City Council - workshop

All right, we'd like to call to order our city council work session on Tuesday, September 1st, 2026. We'd like to welcome all city council members tonight. We'd like to excuse council member Phillips. He is away. We're gonna turn the time over, well, introduction of employees, Scott.

So on the city side of things, we didn't end up having any employees that could make it tonight, so we don't have anybody.

Then I'm going to step up and let Rachel Bigler come up. Introduce, well, I didn't tell you this. Why didn't you tell me? Oh, I'm sorry. She is going to be the new chamber executive assistant replacing Bonnie here soon. Some of you might have recognized Rachel. I do. Where do you recognize her from? Come on up, you have to introduce yourself.

You have to sing your whole thing.

I only sing when it's memorized. Hello, I'm Rachel. Thank you so much. It was so fun.

I was actually sitting here thinking, how do I know her?

You've seen me so many days. You stared at me for three hours. I know. Unfortunately, you had to stare at me.

If we had a swing, we could swing her down.

How did you pull this off?

You're a lot better than he is, by the way.

Why are you working for Eric? You know what?

It's okay, Rachel. It's okay. Tell us about yourself.

I grew up in Seattle, moved here in 2012 for school, went to UVU, go Wolverines. Did a lot of event coordinating, studied acting, that's why I pop over to the roof sometimes and do some shows. And yeah, so that's a little bit about me. So excited to be a part of this whenever that happens in like a month or so.

You'll be working with all of us closely, so it's good.

Yeah.

Yeah, roughly, yeah. Bonnie is very pregnant. She's having a baby, so it's time for her to move on to bigger and better things.

Yeah, so then you'll have to have me. Love it, great. Yeah, so I'm excited.

Okay, all right.

Do you have any other upcoming performances at the Hill?

Not right now. I got to take a little break for a while.

That's one of my favorite ones, by the way. I saw it twice. Oh, that's great.

I'm happy. That's awesome. So excited to have you here.

Yeah, it'll be fun. One last question. How much did the dress weigh at the very beginning?

It was about 25 pounds. yeah it was it felt it felt like a comfort towards the end it was my comfort weighted vest yes rachel thank you for coming this evening okay thank you we'll see you tomorrow okay all right scott rachel unless you want to spend the rest of the night here i don't think so no she let her go home

Last year when we opened up Cook Family Park, we sent our intern and Sierra over to do some surveying of the people that were attending the park. We wanted to get an idea of who was there and what they were using. and if they were spending any money while they were in town. So we had last year's data and we asked our intern to do that again this year, Sowad Singh's our intern. So she went and did that and she has a presentation she'd like to share with the results.

Hi, Mayor and Council, it's always good to see you.

I'll share some of my findings with you.

How many? Two hundred.

It should be now.

Oh, there it is.

Perfect. So 217 responses, nine days, over two weeks, morning, night, and afternoon to get different people that went. So we asked the exact same questions.

I'm so sorry. And you went in person?

Yes.

OK. And where were you positioned at? I'm just curious.

Yeah, I went all over the park. Some people were walking around. So we're in the splash pad. I went to the football fields, soccer fields.

OK, so kind of a random sampling of who was there. Exactly.

Different ages, different people, different groups of people, different sizes as well. So these are the four main questions that we asked. Where are you visiting from? What park features or facilities are you using? Do you plan on visiting any businesses before or after you visit the park? And how many times do you visit the park? So super interesting that we have exactly the same data as last year. Last year our data was 23% Pleasant Grove, 76% from outside, and we have 24 and 76 now. Isn't that interesting? Florida, Hawaii? I mean, can you believe that?

What day of the week is this? It came just for Cook Valley Park, that's crazy. When did you survey this?

I went Monday through Friday for two weeks.

Oh, for two weeks.

Yeah.

And different times, sometimes I went- I'm sorry, what month? I went in July, so the second and third week in July. So we didn't do it during Strawberry Days or the 4th of July because we didn't want that to secure our data, and that's what we did last year as well. We went in July, not during Strawberry Days or the 4th. So we had people from 29 cities in Utah, 13 states, And from four countries represented. One that still lives in Canada, but the others were actually from Mexico and Venezuela. And they actually live in Pleasant Grove and American Fork now. But I just thought it was really interesting. As I approached them, they're like, sorry, no English, just Spanish. And I was like, so excited, because that's my native language. So we got to have a good chat. So these are our most frequent visitors, 23.5 from Pleasant Grove, and these are the other cities that came, American Fork, Orem, Lehigh, Saratoga Springs, Linden, and then in the other cities we have Salt Lake, Eagle Mountain, we have Highland, and it's just so fascinating how people would come from Salt Lake and they would be, the drive is so worth it. I come here with my kids during the summer. So I just thought it was fascinating. This was an interesting summer. It was super hot, so we can see an increase in all these percentages. You can see that these don't add to 100% because we asked people, what facilities did you use? So this just means that if you visit the park, there's an 89% possibility that you will use the splash pad, a 77% that you use the playground, and then those are the other percentages. As you can see in the bottom, the 15%, 56 and 16% were less than 10% last year. So we have a lot of people that are using more facilities. We have moms sitting down in the pavilion and just saying, I just love this part because I can sit right here and I can see my 15 year old in one side and my seven year old on the other side using different facilities in the park. So I just love how the same family uses basically most of the park. Yeah. And then we did a small comparison between last year and this year. So you can see that the 2025, the one that's a lot darker, we had a lot of first visitors and that's expected. Our park was new. And I think that all of those first visitors are going more into the monthly and daily uses. So last year, because it was so new, we didn't have people that would be like, oh, I come monthly or seasonal. And this year we did. We had a few families that said, you know, I try to visit like five parks and we just come to this one the most. And then we also asked if they were planning on visiting businesses before or after they visited the park. Last year we had a 35% yes, 65% no. This year we had a 5% increase in people that said yes. And these are the top businesses mentioned. Not all of them. We had several. Some people mentioned a skate park. But they are in order, actually. So people mostly go to Chick-fil-A, Macy's, Walmart, Daylight Donuts, Taco Amigo, and Purple Turtle, which are the staple of our city. And we had so many comments. People would stare at me and would be like, can you please just say thank you? We're so grateful for this park. They mentioned how this mom said, I always tell people I live by a park that looks like you would need to pay to get in. And another mom said, when I go to parks, I normally dread taking my kids to the bathroom, but bathrooms here are always so clean. So I thought I would highlight that because you would see our parks crew always working so hard and diligently. Do you have any questions for me?

