City Council - workshop

All right, welcome to the Prohibition Council Work Meeting. It is September 8th, 2026, and it's 2.30 p.m. We will do a roll call of elected officials. We have Counselor Rachel Lewis, Jeff Whitlock, Catrice McKay, Craig Christensen, Becky Bogdan, Marsha Jacket. Although this is a public meeting, only the presenters and those invited by the council may speak or ask questions. Unless otherwise invited by the chair, please wait to speak until called on by the council chair. When speaking, please be sure to use a microphone so that the record is clear and those attending virtually can hear you. Please also be sure to limit side conversations as they interfere with the audio recording. If you need to have a side conversation, please step out of the work meeting room. It is proposed that we approve the following minutes, August 25th, 2026, work meeting. Are there any objections or requested changes? All right, seeing no objection, I declare the minutes approved by unanimous consent. All right, our first item of business is a presentation regarding the Consolidated Annual Performance and Evaluation Report. This will be our public hearing, presented by Melissa McNally, our Community Grants Administrator. Hey, Melissa.

Hey.

Thank you. So this item is just coming before you today to prep for public hearing in two weeks. And this is just an informative report. It doesn't require any council action. And we prepare the report each year. And it just goes over the accomplishments for the 25, 26 program year for our HUD grants. That's our Community Development Block Grant and our Home Investment Partnership Grant. So this is just a high level overview of low and moderate income residents that were served, individual households served. We did include over last year, we did support 456 individuals through residual home ARP funding, and that's tenant-based rental assistance. And then the $24,732 is an area benefit. So that is reflective of census tracts where infrastructure was improved. And that would be the infrastructure projects that we had over the past year were safe routes to schools through public works. So that's what that is. that number is. Oh, am I? Sorry. Here we go. Okay. So last year, we're super proud of this. 46 down payment assistance loans through our home program, which is up significantly from prior years. We made some changes to our program after last year, and it has been really successful. So it's just increasing that down payment amount. Yes. Yes. So it's a little bit easier for first time homebuyers to get into homes. So. Does that mean they're in Provo or could they be in the county? Both. It's Provo and the county. We do definitely do more countywide than in Provo. But for our Provo residents, we do offer more to try to entice people like Provo is where you want to be. And it is where you want to be. Do you know how many of those were Provo residents? I do not. I can get that number later and make sure I have that available for our, um, public caring. So, um, and then our, um, rehabilitated, rehabilitation units. So that's a combination of, um, some rental housing that was rehabilitated and then just some of our homeowner, um, programs that we have like our egress windows and our emergency repair. And then the households again is just a reflection of the direct financial assistance.

Are you saying that we pay to rehabilitate rental properties?

We did have some home funding go to a rental property that is going to be rehabbed. So this is, we have a few rental properties in Provo and as well as Utah County that we have assisted through home dollars. And it is for subsidized housing that most of our rental properties or things that we've contributed funding to are through the housing authorities. This particular one is- So it's not just landlords who- No, no, no, no. This is for, yeah, this is for, it's for the building beginnings program and And these go, any property that has the home funding has to go through like a period of affordability. And that just means that we will go and check on the properties periodically to make sure they're up to rental standards. And then we do have liens on the properties to cover all the home dollar interests in the properties. So yeah, it's not just land.

It's like, wait a minute.

But that's a great question. Thank you. Yes, I think so.

How many smaller homes?

I don't know what you're saying. But we are, we're saying that people are moving into some of these smaller places.

Yes. What we're seeing the most, mostly what we're seeing is these first-time homebuyers moving into condos and to townhomes because anything beyond that is priced too high for them to afford. A little bit less than that. Yeah. In the mid three hundreds.

Yeah.

That's I mean, for the, for people that, that qualify for the program, they have to meet the income qualifications to get down payment assistance. And that's not, you know, to, to afford, you look at studies across the state of Utah and to afford a medium priced home in Utah, it takes $130,000 income and people that are within these income limits aren't making that much money and a median income or a median price home is in the, is in the five hundreds. But even that, I mean, yeah, it's a problem that we're working on. Um, And it could be just that realtors aren't aware of the homes. I don't know. We're just there providing the assistance for the home buyer. You could always let the sellers know about the program because that's something that they could also let their seller know.

Well, two of them are from Prolo Housing Authority, right? That they're trying to switch over their inventory for that have been on the market for a long time. The other one, it seems like they sell and then the financing falls through for the buyer and they sell. It's just, it's been two or three times that it's been a selling and just it's gone down. But either way, these homes have been on the market for months and they're like 1200 square foot. They're not big. They're like three bedroom, one bath kitchen.

Yeah. So it sounds like a perfect starter home. They just need to find the right, I don't know. Um, Okay, and then this just goes over our numbers again. This number is, so some of our beneficiaries were required to collect demographic information. So that's what this number is for the people that we've served in Provo, the demographics on that. And then the 1700 is representative of those just receiving our public service information. assistance. So those are through programs like are done at community action or through raw and project read those kinds of programs. So that's what that number is reflective of. And this just goes again through the rental rental units rehabilitated, and then the homeowner rehabilitation. And There we go. Okay. So for anyone that wants to read this lovely CAPER or Consolidated Annual Performance and Evaluation Report, Here's a QR code to our website. There's also a brief survey where you can offer feedback on how you think our grants performed over the last year and maybe things you'd like to see different over the next funding year. As we're gearing up to do our applications for funding for the 27-28 year, we would love to have feedback to help guide some of those those funding decisions. Okay, Councilor Whitlock has a question. Yes.

Yeah, just a couple of questions. So I guess starting, and if I missed this somewhere, I apologize, but could you provide context on what happened with the 37 home project?

Yes. So we had a developer developing single family homes in Salem. And with home dollars, you have to... from the time that you sign the contract, you have so long to have the project completed and it's a four year completion deadline. So this is a project that was stalled because of some, there were some problems with the land and other things that it was, this was all happening before I came on and took the reins of the HUD programs. we were able to get a year extension and the entity still wasn't able to get those 37 homes completed. So at that point, HUD's like, okay, you need to pay this money back to us. And those homes are no longer eligible for home funding. They will still go to lower income families because I know that this entity also gets funding through USDA. So it's still affordable housing in Salem. It's still moving forward. they just had to repay the home funds to be reallocated so that that will be reallocated in the next program year.

Thank you. That's really helpful context. And then I guess similarly, there's a line in there that says basically a greater share of home funds to down payment assistance relative to new construction activities. Can you just expound kind of why that's the case versus trying to find more opportunities for construction supply?

Um, right. So the, our committee and our consortium members decided not to fund the fund, the, um, the entity that is doing the new affordable builds right now. We are looking for other people. We're trying to promote the program to other builders.

So there's like one partner and we're saying, we're not going to, we don't want to work. We're not going to fund that.

Well, they, they said, we're going to put the funding on hold for now. We've got 3 million invested in a, in a project they're working on right now in Payson and they're waiting to see if they will be able to meet the timeliness deadline on that project. So they, they, the consortium board opted to pause that funding, any funding reward this year, just because of the whole, the 37 homes not coming to fruition. So we'll see. That's why this year they opted to do, they said, we're going to move this towards down payment assistance. That's what that's moving. And until we can get another developer that's doing affordable housing to apply for the funding, that's, Yeah.

Okay.

Yeah. So if you know developers, we're getting ready to do our next course of funding. We'll open up applications early October. So we would love to have other people apply for the home funds. That would be great to see.

Thank you.

Yeah. I had one question. In the paper, it said there's a trend of larger families continues to increase. And that completely surprised me. So I thought the trend wise that families were getting smaller. So are you just seeing a difference in increase in multi-generational families living together? Are you really seeing an increase in family size?

It probably is multi-generational living in the same home. I'm guessing that that is, are those in the... I can't think of the name. It's probably in the impediments to... I think it's called impediments to fair housing choice. Anyway, it's something that we had... an outside entity come and do a study for when we did our consolidated plan. So that is listed as one of the obstacles to, for housing in our area. And I think that that's, I think they were looking at older, probably older census data. Cause I, I do see the family size is shrinking, but, but I also, but you do also see multi-generational. Yeah. I'm guessing you see more of that going on. Oh, absolutely. Yeah.

If their family is getting bigger. Okay. Right.

All right. Well, thanks, Melissa. Any other questions? I would like to recognize that Gary Garrett has joined us. Okay. Thank you. All right. Next resolution supporting the submittal of the 2026 outdoor recreation legacy partnership grant application to secure grant funding to aid in providing park improvements for the epic regional sports park as presented by Brad Rainey, our director of parks and rep. Good timing, Brad.

Good afternoon. Thanks for having us here today. We have on the agenda tonight seeking your support to apply for a grant for funds for the Epic Sports Park. Before we got there, we wanted to take this opportunity to take a look at how things have gone, what's going on right now, and look to the future. We're almost coming up on our two-year anniversary of it being open, so we thought it'd be a good time to have a little discussion about it. Before I go any further, I want to turn the time over to Aaron Scott with Explorer Utah Valley, who's going to present the next slide just looking at economic and tourism impacts over the last year and offer some perspective.

