City Council - Regular Meeting

Hey, everybody. We've got about a minute, but I'm gonna go ahead and start the recording so that our online folks can join the meeting.

Recording in progress.

Madam Chair, we're ready whenever you're ready to get started.

Hello everyone. Welcome to the Sandy City Council meeting. Today is Tuesday March 24. We have a couple of special recognitions on the agenda. We have a couple information items, consent calendar, and a meeting of the Alta Canyon Administrative Control Board tonight. We will be taking public comment, general citizen comment at 6PM tonight. We start our meetings with a prayer and a pledge. Who would like to volunteer to give prayer? Thank you so much. Appreciate it.

Our dearest heavenly father, we are so grateful to be gathered together this evening to discuss the issues facing Sandy City. Please bless us that we would all be able to have open minds and to come up with the best solutions. We thank thee for this wonderful opportunity that we have to serve. We say these things in the name of thy son, Jesus Christ. Amen. Amen.

Thank you. Will everyone rise and recite the pledge with me, please? Alright and introductions next. Dustin will you kick that off?

Of course, thank you madam chair. My name is Dustin Frado. I'm with the city council office. There are a couple other council staff members in the very back of the room Justin and Liz Theriault.

I'm Tracy, I'm counsel for the council.

Chris Edwards with the council office.

Brook Christensen District 1. Cindy Sharkey at large. Allison Stroud District 2. Brooke D'Souza at large.

Erin DeKeiser at large.

And we have two council members online. Ms. Hausman and Ms. Nickel will you guys introduce yourselves?

Sure. Marcy Hausman District 4.

And I know Ms. Nickel is there I think she's having a little bit of a problem she is definitely online we see her we'll move on in introductions. Madam Mayor.

Mayor Monica Zlotansky.

I'm Shane Pace, city administrator.

Jeff Robinson, I'm sitting in for Lynn Pace.

Alright, thank you everyone. We'll move right into the agenda and the first item is a special recognition that's going to our public works department. Mr. Brian Romrell, is Brian here? Are you gonna do this for us? Thank you. Come right down here.

Thank you very much. My name is Brian Romrell, and I represent the American Public Works Association Utah chapter. The American Public Works Association represents over 30,000 public works professionals throughout North America, and the Utah chapter has several 100 of those, about 600 at this point. I'm just gonna tell you a little bit, brag a little bit about the public works story. Public works is integral to what we all do. Right? It makes possible everyday life. Normal happens because of public works. Our vision is advancing quality of life for all, and we stand by that. We're proud of it.

Before presenting this award, I'd like to just take a moment to share the public works story because it's one that often operates behind the scenes but touches every resident every day. Public works professionals are responsible for the infrastructure that keeps the city running from the roads we drive to the water we drink to the equipment that responds during storms and emergencies. These systems don't happen by accident. They are planned. And they're built and maintained by dedicated professionals who ensure that our community is safe, reliable, and prepared.

And importantly, public works professionals are also the first responders plowing roads in the middle of the night, restoring critical services during emergencies, and helping keep communities safe when it matters most. Quite simply, public works is an indispensable part of what makes a city function. Tonight, we are proud to recognize an outstanding example of that work, a project in your city. On behalf of the APWA Utah chapter, it's my privilege to present this award to Sandy City for the phase two of its public works facility reconstruction project, the new fleet management we completed in 2025. This project represents a major milestone in Sandy City's long term commitment to modernizing its public works operations.

The new 22,000 square foot facility features seven pull through bays to efficiently service a fleet of more than 700 vehicles and equipment along with high bay work areas and a 10 ton crane to safely man maintain the city's largest and most critical assets. The project also demonstrates innovation and fiscal responsibility by utilizing tilt up construction. The city saved approximately $1,200,000 while delivering a durable high performance facility in just thirteen months. This success was made possible through strong collaboration with Forge Constructors and the project designer, Galloway. But beyond the technical achievements, this project tells a story of resilience as we're all familiar with.

Following the twenty seventeen fire, Sandy City took a thoughtful phased approach, rebuilding essential operations over time and ultimately delivering a facility that now fully supports its fleet team and the critical services they provide to the community every day. Projects like this don't just improve operations, they directly support public safety, emergency response, and quality of life for every resident. Congratulations to the Sandy City, its leadership, staff, and project partners for this outstanding achievement, and your continued investment in the community. This time, I'd like to invite Ryan Kump, the public works director at Sandy City, and others who I'll introduce as they come up, representatives from Galloway and from I I just drew a blank. Forge constructors.

Come on up. We would love to

Thank you.

I I failed to just read by name. Jonathan Fall is, with Galloway, and Chris Testy is the new fleets, he's the new Sandy Sea City fleets director. And then we have Greg Fix is with Forge Constructors.

Thank you for that presentation. We share your recognition of this group. We're of what they accomplished as well and we appreciate everybody's efforts on this. Thank you. Alright we've got another special recognition. They're endless tonight and our finance department gets to be recognized yet. Brian, come on down and tell us what's up.

Okay good evening council. Tonight we want to recognize our staff for their tremendous work for two awards that are they come from the Government finance officers association short acronym is GFOA and we want to introduce Nick Hill. Nick Hill's who is here representing the Utah section of GFOA. So I'll have him come up but before that I just wanted to recognize the staff that gets the credit for this. So we have there's two awards one on our ACFR which is in financial reporting.

So we want to recognize Glade Jardine if you can just give a wave to the staff, Shannon Ashby and Young King Finlinson and Matthew Sharp. And then the second award is for the budget presentation award. We want to recognize Brett Newman, Zach Whalen and Aaron Barry for their dedicated and hard work on all these. And then I'll turn this to Nick Hales. And following the award presentations, we also have our auditors here that I'll introduce.

Well, hello, council and others who are here, mayor and and staff. I'm grateful to be here for my annual visit. I think I've been here three or four consecutive years, and I'm I'm glad to see some familiar faces on council, who get to know me a little bit as well. I'm Nick Hales. I'm the deputy finance director for West Valley City, and I'm the immediate past president of the Utah Government Finance Officers Association.

I'm glad to be here with you to recognize your amazing finance team for the hard work that they put in. And I've got a couple of notes that I wanted to refer to. First, for the, it's it's called the certificate of achievement for excellence in financial reporting, which applies to your act for your annual comprehensive financial report. This is Sandy City's thirty eighth consecutive award, if I did my math right, by adding one to last year's report. And which which is an amazing string of of transparency and and good financial reporting for your team.

I wanted to read the the press release from GFOA that came out. It's just a a short paragraph and a half. It says the Government Finance Officers Association of the United States and Canada, GFOA, has awarded the certificate of achievement for excellence in financial reporting to Sandy City for its annual comprehensive financial report for the fiscal year ended 06/30/2024. The report has been judged by an impartial panel to meet the high standards of the program, which includes demonstrating a constructive spirit of full disclosure to clearly communicate its financial story and motivate potential users and user groups to read the report. The certificate of achievement is the highest form of recognition in the area of governmental accounting and financial reporting, and its attainment represents a significant accomplishment by a government and its management.

And I would add, achieving that for thirty eight consecutive years means that's even better for you guys. So congratulations on that one. I also wanted to, recognize your team for the distinguished budget presentation award. And after I'm done with a little bit of reading on that one, I will hand both of these amazing plaques to Brian, and we can do whatever pictures that your team would like. But, my understanding is that this represents the twenty second consecutive distinguished budget presentation award for Sandy City.

This is a program that's a little newer. It was established in the eighties to prepare documents focused on high quality transparency and goals and goal setting and like that. I'll read a little bit of this one as well. The Government Finance Officers Association is pleased to announce that Sandy City, Utah received GFOA's distinguished budget presentation award for its budget. The award represents a significant achievement by the entity.

It reflects the commitment of the governing body and staff to meeting the highest principles of governmental budgeting. In order to receive the budget award, the entity had to satisfy nationally recognized guidelines for effective These guidelines are designed to assess how well an entity's budget serves as a policy document, a financial plan, an operations guide and a communications device. Budgets budget documents must be rated as proficient in all four of those categories and in the 14 mandatory criteria within those categories to receive the award. So high praise again to your finance team, to Sandy City for excellence that has been created for financial reporting and transparency. And congratulations to to Brian and his team and to city council.

I appreciate being able to come here to present this award to you guys tonight. Thank you.

Thank you, Nick.

And Brian will hand you these. So counsel, this one is the ACFR award, the financial excellence one. There's only three little devices on here because the rest are on prior plaques that so this is now the overflow. So congrats on that one. And the budget award also looks very similar. So let's bring these over. Who needs the budget one, Brian?

I can't grab you right there.

Thank you Nick and congratulations Brian to you and your team.

Yeah thank you.

We appreciate you too.

Thank you. Then the next part of this agenda item is to have our annual report, external financial report presented. So we have here tonight with us David Peden who is a partner with Ida Bailey. Ida Bailey is the firm that did our audit and then we also have Kevin Smith that was a manager supervisor on the audit. And so I'd like to turn the time over to David Peden.

Good evening council. We are pleased to be with you and really appreciate the opportunity to work with the city, work with Brian and and his team. I am David Peden. I am the audit partner, so I oversee the audit of the city. And then we've also have Kevin Smith here who managed the engagement and he does, you know, all the real work. So appreciate him being here. We also similar to you, you've got a great team backing up Brian. We've got a great team of people who aren't here tonight, but they also, you know, they talk to me. And sometimes you get on a job and you think, oh, I don't wanna do that again. But multiple times they've said, yeah, we definitely wanna be back on Sandy City.

So really appreciate your team. We'll start. Kevin's gonna walk through our audit report and opinion and our state compliance report, and then I will, finish up just talking about internal controls and, some required communications that we communicate to you. So, Kevin, take it away.

Thank you, David. At first, I would like to start off by thanking the accounting team here at Sandy City for all their hard work. We know they were stretched really thin this year going through an audit and an accounting software implementation and maybe even just being a little short staffed. So we really appreciate all the all the hard work and effort that they went through to to provide us just quality information to to audit. We ended up starting the audit a little bit later than normal which is kinda why we are presenting, later, than normal but that was just to give them enough time to be ready to, give us quality information to audit.

The first, the report that I'm gonna go over briefly is the independent auditors report on the financial statements. We were able to, through our testing, have enough information to, note that you, have a clean audit opinion and that's the audit opinion that you want to get. This is the audit opinion you've gotten in the past and that you you want to get. The, the wording of the of the opinion is very similar to the prior year. There's just one portion that I would point out that's a little bit different.

It's an emphasis of matter paragraph that talks about a correction of of an error from the prior year, financials. David will discuss briefly later, but I would just point out that there's an extra paragraph in the audit opinion that points to the note in the financial statements, where this is discussed. But overall, the audit was a clean opinion. The other, report that I'm gonna go over briefly is the independent auditor's report on compliance and report on internal control over compliance, as required by the state compliance audit guide. So this based on our procedures performed, based on, the requirements set forth by the state compliance audit guide, we noted that there was no material noncompliance in, in the city and we're able to provide a clean opinion on compliance.

We did note one item so the the report is very similar to the prior year. One item to point out in the other matters paragraph is that we did note an immaterial instance of noncompliance related to budgeting, where one of the funds the expenditures for one of the funds was, slightly over the budgeted amount. It was about $5,000. So, David will also be touching on that one later. And that's all for me. So I'll turn the time

back over to David.

Alright. So just a couple of things. I'm gonna jump over. So we a couple of things. Number one, you know, we've got our reports here, this little stack right here, and then we have this giant stack. This giant stack is what your your city group put together. This is all the financial records that accumulate into this report. So again, we're giving a small piece of this, but a ton of work to accumulate all the information that is required by government auditing standards and by GASB. In terms of our communication, so we have a letter. It's called a two sixty letter.

It's really just, hey, what are the things that we're required to communicate to you? And with all of these things, I'm gonna just focus on the things that I think are significant. But if in your review you've got questions, we certainly are happy to answer any questions as well. So this is called the the two sixty report, and most of it is kinda standard boilerplate language that we have to talk about. So I'm gonna point out just a couple of things that were more significant.

Number one is there was a new accounting standard this year called GASB one zero one, and you did implement standard. Your team did a good job evaluating, analyzing how that would impact the city. And ultimately, the the standard itself just took a look at what you accrue for potential potential leaves that your employees may take, you know, vacation time, short term medical leave, those types of things, and modernized that standard. The impact overall was not that significant. And because of that, there was some additional liability that the city now recognizes based on the change in standard, which is about $400,000 of additional liability related to your short term medical leave.

The standard would typically you would go back and and if it's material, you would restate the prior year to show that as if you had always had that liability. That amount isn't material to the financial statements, so the city elected to to just show that in the current period and not restate the prior period, which one saves time and and is appropriate to do. And so you will see in our communication letter, we are required to communicate what we call past adjustments or adjustments that we identified that the city for one reason or another elected not to make. And that's one of those items that was identified. And again, so not not something, you know, they were aware of it and it was just an election to make the financial reporting easier.

And then in terms of significant estimates, the the most significant estimate for you is your net pension liability. You'll notice if you look at the financial statements each year that will swing significantly depending on how the market did in a given year and that's pretty typical. But obviously that has a big impact and is not a known amount of what those ultimately will be paid out for. The only other thing so again Kevin mentioned well let's on the the very last couple pages there's the schedule of audit adjustments. So again, we didn't have a lot of audit adjustments, but we did have just a few adjustments.

And I'll kind of point out the couple things that were significant, which was one, with your workday transition, you have a new software that is under the the accounting standards. You're required to capitalize that as an asset, and then you amortize it over the period that you're gonna use the software. The city was aware that that would be coming on as you went live, I believe July 1. But with accounting rules, because the contract was signed before year end, the liability actually needed to be just shown a little bit earlier. So again, the accounting team was aware of it.