Did you break down the number of who's going to go visit a business into the different cities who came and visited? Meaning, if they came from outside of Pleasant Grove, were they more or less likely to answer yes to that question, or are we just having Pleasant Grove people answer yes to that question? Does that make sense?

To the businesses?

Yeah, to the question number 30. You asked that to all of them. You asked everyone?

I asked everyone.

Did you break it out as to like, okay, here's the percentage of Pleasant Grove citizens who said they would be more likely, they're going to go visit a business after the park, and here's all of the other cities, and what percentage of the other cities would go visit a Pleasant Grove business after the park?

I did not in this analysis, but I still have the data and I'd be happy to give it to you.

I'd be curious. My guess would be that a random sample wouldn't differentiate between whether they were a PG resident or whether they weren't, unless they would just go home.

What I'm saying, I'm thinking, yeah, I don't know. I could see Pleasant Grove people saying, well, I'm not going to go visit a business because I just live here. I'm just going to go home. But I could see, well, I'm here for the evening. I'm going to go grab dinner before I go home next. So I'm just curious as to, are the people we're bringing in the ones that are then patronizing, or are the people already here that are likely to go to Taco Migo anyway, are they the ones patronizing our business?

Well, we would go to a pizza place, pick up pizza, and then go to the pavilion and to the park. So it would be interesting to see if...

Yeah, I'd love to give that information to you.

If you've got it, you can break it down.

It's just a cross-tabulation. Those that said on the survey, we came from out of town, to then put that over the places they visited, what the percentage of those people have visited.

I do have a couple examples, though, of people from other cities being like, there's this skate shop by Macy's that I can't remember the name right now. And somebody else coming from Eagle Mountain was like, oh, there's quick greens that's new here. So I just wanted to come to that one. But I'd be happy to give you some more detailed information.

That's great data.

Yeah, thank you.

I mean, I'm kind of thinking if it's July, a lot of people are on summer vacation, like, out of state and things like that, which makes sense. And then sometimes I feel like it's when something's in your own home. Like, I can kind of go anytime. So, you know, they might spread that out more, like, throughout the year. Maybe they summer, so they're on vacation as well here in Pleasant Grove. Yeah. So this does, like, make sense to me. I love this. I think it's awesome. It's good data. Thank you for doing that. Yeah, of course.

Some of us are mean parents, and our kids want to go get ice cream afterwards. Yeah. Yeah. So sorry, I'm not contributing to this. There you go, Scott.

All right, so I'd stay there. Scott, would you come up? We're going to... Oh, yeah.

Yeah, you forgot almost.

Okay.

Okay.

So Scott has something he wants to present to you, but we know today's Soad's last day. I don't know if you saw her email. So it's a sad day, but it's a happy day for you moving on. But we'd like to recognize her as the best intern ever.

Yes. And Scott?

The best intern ever.

No, we moved on. It's Soad now. She's the best.

In fact, we were gonna retire her name.

We have staff that's very thoughtful and a mayor that's very thoughtful about these types of things, that when we have somebody come and work for us. The intention was to keep her through the rest of the school year, but I don't want to get into the federal government politics and what's going on that kind of changed that dynamic a bit for her. So she is not willingly having to leave, but she is. And we appreciate the work that she did. She was awesome. The reason she ended up working for us is because whenever it was last year, probably about October, November, she asked to meet with David and I because she wanted to learn about working for a city. So we sat down with her as an MPA student. and she asked a bunch of questions about Pleasant Grove City and so that when it came time to hire an intern and she applied, we knew her, we knew who she was and it was an easy decision for us to bring her on board.

From Utah Valley, right? Your UVU?

No. Oh. Sorry. No, go green. Go Cougs. BYU MPA. Go Cougs. BYU MPA. Thank you, Steve. She really is the best. So we have a certificate here. Oh, thank you. Says best intern ever, so Ed Singh. Thank you so much.

And we also have a- We want that included on your next resume. Aw. Thank you so much.