Awesome. Thank you. Hi, Erin Scott with Explore Hotel Valley. So our organization gets involved with anything really that has overnight stays. So the bigger tournaments that bring in people from out of state or out of the area who will come and stay in hotel rooms and spend their money in our area. So these are kind of a listing of the large tournaments that we've been involved with since the opening of the park and the estimated economic impact that they have brought into the area. So you can kind of see the list here. How we calculate this number is through an economic impact calculator through Destinations International, which is widely recognized as the main association and for DMOs and Convention Visitors Bureaus for our organization. So it is kind of the gold standard economic impact calculator used by most all cities, counties throughout the country and even throughout the world. So a look at as far as Contracted hotel room nights anticipated, like as they travel in and they get rental cars, the food that they purchase, the shopping that they do and all of that. This is specifically direct impact. We also can calculate indirect impact, meaning like if there's a company in the area that supplies food, things to a hotel, they're still going to have some of that impact because of the group that comes in, but it's not as direct. And with that, just anecdotally, we hear a lot, especially in this downtown Provo area, the restaurants and the activities, how much impact they see when these groups are in. They are coming and eating their restaurants and enjoying the activities and really getting out and about all throughout Provo and into Utah County. I've seen it personally myself. Literally, I was down at Rockwell's and a van of soccer team girls got out and flitting around all over downtown Provo. It was great to see, um, A good part of that of why the sports tourism impact is so important to our area is because a lot of times they are coming in, they are playing one, two, maybe three games a day, and they have a lot of free time. And so they are going out and they're exploring and they're spending money. They're coming in as families. It's not just a one-off person coming in for a conference. They're coming with their families. They're going out and they're doing things. So we see a lot greater impact that way. Also, as far as hotel room impact, they're not just using the hotels closest to the park. They are really spreading throughout all of Provo. And a lot of these really large ones are really spreading out throughout the county itself. A reason for that being they don't necessarily want one hotel doesn't want all the soccer teams under their roof. nor do all the kids all want to be together like that. So they'll kind of take a few teams, have a good base, and then also be able to accommodate the rest of the corporate groups and the business travel and leisure travel and all of that. So provides a really good mix and base for the hotels and really bringing that impact all over. So I will turn it over to you there. Absolutely.

Becky Bogdan.

So can we look at this total 17 million?

Yes.

That's not just Provo. That is for the entire event.

It's the entire impact for the event itself. So we don't necessarily have a way to break it down into just Provo itself because, as I said, with this, they are oftentimes using hotels outside of Provo just by nature of how large it is. But a lot of the impact is in Provo, just in terms of them being here at the Epic. This downtown area sees a lot of it. I've seen them really out and about and all over. There is some of it. And we try very carefully. I will say USYS National Championships is the best example of that. This was just here this past July. And We split it with Salt Lake. So they had games at the Epic and games at the Rack in Salt Lake. We had hotel blocks all throughout Utah County and Salt Lake County. So when you see that economic impact, that is not the impact for the full event. That's the estimated impact just for our county, our area. And even with those, when we get all of the hotel information of where they've booked, where they're staying, how big their block is, how many rooms, what the room rate is, so we can help get a clear, accurate picture of this estimated economic impact, we filter out any hotels that are in Salt Lake. So those aren't included in those numbers.

Councilor Garrett?

Erin, I don't remember two to three years ago when we were having these discussions what the projections were. Does this match projections based on where we were as this project was underway? This will bring this kind of economic impact to our valley.

I don't fully have those numbers off the top of my head. What I will say is... I don't think anybody anticipated that we brought in these big of events this quickly. A good thing is here, one of our very first ones, Pioneer Cup, you'll see a much smaller economic impact. If I'm being honest, at least from our organization and what we see throughout the industry and the research we did, it typically starts with these smaller ones that maybe they're breaking out into the West, maybe they're breaking out into Utah or the area. They haven't really built up a reputation yet. We're new so they can get into us because we have dates open. And it's kind of it's kind of a gamble of are they going to produce? Are they going to do anything? That was a good look at. Yeah, they were OK. They didn't produce as well as they thought they were going to. And then they didn't come back because all of a sudden we were able to get Elite Academy and DPL back. which are very well known in the industry and bring real economic impact and have a reputation and have that base already. And from that, the reputation grew from getting like pre-ECNL, National League, and then USYS. So it wasn't expected for us to bring in these big name profile groups as quickly. So I would anticipate it's actually a greater look. Anything else I can answer before I turn the time back over? Counselor Whitlock.

Yes. And I just want to clarify. So these numbers are hotel and restaurant and retail or just hotel?

So it's meant to be an overall economic and it's estimated economic impact. And it is so, again, it's through Destinations International as the organization. It's kind of the industry standard calculator that cities use. It's done through Tourism Economics in Oxford. So a lot of people much smarter than I have, than I am, have put in all the work to really estimate.

So it's like a consumption basket assumptions?

Yes.

Visitor count? Is that kind of how it's done? I'm sorry, say that one more time. Is it basically like visitor count and then there's a certain assumption based on like consumption basket based on the number of visitors for these tournaments? Is that kind of how it's done?

Correct. So we put in like information that we put in is the number of attendees. So the number of athletes plus their spectators and attendees, we get that information from the organizers. And then we get the contracted hotel room blocks from the hotel. So their number that they're going to have per night, how many nights they have it, what the hotel room rate is, you know, costs associated with bringing the event here. And then, you know, it has our tax rate. It has our kind of It's tailored to our area. So cost of living, all of those things. So it can get as most accurate picture as possible of the overall impact of it. And that's where I say these are the direct numbers, not the indirect. So we're not pulling in like some business supplies, tablecloths or towels to a hotel that's local. So they are benefiting from it when business is brought to that hotel. But we're not including that in the calculation. Thank you. You're welcome.

Anything else? All right. I think you're good. Thanks.

Thanks, Aaron. Just a quick look at current operations and one comment on economic impact. What we just reviewed were big tournaments where people are flying in and staying overnight. There's league play and smaller tournaments going on there that serve our local teams, but they're also bringing in teams from outside of Utah County. They may not stay the night, but they come here and hopefully they go out to eat after and spend some time here in Provo. So there's that. We don't have a number for that. Our operations, our operating costs are covered by revenue. Over my career, I've seen lots of pro formas for facilities like this. This rarely happens in the first year, and that happened in the first year, and the second year, usually it's several years out. So I think that's notable and remarkable from our staff that's working really hard to be efficient. These tournaments that we just looked at, they provide the largest share of revenue that we bring in. So it's a few tournaments that cover a lot of the cost. And we estimate about 3,500 to 4,000 Provo kids utilizing this facility. So that's from local clubs to our own parks and rec leagues that go there and play. And we also have the playgrounds there, two really, really nice playgrounds that are open to the public. And then just over the last couple of months, we started the drop-in field program. So one field's available for drop-in play. Over the past couple of months, we've been kind of working this out. I feel like it's come to a pretty good place. It's not negatively impacting the facility, and people are able to use it. Probably the biggest challenge is our staff just has to kind of regulate that use to make sure teams aren't out there trying to practice. And so sometimes that creates a negative interaction or it can be conflict, I guess. But they do a good job of managing that though.

How many fields is that?

How many fields is the drop-in field? It's just one field. One field that rotates around. We publish it on our website. We have a big marker out there showing which field it is. So like every couple of weeks, it'll move to a different field.

But it's one of those ones that we rest, right? It's not one that's active play?

Well, I mean, it's open to the public. It's not active in the sense that there's games programmed out there. So I mean, true rest would be nobody on the field at all.

Well, when I was out there the other day, it was one of those ones that they're resting. It's one of those ones along the western side. But they don't play all the fields at once, right?

There's times when they all play for some of these tournaments that we've looked at, but they do try to rest different fields to prepare for tournaments and just depending on the schedule. Okay. Any other questions before we move on? And then just kind of looking at the future, we have tournaments lined up for this upcoming year, similar to last year's schedule. And then the item before you tonight is kind of looking forward at the next phase of the project. So on the image on the screen, the South Five Fields, there's an opportunity through a federal funding source to... put in for a larger project. There's not many grants out there for large $8 million grants is what we're looking at. This opportunity just opened up in August. So after we had approved the budget and we had about six weeks to get it prepared, it's due mid September. It's a 50-50 grant. And the project that we'd be looking at is those south five fields, the parking areas near the fields and also between the proposed pickleball of doing that in a restroom. Under the project that we would potentially submit, it's two of the fields would be synthetic turf with lights also. And that's kind of based on user feedback that we've got from Explore Utah Valley. The potential match would come from our partners at the county, from Park CIP, and then from in-kind support from the city. We do have a lot of experience building the fields after the last, so we do have the ability to do that. This is kind of a rare grant opportunity. I don't believe this grant has ever been given to any city in Utah. Hopefully we're the first. So there'll be some time once we know if there's interest in our project to start solidifying the match component of it.

So this is a federal grant?

Yeah, so it will apply to the state and they'll vet projects and then apply on our behalf if it moves on. Similar, if you're familiar with the Land and Water Conservation Fund grants, this is the same type of grant as that.

And right now, everything north of that road is done.

Yes. I'm looking back. Everybody's nodding their head. Yes. Yes, it is.

Councilor Bogdan. I have no doubt that this is a great opportunity. $4 million is a lot on our plate and I'm really uncomfortable saying, yes, we can do this when I don't know what the trade-offs are because there's going to be sacrifices and trade-offs to make this come first. And so that's something that I'd like to see before we vote on it tonight is give me an idea of what projects we're giving up. Because projects will be given up. How many years are we looking at? Are we looking at nothing but the sports park gets done for two years? Right? Kind of a thing. And that's what makes me really uncomfortable with this.