It just was a matter of showing that right now. With that liability, there's a corresponding asset, because you have the ability to use that system. So there's no net income impact or net, impact to fund balance, but that was just one adjustment that that we had. And then the second one that I'll point out, was just related to Kevin had mentioned a restatement of the financial statements, and this was related to the general fund. You moved some activity over to the benefit to an internal service fund this year.

And as you evaluated some some of the benefits, you determined that there were some liabilities that had been placed on actually quite a few years ago and didn't reconcile out and were not true liabilities to the city. And so those just needed to be removed. And so we the city restated just that opening fund balance to show that you actually had more fund balance available for those liabilities that weren't true liabilities that need to be paid out. And again, that was an issue I believe that went back to 2015. So just the team was cleaning that up.

So that was just the one item on the restatement. And then just related to that, anytime we have any kind of audit adjustment, we evaluate if there's any kind of deficiency related to that. So we did identify one deficiency in internal control related to those audit adjustments that we we talked about. I think we talked with your team and I think they're aware of, you know, essentially what went wrong and how to make sure to to catch that next year. So feel good about, you know, their understanding.

And I think they are responsive and trying to do the right thing, which is why you just saw that award for from the GFOA is, you know, they're constantly working to make sure that you've got good controls, good processes, good systems in place. And then Kevin mentioned that the state compliance issue, obviously, a very small overage just on one of the funds. But all of your funds almost are required to stay on budget. So I wouldn't consider that a a significant or pervasive issue. With that, any questions on the financial statements, the report, or anything else that you saw.

Council members, any questions for the auditors? I'm seeing a lot of heads shaking. Thank you for a really complete report. Appreciate all the detail.

Awesome.

I think that's it for us.

Thank you so much. Appreciate it.

Thank you. You done too, Brian? We're Okay. Moving Alright. Alright. Next item on the agenda, that would be Mayor Zoltansky recommending advice and consent of Jeff Nyber as Sandy City Police Chief.

Thank you madam chair. Thank you council. Good evening members of the city council, Sandy residents, business partners, Sandy employees, members of the Sandy Police Department. It's my privilege tonight to present the city council for advice and consent, the nomination of Jeff Nyber to serve as our next chief of police for Sandy City. Before I begin to describe the reasons for the nomination I want to take a moment to first thank and acknowledge and recognize the outstanding men and women of the Sandy Police Department.

Your faithful adherence to the department's core values of integrity commitment service and excellence in police services is the reason that our city is safe and secure. And I especially want to thank Interim Chief John Arnold for his service during this important period of transition over the last several months. Chief Arnold stepped in when the department needed steady leadership and continuity, and I'm very grateful for his willingness to serve and support his department during this time. Along with his command staff, deputy chief Corey Hess, captain Ethan Alexander, and Captain Curtis Robinson, as well as the lieutenant sergeants and supervisors. And then I must thank the entire police personnel, our outstanding officers, staff for your dedication and outstanding police work solving and preventing crime under interim chief Arnold's leadership.

Chief Arnold will continue to serve in his current role until the new chief is approved. So to you, police department, our residents, neighbors, everyone watching tonight, it's safe to say that the selection of this position as police chief is the most important staffing decision we can make together as a city. And it's one that I've approached with great care. I've taken the time to consider internal candidates and also others outside the organization. And I recruited Jeff Nyber when I learned of his availability.

Many of you might know him in his role as public information officer for the Utah Highway Patrol. And I've been aware of his outstanding reputation in law enforcement from my firsthand experience working with him. We won't count the years, but it's been many years ago when I served as Sandy City prosecutor. Jeff was often a witness for DUI or traffic enforcement that I was prosecuting on behalf of city injustice court. And then as mayor, we came to work together again in 2023 to develop Canyon Traffic Solutions for Little Cottonwood Canyon.

However, in recent weeks as I began to explore the possibility of Jeff serving in this important leadership role in the city, I've spent time with him and his wife, Jenny to explore their interest and willingness and enthusiasm and excitement for this opportunity. I along with my administrative leadership team have met with him for many lengthy discussions. We've met with them both as a team. I personally have conducted reference checks along with extensive the extensive law enforcement background check such a position requires. He comes with outstanding references and recommendations from colleagues and leaders across the span of his distinguished career.

So with that little introduction, Jeff, I'd like you to take a minute at the podium and then I'm going to describe a little bit of his experience and then I've invited Jeff to give a little introduction himself and take questions from the council. Is that all right? Yes. Okay. So Jeff Niebuhr, I'll call him Chief Niebuhr because his last position with the highway patrol was assistant and major.

So chief Nyber was selected for this nomination based on his outstanding career in policing and a proven record of leadership. He brings more than twenty five years of experience with the highway highway patrol where he has served in a wide range of roles that have prepared him exceptionally well for this critical leadership position. Most recently he has served as assistant chief and major overseeing public safety operations including traffic enforcement, aero bureau operations, like that's helicopter deployment. Who knows, maybe we might need a helicopter in Sandy one day. He'd be the right guy to let us know.

Also field operations and other specialties across Northern Utah. In that role as assistant chief and major, he supervised more than 325 sworn and civilian sworn officers and civilian personnel across multiple regions and specialized units, including special operations, SWAT, dive team, and public order. He also played a key role in planning and executing security strategies for large scale public events, coordinating closely with state, county, and local partners. In addition to his executive leadership responsibilities, Chief Nyber has a strong foundation in frontline policing. Over the course of his career he has served as a trooper starting with traffic enforcement, criminal investigations, domestic violence cases, shootings, canine operations, drug interdictions, and seizures to name just a few areas of focus.

And as he advanced in his career he served as public information officer, sergeant, section commander for Salt Lake County and bureau chief captain until serving in his most recent position with UHP as assistant chief major. He has developed expertise in critical areas such as pursuit policy use of force decision making, and organizational leadership. He's also served as a key legislative liaison for the highway patrol. Importantly Chief Nybara also played a key role in operation Rio Grande and has experience working with the unsheltered community in the implementation of state policy an area that requires both enforcement expertise and sensitivity and on areas of panhandling encampments and thoughtful coordination with social services and community partners. Chief Niebuhr holds a master of criminal justice administration is a graduate of the FBI National Academy and is a nationally recognized contributor within the International Association of Chiefs of Police.

When I learned that Chief Nyberg had recently retired from the highway patrol at the end of last year and was available, I reached out to meet with him to discuss the possibility of the opportunity in Sandy. Over the course of the last several weeks and many conversations it became clear that his experience, leadership philosophy, and commitment to public service aligned strongly with that with that which is established here in Sandy. He is aligned strongly with the values and the expectations of excellence that we have for our Sandy Police Department. I personally have coordinated and conducted extensive reference checks and the feedback has been overwhelmingly enthusiastic and positive. Colleagues and partners from across law enforcement throughout the state have consistently described him as an excellent choice for chief.

And I also reached out to his direct reports who also had glowing remarks. They describe him as someone whose entire career has prepared him for this moment in this role in Sandy. They highlighted his education and training, his strong communication skills, his well established relationships across many agencies throughout the state, and his ability to collaborate and build effective an effective chain of command. He is widely respected for his leadership and professionalism. Now Chief Nyber and I have talked extensively he understands that joining this organization as an outside someone with an outside perspective.

He has impressed me with his commitment to policing and he has impressed me with the sensitivity and respect for what has been created here in Sandy already. With his high caliber of professionalism matched with what is already existing in Sandy today, he offers a vision for the next era era of policing in Sandy and that vision is grounded in strengthening community safety through strong partnerships and strong relationships. That's relationships officers themselves, between our officers and our residents, and between our department and city leadership. Chief Nyber has been very clear that he is not looking to come on board to overhaul the Sandy Police Department but rather to listen to learn and build on the strong foundation that is already in existence. And he is intending to rely heavily in his transition on the expertise and the experience within the department while focusing on the core policing priorities such as training readiness and policy adherence.

At the same time Chief Neiber is committed to strengthening connections with our residents through clear and consistent communication and to thoughtfully advancing tools and practices that enhance officer safety and improve our ability to prevent and solve crime, including modernizing our technology, software, and equipment. Based on his experience, his character, his reputation, and the confidence expressed by those who worked closely with him, I and my administrative leadership team wholeheartedly recommend Jeff Nyber for your approval as the Sandy City Chief of Police. And I've asked Chief Nyber now to offer some opening introduction and then turn it over to you counsel for questions. Thank you, chief Neiber.

Thank you, mayor. City council members, thank you for the opportunity to be with you here tonight. I wish I had an award to give, but I don't. That's so cool to see that at the beginning of city council. And I've also prepared just some some quick comments.

I know your agenda tonight is super long, and I don't want to ramble. And I just wanna stay on point, so thank you for that. Before I begin, I would like to recognize the two officers involved in the shooting this past Sunday, this afternoon. Incidents like that serve as a sober sobering reminder of how dangerous this profession truly is and how quickly a routine situation can come become life threatening. It reinforces for all of us the importance of vigilance, preparation, and ensuring our officers have the training, equipment, and support they need to go home safely to their families every night.

My thoughts are with those officers and everyone affected by by that incident. I also wanna express my sincere appreciation for the time each of you spent with me during this process. I was genuinely enjoyed those conversations. We we talked about some very specific difficult topics, but at the same time, I think we were able to laugh and relax and have a good time at the same time. So I very, very much appreciate that.

What stood out to me was your passion for the city of Sandy, your commitment to public safety, and your desire to do what was right for the community. That was very impressive to me. That left a strong impression on me, and it's one of the reasons I'm so honored to be sitting here today. I come before you humbled to be nominated as your next chief of police. I'm truly grateful for the opportunity to continue serving in a profession I care deeply about. Law enforcement has been more than a career for me. It's been a calling. This nomination is not something I take lightly. I fully understand that this role carries tremendous responsibility, not just to lead an organization, but to serve a community, serve its officers and staff, and uphold the trust placed in the badge. Badge.

Over the course of the career of my career, I've had the opportunity to serve a variety of leadership roles, gaining experience in operations, administration, organizational development. I've worked through critical incidents, led teams through complex challenges, and been part of building strategies that improve both officer performance and community outcomes. Those experiences have shaped my leadership philosophy philosophy, one that is grounded in accountability, transparency, and taking care of people. If selected, my goal is to lead in a way that reflects both the values of this council and the expectations of the Sandy community. First and foremost, I believe in people first approach to leadership.

That starts within the department. Our officers and our professional staff are our greatest asset. When they feel supported, when they're trained and valued, they perform at a higher level and serve the community the community more efficiently and effectively. I'm committed to fostering a culture that emphasizes professionalism, wellness, and a continuous development because taking care of our people ultimately translates into better services for our residents. At the same time, I believe strongly in community centered or proactive policing.

Public trust is essential in this profession, and it must be earned and maintained every day. That means being visible, being accessible, and being willing to listen. It means building relationships before there is a crisis, not after. My commitment would be to ensure that the Sandy City Police Department continues to strengthen those connections and remains a trusted president's presence in the community. I also bring a strategic and thoughtful approach to leadership.

I believe in making decisions that are informed by data, guided by experience, and aligned with long term goals, not just short term reactions. That includes a strong focus on training, risk management, and accountability. My responsibility as chief would be to ensure the department is not only effective today but well positioned for the future. I also recognize that coming into an organization from the outside requires a deliberate and respectful approach. I am not coming in with a prepackaged agenda.

I am coming in with a process. That process begins with listening, meeting with members of the department at every level, understanding the culture, identifying strengths, and learning where improvements can be made. From there, it's about building on what we what is already working well and making thoughtful, intentional decisions that move the organization forward. I I I'll I'll tell you right now, there will never ever be another Greg Severson. I've known Greg for several years, and he is an amazing individual.

But I have an incredible staff or would have an incredible staff, Corey Hess, John Arnold, Ethan Curtis. I had all the opportunity to meet with them, just a little bit and talk with them, and they are amazing individuals as well as the officers when I had the opportunity to kinda walk through the PD a little bit. Ultimately, my goal is simple, to earn your trust, to earn the trust of the men and women of the department, and to earn the trust of the community. I'm committed to leading with integrity, being transparent in my decision making, and working collaboratively with each of you. I would welcome the opportunity to con continue getting to know you to better understand your vision for Sandy and to ensure that the police department aligns with and supports that vision.

Thank you again for your time, for your trust in this process, and for your continued dedication to the city. Madam chair, all yours.

Thank you, chief. Council members, now is our chance to ask questions. Who has questions? Mister DeKeiser.

Well, thank you madam chair and thank you mister Nyber for your interest in position and being here tonight as a council member. It's a rare opportunity to interview a police chief. So I appreciate your willingness to to join me for lunch and have the discussion. We had a very candid and open conversation that was pretty insightful. And I told you I wouldn't ask you about anything we talk we didn't talk And that that was kind of broad.

So I've done some reflection on some things. I just wanna tease out, you know, some better understanding on how you plan to lead in the future of our community because as the mayor said, this is one of the most important decisions that we can make as a city. So first, can you give us an example of a time when you faced a conflict within your department? How you addressed it and what the outcome was?

Yeah. There was there have been several several challenges. I think leadership is leadership. Right? At any point, there's always gonna be challenges. Right? And there's gonna be people that disagree with you. There's been things that I have implemented that people haven't haven't been popular with with a few people. You know, there was some SWAT discussions that we had on on kind of our tactics and the way we were doing things. Didn't particularly sit too well with with some of the SWAT members.

Right? But with that being said, I I believe in being as I mentioned previously, I believe in being open and sitting down and having conversations. Here's my concerns. What can we do maybe to rectify those? Am I not understanding the whole picture? Is there a reason you're doing it this way? Following following some of those instances and following some of those discussions, those that that chain of open communication, we were able to come to a resolution. I understood better what they were trying to accomplish, and they also understood from a supervisory level what I was trying to accomplish. And we were able to meet in the middle and make some changes and kind of focus on that way. That's one of them.

