we'll introduce him when he gets here. He'll start on the 28th. He's our new sports coordinator. So he's actually from South Carolina. and comes with lots of experience. We're excited about James coming in. We also made a couple of other adjustments in how our hierarchy works and what those positions look like. Kate Vest, who you've probably heard her name, was our fitness coordinator. We went through an internal and external process for that position, but we did promote Kate Vest into that position. We're really excited about those changes moving forward. Hopefully it gives me a little bit more capacity to not oversee 13, 12, 13 different people all at the same time and spread the wealth with some supervision. So great, we're excited about those changes. Another little update, I talked about it a few months ago, a new adaptive program. I had the opportunity, it's called SHARE. It's for 18 and older, those who graduate high school and kind of just lose their structure, lose their community, just kind of don't have opportunities, continue to do lifelong learning. And so that is the focus is lifelong learning. And I happened to stop in on that program a couple weeks ago. They actually wanted to do a flash mob for us. It was really cute, so we all went out into the lobby and they did a song and dance about USA and it was the 4th of July timeframe. And so I stopped in there and checked in on them and a wonderful program. We're partnering with United Angels who's helping make that happen as well. They just said they're just getting phenomenal response from parents that these young adults continue to learn about finance and cooking and they do art and fun things and they're doing all sorts of great things. We're hoping this program is kind of a piloted program that we will continue a year-long program. It won't be just in the summer, but then we hope that we can spread this opportunity to other rec centers and other rec centers will take on this kind of this model as well. So really great success there. It's been awesome to be a part of that and see the opportunity of those young adults to be able to still have community and structure. I also have a video today, too. I was actually out of town for the 4th of July. So who was here for the 4th of July? So you guys were there. You saw the party that was happening. So we have a little video to show you as well. We still don't really know what our numbers were for that day. We tried to use Placer AI, a connection to somebody else that has Placer AI. Right now they claim a pretty high number that we're not sure quite fits. Like what? Like 18,000.

I think that's probably pretty close.

I don't know, man. It seems really high, but I wasn't there.

Both those bowls were full, plus the cemetery.

It's just from six to 10. And the way place your eye works is it pings phones. And so, you know.

Could it pick up residents in the area?

It could, and that's kind of my question. I wasn't the one that asked for the information. And so I'm wondering what truly the radius is. I think it was supposed to be just Cook Park, Cook Family Park.

Like with the radius, because you have like the town homes and the villas and stuff. So that could be like a couple.

Or somebody driving by or checking in.

So that'd be interesting to see though. I don't think there's 18,000, but there were thousands.

They're definitely worth, yeah, definitely worth thousands. So we'll see if we can get a better, real better perspective on that, although regardless, whatever the number was.

Scott knows that, well, if you go to the rodeo, the rodeo holds like 8,500, 8,600 people in that. If you look at each of those bowls, I mean, I'm serious, it was full.

Yeah. I'm from Idaho Falls and they claim to have the biggest show west of the Mississippi, so it's my tradition to always be there. Sid's like, nope, not anymore. Well, it was the last year they were doing that show that big, so I actually went up to Idaho Falls and took the fourth off. So thank you to Andy and her team. It takes a ton of people to make these things happen and on a day when you want to be with your family. So props to Andy and her team for making this happen. So we have this little video to show the day's events like we always kind of do. We always have our nice little videos. I'm going to turn down the volume right now before I hit play because it might be too loud. Yeah, so I'll end with Andy Vinker. She said her core memory now in life is when the song, the Andy Grammer song came on, I think it's Home.

Yeah.

And everybody was singing that. And I thought, this is cool. I mean, I know these cost a lot of money. There's a lot of people that make these happen. They have to work on a holiday. I mean, we had all sorts of people out there helping. But moments like that where you are pulling the community together, and it's remembering who we are, We're all in it together and celebrating together. It's pretty awesome. The problem is... Yeah, the problem, yeah.

I think with Andy's, we've created a monster.

Yes, yes. It's a good monster.

A very good monster, yes. But nonetheless, people are going to want this next year. Now, if it's just a firework show, that's fine, but this was like the best I've been to since I've lived in Poznan to go for 46 years. This was so much fun. The firework show was amazing, and I don't know if it's because there was more, it felt like it was bigger.

We beefed it up. Because it was $250, we put more money into it.