Notice it's green. It's green.

Let's get a photo.

Yes, can I just share a few highlights before?

Yes, go ahead. Then we'll get a picture.

I'd like to just tell you how fascinating it's been for me to be here. It's been intellectually enlarging and it's been so enhancing in my experience. I just thought I would show you a couple of pictures. So we did this summer wellness bingo. We've done it in the past. And we've also done the Step Challenge. We love our employees, and we just are fascinated by their expertise, but we also want to keep them happy and healthy. And we started with an 80 million step challenge. And we were like, that's going to be the highest. And then we were doing so good, Scott said, let's do 100 million. And I was shaking when he said that. But we got to almost 10 million, and we still have people that need to input their steps. And I just think it's just so fascinating how Pleasant Grove employees are just so dedicated, and they go above and beyond. These are some pictures of the fun memories I have of going on ride-alongs with just public works and library and looking at them test. And they were so awesome, they let me get hands-on and go on the Strawberry Days parade, the mayor's dinner, being on the 250th celebration was awesome. And yeah, so thank you for everything. The mayor asked me to take a picture of my first day of school. So this is for you, Mayor Jensen. But yeah, it's just been fascinating and I am just so honored that I would be here. I knew that I wanted to be here and that it was my top choice, but I've been surprised about how much that has been raised. So thank you.

Awesome, thank you. Thank you.

Yeah. And we'll, Sierra will grab a picture. Actually come up here with us.

Come up here with us.

I'll just hug you if that's okay.

Thank you. Thank you. You guys are awesome. Thank you so much.

Thank you. Thank you.

I remember her first meeting.

Do you?

So speaking of which, I don't know if you remember when we introduced Soad, that clip of her being introduced went relatively viral on LinkedIn.

Well, we were also trying to assure interns. Yeah. Yes.

We had a guy that's a retired city manager, runs a LinkedIn page, and he pulls clips from city council meetings all over the nation. And he pulled the clip of when SOAD was introduced. And the title of the clip was, one day your intern is going to be running the city. And it was just talking about the importance of hiring interns. I don't know why they selected our meeting, but it was something that, I mean, it got shared quite a bit. And it was pretty cool that they did that. That was our first meeting there. Yeah. That was so cute. Thank you. Remember me.

All right, thank you. Okay, staff, we'll start with Neil tonight. I know you're anxiously engaged and ready.

He's always anxiously engaged.

Steve, when Rachel was introduced, you said something on the lines of, and you work for the mayor?

I said Eric, not the mayor. Eric, thank you.

Because the mayor I could understand, but it's Eric. I'm pretty sure we all back on this side work for the mayor. Well, for the mayor, but not for Eric. That's what I'm saying.

You work for the office. See, so the office makes the difference, Neil.

Yeah, just wanted to make sure we were aware of that. I read you a text message last time and I actually wanted to read you another text message just to update you with some things. This was today at three o'clock or a little earlier. Having a hard time getting this water shut down on State Street and First East, expanding our shut, meaning we gotta shut more down than we originally thought. You may start to get calls about businesses with no water. We'll have water restored as soon as we can. So there was a leak on State Street. We went and had a plan, and we said, okay, if we turn these valves, well, not all the valves turn the way they should after being in the ground for 40 years. And so we had to expand the shut. That was just Drew letting me know. A little bit later, turning water back on now. We're going to put the 12 to 16 inches of sand over the pipe. Nate is here now. I'm going to turn it over to him to get overcut flowable fill, base asphalt, et cetera, to UDOT spec. That's just a day in the life, and it exemplifies the work that takes place, the unknowns that take place on a daily basis, the cross-group coordination. One group takes care of this, another group takes care of that, and the city moves forward. oftentimes it's inconvenient when we do things, but we try to do them with the most expediency and with the most convenient time to do them. So rest assured that we're working towards the best possible solution for our residents in those situations. Outside of that, We've been just really busy with preparing for projects, interviewing consultants, reviewing RFPs, and selecting for the next round. We're still waiting on some property information for the 4000 North project before we're able to move forward with that. But super close, but we just can't quite advertise that for construction until we have those property issues neat and tidy. And then there's just always the next things down the road. So outside of that, I don't have anything else to report to the council. I'll entertain any questions if anybody has any.

A couple maybe updates. So the project on Mahogany Drive up there, it seems to be coming along. It's a pretty major project, it seems like. Could you get us an update on maybe the timing of that?

Yeah, Mahogany Drive is a water line replacement and roadway replacement. And so we put the limitations on the contractor to be completed by October 15th for that. October 15th is kind of a standard date. We want to have all things wrapped up because we turn off the PI and we don't wanna pave something after that date and find out in the spring that something's wrong. You can pave after that date, but we try to have it always wrapped up. We don't always have that taken care of, but October 15th is that date.

I had another question, and I don't know if this would be maybe combined for you, Dion, and even Chief Brown, but we have had a citizen come talk to me about the crossings between the Murdoch Canal path and across kind of our major streets, 11th, 5th, and 2nd, and how that can get a little bit sketchy with bikers who are just kind of flying through, even though I think there's a small stop sign for them. Yeah. He reported a couple of near misses from from that kind of happening. I mean, have you been able to look at that? What would be the appropriate action? I mean, maybe getting something painted on the road, maybe doing more aggressive gating so they can't just fly through but have to actually kind of maybe stop and look, or what is your thoughts? I don't know if you've been able to look at that.