Again, just with leadership, challenges are always gonna come up. And I just wanna reemphasize that I'm not my I I don't see my leadership style as my way or the highway. K? I wanna hear concerns. I wanna hear challenges because you know what? I don't know everything, and I'm not perfect. Right? And I want to hear those and I would take that same model and that same challenge here at Sandy City. Again, I think I kind of expressed real briefly that my first point of business is to sit down and listen. Right?

And meet with the officers, meet with the animal control officers, meet with the evidence staff, meet with record staff. Okay. What are we doing good? What are we struggling with? What are our challenges? Where can we get better? In all honesty, they're the experts. Right? And I need to listen to that, and I need to take that into consideration. And then hopefully down the road, as we meet as a command staff and meet with everybody and have those discussions and open meetings and open discussion, we can make positive change on those challenges.

Thank you. Maybe in this next one you can be a little bit more specific. A lot of what you've said segues into what my next question is. And I think it's really important. You mentioned having self awareness like am I not fully understanding the situation or there's been different leadership challenges things like that. So can you share an example of when you recognized yourself or maybe you were informed by a colleague that you needed to adjust your leadership approach?

Sure. I'm first I'll be the first to say I'm not perfect. Ask my wife. I say that a lot. I'm perfect not and I'm always looking to improve. But I think one of my strengths is knowing that I do need to improve. Right? And it's not below me to apologize to people. And I have apologized to people and said, you know what? Sorry for either acting this way or maybe this came up this didn't come across the way I thought it would be.

Right? And I've had to apologize to people in the past, but I think that's a strength and certainly not a weakness. Yeah. You know, you know, working working with my team over the highway patrol, and I'd be the first to tell them that, that I'm not perfect. But I will say that I've always had an open door policy, and if there's something that's bothering you, you need to come talk to me about it. And you need to come walk in my office or call me or text me. Right? And we can go get a drink at the at a gas station and we can talk it. I've done I talk about it. I've done that many times to try to better understand somebody's position and apologize if I need to.

Finally, how do you plan to continue your personal development as a leader?

You know what? Leadership never stops. It's always a learning process and it's always continuing education if you will. I've had a lot of leadership training that's benefited me a great deal. I've been to the FBI National Academy.

I've been to Police Staff and Command, FBI College. Got my master's degree. One of one of the things that my old bosses told me is that you always have to continue your your leadership involvement and learning. I back back in our department, my my old department, we read a lot of leadership books and that's where I kind of gained a lot of my kind of instruction right after going through all of this other training that I've been through. So I continually try to maybe it's listening to a podcast, maybe it's reading about a good book I heard about leadership, all the above.

There's always training. There's always training going on that we need to be a part of and that I would continue to be a part of. Relationships in the Valley is really huge as far as leadership. Right? There are a lot of well tenured chiefs throughout the Valley. In fact, some of them are very close friends. Reaching out to them, talking to them, hey, in this situation, what worked? What didn't work? You know, how can we overcome some of these challenges. So I guess what I'm trying to say is that leadership is always ongoing. I don't care how much training you have. I don't care how much education you have. You always gotta gotta train and improve your leadership style as well as, you know, reading a book or going to a class.

Great. Thank you. That's all I have for now, madam chair.

Thank you. Miss Stroud? Thank you, madam Chair.

A couple of these are some questions that we talked about and then I came up with a couple others. But you know a little bit capitalizing on what Mr. Kaiser was saying. So highway has a unique mission and policing strategy. You know, what have you done to prepare yourself to run a city police department? You you know, and and you've got a, you know, very strong resume here and you just talked about some of the things that you've done. But those I think were done in the in the scope of looking at it for highway. What have you done to prepare for a city police department?

Well, I'm first going to say council member Stroud that the highway is not as different as you think it is. I know a lot of people talk and talk about Utah DPS and talk about the Utah Highway Patrol. And and the idea that this is out there is that all I do is handle crashes and write tickets for signal violations. Right? Which is part of our mission, part of our traffic safety mission. Right? But we do so much more. We've talked about domestic violence, for example. That's a perfect example, actually. Is it different in the city?

Yeah, to a certain extent. Domestic violence here in the city is in a home. Right? And there's some dangers there that you have to deal with and be ready for and be well trained and deescalate. But a lot of those situations are the same out on the road. We have a lot of domestic violence and we respond to several a day, right, of cohabitants arguing and maybe even getting a little bit physical. And those same things apply. Right? You still have to de escalate. It's still a very dangerous situation with a lot of emotion in those situations.

So the point I'm trying to get at is we're a lot the same. Different, yes, in some aspects. But with domestic violence, for example, Utah DPS and Utah Highway Patrol, we were very instrumental in creating the LAP program for domestic violence. Granted, it was absolutely 100% the initiative of Lieutenant Governor Henderson. However, we consulted and gave feedback.

And this is kind of what we would recommend and kind of work through that. So we're kind of working those same issues from a state level as well. Again, I'm not going to say they're fully the same. SWAT team operations, another good example. Same fundamentals, same policing fundamentals, right?

Risk matrix, deconfliction, training, having the correct number, amount of people, search warrants, it's all the same. So I think what I'm trying to get at is all that experience at Utah DPS is very, very similar to this. And as I mentioned previously, I have experts that know Sandy, that know Sandy on a neighborhood level. I mentioned Corey Hess and John Arnold and Curtis and Ethan. And then on top of that, the officers that work the beat every day and work this community every day. So that's going to be a huge advantage. Is there going to be a learning curve? Of course. I need to get to know that. And I'll be the first to admit it.

But I know people have come in from the outside to other law enforcement agencies and been successful. Had a really good productive conversation with Chief Red from Salt Lake City who is also a fellow DPS guy. Also talked to Ken Wallentine, you know, and my question to them was, hey, what works good? What doesn't work good? What struggles did you have? You know, what do we need to be prepared for? So I've really done my homework on this and really given it a lot of thought. I understand why you're asking that question because I'd ask the same thing. But I think I'm uniquely prepared to do that with the help of my staff and with the help of these heroes that are online, these police officers.

Okay. You know and I guess a little more of an extension to that. So what would you say you're maybe your top two strongest skills and attributes that do qualify you for the city chief spot? The top two. Just give me two. You gave me a lot

there, but what would

be your top two?

I would say open minded. Again, open to conversation, open to a policy. I think that's my best. But on the flip side, I also hold my staff accountable to policy, to state law, make sure we'll we are following the rules. Those are probably my top two.

And I know this is one that we talked about as well. Know, change can be difficult. Know, it's just it's the unknown. How do you plan to earn the trust of the officers and civilian employees of the department?

Like I mentioned, I completely understand why that question gets asked and completely completely because I again I put myself in their shoes. I would ask the same thing. But I I I think what I'm doing initially in the first thirty to sixty days is sitting down and getting to know everybody. Trust takes time and I know I have to earn that especially at the ground level and I plan on doing that and that involves being there, being visible, being available, being open to having critical conversations and challenging conversations, right? Whether that be internally or about things happening in the community.

That's what I plan on doing to gain the trust of the officers in the field. So being available, being willing to have difficult conversations, being willing to hear, hey, Jeff, I don't think you're on the right track on this one. And really absorbing that and taking in, Okay, why do you feel like we're not on the right track on that one and hearing the other side? So that's how I plan to do it and be there on these shootings, on these critical incidents. I need to be there as a police chief. I need to be supporting the officers in what they're doing because again like I said they're our greatest asset. But I am going to say that that takes time right? That takes time and I need to prove myself and I understand that.

Okay. And you know just talking about employees you know have you have you had a chance to meet with the union? And if so, what was your biggest takeaway?

I have not. Last week was quite a roller coaster. I was trying to get a hold of you guys and have conversations with you guys. But what I did do is Shane Pace took me down to the PD while Emera was busy. And I got to spend some time with interim chief Arnold as well as went to lunch with Corey Hess and talked about some historical things with Sandy City, kind of things to expect.

That was very, very beneficial in talking to those two. Again, I was down in the police administrative office just kind of talking to Ethan and Curtis a little bit about who they are. And then I got the awesome opportunity to rock walk around the PD and got to spend some time in the detective's office talking to them, shaking hands, meeting them. One of them was totally in diving and he said, hey, you were on the search and rescue dive team so we talked about diving for ten minutes, you know. And I met Amanda who's over our Explorer program.

What a great program and it was awesome to hear her talk about her pride for that program and whatnot. And we went over and talked to the evidence techs, they are an absolute hoot. Went and talked to somebody in the crime lab. Went and talked to our records staff. And really honestly, Councilmember Stroud, we've got some incredible people. And it was awesome to get to know them just a little bit better. To answer your question, definitely on my agenda and my calendar to do so. I'm just kind of going through the roller coaster right now. But I will get there.

There's a lot of people to talk to. I understand. I was just looking at some of them. What is your three, five, seven year strategic plan for the department? So specifically recruitment, training, and retention.

Yeah. So no, another another great question. I come from an agency that builds a five year plan, and that's updated every year. So I'm very familiar with those. And, again, I I I still need to sit down with staff and kinda talk to them and get the direction. Where should we go with this? Where should we not go with this? And have that discussion. But I'm really into three particular pillars. And that sitting kind of picture a house. Right? The base of the house, the foundation of the house is the PE's culture. Right? And then that house has three pillars, three the pillars analogy. One of those is internal performance, external service, and the third is personal preparation.

And what sits on top of that is competent, professional, and capable police officers. Right? So I would focus on those three goals in my five year plan, internal performance. How are we enforcing? With what data are we enforcing? We only have so many officers. Right? We can't be everywhere at once. And I'm certainly can't come before the the city council and ask for 60 officers. Right? So we have to be strategic in the way we do our enforcement. What are the hot spot areas? What what kind of DDACS principles are we using, in order to get there? External service, what does our proactive policing look like? How are we connecting with our community?

How are we helping them and supporting them? And lastly, personal preparation. If we're going to prepare for five years down the road in the future of this organization, what are our officers, what are our sergeants, what are our lieutenants, what are they doing personally to prepare themselves to be in leadership positions? Are they going to school? Are they taking leadership classes? Are they on the list to go to the FBI NA? You know, different things of that nature. So those are kind of my three pillars. Again, I want be careful with that because I also want to seek input from the field as well as the command staff on which direction we go in the next five years. Right? But that's that's kind of my leadership style to a tee and kind of my strategic plan for the next five years.

Okay. And speaking of kind of command staff, you've got some strong minded people in your command staff who have decisions and experience within the department, within Sandy, who've been here their entire career. What are gonna do when you wanna make a change or adjustment and they disagree with you?

Yeah. So so me and Corey had that exact same decision at lunch or discussion at lunch. He says, hey, I just tell you how I what I think. Right? But rather than take it negatively, think it's a positive thing. You know, I I want to hear what what Corey has to say. I want to hear what John has to say. And in this initial six months or so, you know, I need to listen to them, and I will listen to them because they have the expertise. Right? And of course, I mean, I'm gonna put in my 2¢ too.

I've been very clear that I'm not a yes man either. I'll share with you my feelings, right, and the direction I think we should go. But my hope is in those difficult conversations and those challenging conversations, we can still respect each other. We can still forgive each other after it's all over. And that we can find a happy medium and move forward and move the department forward. So I think that's kind of the best explanation of what I think it should turn out to be.

Okay. I think the last one that I have and I was actually I was surprised when I reflected back on our conversation that I did not ask you this. But what is your vision for the department? I mean that's I and as I was thinking about them going, oh my gosh, you know this one seems so like it would be the first question and I had to think back of what my vision for the department is. And you know mine is to be the best, to be the best trained, to be the best equipped, to be to have the best service, the best efficiency, to be the best paid. One way we can achieve that is by seeking out technology, vetting it, embracing it. What are your feelings on that and what is your vision?

Well, I I think you explained it the best. Right? That's that's what's what we wanna be. I've had some conversations with the mayor, a little bit about, some of the history, and we were talking about the Elizabeth Smart resolution and kind of what happened there. And that was I was Sandy City officers that did that, that paid attention, and knew to ask the right questions and how to ask them.

And and and that's what I want. My vision for the department is to have, again, competent, confident, and professional police officers. Those three things. That's what I want. And I want people, not only laterals, but I want everybody to be at want to come work at Sandy City because it's a great place to work, because they feel like they have some autonomy, because they feel like they're listened to, because they feel like they're recognized for the good work that they do. That's that's that's what I want to have happen.

Appreciate it and and especially going over some of the questions that we already had but then also giving me off the cuff some of the other responses so.

Yeah. Thank you.

That's what I have right now madam

chair. Miss Christensen.

Hello. Haven't gotten a chance to meet yet. I'm excited to do that this week. Most of my questions have been asked. The only one that hasn't is Sandy has a very high history and expectation of consistently being accessible and community focused to our residents. And I just want to kind of ask you how you see that continuing forward and how we're going to maintain that really high standard?

Great question. Again, I'm gonna I'm gonna say I don't know what I don't know. And in conversations that I've had with deputy chief Hess, there's there's a lot of ideas within the the Sandy City Police Department on how to tackle that. And I would have I would, of course, listen to that. So I just kinda wanna kinda state that pre my comments.

But one of one of the reasons or something that I feel that I was missing at the state level, and and I've mentioned this to to most of you, was a connection to a community. We did some pretty awesome things at the state. Don't get me wrong. You know, you you bring a helicopter and people walk around from all sorts of neighborhoods and come talk to you and stuff like that. We've done crash presentations and talked about seat belts and taught driver's license or driver's ed courses, talked about the importance of not drinking and driving and stuff like that.

But I've and those were all great and fantastic, and they do a good job at it. But I've never I've never felt like I've been missing that connection with the community that I wanna be able to walk down the street in historic Sandy and have somebody poke their head out and say, hey, Jeff. How you doing? You know? Hey, Bob. How are you? You know? And have that community connection. And in order to do that, and this is by no way critical or anything because, again, I don't know what I don't know, But we have to get out and walk the streets. We have to get out there and be visible.