Okay. Because I thought it seemed like a bigger like drop zone and stuff. So maybe the fireworks seemed bigger. It was a long, like one of the best fireworks show ever. There were people, there was plenty of room. There was plenty, I felt like plenty of, I mean, I don't know, parking coming in and out with, and maybe we can get some more police and stuff to help with that. But stuff you don't, you figure out after the first year. Sure. It was so good. It was. And just the whole, people were set up, like we wouldn't put our chairs out like at noon, but there were people that hung out there the whole day. The cemetery, there were people there with their loved ones who have passed.

Mm-hmm.

at their grave site, celebrating with them. Okay, that's amazing. The whole thing was awesome. So if we can do it next year, I don't know if it has to be that scale, but the minimum, I think this is the best location moving forward. It was awesome.

Maybe we don't let council member Lamont put her chairs out until 3.

We got too soon. But there was plenty of space. And it was still packed, but I still felt like there was plenty of room. It was awesome. Like I said, maybe it's not because you don't want people to enjoy it with their families, the employees, and whatnot. Sure. at the minimum having it there. I mean, the only complaint I've heard is we need more food trucks. We need more of this. Like anytime you need more of something, that's a good thing. It means people were coming out in droves. So I thought it was amazing.

Yeah, I agree. The band was actually the Salamanders.

Not that we've had before.

Yeah, so that's their countryside name, Drive. And so when I walk by, I'm like, okay, this is awesome.

That's good.

Oh, so welcome, Council Member Williams. Thank you. Good to have you here. I'm watching intently, but couldn't speak. Oh, you're good. Thank you. Are you going to wait and have Kate come in and discuss the other item?

Which one?

Something about, you know, we're becoming...

Oh, healthy, yes.

Do you want to wait on that?

I can tell you we're in the process.

Obviously, we'll be... We'll let her have the limelight, I guess.

Yeah, we're in the process of working on a healthy...

Awesome program.

Yeah, an awesome program about being healthy. So yes, when we get more forward into that, we will have her come, for sure.

Okay, awesome.

Awesome, thank you.

Yeah, thank you.

Dionne? I see you waiting patiently back there. So I will give props to Dion. While we were sitting in the bowl for waiting for the fireworks to get going, I made a phone call to Dion, and he was most gracious to light up the G for me for the city.

That was awesome. Oh, it cost.

Yeah, I owe Dion. Really? I owe Dion.

Oh.

Look, there was a cost. Yeah, it was a cost. My mental stress. I don't know.

Not a monetary cost. Yeah.

I really don't have anything. It's hot. We're hoping for some rain. You know, we're starting to, like Neil says, we're starting to dry things up a little bit. And I believe we are still set at 80% on our controllers. We haven't ran 100% yet, with the exception of downtown to get it back into shape. But everywhere else.

It's starting to look good. It's starting to look good. Downtown park, yeah.

Other than that, if you have any questions, I really don't have anything. Status quo.

The only thing I've got is we've got a mutual neighbor who has been pinging me a lot lately about wanting to maybe enhance our signs at the street crossings for the Murdoch Canal, specifically on 1100 and 500, the ones that are... Like bigger stop signs or something like that, or what? They're suggesting like the solar flashing lights around that you see on some stop signs. They've even suggested maybe even something as simple as painting the word look on the road. I don't know necessarily how I feel about it. To me, everybody sees the signs that are there. It's not a matter of not seeing the stop sign, it's a matter of a choice of thinking it doesn't matter or apply to them.

The vehicles have the right of way for what they're doing.

I know, I know. But we have a mutual neighbor who keeps pinging me.

So the Murdoch Trail is operated and owned by the county. So we don't have a lot of say. We can make recommendations. We did some reflective tape on some things a while ago. We can make those types of recommendations. Where it comes to streets, that's all public works.

The trail itself follows national trail standards and guidelines administered by the county. We have started looking at enhancing the approaches on our streets over which we have stewardship and that is on our list of items that Brenton and I are talking about because, The usage I think is just up overall and I think could use some additional enhancements.

I still think it's a major issue of just personal responsibility of the people on the trail, but that doesn't change how it makes a driver feel when they run them over because they were stupid, the other people were stupid.

Yep, we're looking at kind of best cost-effective enhancements for those intersections. Okay, well, no, I appreciate that.

Okay, thank you. Yeah, 1100 North is the busiest counter in the county on their trail systems. So 1100 North, Wade Springs Trailhead sees more people than any other trail counter in the county. So it's the busiest for sure.

Thanks, Dan.

Yep.

Chief Hingeman. Long time no see.

Mayor, Council, how are you guys doing? Good. It's been nice, fun, hot, and busy for this last little while. I don't know if you're bringing it up or not, but I know you guys got a text, but we're going to ban fireworks through the 24th. That's going to be the bad guess, but I think for us, it's going to be just safer and a little more cautious because

I don't think it's the bad guys. I think it's the smart guys.