Great question, and the answer is yes. The trail is administered by the county. It originally had gates across it. They found out that there was so much popular demand that they opened up that gating to allow additional pedestrians and bicyclists to go through that unimpeded. uh af well it was it was a couple of months ago that we started looking at that and then it got brought up a couple meetings ago since that time we have looked at and created small plans to enhance the crosswalks and actually create some relatively i will say cost effective enhancements to be installed you should see those in the next month or so as we put those in the queue to be implemented. We wanna narrow up the lanes a little bit with some delineators, similar to what we did on Center Street. And we're gonna paint the crosswalks, and I'm actually gonna, we're gonna paint the middle of those crosswalks blue. We're going to add a lot of reflective beads in that paint to have that pop at night, and those candlestick delineators will bring those cars in. You'll naturally want to grab your steering wheel a little bit. You'll want to look up. It'll make you uncomfortable, and that's actually what we want for those particular crossings. The bicyclists and the pedestrians are supposed to stop at the trail and then proceed. And when they have stopped and proceeded, cars are supposed to yield to that. So that's how that is supposed to work. but hopefully bringing more attention to those intersections and helping motorists understand that they need to look up and see the road at those locations, not just at those key locations. We've identified all of our crossings in Pleasant Grove to receive a similar type of enhancement at those crossings.

Then there was one other thing, and that is really close to my house. It's on 180, turns into Crescent. But in the part that was developed kind of before it was incorporated into Pleasant Grove, there's no sidewalks, very narrow road. It's very dark. And I don't know if, I know when we did that, the Blackhurst kind of development, there's that road that goes off, there may be a corner light there, but otherwise it's pretty dark. There was a lady that got hit by, as a pedestrian on that road and she was severely injured. I don't know if there's anything we could do to look at that and see if there are maybe some natural places we could just put some lights. I know not all people want lights in their yard because then it reflects at night, but I don't know if we could look at that.

Yeah, we don't have a dedicated streetlight fund for new streetlight installation. New streetlights are required for new development, and that cost is borne by the developers, but we do not have a dedicated streetlight fund for new installation. So that would be something that we would want to discuss and put in the priority queue for expenses if that's what was desired through the budget process.

How much are they per light, just as kind of a ballpark?

To get power to them, you're probably looking at about $7,000 or $8,000 a light to do. I mean, the light themselves. have a cost, but then without knowing the exact location and the boring and the installation process, I would put it at about seven or $8,000 per light on a scaled basis of about 10 lights.

I mean, I'd be interested in having a discussion to add a new line item for the budget for installation of new lights. I think that's a huge safety issue in our city, both not only with pedestrians, but also crime as well. And so I'd be in favor of talking about that sooner than later, getting a budget line item for that.

Yeah. We can certainly add that to the agenda for the budget and planning meeting in coming up. It seems like we just had it, but it is just around the corner.

I'll just take the rest of you to agree on that. I have a question, maybe it's for Dion. I've had several people reach out about the tunnel on Murdock, getting better lighting in there. Do we reach out to the county or do we take care of it and then build them? I've just received two emails on it and that's it.

I'll let Dion address that.

Dion, you can come forward. Thanks, Dale.

Dion, you're next. So we've been in communication with the county. I actually emailed them this morning. They are looking at installing four additional lights in the tunnel. He did not give me a date, but this is, I contacted him about two weeks ago. And so they have, their electricians have gone out and looked at it, seen what they can do, and it's on their work order list. So they are looking at addressing those lights. Okay, perfect. And I really don't have anything unless you have questions.

I do speak a little chat with a with one of the park employees who is I don't know who commissioned a pickleball study done at Discovery to see who is playing when Scott can you answer that okay let me tell you though why the hours he's there it's not accurate hours so between April and middle of August is the busiest times, he's now there when school's in session, which means no one's at the courts until about nine or 10 a.m. So he's going at about 7.45, and there was my group and a group of senior citizens, whereas when I've gone in the summer, about half a dozen times I couldn't get on a court. That's because people are taking their kids to school during those times. So he's going at a time when the courts are not being used.

Was this Discovery? Yes. Okay.

He drove by Veterans and Veterans was packed, which that one, I mean, you've got the rec center, there's a different, people just frequent Veterans more. But I can tell you that you're not gonna get an accurate reading and it's mostly because people will not go right now because they're dropping their kids off at school. and it's not summer anymore, so just people aren't going at that time. The most accurate read, which we don't have time for at this point, would be May to middle of August. That's the peak time for pickleball, again, mostly because the kids are out of school and people have time to go play in the morning. So I don't necessarily wanna waste his time or have an accurate study come back as to how much is being used or not used because I based on my experience at the courts, that is not a busy time at all. So it's going to look like no one's playing there when really they are, but this isn't like the peak season at this point.

Yeah, I mean the focus of what I asked them to do was the night, to see how many people were playing at night. The morning stuff was, I just said if you're out there, just kind of make a tally mark. I was more curious in the mornings if Veterans is full and whether Discovery Park is full. But really the thing I wanted to figure out is do we have people waiting in line to play tennis under the lights? That was the big focus.