Right? It's easy. I've been a cop for twenty five years and and it's awesome to go find a little part a little parking spot in the corner of an LDS church or a business and start pounding out reports. Right? And that's an important part of what we do. However, we need to make an effort to get out and walk the streets and be visible and talk to our community. So again, I don't know what I don't know, but that would be kind of my model in getting out there and going walking the streets of historic Sandy and popping my head into some businesses. Hey, how's it going? My name's so and so. What challenges do you have? Right? And kind of creating that connection. I think it's one thing to and and this is super important to to invite them to you, but you also have to go out and and and and get there.

Thank you. And I have to say, you are my third police chief that I've done advice and consent on and you are the least nervous of all three so far. Oh, really? So good job.

It doesn't feel like it but thank you.

Alright. Miss Hausman.

Thank you, madam chair. I just really quickly wanna make sure you're all able to hear me.

Yes. Perfect.

Thank you. So good for the opportunity or grateful for the opportunity here and grateful that we were able to connect via phone even though we've not yet you know met in person but I know that's coming. Honestly, my questions also have been asked. So I'm going to sort of reframe one of my questions and ask to elaborate a little bit further. But first, a little preface. So I just wrote published kind of this essay today in fact about leadership. I love leadership. I mentioned that during our conversation. I think about it. I write about it.

I coach it etcetera. But this essay was really about an experience I had at Hale Center Theatre on Saturday. So the production of Hunchback of Notre Dame which was phenomenal but that's not the focus of my question. What happened at the end of the show I've never seen happen and I've been to countless productions. The the cast bowed together and that was it. Typically, when when you're at a at a show, when you experience curtain call, there's this kind of sequence of bows. And it starts with the ensemble. And then you've got your supporting characters. And then your leads and, like, kind of then the, like, the main lead. That did not happen.

The group remained on stage, bowed together, and then that was it. And I haven't been able to stop thinking about that because I think that's leadership in action. It wasn't about any individual. The show, the story they told, the experience they delivered was about everyone understanding the value that they played. Every note mattered, every line mattered, every step mattered, and no one was more important than anyone else on that stage.

And that's what the bow signaled. And then I started thinking how the director made that leadership decision and what was it the director did through the entire rehearsal process to pull that out of everyone. So that's a bit of a lengthy introduction to my question. But you just highlighted in your response to councilwoman Christensen's your your commitment to kind of community policing. That's what's drawing you to Sandy is you sort of have missed this this community feel.

You mentioned that you think it's really important to get out into the community. I I want you I want you to elaborate a little bit knowing knowing kind of this parallel that I just drew between it really is not about a single individual. It is about every single member of an organization recognizing their value, their role, no one being more important than anyone else. And in fact, the leader is invisible. We never saw the director.

We only saw the outcome of the director's influence. That is the mark of excellent leadership. It is not being in the spotlight. It is being behind the scenes, unlocking potential in every person with whom you interact and delivering that. So what does your leadership look like?

And as you think about what you just communicated, community policing is very important. You wanna be out in the community. You wanna be able to know, someone says, hi, chief. You respond back. But I I I I'd like to hear what the impact of your leadership would look like in delivering the kind of community policing experience you want our residents to have. Does that give you enough to understand my question?

Let me take a whack at it. I think I think so. First and foremost, council member Hausman, I'm gonna tell you something that I told my officers, on quite a few occasions, when I was the assistant chief. I always told them, hey, I work for you. And they would they would look at me with a puzzled look and they would go, yeah, right. And they'd start laughing. And I was dead serious. No. I no. I'm not kidding.

I I work for you. You know, my job is to make sure you guys have the tools that you need. My job is to make sure you have the funding that you need for the training that you need. My job is to make sure you guys get home every night. And and I know that's more more, kinda to your point and your story that you told, but that's that's what I believe in. Right? I'm I'm not here seeking praise. I'm not here seeking the spotlight. This is a very hard process, by the way. So it it it's definitely fun, but it's not fun at the same time.

But really, really the number one priority is the officers that are going out and doing the job every day that are working the swing shifts and the gray shifts and the animal control officers and the crossing guards and that type stuff. As far as the community policing, again, I just want to reiterate there's got to be connection. Right? You know, I I definitely want to get out and go talk to the schools. Right? And talk to the administration. Like, how are you feeling? What do you feel like your readiness is to an active shooter scenario? You know, how do you feel like our response is and really have some of those conversations. I know I've said this a 100 times.

Again, I don't know what I don't know. But and and and really getting out there. Another thing I've talked about on several occasions is I had an opportunity when in my twenties to go to Venezuela, and I spent two years there. That's where I learned Spanish, and that's a community I love a great deal. They're very special to me. And sorry. And to to to experience that would be would be awesome. I understand the difficulties they have. I understand the challenges that they they face. I had a really good friend call me a couple weeks ago and she was hesitant.

She's from Venezuela and she was hesitant to talk to the police. And I said, you know, immigration aside, that's the federal government's job. Right? You need to go talk to the police department that you belong to. And if there was a crime committed, you need to do that. You need to feel comfortable you can do that. So I think I'm uniquely positioned to kind of understand that plight a little bit. There's got to be community meetings out there on, you know, with some minority groups that I think we can definitely get involved in and reach out to and participate in and become a trusted advisor like Anna Lopez called me and asked me those questions. Hopefully I answered your question.

Yeah. I think you answered it and a few others. Like, I really appreciate that. So I really only have one other thought or question I guess you could say because like I said I feel like you've been put through the ringer. Everyone has really covered my questions. So the last one really is about sort of communication style. I coach leadership. And one of the thing I invite leaders to think about is there's there's intent and then there's impact. And your goal as a leader is to have those align so that experience others have when they communicate with you matches the intent. So message delivered.

Communication, you know, it's email or conversation or whatever it might be, you know what the intent of that was. And there's always an opportunity to check if the impact of that was achieved. Like you know what the intent was. Did it match the impact? Did it come? Was it received the way you would hope? Did it accomplish your intent? Or is there a gap between what your intent was and what the impact ended up being? So I'd love to hear a little bit about your communication approach. How do you go to people and measure whether there is alignment or whether there is a gap and learn from that conversation?

Well I I don't to answer your question I don't think it can be done by a single person. Right? Especially if you're trying to get the message down to the boots on the ground. Right? I've been I've been in plenty plenty of scenarios where, the the superintendent of the state the highway patrol said, hey. This is what we're gonna do, and this is how we're gonna do it. And then it makes it down to the captain, and then it goes to the lieutenant, and then it goes to the sergeant. And by the time that it to the officer, it's like, we didn't say anything like that. Right? So like you said, you have to be intentional in how you communicate that.

You have to make sure how everybody under understands what the goal and what the mission is. You know, with with with with that being said, I mean, as far as myself and the way I communicate, law enforcement is, to a certain extent, results driven. Right? If we're going to do this, we want to see this. And if you can't measure it in some circumstances, then you probably won't be able to accomplish it. Right? So that's kind of my style. But really, really, really follow-up. Does everybody understand what we're trying to accomplish here? Is the message that we're sending getting down to the officers on the ground? If so, are there questions? Are there concerns? Are there challenges? Send those back up. Right?

And it's just got to be an environment of open communication and you got to make sure there aren't any questions and kind of communicate that way. Does that make sense?

Absolutely. Thank you. I appreciate your time. I know you're answering a lot of questions.

Thank you so much.

Thank you. Thanks for the opportunity. That's all I had Madam Chair.

He's not done answering questions. Ms. D'Souza.

Thank you madam chair. Nice to meet you in person and I appreciate the time that you made for me over the last few days so thank you. It was a it was a good conversation. Ability to have a little bit more of a candid conversation than maybe we can in this, you know, environment. But I some of my questions, I guess, tonight, again, in reflection and and listening to the questions of my colleagues and your responses trying to fill in some of those gaps maybe for me.

And my first question is is more about Sandy specifically and trying to understand your knowledge of Sandy as a city from a policing environment, you know, and what do you feel are maybe our biggest challenges right now? And then on the opposite side, you know, what do you see as maybe our strength?

Well, I've had the opportunity and know people within the organization. Back in the day when I was younger, I would serve search warrants with the Sandy City Police and top notch SWAT team, top notch police department. They made good tactical decisions. They knew what they were doing. Very, very competent people.

So I I think, number one, our our people are most important greatest asset, and I think they're very, very competent. With that being said, I think, you know, when we talk about equipment, we we need equipment to get people home safe every night. We need good equipment. We need the appropriate amount of a training. Again, my previous goal is, competent and professional and confident police officers, right, to make sure they can handle any situation that they come into. So, I think, that's always a challenge. Right? Thing thing things cost money. Equipment Training costs money. That's budget is always a challenge.

Something I'm very, very well of, especially coming from a state level, depending on how good the year was or was not. But I think that's a challenge. I've I've done quite a bit of research on the city and looked at the different districts. I know there's differences in districts. Does that make sense? Mhmm. There's some areas with a little bit more crime. There's some areas with less crime. Again, what can we do based off of data to address those problems and police those problems and see what results we get? Hopefully, that kinda answers your question.

Again, I don't know what I don't know. I'm sorry to sound like a broken record on that but that's definitely something I'm gonna trust the deputy chief and the captains on and get advice from them on what we need to do.

Okay. Thank you. You know, do you do have been very open about the fact that there's gonna be a learning curve. Right?

Correct.

And so I'm kind of curious what your what what you have as far as like a a general realistic expectation for how long you feel it will take you to be fully proficient with our police department and our city's policing needs?

Well, one thing I think to answer your question, I don't think no matter how long and you're in an agency that ever happens. Okay? Because due to the challenges, due to the different problems that happened, it's always evolving. Law enforcement is always evolving. Technology is always evolving. And to be totally and a 100% competent, I just don't believe it happens. You're always on the move. You're always learning something new. I mean, heck, in five years, we could have cars that are driving themselves. You know, when they get in a crash, who am I supposed to cite?

Right? That's advancing. Right? And But realistically, again, I think with talking to the officers in the next three to four, maybe even six months, I think I could be in a position to really feel confident in what's going on, to offer advice, to offer help, support. Again, I will rely on heavily initially my command staff and the officers because again, they know Sandy City from a neighborhood level and they have the connections and that's something that takes time. It just does.

Okay. Thank you. And, you know, I I understand that that you can never really be fully proficient if you are invested in in what you were doing and improving all the time. Right?

Right.

You know, but I I guess I my questions do stem from, you know, you've explained the difference between or how you perceive the difference between public or excuse me highway patrol versus, you know, municipal police departments and and the interactions that they have in the different, I don't know, not responsibilities but instances that occur unique maybe to each side. So, you know, just in in full transparency that is probably my biggest like area of concern is is wanting to ensure that that those skills and experiences experiences truly truly transfer transfer into into the role as Sandy police chief. You know, we are as as you pointed out during our conversation, the seventh largest city. And and so, you know, you you explained I think very well what interested you in the role. But I guess I'm curious what interests you in Sandy specifically.

You know? There are other cities with smaller departments. I I wouldn't consider us a a small department, a small city. And so help me understand you know why that, why Sandy?

Well, I think there's a lot of answers to that. I obviously had a very big agency that I was in charge of. So nothing against the smaller cities. Respect them. I love their chiefs. All that kind of good stuff. But I think this is a little bit more my speed and kind of what I like to do. In addition to that, I live in a neighboring community. Okay? And in that community, we have pretty much the same exact challenges and the same exact problems, right? It's crime. It's transportation. It's growth. It's how do I get up the canyon, you know, during the winter season, during the ski season, and stuff like that. And we have the same challenge.

So that's one of the things that attracted me to Sandy City just experienced. Know you guys as a city have a lot of upcoming events, a lot of big upcoming events and that's something I like to do. I've put on escorts for vice presidents, presidents, worked with secret service, worked with partners. I've done vice presidential debates and created security plans for those. You guys have the RSL Stadium. You guys have the amphitheater. A lot of different things going on in the city. And that that kind of for lack of a better term high speed low drag is kinda what we're in the environment that I that I do well in if that makes sense.

Yeah. Thank you. Thank you for that response. I appreciate it. And then kind of following up on something that Brooke Christiansen asked was in relation to the interactions that Sandy PD is known for with our residents directly. How do you see yourself interacting with members of the public who may have a grievance with the department or with an aspect of our ordinances maybe and they want to speak to leadership. How how do you handle those interactions?

You know, one thing I learned throughout my law enforcement career that I think is pretty important and even dealing with those who have mental illness, right? I've learned over my twenty five and a half years that people just want to be listened to. They want to be heard. Right? Without being told that you're wrong or speak over them. That's crazy. Right? I think we need to listen to people and I think that's important regardless if we disagree with the way they want to handle things or what they would have the police department do. At the same rate, I think that's a great opportunity, number one, to listen and then number two, to educate. Right?

Okay. That's a great idea. Here's the number of officers we have. Here's your problem that you have. What solutions do you have to the problem? So tell me how we could do that within the guardrails that we have. And I think those discussions are important to have. Again, people just want to be heard and they want to be listened to. And I think that's an important part to council member Hausman's question. Just want want to be listened to. Right?

Alright. Thank you so much. I don't have any other questions and I appreciate your time both earlier and tonight. Thank you.

Thank you.

My turn. You guys did a good job. This is arguably the most important position in the entire city. I think the events that we experienced over the weekend punctuate that. One of the things that I have learned by going through training that's been provided to us by both our fire and police department is that trust is key and paramount.

If there isn't trust, lives are potentially lost. The police department's a brotherhood. I want to drill down on I want to get granular about the differences between twenty five years with the highway patrol and with a city police department.

So

you were focused on 3,000,000, I don't know, a million and a half people, whatever we're talking about Northern Utah or all of Utah. We want you to focus here on 96,000 people, right? You're going to interact with them every day. They depend on you. They have expectations of you. And then you of course you have your employees that are depending on you also. How are these jobs different? I wanna get really specific about that. Leadership qualities I would agree are transferable. Transferable.