I understand. I will just say that we're not obligated to go through with it right now. We're just kind of feeling out if there's interest. I would be hesitant at this level to encumber funds or ask partners to encumber funds when we don't know if there's interest yet. So the obligation will come with the grant agreement, which would be in the future. But as far as projects that we delay, I don't think we can quite answer that yet. I think we need to know how much money our partners would be able to put in before we really knew what was going to, if it was going to impact other projects.

Then that's a deal killer for me because I would, I get where you're coming from, but at the same time, we have to put off projects in order to do this. 4 million is a lot.

of money, right?

You're going to ask for a million from the other. And if they don't contribute some money, and that could be 6 million on our end. And that that's a lot of money. And that's, that's a lot of need within the city, right for this. And it's so up in the air, I get that. But once we get that funding, then we're gonna have to be scrambling to figure out what those trade offs are. And I feel like on that end of it, I'm kind of obligated to say, okay, now here's the stuff that we're going to be putting off instead of making a solid decision.

Sure.

But we also have to keep in mind we're getting 12 million.

If we had the full 16 million in funding, it would be 8 million that we would receive.

Well, from the county too. If we're going to get county and that's 12 million, but we can't, we really can't create ourselves. So, and it all equals, having this finished will also equal more revenue for us that will make a difference in our bottom line too. For the county, not necessarily for Provo.

Absolutely for Provo.

That $17 million wasn't all in Provo. I know, but it's still a lot of Provo.

And maybe Brad and Erin help us establish a need for this. Through our two years of experience, organizations are saying, We know it would bring our tournament to Provo, but we need a few more fields to be not big enough, or you're too proud to invite me to turn away any tournaments.

I'll come over here. Absolutely. Those conversations are happening. I don't have the hard numbers I can show you on that. But a combination of some of the tournaments that have already been coming have basically said, if you add more fields, we will have more teams that will sign up and we can bring it. They are just at max capacity. So they already are waiting. for more fields to be able to bring bigger things in. And quite a few tournaments that have said, you're just not quite big enough. Again, USYS that came in that we had to split with Iraq because we just didn't have enough fields to accommodate the full thing. So yes, that business is out there. They know our reputation. They want to come. We just aren't big enough.

It helps to know that. Thank you. So what's the ideal field size? I mean, to be competitive in that space, is it twice the number of fields? Just these four or five more?

Yeah. I mean, honestly, having somewhere in four or five, six more in that range. I mean, every tournament is going to be a little bit different, but that's a good range to get quite a few bigger things for sure.

Having gone through a few studies in the past, usually 20 is kind of the number for like real competition. impact and tourism impact that you want to shoot for.

Council Whitlock has a question.

Yeah, so I just want to understand the question before us and how it fits into the process. So the question is basically, will we pass a resolution stating our support up to $4 million? Is that like a required step in this grant process or is it more just feeling for council feedback on should we do this?

I think this would be equivalent to like a letter of support to bolster the grant application. I don't think it's a commitment to a certain...

um funding plan or dollar amount that we commit out of certain that's not due yet as part of the grant can we just clarify brian is that the case did you look at the language on the resolution i saw the resolution i don't and it the way the resolution is written is sad any of the application materials the way they have the resolution is written is just a statement of It doesn't bind anybody to accept. So say they apply and they're approved. At that point, there will be a grant memorandum issued that we will have to sign. In other words, you can always turn it down. You can get it and not take it. It's like applying for a loan and not taking it.

So this is a free option, effectively, because we can always say no later. Right. Because I do agree with some of the points made. I would like to see a lot more detail around how would this affect our current CIPs if we were to go forward and actually commit this money. I'd like to much better understand the upside because I think it's great 17 million in impact, but what additional impact does this unlock? I'd love to see how that actually translates into sales tax dollars for Provo. There's just a lot more detail I'd need to see before being comfortable actually committing $4 million. But this sounds like a pretty option, which seems simple.

Yeah, because along those lines, it would be really useful to see how much money Provost already invested, either our own funds or grant monies that we've received into this. And what benefit we've got from it and how much additional benefit we would expect from the additional investment. Because we have diverted substantial resources into this with the purpose of it being a tool of economic development and to generate revenues for the city, which it has been doing. And so having those numbers will help us at a future point if they do get the grant to make that assessment.

Yeah.

And I think kind of from our standpoint, we can certainly do all of that before we make this huge effort and do all this research and ask Explore Utah Valley and partners to do that. I think we want to gauge to see if there's interest from the grantor that our project meets. Like in our opinion, it meets the criteria, but maybe they don't feel that way. So we kind of want to find that out. This is a grant that's kind of new. It's not one that comes up every year that we've gone for before.

I want to do it again. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

Thank you. It wasn't too long ago that I was here discussing this project. And between that time, it went out to bid for kind of the majority of the work. Those bids came in slightly higher than we expected. We do our best to budget, but you just don't know until you bid it out. Our team worked to be able to self-perform some of that to bring that number into more manageable difference. They're actually out there right now at Fort Utah doing work. You'll see city trucks out there starting the demolition. So this number here kind of represents the gap that we need to make sure we get all elements of the project done, specifically the actual playground itself is what this will go to fund. So there's essentially three contracts for the work. There's one for the design build of the all wheels portion, the skate bowl and the pump track. And then there's kind of the civil aspect, the parking lot and the utilities and demolition and all of that. That's what was just bid out. And then the third contract will be just install the playground. And that's what this will allow us to do. The funds come from unassigned funds within our fund balance in the parks capital improvement fund. Happy to answer any questions on this.

So you might have submitted it and I didn't see it. I was just wondering if it's the same thing we talked about in terms of what that 330, what that final project looks like. Does this fund the exact same project we talked about?

Yeah, it's the same. It's to ensure that we can deliver the project as presented. Okay.

All the bids just went out.

Yeah.

I was just curious if there was any changes or substantial change, substantive changes. No.

Okay. Anything else? I have a question about the CIP. I have a couple of questions about CIP actually. So number one, I went to go look in the CIP book and those numbers are different than they are in the budget. Why? Why? Do you know why?

I don't know off the top of my head. Anybody in the back have an answer to that?

When you say CIP book, do you mean over dissent today or...

No. Well, yeah, kind of. Yeah. I mean, you know where it's got the money coming in and the money going out and then it's a balance, right? The same money coming in is the same money coming out. Then there's a line item that says like fund balance or whatever, but it doesn't match what's in that. I asked Ezra, I'm like, where's this money coming from? Cause I can't see it here. And then he found it in the budget book. So the budget book does not match what's in the CIP, but he has his hand raised.

Yeah, I could talk to that. So I talked to finance about that today. Um, the budget, um, the budget managers, not in today, but the budget officers who I talked to, I might have those titles wrong. I'm still learning that side of it. Um, but the, the document that we were referencing was the one that was passed in March. And historically, I guess they've, they've taken after, you know, months of going through the budget. They take whatever's adopted at the end of the completed budget cycle and put that in the budget book. And so they said they're happy to kind of keep that initial document more up to date if that's something that people are referencing. But I've found that a lot where just in general, if there's a document that's being referenced regularly, we want to make sure we're updating that one specifically. And so I think we'll be able to work with the team to make sure that happens in the future. Just identify all those ones that we no longer need. We can get rid of those ones and just keep a specific setup to date.

Thank you. My other question is, is there's $4 million in the fund balance? Is what we're looking at after all of the expenses come through for 2027. Are we saving that money for a specific purpose?

I think, yes, I'll let John comment maybe, but yes, we're looking forward to future projects, setting aside impact fees for potential project at Bicentennial Park. And anything you want to add there to that question?

I was just curious because we gave you guys a million dollars for Fort Utah, but there's four million here.

No, it is being saved.

John Anderson with Park Projects. So we do have two main large projects currently getting under contract with the Fort Utah Park improvements, as well as Pearl River Trail Central improvements. Most of these projects have grants associated with them. So we have to expense funds up front and then get reimbursed those funds. So $1.5 million of Fort Utah improvements is grant funds. That will expense, then they'll come back. But at Provo River Trail Central, there's over $4 million in grant funds that will be expensed and then come back. So this is to make sure we're able to cover the checks as it comes to the contractors. And then at the end of the year, we're reconciled or whatever period of time we go before we are reimbursed by the contractor.

So that $300,000 that we would be putting here, that's not going to put us in jeopardy in any way, shape, or form.

But we need to have the capital appropriated so we can spend it for this purpose.

Right, because it's not in the regular CIP. Okay. And do we normally just keep this kind of cash on hand kind of as a slush fund to pay out and come back, or is it normally lower?

No, it's for these large projects that we have on hand that we need to make sure we're able to cover the expenses.

So in a normal year, it would be like a million or something a lot lower?

I don't know if normal. here is, but it's based on the project. So we didn't have a lot of this last year, fiscal year 26 for expenses. We accumulated that here for these projects. Some of these projects would have progressed sooner. I think there were property acquisitions or permits and things that pushed that back a little bit.

Gotcha. Thank you for that explanation. I appreciate it. Anything else? All right.

Thank you.

Thank you for the ordinance regarding outdoor lighting standard exceptions. as presented by Burton Johnson, our council policy.