I mean, I would say even at night right now, you're going to get, I mean, veterans is again, is it like an anomaly because they're really popular courts, but at the other courts, even right now in the evenings, because again, people have school, the college kids have school the next day. It's not gonna be as busy because school's back in. So the peak time is gonna be, it's hard.

So the council already gave us direction to move on putting these courts in. I just wanted some data for my information as to how this looks. Unless the council's gonna change their mind and say we're not transitioning those courts into pickleball courts. This is just me saying I've been out there at 8.30 at night. I played, the pickleball courts are full, the tennis courts are not. But that was anecdotal. I'm not there every night. So I just said for two weeks, can we go out at 8.30 at night?

That's fine.

Yeah.

No, that's fair.

The reason I said in the mornings, I just wanted to know. For instance, this morning, veterans had full courts, this is 9 a.m., full courts, and then seven groups waiting. Discovery had one group playing on six courts.

Yeah.

And so I don't know why Veterans is so much more popular than Discovery, but that's good information for us to have so that we can get some people at Veterans to, hey, come over to Discovery where we have plenty of court openings instead of waiting here. But because what's going to happen when we transition these courts, the biggest argument we're going to get is these are the only lighted courts in the area for tennis. I'm meeting with the principal tomorrow at the high school to talk about the tennis courts up at the high school. My assumption is they're gonna unlock those courts, okay? So we're gonna have tennis courts available during the day, which in the summer is most of the time. that's gonna be available to our community. The courts at night, I asked our neighboring communities, do you have lighted tennis courts? Cedar Hills has two, we currently have four, American Fork doesn't have any, Linden has one. Because part of me is like, are we pulling people from other cities because we have them and the other cities don't? but we also probably pull pickleball people from outside of PG because mainly at veterans because those are some of the nicest courts that you'll play on. So that's just my opinion. And so that's the purpose. This is not a full-blown statistically whatever. This is an observation to say I just want to know are we heading in the right direction by saying we're going to transition two of these courts so that I have a comfort because if it came back Each night we're there, all four tennis courts are full with the lights and we have people waiting. Then we probably need to rethink what we're doing. but, and we're still in the process of gathering the data, but I'm assuming just anecdotally, when I drive through there, we're not going to get a report where there's people waiting for tennis courts, but there will be times where people are waiting for pickleball courts. So that, that was the intention.

I just, I wasn't sure in the attend and who issued the study. That's why I was confused. But so our resident had a suggestion and that was leave the tennis courts at discovery and add, additional pickleball courts to the north of Veterans?

So that will cost probably three times more to get additional courts there. So the main reason we're transitioning these courts is we can get them for probably 30 cents on the dollar because they have to replace them at their cost. OK, so that's it. So that's those are master plan at veterans. There's master plan for another eight courts. In my mind, that could be a heck of a long time before we need to do that, especially if we're going to take two tennis courts and change them to pickleball.

So your study thing, observation we'll call it, it's still going on because like my daughter's just started tennis and the high school is obviously in full season for girls tennis. And so my kids play tennis. So that's why I know that sometimes there are people waiting for lighted courts when they're playing for tennis and it's hard to find them in other places. The reason why people come to ours is because they know there's four. So you're not going to drive to one court in Linden with the risk of it being taken. And find somebody there and then you... Same thing in Cedar Hills. And so, anyway, I know I'm on the losing end of this argument, but I'm just throwing it out there again. No, and I think that's fine.

Again... You're going to play pickleball, right? I think, Steve, when you sent your text, that was me saying, you know what, let's double check this thing before we absolutely turn the contractor loose and he's gonna tear those things out. They're coming out anyway. What we're gonna do to replace them is what we're mostly discussing. But I just wanted a comfort that, okay, that we do have a ton of use out there.

Can I ask you one other thing, maybe, Scott, is when you talk to the principal, as you're telling them what maybe the plan is, I don't know what the cost would be to light a couple of the courts up there. Yeah, I'll ask about that. High school, but would, yeah, would the high school or the school district maybe kick in some money if we wanted to light a couple courts up there?

You know, I think that's, I mean, that's a great idea because I think there's some poss, I mean, the courts are built. So adding the lights and if we went 50-50 with the school on the lights might be a good win-win for everybody. And again, we're getting some additional lighted tennis courts for 50 cents on the dollar as far as the city expenses.

So I'll talk to them about that. I mean, their team might like it because their team, I mean, like the men's team starts in the spring when it's still dark out. Oh, yeah. And so, I don't know. That was just a thought.

I mean, don't suggest 50-50 first. Start with 100% now.

I don't think he's watching our meeting. Yeah, I think we're good. But I mean, no, we'll have a discussion. And if we're going to do it, I just want to be fair. We have a great relationship with the school district. Principal Hanks is awesome to work with. And so we're gonna have a discussion and we'll get that figured out.

Okay, well, Dion, thanks for that answer. Appreciate it, Dion. Thanks for coming up. All right, Sherry, library.

So I thought I'd tell you a few things that are happening and some things we've purchased. So you know about our library of things where we just have random things for checkout. We have been adding to the collection some adaptive tech and wellness kits. So some of the things we have purchased are that people can check out. a large font keyboard, a nonverbal communication device, a weighted sloth that is just relaxing for.