But we're talking about police. That's not, it's not like a private business where I can try this manager and if it doesn't work out, boom, where's the next one, right? This is so consequential. How where are the biggest variances between the highway patrol and the municipal police department? Your your version, what what are the major differences?

Well, we we talked about this on the phone, madam chair. And you asked me, okay, is there anything in the job description that you haven't

I was gonna go there. Is there anything in the job description you

would I'm gonna have need you to it. And we talked about animal control. Yeah. Something I've never done before. And there's a lot of things I've never done before, especially in my my law enforcement career. I remember when my boss put me over the criminal interdiction team. The only thing I knew about canines is that I could pet the floppier dogs and stay away from the pointier That's all I knew. But being involved in that and learning about it, I developed national contacts with Haida. I learned criminal and addiction and stuff like that. So I guess what I'm saying is that it can be done.

And from a granular level, again, don't think we're that different. We have State Bureau of Investigations. Right? That's our detectives unit. It's just a lot bigger. Right? And I would say the biggest difference is just relationships. Right? Previously, it's the whole entire state. Right? But here, they're going to know my name. They're going to know my police officer's name. Right? And it's to a certain extent more personal. But we have criminal interdictors that deal with drugs.

We have investigations. We pull loads off that's very, very similar to what Sandy does. Grandma, we don't have helicopters. But if we can, they're super awesome, by the way. But that's a little bit different as well.

When I was going to VPA, is everybody familiar what VPA is? It's the Valley Chiefs get together and they have a meeting. But I was nominated to put together our POU strategies, our public order unit. That's crowd control strategies. Right? And pulled together platoons and people and resources for the Valley. So the reason I tell you that is because it very similar. Right? And we can connect that way. Are there some differences?

Of course there are. But if I'm coming from Sandy and say I'm going to interview for Draper City, they probably operate a little bit differently too. And there's probably a learning curve there as well as Cottonwood Heights and Harriman who's looking for a chief, a new chief right now. There are going to be those differences. But I have no doubt that I will be able to overcome that and learn those and coordinate appropriately.

One could look at your resume and wonder if you're overqualified. You've certainly managed bigger department, you've managed more people. When we talked about this, when we talked about the difference and I asked you this question, why do you want this job? And you indicated it to me at the time that in all of your career, looks like an impressive career, the one thing you don't have is community policing and that appeals to you.

Community connection.

Community connection. Okay, so describe to me, you've talked about walking into businesses and interacting with the business owners. You've talked about getting to know the people in the school district. What is the rest of it? What do you think about community connections? What is your definition of community policing? What are you going to be able to do here that you haven't been able to do before and this appeals to you? You're looking forward to it. You want to know you want to conquer it. What what what is it that's new that you want to do?

Yeah. Great question. Thanks, madam chair. Neighborhood watch, I think, is a excellent program. In fact, a week ago, I saw you guys post on that community connection that you had that the boots on the ground, the officers knew about, detectives knew about, they investigated it. They they did their investigative thing. SWAT team comes in and serves a search warrant and and finds X amount of drugs in the house and somebody's taken off the road and where they should be in jail so they can't sell drugs to kids or the community, right? That's awesome. That's something I want to be a part of. I know there's parks.

Know there's traffic safety issues which I'm uniquely positioned to deal with, right? And hopefully come up with some solutions or at least make it better. There's gangs kind of involved in here. Yes, we have people at a state level on the metro gangs and work with metro gangs quite often. But I want to kind of work that side of a little bit too. Where can't we move the needle a little bit here to make to make our streets safer? So all that combined and talking and create talking to people and creating relationships, That's really interesting to me and something I haven't been able to do in my career.

Any more questions, council members? I'm just looking over my list. It seems

like Is we've kind of been

there anything we haven't asked that you would like us that you would like us to know?

You've asked a lot. I just just want to talk about my family too if that's okay. Yeah. I have my wife here. She's obviously a huge support. Obviously, maybe just a tad bit hesitant about all of this which is I think completely normal. But again, I've got three kids. And my oldest is lives down in Spanish Fork and he's training to be a commercial airline pilot. So he's trying to get his flight hours right now. I've also got my middle son who's down at BYU and he graduates in month and a half from their film school, believe it or not.

He's big into production and commercials and stuff like that. And then my daughter goes actually to C Tech and I think all of you are kind of familiar with that. She's getting her cosmetology degree or certificate, I guess, I should say. And we're just kind of average people. I love to fly fish. I love to whitewater raft, believe it or not. I guide the Snake River up in Idaho. That's something I very, very much enjoy. And I think once people get to know me a little bit and we kind of get over the hype a little bit of what's going on, and again, all valid questions. I completely understand why you're asking them and why the officers would ask them and why they would have hesitancy.

But I think once people get to know me, they'll know that I'm just a normal guy. And again, my number one priority is the officers that do the job. It has to be. It has to be. You know, I'm gonna fight for them. I'm gonna be honest with you guys. You guys have all asked for honesty. I will give you honesty, not in a negative way or a confrontational but I will tell you what I think when you ask what I think. So that's kind of a little bit about myself. I'm Utah guy, born and raised along the Wasatch Front and just place that I love very much and very much appreciate.

Well, thank you. And thanks for bringing your family. It was nice to meet you too. Appreciate you coming tonight and answering all our questions. And if any more occur to us can we reach back out to you? Yes ma'am. Okay. Ma'am. Alright thank you. Alright we are past our public comment time so we'll do that at this point in time. I don't have any blue, oh yes I do. Pat Jones. Hi come on down.

Hi. Good evening, everybody. I just have a very quick question. I hope that the council and the administration will agree to bringing giving us a final report on the bills that were passed, those bills that affect Sandy City. Thank you.

Thank you. Alright, Henry.

Hey. Thank you, mayor, for when we got to sat and sit down and talk. And thank you, Sharky, for talking to me three times this week. Thank you. I know you two have been busy. Thank you. You guys are cool. Don't worry. On this question, I we've been talking about Sharkey. In Utah law, on the cars on the side of the road.

They did take that out of Utah law where you don't have to have a license plate and park on the side road. It would have to be coming from the Sandy City. So, you know, Captain Arnold actually brought that to my attention today. Other things I wanna I wanna try to bring up the truck parking a little bit more. I know I talked to the mayor about that and safety around our side of Sandy. That's the only concerns I have. You guys are working with me, and I appreciate that. I just wanna come tell you guys thank you. Alright. Thank you.

Thank you, Henry. Alright. That's all in chambers. Dustin, do we wanna invite the online audience to participate?

Of course. Thank you, madam chair. If you're joining us virtually this evening via Zoom and you'd like to comment Stay

there.

Now is the time. Go ahead and click the raise hand button on your screen. I'll call your name in the order in which you raise your hand, and you'll have three minutes. Madam Chair, looks like we have another gentleman. You want to Yeah. Take a

Hold on just a second. We'll see if we have anyone online and then we'll come right back to you.

Not seeing any hands raised madam chair.

Same. Sir, happy to take your comment. Will you state your name for the record, please?

George Tobler.

Alright.

I've been a builder and developer for fifty five years. I've run a fairly large company relating it to Jeff. There's a lot of difference between building a house and building an Intermountain Medical Center. The the systems are the same. The scope is larger, but the systems remain the same.

I've had the pleasure to ride with Jeff for many years. I've seen him take a very high situation. And his ability to deescalate was very impressive, a lot more than I would I would have the wherewithal police officers, the the adrenaline gets really high when it's so stressful, and to be able to walk it back instantly is a very difficult thing to do. Being as though I've been a manager of a company for a number of years, The same thing with the police chief. He's managing people.

And I've watched the way that he has worked from being a trooper right on up through being the next to the top in the highway patrol, he's had a lot of management experience, tremendous amount. As a as a result of that, he's going to fit right in here as a manager because it it the situation changes. The the techniques don't. And I can't recommend him any higher. He he would be a wonderful asset to the city. You.

Thank you. Alright. Seeing no more commenters tonight, I'll close public comment for the evening. The next item on the agenda is miss Christianson's.

Notes. So this amendment came to me from a resident, actually, two residents that were concerned about different parking situations and how they were enforced in the city. And what this amendment does, it doesn't add anything new to our code. It is just making sure that the pieces of our code that police need to enforce are in the correct spot so that they can enforce. So this amendment closes the enforcement gap by adding existing RV parking restrictions to the city's traffic code.

So I'm just gonna read this to you guys so I don't say crazy things. The need for this change was highlighted by my recent resident experience where officers responded to an RV parked in the public right of way but were uncertain about their ability to issue a citation under the current code structure. Because the restriction exists only in the land development code, enforcement is geared towards the property owner rather than the vehicle operator. That limits the practical response in the field. So by placing the same standard in both title 14 and title 21, the city can ensure a clear, consistent, and effective enforcement depending on the nature of the violation.

So that is the reason that I'm bringing it to you guys to see if you're interested in updating this to make it easier for our police department who don't enforce in that code to be able to use it in their daily jobs. And I'm just looking for feedback from you and your thoughts.

Miss DeSouza. Okay.

So I just had a couple of questions and, you know, like, just on its surface, it seems totally logical and reasonable that that they reflect in both places. Right? Yep. But my I I have a question about what is the definition of recreational vehicle?

We knew that was gonna be asked. Good job, Justin. So there needs to be a definition of recreational vehicle added to this amendment if it if we decide to move forward with it. So right now, the legal team has said this. Recreational vehicle means a vehicular unit other than a mobile home primarily designed as a temporary dwelling for travel, recreational, and vacation use, which is either self propelled or mounted on or pulled by another vehicle. In addition, boats, jet skis, snowmobiles, four wheelers, etcetera shall also be considered as recreational vehicles. I know it's a mouthful.

Well, no. I guess that's where I was kind of going was we talk about trailers and campers and, you know, in my mind, I'm thinking the difference might be because a trailer by itself doesn't have, like, the motor and does that is that

It would still count. Well Right?

Well, says that's why I'm wondering why are we adding recreational vehicle if

It's already in our code. It like, the the term. It just needs to be, like, flushed out from the other part of the code into this part of code.

Okay. Further defined too?

Or Yes. Okay. Well

Yes, so that's, I haven't been personally involved with the discussion, but Darian Alcorn from our office has been involved. And she's talked with Doug Johnson who's our prosecutor, He's our chief prosecutor. And they both talked about the need to to one, have a definition and two, refine a little bit. So they haven't done the refinement yet. We just recognize that it will be necessary if you decide to go forward with the proposal. There will be a definition and we'll fuss with the definition.

So if there's specific things that you feel like should be or shouldn't be added like it's still

Sure. Yeah. And I guess you know I'm thinking about then it gets a little bit deeper because the the proposed language, you know, initially proposed language by legal talked about, you know, four wheelers or like like a side by side would that be a recreational vehicle and if it's street legal can it not park on the You know like that would be

It's a good question.

Those are things that I Okay. I would like to make sure that we have fleshed out and that we aren't making unreasonable exclusions for vehicles by broadly defining recreational vehicle, I guess. And then the only other question that I had is it would be helpful to know what title 21, like what language it has in relation to title 14. I know that they're like land land use and traffic but it would be helpful to see the reference to each.

Okay. We can put that out there too. I have that. I'd just be curious.

Yeah. If you could

provide that even in an email Absolutely. That would be great but And then I guess at any time, I don't disagree with that but I saw the email from one of the residents that you had responded to Yep. Asking about, well, gosh, if I'm, you know, doing some moving around and quite frankly, I'm I've I've had to do it too. No.

Yeah. I agree. And so the legal department looked at it and it does say the generic language right now is, like, not allowed in our code. But there are if we would like to make those adjustments, there are some other cities that say things like for twelve hours or this or that. They think it would be extremely hard to enforce and to monitor. So they're very concerned about putting that in there. But if the council wants to put it in there, we can.

Okay. Just Yeah. I I don't know that I have like a A preference. At this point, I just wanted to

k.

Ask initially and think about it for a little bit. Yeah. K. Thanks, Brooke. Thanks. Council member Christensen. Apologies. Good.

Since this was in the land development code in title 21, does that mean it was enforceable through code enforcement but now we want to make it enforceable through the police department?

No. Technically, it's enforceable everywhere, but the okay. And correct me when I say it incorrectly. But, basically, the police never look at the land code. Yeah. So they didn't even realize was a code in the city. And so they are trying to train their officers, but it they they cite the homeowner, the property owner, even if it's not their vehicle or item. Who does? That that's what the land code tells us to do now. So if someone stopped by your house, parked their trailer in front of it, and they they came by, they would cite you right now.

Oh. Oh.

And so this makes it so they can cite the owner of the item Okay. Instead of the property owner.

Well, makes a lot of sense. Okay. Yeah. I would love to see this come back. Okay. I think

Ms. Hausman has

Hausman? Yeah.

Thank you. I just didn't know if you saw my hand. I just wanna make sure it's gonna I so a couple of things that I had here were answered, so thank you for that. I don't know that I have clarity on on one piece, so I just wanna dig into that a little bit. Can the owner like, I feel like you you explained that because an owner can be cited through the land development code if the RV is there, but then the of the RV can be cited. Do we have like, could someone be cited twice?

No. It would be if we moved this right now, it's just the property owner that can be cited?

So so may I? So here here's the problem. The way it is currently drafted in the ordinance, they would have to cite only the property owner and and and frankly, you're not gonna be able to enforce that against the property owner because it's not their RV. So, what will happen is the provision in the traffic code will focus on the operator or the owner of the vehicle, not the property owner. And the provision in the title 21 will remain the same for the property owner because that the focus of of the provision in 21 is how a homeowner parks their RV, not necessarily just someone driving through with another RV.

So they're they're focused on two different people.