Hey, good afternoon, Council. We're back again talking about outdoor lighting. So the first thing I want to do before we get started, the proposed changes are just to Provo City Code section 15.21.040, which is the exemption section. So everything else that we did two weeks ago, we're not gonna bother with, it's just the exemptions today. And before I get started, I wanted to talk about the intent section of the code and it highlights four main things. One is providing safety and security to people on public waste, so public safety, protecting the enjoyment of private property rights, conserving energy resources and reducing light pollution. So the main kind of value trade off with what we'll be discussing today is allowing people to enjoy their private property rights and not unduly burdening our residents with onerous regulation, while also trying to meet our aims that we discussed last time with reducing light pollution. So the first section, To preface, I like to have a discussion about each one of these sections, each one of these slides before we move on to the next one. So if you'd like to make a motion to change any of the proposed language here, anything like that, that is encouraged. But to start, this is what the exemptions were before initial discussions in August about updating our lighting standards that allowed holiday lighting during November, December, and January. given that it wasn't creating dangerous glare. And then this is the current code that we passed two weeks ago that says, oh, sorry, that holiday lighting is allowed any month of the year, but that there's a curfew at 10 p.m. to turn off the lights. And then this is proposed language that I've written. This is meant to be kind of a placeholder, so I'm hoping for some discussion about this, but I'll give kind of my rationale behind why it is the way it is. But with the new proposal, it would, allow holiday lighting. We would allow holiday lighting between June 15th and July 25th, as well as the months of October, November, December, and January, rather than the entire year. And it delineates what is considered holiday lighting. So that would be internally illuminated decorations. So think big inflatable Santa on the roof lit up. String lights, which is kind of your traditional Christmas or Halloween lights. String light displays. My thought with this is like... your reindeer on the lawn that's lit up with Christmas string lights, and then colored festoon lighting. Festoon is about a word that I knew before doing this research, but it's basically like cafe or like Bistro lighting, like the bulbs that are kind of on a string. And I'll show a picture of that in a minute. They do make those in other colors than just yellow or white. So that would be considered a holiday light. So with that, I want to propose a couple of different options. One could be taking this at face value. And with the dates, the reason that I chose those is because it addresses Halloween, Thanksgiving, and all the wintertime holidays, as well as Independence Day and Pioneer Day. which I think are some of the major holidays that someone would find it important to put up holiday lights for. So we could do the proposal as is, or we could keep what we had before and remove the curfew section, or the third option is whatever you would like that's different from those two. So I want to open the discussion.

I just want a discussion. It doesn't account for... BYU versus Utah. So I want blue and white lights on my house. It doesn't count for a big Provo versus Tempe game. So I want whatever direction I'm going to go. Kind of those things that we were worried about that some of the counselors have brought up. And so that's why I don't like the bottom one because it does take away the funness of having that light. The funness, does that even work? you know what you mean no it's not the enjoyment of having those lights on your home because now we're restricting them from oh gosh what's that big football event that they have in in the spring where you have the king and the queen anyway all those kinds of festivities and probably even has their own little raid right all those kinds of little festivities that you would just kind of enjoy using those kinds of lights for. So anyway, just throwing that out there, because I know that was part of our discussion. I like how that's so defining.

Brian, go ahead. Just one comment on that, Councilor Bogdan. And again, the council can go either way on this, but I just want to clarify one thing, which is that one of the things I like about what Britain's done here is The previous version, the current version, well, the current version and the previous version don't even define what holiday lighting is. This one at least makes an attempt to define it. And to the extent that what you're saying applies to the jellyfish lighting, that's not this. There's another section later that we're going to talk about that's that. This is other things. This is the big bulbs hanging off the side of the house.

The jellyfish is still a big bulb.

Right, right.

You mean like the projection lights that go on?

This is projection lights, the old Christmas lights that I grew up with where it's the big bulb that's on.

Oh, the sea nights?

Yeah.

Some of those jellyfish lighting are like C9s, aren't they?

Well, anyway, we'll get to that in a minute. And maybe we ought to skip forward to it. I just wanted to clarify that this particular provision is not talking about... How exactly is it defined in the system? I'll just skip ahead and we'll talk about this.

Okay, so we called it jelly lighting during our discussion. I think a better way to describe that to be very general, but also specific is permanent outdoor LED facade lighting. That's the verbiage that I came up with. um and then maybe to clarify even further some brands it's that picture that's that's separate from holiday lights because it is it's permanently on the structure right um that does get a little bit more confusing later i will explain this um but let's just talk about this and then we'll go back to section one address that and then and then we'll address this so the jellyfish lighting as we described it this is again a proposal that's meant to be somewhat of a placeholder um and i'll discuss a couple options but it says that any of this the jellyfish style lighting is allowed as long as it's inside the soffit which is kind of the in inner part of the eve along the roofline and is shielded, directed downward, and mounted horizontally, so it's not facing out towards the street and more focused down. When the lights are on, they need to be 3,000 Kelvin or less to meet the color-related color temperature standard, except for during the holiday sections that I mentioned during the first subsection, which would be June 15th through the 25th of July, and then October through January. Okay. Which would still preclude...

It does, you're right. I just wanted to clarify that if that's the thing that you want to exempt, the right way to exempt it is to delete the two sentences in this section about the color, not the previous section.

And that was going to be one of my options that I was going to propose. So thank you, Brian. Great minds think alike. On the jellyfish lighting?

I have some and I can mine aren't jellyfish, but not not that specific brand. But you do have the ability to control the temperature.

My understanding is you can control the color, but some of the earlier models can't.

And brightness is not addressed in this code. It's not for that reason. Yeah. And then the last section clarifies that it can't create dangerous glare. And we want to, with the private property rights argument, the idea is that we don't want to keep people from doing things that are not a nuisance, while also protecting others from nuisances from other properties. And so this, go ahead.

What is the definition of dangerous glare?

That is an excellent question. I think dangerous glare is a bit subjective, but the intent is that...

It sounds way subjective. I'm just wondering if it's helpful at all. I've had a neighbor who was exuberant about the dancing lights, and it wasn't dangerous. It was surely annoying. But it wasn't dangerous. No one got hurt.

Well, not offended, but not hurt. I was going to say that's the second part of it. I mean, I think if the city was going to, since it would be the city prosecuting, if the city was going to prosecute on the idea that it was creating dangerous glare, we would essentially have to say it's so bright that it's causing traffic problems. Like people driving towards the house can't see.

Somebody doing a strobe or something. Right.

So this has nothing to do with nuisance glare.

The second part of this sentence addresses that.

Dangerous glare seems so, again, I'm just wondering if it's even helpful at all. The unreasonable annoyance makes sense to me, but really dangerous glare?

Probably want to keep it in there.

I mean, I think I can imagine a case where we could use it. Yeah, exactly. It's essentially, in my mind, There's probably other instances, but the only one that really comes to mind is that it must have to do something with traffic. So it's somehow creating a glare that's actually causing danger for drivers.

So that explains the comment I made last time about the sign, the mall sign. From what I was told, I haven't really checked into it, but I was told that that's one of the reasons why UDOT has stricter... things than our ordinance does. I was told specifically UDOT has stricter sign ordinances because of that, because of the dangerous glare on the freeway. You don't want somebody going through 25 miles an hour. So, you know, to Brian's point, if there's a section of highly traveled Lakeview Parkway that has dangerous glare at 45 miles an hour. That might be something that.

To your point, Councilor Christian, I don't view it as being likely. I don't foresee that leading to serial prosecutions. But I could foresee a situation where we could say, hey, there's no neighbor who cares because the lights are shining right out of the streets. The neighbors aren't actually caring, but the city cares because of the traffic. All right.

Thank you.

What's the beat? Most of our goals, if you want to go to Southern and we don't want the time, we don't care. That's real.

You want to abandon the time, right? And we're just worried about the new success.

And that's going to be a huge part of the fleet. Like he said, she unplugged for me. She knows hers is a lot. So she unplugged it and she can hear that. But this is not going to be something where we're going to go out and be controlling. This is about serious cases where neighbors are calling the business initiative to look at this and that we have something to use to go with it. Mayor, is there anything else that you could, like, any feedback from your part?

Yeah, so I have not heard of any complaints about this, but I was just wondering, does this first part, the permanent outdoor, it describes what kind of light is allowed And so do you even have to go into the dangerous glare part? Because can anything such as jellyfish, trim light, or other similar brands, if it's shielded, directed downward amount, horizontally in the soffit, can that even become a dangerous glare on adjacent streets or property?

Because it's not shining through somebody's eyes. We're already saying it has to be.

You can have all the brightest, brightest, and flashing all night, as fast as you can go around your house.

Even if they're shielded and directed downward, is it really going to become a dangerous glare?

Not a dangerous glare, but in a way it's a nuisance. Is it possible? I think it's possible.

Okay. I think this would be tricky to... I mean, I guess we should have Sandy in here, but we go off complaints only anyway.

Totally. And like Brian said, he doesn't think it's going to be used for a doll, but there could be a case that it would

Yeah, I think you make a good point, Mayor, and I'm not a light engineer, so I don't know whether I can say whether it's possible. I guess I would say if it's not possible, there's no harm in the sentence being there because it'll never be invoked. If it is possible, then it's there as a tool if it does happen. So it seems to me like the biggest policy question is about those middle two sentences about the color.

I'd say the two biggest policy questions are the color and then existing lightings that have been installed that would not be in conformance with this.