Yeah. It's the smart guys. It's so dry. It is super dry still, no moisture. Our concern is we just don't want anything like that, any flooding and after work and that stuff.

When a train burns up, five homes?

Yeah, I was going to say, yeah, a train came by up in Weber and sparked off the side and caught three homes on fire. So once that gets in that brush, it just moves so fast and hot.

Did we get all the paperwork submitted?

Yeah, it's all done. It's all in. So we haven't heard anything. We should be good to go. So we're... we're uh on that but yeah that's the one main thing i know it's kind of a hate to be the bad guy but i think that's our best decision for all the comments mostly online are pretty pretty positive so yeah thank you and the citizens have actually been really good i mean they we haven't had anybody really fight that or come across that they've been super good and not light and much a very little here and there but nothing serious so we've we've been super fortunate so it's really it's kind of good for us so um we've been busy just fire department just lots of things going on I don't talk a lot about, and I figured to bring it up a little quiet, but we do support the Utah County, the SWAT team with the Sheriff's Department. We have guys that are on that team, guys and gals that are on that team help support that with medic stuff. But Captain Nish is one of the main guys that runs that. He texts me usually every time they go out just so I know what they're doing, what's happening, and keep track of them. This last couple weeks, they did do a, I'll tell you guys real quick, a little bust, but happened between West Valley, Kearns, Tooele, and Utah County. It's kind of a combination thing, but they got 7,000 opiate pills off the street, $17,000 cash, and two or three main individuals with this whole thing. So our guys are usually, if it's a county thing, we've got usually a couple medics that are on there, just so you guys know, they're helping those guys out and supporting that team. So it works real good for us. We get a lot of good training out of it. We help the medical training with the sheriff's department, all that stuff. So it's a good little team effort we have going with those guys. And we've enjoyed doing that. Just been busy calls this last few months. You know, we've had, you know, close to 200 calls every month this past couple of months. We've been moving along. It's been hot. Our wildland team is in Montana right now. They've been there for a couple of weeks. They should be heading home tomorrow or the next day or by the end of the week, they should be home. We'll get them home rehab, do a little rehab on the vehicle, and probably get them on the board again next week or the week after that and see how they're doing. But they're doing pretty good.

Is their activity this year been higher than prior years?

Well, for Utah, yeah. We've been down in Utah, southern Utah. For those fires down there, they came back and then Montana asked for us. We've been in Montana for a while. A lot of times, the repo people set them there just to get ready for... lightning strikes and stuff like that they kind of get them ready so that's what they've been doing up there so that's that's been going real good for them um we do have we have a couple of promotions uh this next little bit we'll do a badge pin ceremony this next little while i'll let you guys know when we're going to do that but we uh we cage halls one of our guys we put in as our new lieutenant for right now we're doing some testing right now we did some interviews and so we'll get all this other stuff taken care of this next two or three weeks hopefully get things filled up again I'm trying to think of one other thing. What else do we have? I wrote a couple things down. I was thinking about some of the stuff. Oh yeah, this last couple weeks between me, Chief Gussman, Chief Larson, a couple of the crews, we went out on the east side about a block in all the way, almost got the whole city from the north and south end. We passed out flyers for a wildland. kind of things to watch out for, yard cleanup and things like that, where they can contact us if they need help or just some ideas that homeowners can watch out for. So we're trying to keep up on that, watch those and get some stuff out to those homeowners that need something, we can help them out be aware of those kind of things like that. But other than that, like I said, just been busy, hot, keeping up with stuff. And so other than that, if you guys have any other questions or concerns.

Council? Council, do you have any? Okay.

Thank you, Chief. Appreciate it. Thanks, guys. Yeah, 4th of July was good. It was a good, it worked out well. Lantus is really good to work with.

Did you guys like that location better? A lot better.

Traffic's always a pain no matter what, where you go. But there were a lot of people. It wasn't crowded. The Lantis, our fireworks show that we were with, he loved that place. It's just because it's kind of closed off. Nobody can really get to it. Didn't have to walk, you know.

Where I was like at Discovery, people could usually probably walk right up.

Yeah, it's hard because you're trying to keep people out of the ballparks. But this worked really good. This is a super good, yeah. And he really liked it. He appreciated us keeping our show going because he had quite a few cities that canceled on them but the way we have it set up where it sits in that old pipeline area there's not a lot we have to concern them with and it's out of the you know view of the people so it worked out real well good so we were happy with that and so thanks chief thanks daniel you have three minutes you think you can get it done okay we'll save chief for chief brown till last here oh we'll get you after the chief

Any questions?