But what if I am the owner of the property and it is my RV parked out in front of my home, can I be cited twice?

Then then, well you can't be cited twice. You'd be cited for having it parked illegally.

Because right now it's not allowed in Sandy City code for you to park your RV on the road. That's currently illegal in Sandy. So if you park it out there but not twice though for sure.

Well, how do we know that?

You would

not be cited. You would not be cited twice. The police was cited. They'll cite it

under Okay.

Let me

get my question out. So is the police department gonna talk to code enforcement and learn that I've already and I don't have an RV. This is just a what if scenario. Are they gonna talk to each other so that the police department knows I've already been cited as the homeowner and it's my RV so then they don't cite me for traffic?

I

Yeah. They won't talk to each other but they don't do the same thing. So code enforcement is not going to cite you for parking your RV out there. They might give you a warning. Will they even do that James? I don't think they will.

If it's out on the street it becomes a police

James, can you come up and talk in the microphone? Then then Marcy can hear you too.

Actually, if it's parked out on the street, if a code person sees that, they usually notify the police, and the police will usually handle something that's parked on a public street. So the police handle it, so it's only ticketed of once. If it's the owners, we can go up and give the owner a warning that it needs to be taken off the street. But if it's actually given a, like a citation, that usually comes from the police department.

Okay. So, yes. But maybe we need to clarify that process a little bit.

Yeah. Yeah. I I'm wondering if there's if it's even needed in title 21 code anymore then. Like, what what would would a simple solution be? It becomes a citation event through police department because it's connected to the owner of the vehicle. If the owner of the vehicle happens to be the homeowner, we're not worrying about the land the land side of things. We are it is just in in title 14 as a parking citation.

So that would just be for recreational vehicles. Right? Because there are other vehicles that are attached to possibly a business. I mean, if they're renting vehicles out with some type of a home occupation or things like that, that is something that we would want still the ability to to have in title 21 because we would then be in charge of something like that. So we do need it in title 21 to cover other aspects like the home occupation or anything like that is renting out an RV. And people do that now quite a bit. That would become something that we would take it under their home occupation license. So we'd still want some ability in '21 to be able to do that.

Okay. I I I just wanna make sure that we are not we are not signaling to the community like that that we're we're going after multiple things here with your RV. I just want to make sure we have clarity around giving our officers absolutely the right tools, but not potentially duplicating the impact and causing some strife there for homeowners who really need to just be made aware that this is a problem and it's in our code. And so I'm assuming there's an education piece of this that happens from our traffic enforcement side of things before a citation would be issued.

I will check on that. I know in the past they've just asked them to move it. Gefarnold, do you wanna answer that? Oh, yeah. They get the pink tickets. Even brought a visual.

Typically, these are referred to as pink tags and we put on vehicles when there's parking issues, etcetera. We typically would give a pink tag to a vehicle stating, hey, this is a problem. Please correct it. Then they come back within you, generally speaking, the next twenty four hours to see if that if the vehicle's been corrected. When it's a specific parking problem, where it's an abandoned vehicle, you have the forty eight hours, and so it's a different rule. But we put pink tags on windows typically to give a warning initially for education purposes, and then we come back and we take enforcement action unless it's a significant issue where it's blocking roadways causing problems of that nature.

Perfect. Okay. So that that's helpful. So essentially, the the education happens through the pink tag. And and because it's in the road, our land development 21, title 21 doesn't come into play because we defer to traffic and and that process. So so that's the clarity we would provide to residents that we're not double dipping here. There's no danger of you getting, you know, a notification from code you know, our title 21 code and then also this pink tag from our title 14 code.

Correct.

Okay. And then last question is about like fiscal impact because it does seem like we are shifting kind of the enforcement costs. It sounds like it was already happening. We're just like like, it sounds like James clarified this that if it's in the road, that was already gonna be a traffic citation, but officers didn't know what tool they had to do that. So we're clarifying. We're giving them the tool. But does that change, like, fiscal impact? Are we shifting by by changing codifying this change in enforcement? Does that does that change fiscal impact in any way? Are we anticipating, like, increased citation revenue?

And if so, are we communicating clearly the why for that?

I don't think it will have a large impact. The reason this has even come up is because there multiple RVs that have been parked in front of homes and businesses that people are living in and not moving. And so it's created a problem in their neighborhoods or their place of business with with customers coming in and there just has not been a mechanism for the police to take action other than putting a pink ticket on and asking them to move but there was nothing in title 21 after that to do anything with. And so this I don't think it's going to create any physical impact. Does anyone want to correct me?

No. Shane says no. So it'll just be a new tool for not a new tool. A tool that's now being able to be used for police to help clear up those issues.

That that's helpful. Thank you. And and the question the only question that I had left, I feel like got answered earlier. So I think that's everything. Thank you. Anything

else? Yep. So overall, it feels like we're good for me to, like, address some of these issues and bring it back. Thanks guys. Appreciate it. Alright.

Consent calendar is next and that consists of two sets of minutes and the final draft of the housing workshop. And I'm gonna pull the housing workshop item for a separate. I would need to ask you guys a question but can we do the rest? Two sets of minutes. Someone want to make a motion to adopt that portion of the consent calendar?

I move that we adopt the draft meeting minutes on the consent calendar.

Is there a second?

Second.

Alright. All in favor? Aye. Any opposed? Ms. Hausman do you want to take your hand down so I will make sure if it goes back up again. Yeah thank you that it's a new thing. So here's what I wanted to ask. You guys will notice on this final draft there was a new page created and that's page 25. And when I saw that it kind of brought some questions to mind.

And I was wondering what our intent is. As we know this final draft is gonna be provided to the consultant. And the new changes to the land development code are going to include this directive that we give them. Is there any chance that someone could pull that up? Staff? Can someone pull that up for us on the screen? Thank you, Liz. Yeah.

Yeah we can pull it up for you Madam Chair.

Good, okay perfect. So this is if I have it right and I'll take nods. What this is a result of the dots, the dot process that we did of putting dots on the pages to signify what we supported and not. Here's what I found when I was looking over this And again, this wasn't in the packet before. This is new.

And it's the second one, small lot single family homes. So we have them as the preferred location as being in low and very low density neighborhoods. When I first saw that without conditions. So when I first saw that I thought, wait a minute, we're telling we're saying that we want small homes on large lots. And I'm not sure.

I mean we could do that. It might produce a smaller cost home because it's smaller but it's still on bigger lots. So the very low density is three units per acre. So we'd be putting small homes on third acre lots. And then the low density is six units per acre which is right around what 7,000 square foot lots.

That's still bigger than the state's goal of approximately 5,000 square foot lots. So I'm just wondering whether we wanted to add the next level up which is medium density residential still in residential. Aren't a lot of those on the land use map but they exist and they double the density again. So we go from three units per acre on very low to six in low to 12 in medium. Just wondering and again this is a consensus thing.

Is this what we intended to maybe restrict or limit small lot single family homes to just those two kinds of neighborhoods or? I

wasn't here for this part of it.

Yeah.

Yeah. But I don't know why that wouldn't be our preference in all areas of the city.

That's what I voted.

Like I don't understand

why we wouldn't want that to be everywhere. That's what I voted. But what worked out at and they gave us the pictures of the maps is what I think what the exercise was is they included this if it had a majority of dots in it. Those only low and very low had a majority of dots. And every other had like three. So it failed to meet the condition of having a majority. And I'm just revisiting it. This may be what the intention was and this may be what the majority of the council had in mind and intends. I was just curious about that. Ms. D'Souza.

I was just going to add that I think that it would be appropriate in more areas of the city. I personally don't think that small home single family makes sense in the Cairns when we're trying to really increase the density there. Think but anyway I I don't think that it should just be limited to whatever rural and low.

Low and very low. It just

makes me think of I don't know which way I'm pointing this way maybe for the neighborhood right over here. Alta View. Yes. Alta View States. That to me is small lots, single single homes, and it fits beautifully, I think, in I don't know. I just am, like, thinking of, like, different options, like, for senior living or, like, we've talked in the past about, like, the brownstone concepts over by Target or different things like that. Like, to me, that would be, like, a really I don't know. Just a really good use of that. But I wasn't here. So

I'm not I'm not personally opposed to it.

Okay. Any other ideas? Just wanted to make sure as this is supposedly the final and it rolls forward for rulemaking, is this what we want to tell the consultants? Consultants? Maybe Maybe it it is. Is.

I would motion to like adjust that to be in all of our neighborhoods if it fits. Mean there's gonna be a case by case basis basis right? Right?

Yes, Mr. Souza. So one of the

things that I think was brought up previously was a professional like staff recommendation. Does that lead you into another question?

You were not getting that. Oh you mean tonight? Right here for No, the no.

But he doesn't look like he thinks that that was funny but

I know. Just me.

I amuse myself. Okay. So would it be okay to include it but like also are we expecting at some point or can

we get

professional staff opinions on our stickers on our dots that we place. Like, does it make sense? Is it appropriate? Like, what are your thoughts? What should we consider? What shouldn't we consider? It doesn't need to be tonight, I don't think, unless it does need to be tonight. Sorry. Loaded question.

I saw some discussion happening over here and wondered what that what are you thinking about that?

Are you wanting me to answer that question?

Somebody You needs

have the the photos of the dot the process, they're in the back and this is what we said. Yeah. I'm just wondering if we meant what we said or we wanna change it.

Whether or not you guys meant what you said is up to you. Okay? But in terms of the recommendation like we did as a group do our best to provide a recommendation on how to achieve the vision that you expressed during the workshop series.

Sure. And I think that what that what I'm asking for and I think what I heard Cindy maybe ask for previously previously is different than that, you know, like taking it a step further and maybe taking it putting putting professional lens and and maybe a little scrutiny on the choices that we made. I don't know. I'm I'm comfortable with that personally. You know, I'd like to know that what the vision as we proposed it makes sense or are there other challenges that we didn't maybe consider or need to.

Yeah. Can I speak to that madam chair as well? So again I think the intention is to say we're rewriting the code and those recommendations are going to come with the code rewrite. This is a vision document right? It's like the general plan. It's a vision. You say this is the vision we hope to achieve. Staff and the experts will look at that and say, Okay, well can we help achieve that vision? Is there something we can add into the code that will help to do that? Or no. And those recommendations will come. But at this point and James, feel

free to

chime I totally agree with his approach and what he's taking. That's why we did hire the professional he's hired is to take what you've got and to look at it at this point.

Yeah. The goal is to provide it to them and say, is this achievable? Right? Can we achieve this vision? And we've provided our recommendations on how we think it might be achieved within those final couple of sections of the report. That's the intention of those sections. Can they can we get more specific on those? Yes. And that's what the consultant will do.

Okay. For good or bad, you know, I think somebody needs to be okay to tell us that we maybe made a mistake or didn't consider something that we should have.

And on the small out single family, I don't know if you guys want my opinion on that right now or not. But I'm happy to give you my professional opinion if you'd like it.

Sure. Let's hear it. I'd love it.

Yeah. From my perspective, I think that you did get it right with your vision and the exercises. Do you really want small lot single family in the areas of the city where we're supposed to where the intention is to focus on higher density. I don't know if you do. I think from the perspective of a planner, maybe we wouldn't necessarily recommend that.

That's just my perspective. You'd focus on some of the higher density middle missing housing types like small mid rise for example in the Cairns. I tend to agree with you Councilmember DeSousa that maybe a small lot single family doesn't necessarily belong in the Cairns. But that's just my personal opinion.

If I may add

to that, think it's gonna be driven a lot, especially in the Cairns area. Small lot is it's gonna be driven a lot by the market too. I mean, you're just not gonna have someone come in and say, can all of a sudden develop small lots and sell them and make them work. It will be driven a lot of it by the by the market and how that works and functions. What the prices of the land and things like that. And especially in the Cairns that's gonna be that's always going to be something probably a little higher density. I agree You are going get maybe some townhomes or things like that, but you're going to be driven. I mean, we're experiencing that now and even trying to get some of the more dense projects. The market drives a lot of this.

So I think that's a point that I'm making which is the I'm not sure the way we have it right now is in alignment with how the market is defining this kind of housing style. And so in the Cairns would we say if we're looking to set as a legislative body kind of a guideline, right? Are we going to say we won't accept small lot single family homes in the Cairns? Do we want to say that? The market may say that's not the best use of our land acquisition and probably will say that.

But are we saying we won't consider it? Yes. Ms. Christensen.

I would hate to limit ourselves with something that may or may not ever happen. Recommendation, motion, whatever, would be to adjust that to be in all neighborhoods because I can't imagine if and I'm not I don't think this is gonna happen. But if it did and something drastically changed and some developer came to us and was like, you know what? We wanna build starter homes on 90th South and, like, 7th East by the freeway right there, right next to your mobile home parks. Like, would we really tell them no?

Like, to me, that doesn't seem and I don't think that's gonna happen, but I wouldn't want to tell someone there's a part of Sandy that we don't allow single family housing. That's my proposal. Is it do I have to make that a motion to change it? How does that work on this?

Can I just say that I totally disagree with that?

Yeah.

So I'm this whole conversation is like taking me by surprise. I don't know quite what we're getting into. But yeah, instead of like going through emotion and changing this up I'd rather table this and kinda talk about it more. I mean we're voting on the the report that we got back. And so yeah I'd I'd wanna regroup before

Okay.

Acting tonight.

Do we have a time? Can take

one of any sort. When did they when did they need it?

Don't they?

That's up to you. I would just I would just ask that we sometime soon get this document to pass along to our consultant that is anxiously waiting for it.

Are we holding them up in some way?

They need it.

Okay.

To So start working on what they're we've asked them to to work on.

K. Well Okay. So I would like no. I would still make the motion. It might fail, but, like, still make the motion to make the change tonight then if we're we're the hold up. Up. I don't know if there's a second for that or not.

I'll second it.

Madam chair. Yes. I don't know that I understand what the change is.

I don't know that I do either.