Tell me more about that, that sounds nice. Is this a real sloth? Like this is like a heating pad or? A service sloth. A service sloth, like you just hang onto it like a body pillow? Uh-huh. I wanna check that out. Sounds nice, actually.

Yeah, they're apparently very popular with kids who have autism and yeah. Just the stuffed animals that are weighted.

I can see that working its way through the administration.

Well, honestly, so we have a break area and we keep getting things for the library of things and then the employees say, we need one of those in our break area. Yeah. And some of the cheaper things we've added to the break area.

Keep that stuff clean and sanitized.

Um, we honor system mostly. I mean, there's some things like baked goods, baked king pans and things like that, that we check really well and ask them to take it back and clean it. But we haven't run into many problems with that kind of thing.

like those disinfecting guns I don't know if you've seen it has like a blue light on it and people take it and they do it over like everything like their counters bathrooms and so it's just like a almost like a wand a UV sanitizer we do still have the one the fire department gave us during covid um I'd recommend that yeah

Yeah, it would take some setting up because the chief gave us severe warnings. Don't let it touch your arms and don't let it. So it kind of scared our staff.

This one might not be as heavy duty because they just sell like on Amazon, but it's just something that like everyday people can, like they do their purse, I mean everything. It might be like maybe not as heavy duty that wouldn't cause a burn or anything, but then it could sanitize.

Yeah, I mean, we check out books that people touch every day. I was thinking you don't know where the sloth has been. Yes, yes. No, that's a good idea. We'll look into that. And then some other things. Well, events, we've got Mahjong lessons coming up. That's a really popular thing these days. And so we've got somebody teaching and then practice you can do on two different nights. And then we've also, And then also the Arts Commission has a few things coming up. PG Players has a play coming up, Something's Afoot. And then the Arts Commission is doing a class on the art of mocktails and having someone who teaches it for UVU. Wait, when is that? That is September 19th, it's on a Saturday afternoon.

Okay.

From two to four on a Saturday afternoon.

Steve and I are already signed up.

Well, you do need to sign up because they do have limited space. So make sure you do get signed up if you're really interested. But the teacher is someone who teaches it for UVU's Continuing it you know the classes, you can take for fun. yeah yeah and she's got some really cool looking recipes that she's planning. And then also for the fifth year now we're doing this, the arts Commission is doing the songwriter competition and. That's pretty cool to go watch the performances and see who wins. We've got a lot of talent around. Thanks.

Thank you. Daniel. I know you only have a few things, but come on up. Daniel and I attended an exciting meeting last night, so I'll let him talk too.

So you're an international student, right? There's no doubt they make them faster, shinier, and better. The new models are like that. Love that. Hija, wherever you go, you're gonna shine. Council, we, I mean, I received some direction last time. I called Urban Growth and say, hey, what's going on with Tropical Smoothie, right? So they called me back, and they said, We had a good conversation. So Tropical Smoothie was part of a bigger complex they're trying to do. As you know, the owners of the land is the same owners that have the office building in the back. So they were planning to kind of like master plan the entire thing and do a business, sorry, an office building with a couple of retail street mall situation and that's where this smoothie place was gonna go. They put the brakes heavily on the, on the office, but we had a conversation and they'll reapply pretty soon in the next couple of months to come back with the retail part. So there's a possibility it may happen. I don't know if it's gonna be specifically that business. Right now that's what they have in mind, but equal change.

Okay, so retail something, we just don't know what.

Yes, there's an option. So the sign is still valid.

Okay, thank you for checking on that. That's good to be able to tell people.

Yeah, as the mayor mentioned, we had a meeting with a lot of our residents, very well organized neighborhood. Love to see what they did and how they got together. And the reason why is because I have an application for a vicinity plan amendment for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. They're trying to do a, or they have the idea of doing a new religious building in the area, we're talking about 12 acres of land, and they're gonna use about seven and a half acres of land for a new building, okay? Now, we don't have a formal application, so we as the city, we haven't received an application for a site plan, and we haven't received an application for the plat either, okay? What we had was a preliminary meeting, what we call the DRC, where they explain us kind of like, the vision what they have for the land and the first step for that was to amend the vicinity plan because that area when we created the vicinity plan was thought to be residential so there's some residential streets in it. So the application and the item that we have for today was to amend the vicinity plan to remove one road. That was it, is the removal of one road. It's a vicinity plan. It wasn't a site plan. It was not a plan. It was just the removal of one road that was going through the middle of the property, okay? So we took it to planning commission. We listened to all the neighbors. The recommendation was still a recommendation of approval. And... The church had the kindness to meet with the neighbors, the neighbors organized very well, and then we had a meeting yesterday. After the meeting, where the residents had the opportunity to express their opinions and their concerns, the church has decided to put a stop on the item at this point, even for the vicinity plan, okay? So the item that we had scheduled for today is gonna be continuing. Is that 9B? I think so, yes. So that item will be continued at the request of the applicant. At the request of the applicant. I had the opportunity to go with the mayor, like I said, to the meeting yesterday. A couple hours, Mayor, was it a couple hours?

Yeah, and some.