I will address the second question later if that's okay. So for the first question, my proposal, would we like to go back to subsection one or would we like to address this first and then go back? I think we're on a roll, so let's stick with this, if that's OK. So we can either go with this proposal. And I do want to note, with the idea of strobe lighting or flashing, this doesn't address that at all. So in theory, that would be totally reasonable. I guess even outside of the holiday sections, if it was the warm white setting or warmer, according to what this is saying, it could strobe and flash, and that would be allowed. So just a note on that.

So that doesn't fit anywhere and is a nuisance even in the other?

I mean, I could consider that being an unreasonable annoyance or discomfort to occupants of nearby properties. And that could be where this would be invoked if it becomes a problem. But just a note that that's not really addressed in this.

So what are we saying? If somebody has a seizure disorder that's promoted by lights, then that would be... And very simple annoyance, because this is a true thing. People do have user disorders that lights do trigger.

Yeah. Within my understanding, I would say so, yes.

And that's where the reasonableness comes from, right? Because reasonable is a legal standard that the courts are familiar with. Again, this is never going to get... used unless we're actually prosecuting somebody for it because they somebody has called code enforcement has gone out code enforcement is determined that it's unreasonable code enforcement is forwarded to legal legal is determined that it's unreasonable we're in front of the judge and we're putting on testimony the judge thinks it's unreasonable too right that's the only time that It's ultimately getting used.

Right. And in such a case, there would have been an established harm instead of a hypothetical harm or a speculative thing.

Marcia had a question. I was just wondering, I mean, are there other sections of code that would cover something like that? I mean, this is specifically for lights, but what code says that we can't be flashing lights into our neighbor's I mean, is there something like that? I think that unreasonable annoyance or discomfort is difficult to kind of suss out exactly unless it's defined somewhere else in code.

Well, I guess, again, I would say reasonable is a very common legal standard. And the only alternative to using reasonable is reasonable. 200 nits every five seconds. I mean, you've got to have a numerical standard if it's not reasonable. And reasonable is the common legal standard for any of this kind of stuff. So, no, I can't think of anything else.

It's not going to be... You just have to define the actual flashing ratio.

I think it's just difficult because a lot of times code enforcement, to be put in the middle of two angry neighbors and they have to... decide how to split the baby is a tricky thing. That's all.

Yeah. I personally think that a lot of city code is establishing a norm. It's normative. And so people say, oh, yeah, I should be cognizant of this. And you can mention, hey, it rarely ever goes to the judge to actually enforce. It's more about just...

Right. I mean, again, code enforcement, I can't imagine code enforcement... going out and doing something unless it's so clear to them that it's unreasonable that they want to do something. Well, yeah, that's another enforcement problem, right? But again, I don't know what the alternative is. The only alternative is to say it's just always permitted no matter what.

You could remove this thing from the entire thing. Right. And say the focus of everything we're doing was more for public streetlights and for UDOT lights and for parking lots and larger installation.

Right.

So that's the policy question is, are there limits or should there just be no limits and there should just be a blanket exemption? Because right now, the one thing I will say that I wanted to bring up earlier that's important about this section, even if it gets trimmed down, is right now, there isn't an exemption. So every set of jellyfish lighting in the city is illegal right now.

I'm really interested. It is worthwhile talking about this because it's a new trend and the trend is accelerating. I spoke to someone on Monday who started a new jellyfish company. It's a huge, especially here because it's a door-to-door sales and that's one of our best distribution channels in Utah Valley.

Well, and another thing I like about this section is the festoon string lighting, which is like key for downtown Provo, right? That creates a more inviting atmosphere. You want to walk down there in the evening, especially in the winter months. It makes it feel more welcoming. And so we definitely need to have this exemption for the festoon string lighting. Okay. which is year round. And this doesn't- That's the next section that we will address. I know, but this is my favorite part of the exemption. So we have to have it.

Okay. So if I'm understanding kind of the council's wishes generally, We, there's three different options. It could be this proposal as stated, it could be this proposal removing these two sections so that colored lighting would be allowed year round, people can celebrate whatever they want with the trade-off being that that kind of undermines some of the dark sky intention, how big of an impact that'll be. I mean, that's up to you, I guess. And then the last option is to remove the section entirely. And maybe the only thing that we would keep is the first sentence. And that would be all. Is that a fair understanding?

Personally, I think let's let them have their colored lights. They paid for them. They put them on their house. They don't bother me. I don't have a problem with it. Let them celebrate football games or basketball games or whatever they want to celebrate.

Councilor Whitlock.

So I just want to confirm, Brian, currently these lights are not in compliance. So we're actually making them compliant.

Right. We're creating an exemption that doesn't currently exist.

Interesting.

At least with the first sentence, right? So as Bryn was saying, you can do nothing and they will continue to be arguably illegal. You can add the first sentence and make them legal absolutely, right? You can add the first and the last sentence and make them legal unless they're unreasonable. Or you can restrict the colors. Those are the

Which is the first and last.

Yeah, my perspective would be first and last and then a grandfathering of existing installation so we don't get in the business of having to make people pull down lights that, you know, that would be my two cents.

Brian, is that already implied with the way the code is written that anything that precedes the code change is considered illegal non-conforming use?

Yeah, I think... You're telling me it's already illegal so it wouldn't be grandfathered.

Yeah, that's a good point. Although... The colors would have only been illegal then. I guess we probably need...

The code was silent on any of this beforehand, so it wouldn't have been illegal before we did our dark sky scene.

There was already stuff in there about things being... What was it? Not fully shielded, but half shielded. Of course, the jellyfish should have already counted because of the fact that they're mounted under the soffit. So yeah, I think that's probably true. So I think they probably were okay until we passed the dark sky's color limitations without granting them an exemption.

So in that case, then it would be grandfathered?

Yeah, so I think the language we used two weeks ago to already exempt current installations would already apply.

And I can explicitly state, just like I did in that last code, given this effective date, if this does end up coming to a night council meeting when we ratify this, that any pre-distinguished installation of this specific type of lighting would be grandfathered.

That would be really helpful.

Yeah, OK.

Any other thoughts on this part? Okay.

Would someone like to make a motion on that? Or is it implied?

We all did it.

Okay. So if I understand, we're just removing these two sentences, keeping everything else. Okay.

Is anyone opposed?

All right, we'll go back to the first slide now. Okay, so we can go with this proposal as written. We can do this proposal and remove the curfew, or we can do a combo of both or something entirely different based on your discretion.

Okay, so let me clarify.

So right now, Holiday doesn't worry about the jelly lights?

Holiday lighting is very broad. There's no clear definition.

That's the other decorations I see happening is that. Okay. In which case, I think the last one. Good.

Okay.

What does everyone think?

So the practical implication of this last one and the two together would be you can flash your jellyfish lighting anytime, St. Patrick's Day, whatever. If you're going to put in large, you know, blow up inflatable Santas, you can do it within those windows. That's correct. I think that's super reasonable.

I like the last one.

Okay. Do we have a consensus on that?

Yes. Yeah, I see. Okay, perfect.

So this proposal as written, and that would exempt the jellyfish light that we have just talked about. All right, let's go on to those. Okay. So last thing is for student lighting, which that's the picture of it really well.

Excellent job.

So this is the last major proposed section and we will address the the second question, policy question that you had in just a minute, Councilor Locke. But with the student string lighting, this is a proposal to allow it given that it has the correct color temperature when it's outside of the holiday window. when colored lights would be allowed, of 3,000 Kelvin or less, which is pretty typical. There's some that are brighter, or not brighter, let me use exact verbiage, that are a higher correlated color temperature. But this is still pretty commonly available commercially. And then that... require that they produce less than 50 lumens since they're going to be completely unshielded, which would break some of the other norms that we set. And that they need to be 50 lumens are produced per linear foot. And that removes a loophole where you could just stack all of the bulbs all right next to each other and make a big mess.

Okay, quick question for you. So everyone buys the Costco ones considering do we know that the Costco ones need this?

Do we know if the Costco ones meet? I'd have to do some additional research.

Do they meet it? You know? I don't know, but they're great. But that's what everyone has.

I'm sure there are several brands that Costco offers. So I don't know if I can answer that question, but I can look into Costco.

Do we just know that this is pretty standard or is this like...

I mean, you're going to have to... Like there's plenty of standard options that do not meet this requirement, but there are many that do as well.

I think most do because it's basically just that people do it for the warm outdoor lighting vibe. And that's kind of the intention.

Regardless, if they've installed them, they are grandfathered in at this point until they replace them.

It's a little bit complicated because these are not permanent. These are things that can be taken down and put back up and deciding when the purchase date. It adds a couple of complexities that I'm happy to explore.

Mine have been up for five years. They're permanent in my mind. They are thrilled into the train.

Brian, I don't know if you have any thoughts on establishing permanence with this.

Do you have the section in your slides that we passed with the grandfathering? Yeah, it's not on the slides, but if you want to pull up the ordinance. Because the way I remember that language, I'm not sure that these would be grandfathered, and we would probably have to be explicit about that if you want the grandfathered, because I think my recollection is that it deals more with physical installations on the house.

Yeah, so if you can keep scrolling down, please. Thank you. Here. Section 6 currently, but with the puzzles would be Section 8. Any attached to a structure on a residential property. Now, I clarified that the jellyfish lights are not considered an attached lighting fixture under this subsection. And by that logic, it would presume that a festoon light would also not be considered an attached lighting fixture. But we can write explicit language to grandfather in any... Lights purchased before done, if you wish.