To open up single lot single family homes to every location in the city not just the low and very low density neighborhoods.

So you want us to note that small lot single family, the preferred location for those is literally everywhere in the city.

Yeah. Yeah.

Dustin's planter brain is exploding.

No. It's your guys' decision.

I do think James' comment on that is true. There in certain areas of the city, even though it's available, no one would even consider

it if they could do density. I think we agree too.

Yep.

Yeah. Yeah.

It's just we don't wanna limit ourselves.

Won't that be part

of like when they come back in two years that they will have suggestions and recommendations of where We're just

there to Exactly. We're we're telling them what we

Members of the council, could we just have one conversation going for the record?

Would be

Apparently not. If you wouldn't mind.

Alright. Yeah. So what they're waiting for us to tell them our vision of what we want. So it could come back changed but for a starting point I'm just thinking we should be accurate. And that's all I was asking on that particular one. Wait that doesn't even does that make sense. We could say yeah that was what we intended. Everyone could say in a vote That's what we had in mind. That's what we intended. Okay. Fine.

And I highly doubt they're gonna come back and be like, you guys were amazing at this. You got everything right?

Well, and I guess that's kind of my question is there's probably something else in here that they look at. And I'm hoping in two years they come back and they say, you you don't necessarily think this. And so I mean it

Can I just comment on the two year thing? I mean, we're gonna be coming back constantly for updates and they can address this comment and say, we heading in the right direction? You as a council will look at that and say, okay, this didn't make sense. Or we found this. This didn't make sense. And you can make adjustments as we're going through. It's not like we're gonna be not showing you anything and then all of a sudden in two years pop this whole thing on you. We're gonna be updating you monthly with where we're at. And so I think that's a good opportunity. You could say, well, based on what they're telling you, maybe that didn't make sense in this particular one or maybe we're on the right track and you can help adjust that at that point if that's helpful.

So just as a starting point, the answer may be no. But do we want to change that or do we want to leave it the way it is?

And that's what I think I was getting is it's going okay not

that it

could say oh it doesn't matter what we put in here but if there's something else that pops up I'm hoping that the professionals will come back to us and say you know I'm not quite sure you got this one right. So it was just if there's something else in here that we missed or that we didn't get quite right or didn't get quite right for an area.

Hope so too.

So that's I mean I kind of want to clarify that.

So just as a starting point of our intent. You know like we went through these workshops. We approved a draft. Now we're approving a final. Is this what we want for the final knowing that and hoping that they come back and make alternate alternate suggestions suggestions if if they they don't don't feel feel ours ours are are the the best. Best. Miss Miss Hausman. Hausman.

Thank you madam chair. I I think it's a good discussion. I am looking at this a little differently than than what I'm hearing and which is okay. That's that's why we have these conversations. I I see this as preferred location.

I don't see it as only allowed here. The reason I feel that this does actually represent the multiple conversations in the series of the workshop that we had is because we are trying to signal that we are doing what we can within our sphere of influence, so to speak, to to to in the middle, the the missing middle. We have plenty of single family homes in the city. We want to encourage. Sure.

We want to encourage smaller lots that are still single family homes, and we've we've kind of indicated like where I think what we're trying to signal is. There are places where our preference is actually thinking about the missing middle and thinking about variety in in the housing that we put in some of the other places in our city. So therefore, our preference is in low and very low density. Our preference for that area of our city is small lot single family homes in terms of trying to increase the variety of what's available for purchase. I don't know that we are I don't see this as restricting our flexibility in any way.

So I really and again, one person, one person's opinion. But I do think this does reflect our conversations. We were trying to signal we have got to put different housing throughout our city. We've got to think differently about our zoning and the types of housing and and we need we need to signal to those who will become our builder partners. We need to signal what we are interested in.

There will be a whole process by which ultimately decisions are made and what what what we what we like. This is a guiding document and our preference would be focusing on, you know, small lot, single family homes. This would be our preferred location because in these other locations, we are hoping to have greater greater variety in the housing types. Let's get beyond small lot single family homes in some of those other spaces. So that's how I'm remembering our conversations.

That's how that's why I feel this does reflect our conversations accurately again my perspective I'm not I don't think a change is needed.

Okay. Mr. Souza. I was just gonna

say you know my recollection of my choices was to eliminate the highest density for this because it didn't seem like, in in the context of the entire conversation and all of the different housing styles and densities that we were considering, it didn't seem to me to make a lot of sense in like the Cairns for example. Regardless of whether or not the market wanted it, I just I don't know that from a vision standpoint that was how we collectively I thought had seen things. And collectively doesn't mean unanimously. Yeah, definitely. But on the flip side, I feel like there is maybe some discrepancy or contradiction with them in the low ultra low because like you just pointed out, you if you're limited to like three houses per acre and you have this tiny house, you don't have a tiny lot.

You have a ginormous lot. And so, you know, there's gonna be some other things that they're going to have to wrestle with I assume to have some of this work into a practical situation. On the flip side, mansion style multifamily does not belong in the Cairns in my opinion. Like understanding exactly what that is, like it's unique to areas that are not the Cairns for reasons. Right? So

You know, it's interesting. These conversations are interesting. And what they may just reflect is we got to a consensus but it was never unanimous agreement. So it may just need to stay. I really just kind of looked at this and thought there was a contradiction in it because small lot single family homes don't belong in areas with large lots. That's all I was thinking right but But we can leave it. We can leave it knowing that

I'm okay with adding and I think this is part of what we will get each month. Is there's going to be little things. Mean that's you know you just brought up another one. You know, I I I think that that's what we will get. You know, that they'll start coming back and saying, hey, did you is this what you really meant? Because this is how we're interpreting it. So I'm fine with, I guess, expanding that of what you brought up, you know, and bringing it in because I think they're gonna come back. And if they don't think it's a good idea, they're gonna say, yeah, we don't really recommend this. You know, what were you thinking? So I mean, I'm okay with expanding.

I think I think at hearing that the important thing right now is let's get this to them. So I'm good with adding that in there, trusting that they're gonna come back and say, yeah, don't know what you were thinking but this is wrong or did you miss something?

Good. And

allowing them to do that. So I'm

Me too.

Yeah. If that helps. Okay.

So we have a motion?

Yeah. Yeah. We already So the motion was to include it across all the all the areas but Ms. DeSouza it sounds like you wouldn't agree to that.

So motion on the table motion for discussion. Right? I wouldn't support that motion. No. I I think I'm at the point of maybe just leaving it. And again, like there it sounds like there's going to be opportunities to adjust once they apply some of these ideas to the code. I guess that's where I'm gonna even though I recognize say that there was a discrepancy with the mansion style. Yeah. Yeah.

Madam chair?

Yes. I can't see her on the screen but I think council member Nickel

has I her hand do see it and I was just gonna call on her. Yeah. Miss Nickel, go ahead. Chris we can't hear you. Can you hear us?

Yeah we are not hearing you. Count the cards already and we don't have so I get are we leaving it? Are we just leaving it the way it is unchanged?

I think we just vote and personally move on just because, like, that's how we're gonna have to make all these decisions. Right?

Go ahead.

Madam Chair, you do have a motion and a second on the table.

Yeah. We do. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. On a like a procedural. Yeah. I mean this is not it. No. So alright. Let's go ahead and take a vote then. Yeah.

Thank you madam chair. Miss Christensen?

Yes. Miss Sharkey?

Yes.

Miss D'Souza? No. Mister Dick Heiser? No. Miss Droud? Yes. Is miss Nicholl

available? She's online, but I don't know if her microphone is working.

Miss Nickel?

Miss Houseman? I know. No. Can you guys hear me? Oh yes, there we go.

Here we

go. Alright, I'm a I am a no. Alright. Yeah, yes, so it's still I'm sorry, go ahead.

I was just going to say that motion failed.

All right. So yes, it's on the consent calendar for a vote. So we decided not to change it. So question is, yeah. So who would like to make a motion on this?

Motion to approve item number seven on the consent calendar. Do I need to spell it out?

There's a resolution attached. It's 26 dash 44 c.

Motion to approve 26 dash 44 c and final report. Second. Alright. Motion and a second.

Okay is it a roll call or do okay let's do a roll call. Miss Stroud. Yes. Miss D'Souza.

Yes.

Mr. DeKeiser. Yes. Miss Nichol? Yes.

Yes.

Miss Houseman?

Yes.

Miss Sharkey? Yes. Miss Christensen? No. No. Madam chair, that

motion carried six to one. Alright, thank you. Alright. Next on the agenda is a meeting of the yeah sorry a meeting of the Alta Canyon board so I will make a motion to recess the city council meeting and convene a meeting of the administrative control board of the Alta Canyon Recreation Special Service District. Do I have a second?

Second. I'll second.

Alright. All in favor? Aye. Any opposed? Alright. Let's go ahead.

Alright. Chair. Thank you. We can bring up the presentation. As this is loading, I hope

well, thank you.

It's it's

good to be here with you. It's fun to talk about this project, this building. Ben can provide an update on the construction a little bit later. Things are going great though. Very excited about that.

And with with the presentation, I'm I don't plan to go through it line by line and read you every single number on it. I I do hope that you've had some time to take a look at it ahead of time, and that we can go through it from kind of a high level and talk about some of the themes and and some of the things that stood out to us. And then we'll leave you with a recommendation for for discussion. So as you are aware, we are building this this wonderful facility for our residents, and there's been some discussion about what what to name it and what to call it. And so as suggested, we went back out to residents, to patrons, and sought their feedback.

Once again, I wanna make sure that everybody understands this wasn't a vote, was not a poll, but we solicited feedback from our residents, went out through our social media channels, through our email lists, our website, just trying to get as as much important feedback as as we possibly could. The period that it was open February 7 through March 11. During that time, we had just over 1,400 responses, so individuals that submitted input to the survey were given the opportunity to provide a first and a second choice. And so. Those those submissions were combined.

You can see how they were broken down by district. We'll go through each of those. Not surprising District 3 where the facility resides had the highest amount of respondents. So total responses in our districts and this they they self identified which district they were in. So we we've taken their word for it. We haven't gone through and and cross tabulated. We we took them for their word. Some of the the comments and themes. So residents, they were able to participants, sorry, were able to select a option, and then they could also tell us why. They didn't have to.

A large number of people did. We went through and tried to summarize some of the main themes, and and these were really the main themes that we saw. Regardless of of whether they were kind of in the Alta Camp or a Sandy camp that many residents talked about a name that was simple and recognizable as being a priority. The residents did express interest in in repositioning the name for future growth. We saw that in numerous ways and and feedback.

There were a lot of suggestions to drop sports, whether it was a Alta name or once again, or a Sandy name instead of Alta Canyon Sports or Sandy Sports Center. There was the the suggestion over and over again to name it a recreation center, which is just much more common with with other government entities that run these type of buildings. I think people understand or they have a picture in their mind of what a recreation center is. When you ask them if they're going to a sports center, it could be multiple different things. So that was one of the themes and feedback we received.

Lots of comments emphasized the city pride of of using Sandy in the name. And then there, of course, was a contingent that said, hey, we don't wanna change the name. So it's kinda all over that. So the overall choice, just the the simple numbers for the the first option. If you just look at the numbers, Alta Canyon Sports Center came out as the top.

And you'll see this same pattern throughout pretty much all the districts and all the options. So and then we tried to summarize. Once again, I'm not gonna go through each line for you, but you'll see that the first overall choice, the Alta name was greater than all the Sandy names combined, but it was pretty close there. Their second option, it was just Alta still came out ahead, but if you combine the Sandy names, there definitely were were more Sandy names. So you combine all this, Alta Canyon Sports Center was the top ranked.

But as we started to look at this and started going through the list, we it caused us to to pause for a minute because the next one was the Sandy Recreation Center, 294. The one below that, Sandy City Recreation Center, one word difference, 224. Sandy Community Recreation Center, once again, one word difference, 174. You know, there there were a lot of input and feedback from participants saying, hey, we we like Sandy in the name. So just going through them by district, we wanted to make sure and provide this information for you.

Happy to go through it if it needs be, but you'll see a pattern here. And this is pretty consistent between the three districts Where if you combine the Sandy, you look at the sand those preferring a name with Sandy in it was almost two to one in in both districts. Or both options. Sorry. District 2, a little bit closer option one, Sandy and Alta.

The second option, Sandy was was much higher. Alta, but total responses, Sandy one eighty five, Alta 91 almost a two to one. District 3 where we had the most was was a little bit closer, but Sandy still came out ahead of the Alta standalone name. District 4, very similar to District 1 And 2 as well. You know, roughly a two to one in favor of Sandy.

Nonresident feedback, very consistent with what the the other districts minus District District 3, pretty close, but still two to one overall. And then some other suggestions there. Residents did have the chance to write in names. These are some of the ones that we saw over and over again. We did want to give an honorable mention to our own Shane Pace for the Sandy Athletic Center. Every chance he got, he would try and rah rah rah his name, but there was one submission.

That's actually wrong. It was Sandy Activity Center.

Activity Center. Oh, my my fault, but Shane's suggestion had one and it was from him. Also of note, there was the light hearted suggestion of the Shrek Creation Center and the change.org, but it did not receive any official submissions in our survey at all. So but we did wanna recognize them for their creativity. They get creativity points.

So as we we've sat back and looked at this, we we've tried to let the numbers and the and the data speak to us a little bit. Overall, if you just look top to bottom, Alta is the leader. But as you look at these others and you you read the comments and you look at how many of our our respondents were interested in having a name with Sandy and it being able to identify with their community with the future of of the building. The Sandy based names collectively received a total of 875, so a higher percentage. We we thought that was worth noting and of merit.

And so as we discussed this internally as the parks and recreation staff and and Ben and Lois are here to also answer any questions if you need to. That was pretty overwhelmingly a statement to us that the residents really were interested in having Sandy in the name. And so with that, madam chair, our recommendation this evening is to name it the Sandy Recreation Center. That was by far the leading Sandy name with a second option as Alta Canyon Sports Center.