Yeah, it was a couple hours and some, but it was great to see having an applicant talking directly with the neighbors. The city is just standing by waiting for an application that at this point we don't have. Okay, all right. Tonight, also one of the items that we're gonna see, yes. Was that communicated during that meeting or are they still planning on being on our agenda?

No, it wasn't. The residents aren't planning on coming down to voice.

Okay, so this is what happened. After the meeting, I was actually very late at night, I think we received an email from the applicant saying, hey, we want to continue the item, and today and this morning I called as many of the residents possible to let them know that the item was gonna be canceled.

The two main people are spreading the word.

In the previous weeks, I think staff probably spent about 20 hours talking to the neighbors and explaining the situation, what the item was and stuff like that. So to all of those that called me, I call them back and tell them the item's been continued. Okay, all right. Today, council, And Mayor, today you guys are gonna see an item, not the downtown plan, but the second item is for a site plan for, it's called a Stellar Point, but it's a site plan that is gonna go in front of the apartments that are being built in Placent Grove Boulevard. So if you guys remember, we had a requirement of 25,000 square feet of retail. and we waited and waited, and we finally have a site plan in front of us, okay?

Now, this is, I'm sorry, this is for what property?

In front of McKay Christmas property.

Which one of McKay?

Right on the corner of 100 and the boulevard, okay? So, in this case, what you guys gonna see that the parking is a little, for use of a better word, wonky, yes, but the reason why it's like that is because we were protecting that parking for the retail. Once the retail is built, maybe we can work something out with the parking. Now the numbers are correct, just the location needs to be fixed a little bit, but that will happen after it gets built. I need to have that site, I need to have that building built, I need to see it, And once that happens, then we can work on something with the parking. If you guys remember, we put a 64 commercial buffer on the front of the property to kind of make sure that that retail happens, okay? So that's why you guys gonna see this a little wonky. Again, the reason behind is because we wanna put as many locks as possible to make sure that that retail happen and then it wouldn't be overtaken by residential. Okay, that's what I have, Mayor and Councilor. I don't know if you guys have another question. I may not have the answer, but I'll write it down and I'll answer it to you guys later.

Thank you. Thank you for going with me last time.

So I just want, this is nine, this is 10A, right, that we're talking about, the action item. Yes. So they're gonna build another structure that kinda is off to the side of the big apartments that they're building right now, right? That's what we're talking about.

Yeah, they had, if you guys, it's gonna be difficult to remember, but this site, for the residential, they need to provide with 25,000 square feet of retail uses, self-tax generating uses. staff has been making sure that that happens and that those areas are saved and not taken over by the residential to make sure that we get the retail done. At this point, they have, with the building, with the residential building, there's one retail part right there and this is the second one that they're gonna build. So we're making progress.

So with this retail, will that basically, pave in that hole like it'll end up paving the whole spot there be once this is approved okay yeah they need to come out with improvements for sure okay thank you all right uh megan david we're gonna save you for last david

Okay, do we want to start with good news or bad news first?

Yeah.

Good news or bad news? What did you say?

Bad news.

Bad news first. We'll end with the good news? Okay. So the unfortunate news is we had, unfortunately, an employee that passed away over the weekend unexpectedly. So Cindy Gordon, who worked at the front desk for about three or four years, she is a resident here in PG. Oh, my gosh. Unexpectedly passed away. So anyway, so that is a... Unfortunate situation. Thanks to Wendy, she sent flowers today. We'll be attending the funeral on Friday as well and providing as much support as we can to the family and to the other employees that knew her well. So unfortunate news there. But we'll jump into some good news. I guess things that are going on in the rec center. So coming this Saturday is the Mikey's League event, the Adaptive Sports Clinic. um steve the utah mammoth will be there uh we've gotten confirmation on liam o'brien but they won't give us any other names on who will be attending yeah spicy tuna so uh so we're excited about that in all my gear yeah and just show them what i got yeah come on over come on over maybe you'll make the team worst case scenario they say no best case scenario they say yes you can't you know So come join us. So that event is on Saturday at 10 AM at Family Cook Park. So we'll do street hockey, flag football, and we have some retired NFL players. I don't know names yet on those. And then the Utah Jazz will be participating as well. So we're excited about that event. Heritage Festival's coming up on the 14th, so I think Scott will send you a calendar invite, 5 to 8 p.m. Got a couple of performances, the Shane Lee Band, the Arts Commission's doing a performance. There's booths, pony rides, candle making, food trucks, all the wonderful things. Andy did say, tell them that bandanas or bonnets are encouraged.

For everyone, or is she just saying that to us? No, everyone.

Everyone.

Everyone feels like pioneers.

No, she's actually like, I think all the staff will be in pioneer gear. I will not. I will probably show up in my jeans.

Yeah, sorry, Steve. You can't be a part of it. I was taught in my breakout role. I know.

I know.

So one year hot ticket item.

So that is coming up. And then we're just full swing into the fall events and programs and things. FunShine registration is 201 kids currently. So the preschool program is serving over 200 kids.

Is that an increase from before?

It's about pretty consistent.

That's a lot.

Yeah, it's a lot. And it's unique, obviously, for a rec center. Most rec centers don't offer that service. And so great program there. Soccer's up 50 kids. We're in the middle of figuring out where volleyball looks like. But I think volleyball in the oldest age group, the high school kids, is like 18 teams. So we're just trying to keep up with all those fall sports. And before we know it, Junior Jazz will be here, and we'll be on to all the next things. So yeah, that's what's happening in the rec. Any questions for me today?