You can reverse them. But I don't think they are right now.

OK. This one, actual wattage, one-month-old, can be for watts, and has a frame voltage of 120, color is 2,200K.

Oh, OK. So they're under the 3,000.

Excellent. You don't want the one that's colder anyway.

Way too cold.

All right. Thanks for looking at that, Becky. All right, what do people think on this one then?

The two options that I wanted to propose was this or just saying that festoon lights are exempt and leaving it at that and not including any further regulation.

If they allow them, there's no real regulation about this.

Yeah, we could do that. And again, it would undermine a little bit of some of the dark sky intentions with our last policy change. But if the value of having these is greater than that, then that's kind of your policy question. They're not that common.

This one says 350. Oh, boy.

That one was really bright.

So, yeah. I mean, you are going to be watching Costco. But honestly, this is just a report.

If somebody comes out at midnight to tell you to shut your lights,

And Becky, I was looking at one. I don't know if I'm looking at the same one, but I'm looking at Costco as well. And later down the specifications, it says 17 and a half lumens. So I actually think the 350 is for the entire site.

Oh, okay. That makes more sense.

That'd be wild.

Yeah, 50 lumens is already very bright for any of these bulbs.

Some lots of money.

Some lots of breath. So... Those are the two options that I've proposed. You're welcome to change it.

Thanks, Brenton. Right. Any opinions on this one?

I think it's good.

Good.

I could also remove it. I don't feel strongly either way.

I'm good either way, too.

I don't think there's a lot of thieves that are at nuisance in the community.

So I think they need to be permitted.

Yeah, they need to be permitted. I'm just saying there's the additional requirements.

I think your biggest complaints are going to be if you've got some kind of cafe out here on Center Street that's like, but then again, that's going to fall into that stop traffic and people are going to run their bikes into the poles or something.

My biggest concern with doing this would be people who have already taken the time to install these in the backyard. So if we were to actually define what's required, I would want a grandfathering. But I'm also fine with just allowing them and being fine with allowing them.

Let's just allow them. Let's just allow them. I think we're getting too picky.

OK.

So let's do street lighting is permitted.

Yep.

Point blank. OK. And we don't want to regulate any colors, so colors would be allowed. They can be bright pink if they want to.

I think we can solve that if it becomes a problem.

OK.

I've never seen that one before.

OK. So we're just going to allow that. OK. Perfect. If you want to go back to the exhibit one more time, I just wanted to see if you had any questions specifically, Councillor Whitlock, about this language, if that kind of answers your second policy question.

Yeah. And I think especially with this thing we just assembled looks like the alignment on of permitting festoon lighting and not regulating it, I think that addresses the question.

OK. Britton, just a note for you. I think in that case, I would remove festoon string lighting from the definition of holiday lighting in section one because now it's permitted all the time. So it's not worth mentioning it there. Perfect.

So if you've got colored festoon lighting, it's not for holidays. It's for any time. Awesome. OK. Yeah, we're, they can strobe and flash any colors they want, as long as they're not creating dangerous glare or an unreasonable annoyance to nearby property.

Thank you, Brenton. All right, guys, we'll all take a five minute break till 350.

Recording stopped. Recording in progress. Yeah.

Correct.

Thank you. So this is the property that we're looking at along Geneva Road. Center Street is just south of there. It's just over an acre. And this property, if you remember, came to you last year. They were looking for a rezone to the medium density residential with 26 townhomes. That was denied mainly because the neighborhood wanted to see more of retail, commercial, traditional retail type of uses. So The current zoning is a general commercial. They are looking to rezone to mixed use now. They have kind of revised their concept, which I'll show you. This is a future land use map, which shows it as village center commercial mixed use area. This is their revised concept. They have four flex commercial units along Geneva Road in the darker blue, and then 18 townhomes behind that. We just have some renderings and floor plans if you're interested. This is for the townhomes, commercial rendering. And that's it. This is from the west, not from Geneva Road. And I'll leave it there. And I'm happy to answer any questions.

Any questions?

Councillor Whitlock.

So just so I understand correctly, this commercial space is kind of like flex warehouse type commercial space, correct?

Yeah, they're calling it flex office space. There's a 500 square foot garage in each ground floor of each unit. And then the rest is just kind of flex office space is what they're calling it.

And then when you mentioned the previous time an application was rejected, it was all housing.

Yes.

And the primary feedback was because the neighborhood in the area wanted commercial.

Yes.

Was the vibe of commercial more retail or was it black warehouses?

Retail. Right. Right. And I should note that there was in the last concept, eight live work units included in that, but yeah, they were looking for more type, retail type uses.

Thank you.

Yeah.

Anyone have questions for Megan on this? All right. Okay. Thanks, Megan. Thank you.

Next, we ordered submitting the ZOMA classification of real property zone located at 2000 North Kinney Road from the one family residential R16 zone to the low density residential LDR zone. It's a Pleasant View neighborhood presented by Dustin Wright.

Just going to pinch it, and here he is.

Yeah.

Hey, Dustin.

Hello.

All right, so this property here, the applicant is looking to do a rezone on, and it's gone to the Planning Commission with a concept plan as well. The Planning Commission didn't approve the concept plan and recommended denial on the rezone. So this was their concept plan to develop this property with townhomes and twin homes. There's their landscaping plan. One of the things they didn't have a good show on was the amenity space that's required in the proposed zone. The other thing is, The street width, so the street width recently changed. The minimum street width used to be 24 feet, which is what they were designing on. That's now 30 feet. So that was another obstacle there as well. And so they had some floor plans shown. I think they were all three-bedroom units and some elevations of those. So you can see the surrounding zoning on the property is MDR and there's apartments to the south, single family across the canyon roadside. And then up the hill, there's a residential neighborhood up there. You mean the cliff? The cliff, yeah. So yeah, and then the general plan for this area calls for residential. So that's essentially what the applicant was requesting on this property to have it rezoned. It's came before you about a year or so ago to be rezoned to its current R16 zone, which allowed for 19 detached single family homes. And now they're looking to do that other townhome project there with 33 lots.

Dustin, since we're bringing this up again, can I ask you about the cliff? I don't understand how they weren't required to do a retaining wall or something up to the cliff. There's just this dirt cliff now that... I'm waiting for some child to come off of it. I don't know. It's crazy to look at.

Yeah. So they've been working with Public Works on the retaining wall that they'd be...

But the retaining wall is... Way lower than the ..

But are they done with the retaining wall?

The builder told me they're done. And it looks .. Looks like about, what, 2 thirds of the way.

It doesn't go all the way up. I just saw it when I went to the game. I walked right by it. And it's not ..

It's not even halfway up. There's a gap.

There's a huge gap. Yeah. There's a few feet gap, maybe four or five feet gap. I was surprised by the gap.

Do you want me to call Gordon? Oh, where'd he go? So he's in the building.

It's just like the builder, according to them, it's done. And I'm just appalled by it. Oh, sorry.

So Dustin, in your meetings with the developer, Has it come down to, I don't know if he's had any, and we can ask him this tonight, but if there've been questions relative to with the cost of retention and the infrastructure, he's afraid he's gonna have to sell these 19 homes for prices above market. Is that the driving force behind this request to put in more units?

Yeah, I think that touches on kind of what I've heard, that the price point of those is going to be a lot higher than he thinks the market's going to bear. And so he felt like it would be more appropriate to go for more of an entry-level option.

Councilor Whitlock.

As a follow-up to that, is that because of cost overruns on his part or the market has gone down since it was approved?

I talked to Mr. Reynolds about that specifically just a week ago. At the time he came in and asked for the 19-month subdivision, he felt like that was very financially feasible. Cost of everything involving construction has gone up. More than what he was expecting. So he is now thinking that there's 19 homes that have to sell for a million and a half dollars or more to build that product. And he doesn't believe there will be very many people willing to build a home with that price point at this location.

So the costs have gone that much in just the months since?

I mean, he can give you the details.

So, yeah, this is maybe a bit of a meta conversation, but I think this property has a long and sad, interesting saga because I remember when it first came from the planning commission, it was supposed to be kind of like on a sloped development with kind of a little more clustered density that would require less of the hill being removed. And I think then we... or the neighbors and there was more kind of single family which then required more hill removal which then created the retaining wall problem and so i just i just wonder if there's kind of from bill's side or public works i do like lessons for the planning commission the council as this property is a case study because it feels like we're in a really bad spot where it's like we've got this really bad retaining wall with a gap and uh the hill was blown up and now we're kind of asking to we're being asked to renege on an agreement that was just made a year ago so that's exactly what

So I believe the retaining wall is 90% or 99% finished at this point, so I don't believe there's any more. The retaining wall is the same height whether the old plan is approved, the state that's approved stays in place, or you do the new plan. The retaining wall would not have changed with the excavation. Both those are the same regardless of which way the council goes on that. I don't know if that answers your question.

No, but that's okay.

But curious, Gordon.

You did answer a previous question.

Why are they allowed to create a cliff with just that dirt? I mean, it's an uneven cliff they've created. Is that a stable angle of repose above the wall?

Yeah. So we went through a lot of geotechnical. So technically, if they came in and wanted to get a grading permit to remove that material, The city council approved that subdivision. So first of all, we would not let somebody just do that. They had to get approval. So they got approval for that subdivision. To build that, they have to move all that dirt to the retaining wall.