Alright. Thank you. Thank you for that presentation. Council let's discuss this. What do we think? Miss D'Souza. I'm not sure what to think.

I I will say that Alta Canyon Sports Center was the only mention of Alta Alta Canyon. Every single other option had Sandy. So if anybody and, you know, it's like we didn't get and it had many old iterations of sports center, rec center, community rec center. Right? And so I don't know that I feel that Sandy was overwhelmingly selected other than it was overwhelmingly offered for selection, you know, in every other category.

That said, you know, I I'm not stuck on Alta Canyon by any means. You know, I do like the idea of renaming it. I feel personally that Sandy Recreation Center is almost too generic to where I'm thinking about the practical end of, hey, let's meet at the Sandy Rec Center. Which one? The Sandy recreation center.

That's the name of it. You know, when you Google if you Google Sandy, you know, recreation center in Sandy, you're gonna get Dimple Dell also. And so I am a little concerned that we increase the chance of confusion by naming it something as generic as Sandy Recreation Center. So I'm less I'm less interested in in that for that reason. I don't know that I have, you know, a better idea per se other than like I know that Alta Canyon doesn't exist in in some other named function formally but it's kind of been staple of our function community for years and years and years in terms of names. It's been on the building for what? How long is the building? Forty?

Forty two.

Forty years?

Forty one. Forty one.

Forty one? Almost as old as me. Almost as long as I've been alive. Those are my thoughts. I Alta Canyon, let's put recreation center and change it from sports. But those are my thoughts. I Sandy Recreation Center is too generic and I think it's gonna be confusing for people.

Miss Stroud. Yes. Okay. Let's go with miss Hausman. Thank

you madam chair. Just kind of a noticing in unpacking. Love, first of all, I love the fact that you kind of shared data by districts. And so I think it's just interesting to note and I think Councilwoman D'Souza just touched on this. District 3, overwhelmingly is more familiar with Alsa Canyon Sports Center and had far more interest in having that essentially be the name.

And so makes sense in the data why we saw such engagement in District 3 and what that engagement showed. I think it's important to remember our our goal here is to ensure that the entire community knows this is their center. We want we we've had some, you know, communication from our community that they don't they don't they haven't seen Alta Canyon as their community center. It's they have thought it was just for that part of the city, and there's been some confusion around around that. And and we're working to really rebrand, I guess, a way we could say it.

So I think that does come into play in terms of why we had all of the different Sandy options playing with Sandy and different combos. So I think it's interesting and I appreciate kind of aggregating if we look at the responses that had Sandy in the name some other mixture of the rest of the name but had Sandy. I think that is an important data point to consider that as a package, so to speak, or a bundle of if we look at feedback, the responses around Sandy in the name, I I and I think that's what you're basically saying is the recommendation comes because we bundled these. And so because of that and these conversations we've had, at least now this is my perspective I'm putting on I'm inserting on this. But because we've had these conversations around the value of helping everyone see this as a sandy place, I do appreciate that recommendation.

I am leaning that direction as well. So for what that's worth, thank you. Thank you for the efforts to go to the community and and ask just sort of and again I thank you for leading with this wasn't a vote. This was a gathering a gathering information task to help us move forward with our process. So thank you.

Miss Trapp go ahead. I when we've had the

discussions before I really like the idea of having Sandy. You know very similar what you had. There's a rebranding to say we've had resident after resident after resident after resident say I can go there too or what is that? And so I think opening it up you know that makes it even if you have never been up to Alta Canyon, if you have no idea right now that we've knocked down a building and we are building a new one that in a year you're going to say, oh Sandy has a recreation. I had no idea.

And it's it's for me too even though I live Hundred 14 South And 30 East, you know, or wherever it is, you know, as far away as you can get it. I, you know, I the other thing that, you know, and it didn't quite to say and and and I heard Zach say this over and over and over again, know, well, the center, the center. What is the center? Nobody knows what the center is. So if we, you know, if if it was staying at Alta Canyon Sports Center, then it would still be the center. Nobody knows what that is. Sandy Recreation Center it's the same thing. It's the center. What is that? You know so googling it's not it still needs to be unique.

That is very generic specifically generic. I I and it's and probably go nowhere on this. I did a very superficial just that superficial, you know, hey Jim and I type of thing. And I so there are other places that I have been and they will call it, you know, it's like so the Cotton Heights Aquatic team say, oh, chat. And you know exactly what chat is.

And that's because it has meaning and because you could bring it down to an acronym. And so a this is and I know it's completely off from kind of what you're doing, but I threw it in of saying, hey, you know, give me a recreation center, you know, that's city owned and it has Sandy in the name, but that is also an acronym. So it came up with and this is just kind of throwing something out there. Know I mean the star you know Sandy training athletics and recreation. So you know have you been up to the star? Don't know. I mean whatever or spark Sandy parks activity recreation complex, but something and so I don't know if we can brainstorm in the next like five minutes and come up with something or if that's even desirable. But I really think that if you're calling something, oh, well, the rec center. Which one? What city?

And it doesn't have the the ownership. I think that we are truly desiring by putting Sandy in the name. But to say that every time you know, oh we're gonna go swimming at Sandy Recreation Center. You know I mean it just is Shane's activity center, the SAC Center. Is that where we're getting at?

You know, but but something else where it can be reduced because if that's what we're looking at and knowing that Zach just called it back. You know, and that's and when I was growing up, we just called it Alta Canyon. You know, which means nothing because well Alta Canyon what? Oh Alta Canyon Pool, Alta Canyon rec center, Alta Canyon Playing Fields. You know the Alta Canyon Shopping Center.

You know so it's I mean, just something to think about. I do like having Sandy in the name, but I think it's going to get lost if we want this to be unique. We need to have something that people are going to remember. And I and identify with, you know, and that's and just having that of going. This is what it could be, you know. I mean, that's. I don't know that that's kind of my 2¢ with it. I just I think that, you know, keeping Sandy, but having a, you know, either a shortened condensed version. And if it's condensed down to rec center, then we've lost Sandy. So it's just there officially.

Miss Christianson. I like Sandy rec center. I think it's easy. I think it's simple. Everyone's called Alta Canyon Alta Canyon forever. I I think people will just get used to it. I'm I'm opposed to Alta Canyon being in the name. I think it's very divisive in the city, and so I I don't like that at all. But I don't know. I think we're making it harder than it needs to be. It's literally our recreation center. So Sandy Rec Center to me makes sense.

I second that.

Yeah I think it accomplishes. I was interested in these themes that you were hearing back. Residents prefer a name that is simple and recognizable. Boom that does it. Expressed interest in repositioning the name for future growth. That tells me you don't rename it Alta Canyon because that harkens back to the past but not the future. I'm very I'm very surprised at how many people wanted to keep that name. That wasn't the outcome that I expected. I'm really touched by that because to me that means that there's some group of people that are attached to the facility and have some bond to it and want to keep the name. And that's wonderful.

And I was trying to figure out how we could let go Habsies and do that too. But I do think I'm going to agree with the commenters that have said that it's important. The rebranding is important. People need to know it's new and different. It's not what it was and that's really important.

We want everyone citywide not a quarter of the city, not a quadrant of the city but everyone citywide to know that it's for them. I dropped sports and moved connection until I read this that recreation is used by cities so that the use of that word means it's a city facility. Okay. I didn't know that. I hadn't thought about that.

So okay. Sandy Pride in using the name Sandy in the facility name. You know I like that. Not only does it show Pride it's our facility but also it's a citywide facility too. Sandy Recreation Center, I'm totally fine with that. I don't think we ought to start all over with a new name. I do appreciate letting AI name it but

I think it was shame.

But we did we did a survey. Right? So I I wondered, you know, Alta Canyon Sports Center, should we call it? No, no, no. Anyway, I like Sandy Recreation Center. It is straightforward. It is simple. Yeah, people will probably end up calling it the rec center or the the center or whatever it is. I'm I'm good with that. I like the recommendation. I'm good with that too.

Madam chair. Yes. Just two two quick things. Just as a reminder, we are up against the deadline. Our latent construction is fabulous. And we've had a very light winter, good and bad. Good for construction, bad for our reservoirs. It's moving ahead quickly. And so we are at a point in the construction process where we need to name this facility so that we can order materials and and get it properly named. Otherwise, we're going to be cutting a ribbon on a building unnamed.

So that and then just as a reminder, you know, the National Rec and Park Association, they they do recommend and I that facilities are named geographically. They find the the ones that are named geographically find greater success in people accessing them, finding them, and using their services. So harkening back to my my previous position before I came to Sandy, I managed 23 of these. There were a hand 23 of these type of facilities. There were a handful of them that were not geographically named, and they were always a problem for people to find.

They were a problem for my staff to find. I could even point to numerous occasions where I would talk to people about Alta Canyon and and funding Alta Canyon. And they would say, where is that? I said, it's at the mouth of Little Cottonwood Canyon in Sandy. Oh, that sports club. Yes. I've been by them. So just my own personal experience

on that. Okay.

Miss DeSouza. Just one more thing. You know, I I don't wanna come across like I'm advocating for Alta Canyon. I just felt like it deserved recognition that in every single district, the very number one choice even in District 1 was still Alta Canyon, you know, when you get to select one. The only thing that I don't like about I I I agree.

I think that, you know, rebranding it and making it community focused was, you know, what what I had talked about earlier on and I I agree with that. I just feel like naming it something so generic and I feel like the word center may be the issue with the generic feel is going to eventually inevitably create confusion when you're trying to coordinate with people that don't that either live here or don't live here, you know, in in going there. So if there was a another word that

Well, was kinda wondering and marrying, like trying to accommodate. Alta Canyon was really the operative part of the old name, but it was Alta Canyon Sports Center. Right? So I thought do we marry the two by calling it the Sandy Sports Center? We're taking part of the old name and the new name and marrying the two. But that was just a thought. I do think we could get into overthinking this. And but if that's a if that's a better thought, if people like that did you have another other than center? What what else were you thinking?

Well, the only other word that I came up with is complex. I'm not married to it and maybe it's not a complex. I think complex may be aspirational in that it's, you know, modular. But, gosh, is there just another word that just feels right that could take the place of center, you know, sandy recreation something so that it reduces the generic Dimple if if we didn't have Dimple Dale in our community, I I don't think that this would be an issue at all. That's the concern.

Just just a little context again. The 23 county facilities of the 23 that I manage, 22 ended in center. It's very common. It's it's just

Well, yeah. I know you've got the Dimple Dell rec rec center.

So yep.

And so you're going to the rec center.

My to that is coming you know, having also that experience in the county and then going to Cottonwood Heights is the reason why I got called Dimpledale is because the county couldn't they didn't have ownership of Sandy. You know? And then maybe they could've. Mhmm. But we are the only entity that can take pride and call this rec center after our city name. You know, we're talking about city or Sandy Rising. This goes off of all those things, and I I love how it honors Alpha Canyon. Like, this survey, if anything, shows how much much pride the community has had in Alta Canyon. And we need to continue to honor that past. Yeah. But there's so much excitement about where we're going. And just by being here a couple months, I I'm excited about where that possibility takes us.

Yeah. Yeah. Go ahead.

Well, and the good news is if we do call it that and people Google Sandy Rec Center, we're gonna steal business straight from Dimpleco. Ours.

Yeah. So it'll be awesome.

But I'll make a motion to name to adopt resolution 26 there's just a dash. Do I have to say a number?

Sorry. We must have tried to put it on that. So it's it's resolution ACRSSD26Dash01.

That and call the facility the Sandy Recreation Center.

Second.

Alright we have a motion and a second. Second by Mr. DeKeiser.

Miss Christianson? Yes.

Miss mister DeKaiser? Yes. Miss Stroud? No. Miss Nichol?

I don't see her. I think she might have fallen off. Miss Houseman?

Yes. Miss Sharkey?

Yes.

Miss D'Souza?

No but I get it.

Madam chair that motion carried four to two with one excused.

Alright thank you. We do have a closed session but we will go ahead and do standing reports first. Need

to adjourn the board meeting and

reconvene Thank as the you for that reminder. Yes. Thank you. What was it? So motion to adjourn the board meeting and reconvene as the city council. Do I have a second? All right. All in favor? Aye. Any opposed? No. Okay thank you for that reminder. Alright. Standing reports. Dustin. One

moment. My computer has been weird all night so I apologize. Okay. Just a couple of things that I wanted to update you on. Thank you to the couple of you who came in toward the West Jordan And Murray City Council Chambers with us. I hope you found that helpful. I think we did as staff. But a note on that, we did finalize the RFP for the architect who's going to help us come up with designs for the chambers. That was the RFP was issued on Friday. It's going to be open for a couple of weeks.

And so I'll still want to have a conversation with you guys in the very near future about selecting an architect, whether anybody on the council wants to be involved in that or if the council would like somebody on the council to be involved in that, should say. So please be thinking about that still. I'm hoping we can chat about it in a not this upcoming Tuesday, but maybe the following. And then one other note, our legal services contract is going to end with Mr. Caddell here at the June.

We are at our final extension which means we have to go out RFP. We have drafted an RFP. It's essentially very similar to the RFP that we issued, I think four years ago now. However, we have updated the number of hours that we're looking for based on reports from Mr. Caddell. We've also made a change instead of the contract needing to be renewed on a year to year basis. We would have it renew on a every two years. So we basically get an extra year without having to go through that renewal process. And we're going to go ahead and issue that RFP. We're hoping on Friday.

Again, we'll have it open for two weeks. And depending on how many responses we get to it, we'll then bring that back to the council for your review. And I'm not gonna go over the agenda planning calendar for next week, but I will note, I will not be here next Tuesday. Justin will be sitting here in my place. So if you have any anything that you need from me this week, please let me know as I'll be off for a few days next week. That's it, madam chair. Thank you.