Thank you.

I had a question. Yeah. I was approached by somebody who only has girls. Okay. And they were wondering, have we considered ever doing like a girls only flag football league? It's apparently huge outside of Utah. Starting to be a thing, yes. And most, a lot of states actually have high school girls flag football as an accredited sport. Yeah. I'm just wondering if, with all the other kind of rec directors and things like that, has that been discussed? I don't know if Pleasant Grove itself would have enough for a full league, but if it was like a intercity league where the girls could have that.

Yeah, it's actually been a discussion in the state of Utah. I'm not aware of anybody that is currently providing that. The Las Vegas Raiders are actually trying to really increase that as well. And they've come to a couple of URPA events and trying to support that. And so actually I was just watching football the other day and a commercial came on. And so it is kind of probably a new and upcoming thing that we should consider and see if regionally it's maybe something we can do. I mean, now that we've delved into kind of the regional approach with adaptive, there could be some opportunity there of surrounding cities. Let's see if we can get, you know, each city has two or three teams and we can play other cities and still make a league happen, so.

But girls can sign up for the boys league. Yeah. Because hasn't there been girls, because my kids have played and girls have been on the team. Yeah. It's not like it's.

Well, no, they're allowed and a lot of times they'll have a girls team playing. I was going to say, I think we have an all. I've coached a girls team. But my niece in California, she plays in a girls league. Yeah. It's, I don't know, obviously a different, she is 12. Yeah.

Cause I know at the high school they have powder puff, which is like a for fun. It's not like even like a rec thing. It's just like a for fun league.

So her, her high school in California, San Clemente has a high school girls flag football team. It plays other high schools and they have a state championship and, and they're actually moving to also have boys sanctioned flag football.

Yeah.

and a lot of colleges have actually like club. So they're not NCAA teams, but they're club affiliated teams. And so anyway, I just thought it would be kind of cool because I think there's a lot of young girls that would love to have a,

a place where they can play against other listen when i when i was growing up you know i'm a triplet and all brothers and they played um you know like tackle football and i wanted to play tackle football but my mom said nope so i could dress up as a tackle football player for halloween and then i played flag football so that's as good as it got so yeah i i understand that so yeah something for us to consider and look into

I could be wrong, but I think it's going to be at the LA games, flag football. It is.

It's going to be at LA. And I think the NFL's, I don't know if there's money available there from the NFL to maybe start an initiative, but I just think it would be kind of cool.

I think you should reach out to Roger Goodell.

In the late 70s, we started this initiative, and it's still, I played in pads.

Hey, heck yeah. Nice job. I was running back, so.

Full pads. And we were playing other schools. Like the boys would play on Thursday and Friday. We would play on Wednesdays. So it's taken a long time.

I mean, tackle football numbers have consistently dropped. Sure. Flag football numbers have consistently increased. I love that.

Yeah. Well, sports is very interesting because we keep talking about the demographic of PG thinking maybe our sports registrations will start declining as kids get older. We're not totally seeing that right now. Soccer was up 50 kids. Junior Jazz was up last year. Volleyball, I need to compare numbers in all of the sports. I haven't done that yet specifically today. I mean, we're not hurting for numbers. And I think even in volleyball, we have an opportunity to go girls league and a boys league cuz we're so big at this point. So that's something for us to look at as well because we're huge. So yeah, we're feeling pretty lucky about where we're at sports wise, but opportunities to continue to grow and see what we can do, so. Awesome.

Okay, thank you.

Okay, awesome, thank you.

Well, we have a few minutes here. Dave, do you have two minutes worth? Okay, well, look at that. And then we'll get the Chiefs afterwards.

Yeah.

I'll keep it very brief. Just thanks to Soad. She's been great and very helpful for us this summer. And wish her well. She mentioned this in her remarks, but we tasked her with our wellness activities for the summer. And she helped us achieve record numbers. the number of participants in the step challenge, the number of steps we got, our bingo activities. I think we had twice as many people participate as we've had before. So really great effort. We are having in a couple weeks, the 17th, we're going to do a little party, bring in some food, bring in some prizes, and share our success stories from the summer. If you're able to join, that would be great. We'll make sure Scott has the...

Once we lock down on time, I'll send you an appointment.

And then also, I'm still locking down the day exactly. But every fall, just a reminder to you, we have someone come in and give flu shots. So Utah County is going to come in. I'm working with them on an exact date on end of September or early October. Anyone that's on the PEHP insurance, that's free for them, so no cost. So if you're interested, if you have a spouse or kids that are interested in coming in, they're going to be here in the community room. Also, the same day, we'll have PEHP come in and do biometric screenings if you want to see that, no cost. And in fact, if you have PEHP, you come in, they'll give you rebates, $50 or $100 just to get a biometric screening. So stay tuned. I'll have the exact date on that for you, too.

Okay, we'll get the Chiefs afterwards, Scott. Okay, I need a motion to adjourn from work session.

I'll make the motion to adjourn.

We have a motion by Council Member Malone, a second by Council Member Rogers. All those in favor?

Aye.