Why doesn't the retaining wall have to go to the top of the cliff they created?

Say that again. Of the geological hill, why doesn't it have to kind of, so it's flush, so the natural land is flush with the retaining wall?

Um, they could have done that if they wanted to. This is, I don't think there's a preference to one or the other. Retain walls. The city has an ordinance where we try to keep six feet or eight feet and then the terraces. So we don't just have these stark walls everywhere. So the slope is generally preferred. So there's not a, there's not a preferred engineering way to handle it. So either way is. we could have probably coursed and been going higher if that's something that's important.

So what did we do wrong that we ended up with a large cliff that's visible and ugly, just dirt? Like, why is it there a terrace thing? Like, what should we have done differently?

So they're going to still landscape that whole thing. So I don't know what So when you talk about the beauty or how it looks, that would be something we could talk to them about in the future and say the type of stone they're using, if that's what's bothering the look or is it the dirt?

It's the safety. It's a cliff. And it's just a big dirt.

So is it safety or the look or aesthetics?

Well, you have a cliff, which seems like a safety issue. And then you have the retaining wall about halfway up, and it's just uneven dirt.

It's just amputated hill.

Yeah, like crazy.

So from an engineering-wise functions, it should be good for generations without any concerns.

Is any of that landowner's

No, so they've only, excavations have only been done on the developer's property.

But rain is not going to create erosion and we're just going to lose that cliff?

I don't think so. From all the geotech, it should stay just like you see it. It's ugly, that's unfortunate, because it'll be like that for generations. And they're intending to landscape it with vegetation. That's all part of their landscape plan. So if they're MORE LANDSCAPING THAT WE NEED TO PUT THE ORDINANCE. THAT'S SOMETHING WE CAN CERTAINLY LOOK AT. BUT THE WALL MEETS ALL OF OUR CRITERIA AND SPECIFICATIONS. SO WE HAVE THOSE LARGE WALLS YOU SEE ON FOOTHILL, YOU CAN SEE THE ELEMENTARY SCHOOL. SO ALL THOSE WALLS WILL SUCCESS BEING LIKE THEY ARE. I don't know how the safety factor plays into it, but that's something to look at. Maybe plus some more fence and just something along the top of that would be, make everybody more comfortable with that.

Thanks, Gordon.

Hey, Gordon.

You're going to agree to not rush more of Marcia's redesign?

No, thank you.

No, thank you. No, thank you. It would fit a thing.

My legacy. All right. Okay. Well, anything else for Dustin?

I am, I'd still be curious to answer my question. And again, not to put anyone on the spot, just anyone who has any thoughts or reflections just on this whole process, if there's any lessons for the future that we should be thinking about as councillors.

Was that a question for the council?

Yeah. I think the one thing, it wasn't our decision to remove the hill. And I don't know if it was a council decision, the hill would have been allowed to be removed. Is that something that we need to revisit? Is that those kinds of big decisions need to come back to the council instead of be administrative? How was it not? Oh, it wasn't our decision. It was a planning commission decision.

Yeah, I kind of lost the thread a little bit. I remember the initial plan that came from the planning commission was it was a gradual sloped back towards the hill. So you wouldn't have the steep.

The original proposal was for stack apartments. Stack apartments, that's what it was, yeah. And the building itself set into the hillside and packed as a retaining wall. The building was the retaining wall. Right. That was the original proposal. Got it, got it. From that, I went to R118, and I went to R116, and now it's to this.

And so as we made those sort of land use changes, that required the geotechnical work to flatten out, to create the space to use the lots.

Correct.

would you say right cordon yeah that way too so so i think they would not have gotten approval to remove that if they had not gotten the result they the only so before they can only build like a couple of homes on it that's right two homes and so the hill would have stayed once we we rezoned into the 16 homes there's no way they could have i think there's a 50 19 homes the 19 homes could not be constructed on that site without it being low it went that that came with the zoning as a condition and so at that point the hill was destined to be removed at some point yeah it's interesting because i i

There's a lot of technical details here that I think matter and are really important, but there also does seem to be public perception slash narrative that as we disrupt hills and kind of more sensitive areas, then there's negative consequences. And like, for example, Wasatch, you've been climbing there in that area all the time. And I think that's probably more valid than maybe some of the other ones. Even the Buckley Draw development, again, I don't think, you know, I'm not necessarily sure that project had anything to do with the mudslide. Probably not. I heard Gordon make a good presentation on that. But that's the perception, at least among some folks. This change is... getting a lot of i think some negative feedback on just how shockingly disruptive it is visually um and then against some some uh potential didn't you share that picture like the fence was falling down or is that not that who was that that wasn't me okay anyway or maybe it was i think it was sent by some citizens yes yes or it was yeah i mean it's shocking it's like but wasatch is even more shocking So anyway, it's just something I think is an open, you know, as we have less kind of easily developed land in the city, I think it's just something we'll need to continue to learn and get better at.

All right. Thanks, Justin. All right. We are in order to repeat and replace the code titled 14 Z-Wide application. Justin, say what you want.

All right. So I have Chris Losomos, our consultant as well here, if we have any questions, but just want to kind of give an overview, kind of how we got to this point. I'm sorry. About three years ago, the city began the process of looking into amending our zoning code, Title 14, and got the funding from the council and went through a process to select a consultant to work through that code rewrite. And that project, the research began, the meeting with different stakeholders and everybody took place. And then the drafting of the rewrite started and kind of just went through that process with Aaron from our staff and Somos worked really hard on that. And then once that draft was completed, they sent that to our legal department and Brian put in a lot of work to get that to kind of convey a consistency throughout the code and remove a lot of wording that wasn't useful in the code and things like that to make that function a lot better. So that was a collaborated effort to get through this process. So why did we go through this? We wanted to work on our outdated zoning code. It had a lot of redundant regulations. It had some inconsistent organization throughout it. So we wanted to fix that, get rid of some of the language, like I mentioned, that was not working well. And it was often difficult for people that use the code to navigate through it, both staff and developers and citizens. There was just a lot of difficult things throughout the code. So we wanted to find a way to make that more streamlined and work better for our city. And then the other was the pro zones, going through those and removing those. So those were zones that were created for specific developments that were done throughout the city over a number of years. And those are completed and done, and then they still exist in our code as far as a whole chapter of regulations go.

So, Brian, do we still have the opportunity if we adopt this new version to do a prozone in the future?

Yes, it's like Dustin was just saying right now. All it's doing is removing. It's not removing the idea of prozones. It's removing the old ones that are already built and don't govern anything. And I think we've got a comment maybe from you. You'll need to go to the microphone.

Can you say your name, please?

I'm Chris Aguasomas. Pro zones are for specific spaces. And what they do is they preclude and they make it difficult for this body and the staff to actually maintain and operate those sites. So what we were doing with this code is consolidating several zones and making the ability in those zones to take in these pro zones so that you can completely eliminate these one-off zones, most of the time these pro zones, they were tweaking six things. And why not just put it in the regular zone and say, hey, this is what our standards are. So we loosened those up so that the pro zones don't need to happen anymore. That's essentially why we did that.

Well, I disagree because we, with that Vesper, it's almost like we need to create a special zone for that, right? And so that's why it's still like the opportunity to have.

Yeah. And that's really kind of a different thing because all of our previous existing pro zones were about residential projects. And so I think most of the comments that were just made were about that concept about using a pro zone for a residential project that doesn't differ very much from what the code already requires for residential projects. In this particular instance that you're talking about with the idea that Vesper might come back with a prozone, that's a completely different type of project and a completely different type of use of a prozone than what we had in the code before.

Right, because in this particular instance, we don't have anything like it in a place like this.

Right, right.

Or, I don't know. I mean, but throwing it out there too and thinking about Jeff's question from the previous thing, I mean, with the hillside and whatever, you know, I don't know what that would have entailed. I mean, maybe we should have done a pro zone for something like that. But honestly, I didn't realize once it came to planning commission and they elected them to take away that hillside that we were even voting on that, right? So yeah, just throwing it out there.

Yeah, I don't remember that particular one. I don't remember all the details either of how that went through. That one is probably... Assuming that code permitted them to do something with the hillside that you wouldn't have wanted them to do, that probably would have been a better use of a development agreement than a pro zone just for trying to get the hillside the way you wanted it.

So, yeah, so great questions. Yeah, we really wanted to find ways to improve that code for developers that come into the city and want to be able to do something, have to be more streamlined and not have to dig through all these different sections of code and get their development halfway through and find out there's some other section they weren't aware of and just creates a kind of a bottleneck there and Make this easier for staff to administer and for residents to understand and benefit from cleaner code. So there was a lot of Kind of just an overview here, a lot of different areas kind of that I've talked about a little bit already of how this will benefit. So like we talked about those pro zones. And remember, there's And so I think it's on the next one. Let's see. Yes, we had 68 chapters removed to help streamline that 50% reduction in the code consistent. formatting throughout it to make it clear and concise, updated to meet state statutes that have changed each year. Sometimes we need to get in there and clean up our code to meet those new items. The other is development standards tables. So consolidating all the different zones into one table so that people can clearly see what those standards are in one place. Same thing, creating a land use table to make that a lot more clear. A lot of times what we have happen is someone will come in, they wanna, start a business here in Provo and they ask where can they do this business and the way our current code is there's all the different land use codes that they have to go through to then find out which zone allows those and it's just it's challenging to explain it to them and then try to walk them through the process and so I think having this consolidated land use table is going to be very beneficial in that regard as well.