Well, you can brag about the tour. Well, we can ask Laurel to come up, but brag about the tour last night.

Oh, I learned a lot. It was a lot of fun.

Should we have Laurel? So she doesn't have to wait? Should we have Laurel?

Maybe something that I'm not super deep into it yet, but... As you guys know, I manage four different divisions, and if someone wants to submit an application out of the department for planning, for building, we do everything electronically for the last nine years, I'm gonna say. We've been struggling with the business license process, because the way we receive money complicates things a little bit. But we start having meetings with some companies that will allow us to eventually have someone apply for a business license online. We don't have that service yet. in our city some of you guys that have business licenses you guys remember have to come to my front counter get a paper go fill it up bring it up and then we put everything in online so we're working we start working on we talk to some vendors some some companies uh to find a way so we can provide that um in the in during that process i mean i'm starting it i um I pull out the number of business licenses that we had in 2016. And that's when I started working here. And we had 900 business licenses. So as of today, we have a total of 17. 1,700, sorry, 1,700 business licenses, meaning that we almost double up in 10 years the number of business licenses. We expect a growth like that in the next four or five years, and then I think it will stabilize. But this is the year where we eventually grow.

What can we do to help you automate that and get that online?

We got it. We're working on it. The most important thing probably for the next budget year will be to keep that in mind because that costs money. We need to have it in, it's not just automatize the process for someone to apply, but to have the, where we're gonna keep them because they have to be renewed every year and something like that. So we're still trying to find what will be the best fit for us. but that comes with a cost that we'll discuss it for maybe in the next year.

Is there not that solution out there already? No. There are, yeah.

No, that's what I'm saying. We're talking to companies. We're trying to see which one is the best fit for us, which one will work with what we already have, and which one will be the best with the best price.

Just for my own interest, just let me know what the SAS costs are.

I just don't want to wait until next year. This seems like we could help you a lot.

You want to know what the price? What the annual SAS, Software as a Service, cost? Yes, yes, yes.

So right now, the ones that we have discussed, and we talked to three of them, range from $12,000 to $16,000. Annual.

Annual. Annual reoccurring.

Annually plus a installation, one-time installation fee. How much is that? About $6,000, $6,000 to $8,000. So we're working on the process, we're looking at them and we'll keep reporting to you guys, okay? Okay, thanks.

Thanks, Daniel. Well, Laurel, I'll break protocol here. We have like one minute, you have one minute.

I was going to use time during the public comment, but I'll use it now.

Well, you can come up then, too. I'll use them both, sure.

Well, I'm here because I wanted to say thank you to the staff members that came to our tour last night. We had the mayor here, and we had Director Cardenas to come to our tour. And we had about 70 to 80 people come, which is great. Our last tour a month ago for Starboard Days was 100 people, so we're averaging Pretty good numbers, and we're really excited about that. So I just wanted to let you all know about our walking tours in general. We have three every summer, June, July, and August. So our last one's going to be on the 17th of August at 6.30, and we're doing Second South from First East out of the railroad tracks. And we're really excited about it because it takes in some beautiful homes. It takes in the corner that has the Christmas house and it has the Maxfield's home and it has some hidden history that's been demolished and we had the stories of it. So it's going to be a really good tour. So I'd like to personally invite each of you and I'll make sure that gets on your calendar with the details. So don't worry about.

And you haven't done that area yet, have you?

No, we've done Second South, two different ones. This is the third one we've done on Second South, but we haven't done this stretch. This is a brand new tour. So yeah, I'm in the middle of writing the walk-in tour book for it, so we'll have lots of information on that. So we're excited about that. Also, from the tour last night, this is the walk-in tour book we had last night, and I wanted to see if anyone needs one. I put one in your box about a year ago. It's not updated. It's the same as a year ago. So if anyone would like one, we sold out of them last night, but I happen to have four left.

I'll wait, but I...

Okay, after this work session, I'll come and grab whoever would like. I would love to get these into your hands. Awesome. If you have any questions about the Historic Commission, just let me know. I'm happy to, well, I'm more than happy to talk about the Historic Commission. And we're developing our project list for the next upcoming fiscal year, next month. So I will get that into your hands, too, so you can see what we're up to for the next year.

Great. Thank you. Thank you. Council, I'll entertain a motion to adjourn from work session.

So moved.

Motion by Council Member Williams. Do I have a second?

I'll second.

Second by Council Member Phillips. All those in favor?