So that's kind of an overview of

our code rewrite, and I think we wanted to go through the first eight sections. I don't have slides for those, but if there were specific things in those.

Yeah, we're going to do that for the next meeting.

Okay.

Yes. We just needed an overview today, like we haven't gone through it.

Can I?

Counselor. Go ahead.

So I thought that was today, so I kind of reviewed it a little bit. Oh, I'm sorry, Becky. That's okay. I went through it kind of quick. But when you guys go through it, look at bed and breakfast. So the first thing comes up is conditional use permits. So throwing this out there because I'm going to throw it out next time so you guys can think about it. Bed and breakfast, we don't allow Airbnbs. Why do we still have bed and breakfast allowed within the neighborhood? And then the car wash one, there's like a bunch of references to it being next to a residential area. I don't want a car wash anywhere near a residential area.

So what Becky's referring to is in the conditional use section, there are specific plan uses that are conditional use that have specific conditions tied to them. The Planning Commission has to review. So bed and breakfast is one of those. Car wash is another. There's three or four others. But that's what she's referring to.

And then the other question I had, I'm going to have to put on my glasses because it's kind of small here. There's the definition of family. And so this is more of a Brian question. It says family means, and then there's an A and a B. And the one I have a question for is the lowercase, yeah, lowercase B, I, and then the uppercase B, not more than two additional related or unrelated persons. A talks about related people, brothers, sisters, What does that mean? Not more than two additional related and unrelated.

That's already in the code. That's the current code. And I think what you talked about, about the bed and breakfast and the car washes, is already in the current code too. So what was your specific question about that? The idea is that they can have It's essentially like a caretaker couple inclusion, but they can't be paying rent.

Oh, what?

They can't be paying rent because the entire group must be operating as one non-profit household unit.

But people do do it and they don't have second kitchens. They just use hot pads and stuff.

So you're saying that if Shane and I didn't have any kids, that's a new universe. But let's say we did that. And let's say I'm crippled and I need my niece to come live with me and she pays me $100 a month. That's going to fall into uppercase B?

No, because she's paying you $100 a month. So she's renting.

So what confuses me is it says related persons and capital A talks about related, all persons related to the head of household, spouse, parent, child, grandparent. And then B says not more than two additional related or unrelated persons.

That's because in A it lists specific relations. So in A, your grandparents count, right? your great-grandparents don't count, but your great-grandparents would be under B. This is a very old section, and you're free to mess with the definition of family as much as you want.

I don't want to, but I don't understand.

Well, as I say, I probably need to circulate my half-page explanation of the definition that we did a while back, because the definition is very complicated. The reason why it says related or unrelated is is to prevent a situation where we're saying that person can't live there because they're related to you, but they're not related to you in one of the ways that's listed. So under your scenario, if it only said unrelated, your grandniece could not be your caregiver because they're related to you. So it says related or unrelated so that it can be either one.

Well, what about these multi-generational families? Let's say I have five grandkids. Are great-grandkids living with me? Great-grandkids aren't.

That would not be, that wouldn't be, I don't think that's permitted.

That is permitted?

I don't think that's permitted. Great-grandkids. I mean, I don't have the definition in front of me. So I'm more, I'll bring it in straight. Is great in there? Okay. Great-grandkids are okay. Yeah. Great-great-grandkids are okay.

anyway i don't understand it so i can send you i can send you a couple of graphics that we've prepared about it i don't know if it will help you understand it better because it's just complicated it's a weird okay i do have a question about your that your slides um the quote reader it said it talked about um on the best practices bullet point it talked about that you changed the TOD to ITOD or the ITOD to TOD. And I'm wondering what the difference is between those two and why we changed it.

Yeah, so one of the directions we got, I think, three years ago was to look at doing form-based codes. And so currently our code is the ITOD, the Interim Transit Oriented Development Zone. which has been in place for much longer than I think it was anticipated. And so the goal there was with this rewrite was to take a opportunity to do that form-based code for the TOD zone. And so that's what that section's referring to there.

So just a name change or?

the name change, but it's also a change in how that zone will function. It'll be more form-based as opposed to use-based like our current zoning is.

That's the one instance where that zone is completely rewritten. Like the rest of them, all the rest of the zones, it's just tweaks. It's a new zone because it was originally intended to be replaced. So they replaced it while they were just doing it.

I guess the overall question is, is there going to be like, and I'm going to read this all, but is there an easy, are we going to have a, this is what changed. It's not changed or the red line we can read like, How are we, you know what I mean?

Yeah, so in the staff report that should be part of your materials, it talks about, there's a section that says what has changed. So that's that zoning consolidation where they list out all the zones that we've not included in the new one that are gonna be put into the other existing zones. Zone organization, just getting those chapters and everything to align better with each other. standard conditional uses, definitions, transitional standards, incorporation of best practices, and then it gets into what hasn't changed. So that's kind of, again, what Brian's saying is that the goal of it was to fix the code with all the cross references. Hi.

I think a red line would be completely useless because I think it would essentially be the entire thing is red. And then there's an entire section of blue. But I think what you're asking council McKay, and I think Dustin, this is something that probably both legal and development services should work on as we work on coming back on the chunks. I think what you're asking from previous conversations you and I have had is that when we bring you a chunk, you want a list of every change in that chunk that could be considered a substantive change. Not general outlines and not just a statement of we reformatted it. Everything that changed what the law is, you want listed for that chunk. Yeah. Yeah.

You know, it sounds like some great work has gone into this for the last two years. And we're going to get 50 pages at a whack. Yeah. And it's incredibly laborious to figure out the implications of the changes. And so even if we need to slow this down to make sure that we give you the time to actually do that, I would imagine as you do this for other cities, this has got to be a big deal, right?

Yeah. And some changes are significantly more substantive than a lot of what was happening here. There's a cleanup, a massive cleanup.

Yes. And do you have this practice on how you educate the legislative group on how to look at that?

Yeah. So next steps after this goes through, we have this simply guide to using the code and how it's structured and how additional updates will happen and those things. That's that.

Right, but that doesn't describe what was actually changed. That talks about future stuff.

Yeah, but as was mentioned, we were tracking. These are the substantive things that were happening, and this one over here, these sections combined, these three tables came to one table. We have those. It did not attract change, because as I was saying, it helped be a whole thing.

okay so for each chunk he'll come to us with the substantive changes clearly in a document yeah i think yeah we'll we'll both we'll both work on that uh so one thing that i we just had a high level question on is there's two exhibit aids in the packet and i'm curious like which one is the functional one we should be reviewing in the the agenda pack up yeah and the agenda packet because there's like there's uh i think it's just a it's a duplicate of two sections but there's some differences like the parking standards visitor parking standards there's just a couple differences that i know what got uploaded to on base was two different versions of the code of exhibit a and there's and there are substantive differences between the two so i was just and again i know we're going to go through this but i just want to make sure we clean that up because i was really confused about which one to actually review um so that's one thing second plus one to what we've asked for like i think we really need just like a cheat sheet of like any real substantive change like i noticed the map of todd i know we're renaming it but also the map changed understanding what was the previous zone to the new proposed map just that level of detail so we can really understand what policy changes are happening i think will be really important And then lastly, this is great. I'm very excited about it. So despite this feedback, I think our code was too long, way too complex, very hard to understand. So I'm really, really excited about this effort and just want to make sure we do it right.

Thanks, Dustin. Any other questions for Dustin?

Well, I was just wondering, just like Becky, I've started to go through and read things, and I've got questions about definitions. And I think most of them are questions which are for the existing definitions in code that have been carried over. So what is the most efficient way for me to ask these questions? It's probably not in our next meeting.

This will mean all day meeting, so.

Yeah, I think... I think it would probably be helpful for both legal and development services staff to give as many questions ahead of time as possible. One thing that I, so for instance, when I reviewed the 50 chapters, the definition section was the last section chapter that I reviewed because I didn't want to, because I knew it was going to be, a bear and I also didn't want to review it until I've read everything else in it so one thing that I think Dustin and I probably ought to say that because I'm not sure that chunking it in in published order is the right way to chunk it so let me talk to Dustin about that and we'll come up with a plan and then when we when we kind of publish to you our plan of how we're going to approach it then I think it would be useful for you to send us as many questions in advance about that part.

Okay, so we can go to that.

Yeah.

In the meantime, I've got my note.

Okay. That'll be Adam.

No.

Okay. Thanks, Dustin. Thanks. All right. Brian, if you could move us to a closed meeting.

All right, we've got a few topics that have been proposed for a closed meeting. Those topics include deployment of security devices, reasonably imminent litigation, and character and competence of individuals, all of which are approved purposes for a closed meeting under the statute. So it would be appropriate to move to close the meeting this time.

We'll make a motion that we close in a second.

All right, we have a first and a second. Any discussion? Move to a closed meeting. So we'll think about Councillor Tobin.

Yes.

Councillor Whipple. Yes. Councillor Whitlock. Yes. Catrice McKay. Yes. Councillor Hutchinson. Yes. Councillor Loughlin. Yes. Councillor Carragher. Yes. All right, so we'll have a special council meeting and reconvene in the function room for a closed meeting.

Recording stopped.