City Council - Regular Meeting

Counsel, just be aware. I'm gonna go ahead and start the recording.

Recording in progress.

Hello, everyone and welcome to the Sandy City Council meeting. Today is Tuesday, March 31. We have an agenda tonight that consists of a special recognition, two information items. We have a lengthy consent calendar, and then we have one council voting item. We will do general citizen comment at or as close to 6PM as possible but not before. And then we'll also take public comment on the one council voting item on the agenda. As usual, we are going to start with a prayer. So, I'm looking for a volunteer for a prayer. Miss Houseman, would you go ahead please? Thank you.

Our dear father in heaven, as we gather this evening as leaders in the city, we express our gratitude for the opportunity to serve. We're grateful for all of those who serve in the city, both and and staff members. We recognize the experiences our residents have within our community or because of the diligent service provided and we are grateful for the opportunity to be a part of that service. We pray that that will guide us tonight. Help us to listen and learn from one another as well as from those who will present to us.

May we seek to make the very best decisions possible and and seek to have thy guiding hand in all that we do. We are again grateful for those who we will honor and celebrate tonight for their service and for those who we may not recognize tonight but we we understand their service continues without the spotlight. We are grateful for our savior, grateful for this week in particular as we reflect upon his sacrifice and his love for us and we pray that we may all feel his love for us and pass that love on to others and we say this in the name of Jesus Christ. Amen. Amen.

Thank you, miss and we're pleased to welcome the Sandy Explorers Honor Guard tonight and they will present the colors for us and lead us in the pledge. So, if everyone would like to we'll welcome the explorers. Thank you to the explorers and we will be seeing you guys and recognizing you guys in a minute here. Next is introductions. Justin, will you please start us off on introductions, please?

Thank you, madam chair. I'm Justin Swartzon. I'm the

council assistant director. Also in the back, have council staff Liz Terriel and joining us online is council staff Chris Edwards.

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

Chris Nichol, District 3. Marcy Houseman, District 4.

Brooke Christensen, District 1.

Cindy Sharkey at large. Allison Stroud, District 2. Brooke D'Souza at large.

Aaron DeKeiser at large.

Right. Takes us oh sorry.

I'm Shane Pace, city administrator.

Lynn Pace, city attorney.

All right. You're finally done. All right. Thank you. First item on our agenda is a special recognition and mayor Zoltansky would like to introduce this one.

Thank you madam chair council audience Sandy residents. Tonight, we're really proud to have a group of outstanding young Sandy City volunteers who commit so much time, effort, and study to give their service to Sandy to support the Sandy City Police Department and learn about careers in law enforcement, military, and government. Those are the Sandy City Police Explorers from post ninety five fifty. Post ninety five fifty is the longest serving explorer group in the state of Utah. So we're so proud that Explorer experience originated here in Sandy and has continued throughout its whole proud legacy.

So many graduates of the Explorer's group, the troop have become police officers in Sandy and other law enforcement agencies across the state. But in addition to their training on exposure to career in law enforcement, they offer exceptional support to all of us in the city with their citywide event support with crowd control, traffic management, and assistance at major events in a variety of ways. They learn about many aspects of law enforcement, learning new skills, and participating in different levels of competition throughout the year. And once again, our Sandy City Explorer troop has distinguished themselves earning top honors for their color guard performance that we've just witnessed such a dignified presentation of colors here tonight. I'd like to invite Interim Chief John Arnold to come forward to tell us a little bit more about your Explorer post, their exceptional performance, and the national competition earlier this year.

Chief Arnold. Thank you. I

would like the explorer post if they can to come forward. Come on up. Hand adviser officer Slaw. This is about half of our explorer post. We are extremely proud of them.

In February 2026, the Sandy Police Explorers went to Las Vegas for a convention. It is called future con, it's Xcon. It's Explorer Convention. This is for Explorer programs nationwide. While at the convention, they have the opportunity to participate in multiple events ranging from police related activities such as building clearing and how to deal with high traffic track or high stress traffic stops.

But a major focus our explorers did this year was the honor guard ceremony. It is a highly competitive event, and after two years competing, our explorer showed the skill and precision necessary to bring home the first place trophy. That's what this is. Nice nice big one.

I'm I'm on mute. So I'm on mute. Oh, yeah. Yeah. So it's it's you don't have to be quiet. Alright.

I'm glad I wasn't the only one hearing voices. To prepare the explorers practice and participate in flag ceremonies for various events throughout the city, this trophy is a validation to their effort and excellence that they exhibit regularly. In 2025, the explorer post put in over five thousand hours of volunteer time, which comes out to over three hundred hours per Explorer. This time covers traffic control, the 25 Sandy Amphitheater shows, the Balloon Festival, Citizens Academy, Fourth of July

We have

of people

students and many have part time jobs, so these hours

represent of a big commitment. The explorers do not do it for recognition. They do it because they care about the community. They wanna help and take pride in being something bigger than themselves. Along the way, they have built a strong sense of family within the program, and we've had multiple explorers go on to careers in law enforcement throughout the state.

And we currently have four former explorers working for the police department now, and that's Lieutenant Erica Smith, Officer Alex Ewald, Officer James Bostrom, and Officer Kevin Padlin. And so I want to take this opportunity to recognize them for the hard work and the effort they put in in in winning this trophy, but also for the hard work that they put in for the community and the time that they spend. So I wanna thank them for all that they do. So if the mayor and council wanna come down, pictures. We'll even let you guys hold the trophy.

There you go. So if you guys wanna come around to the front, face this way.

We're so proud. Thank you, explorers, joining us tonight, and congratulations for that wonderful award. Good job. All right. Next item on the agenda is an information item. And we brought the whole executive board here tonight. I expected to see Jay, but not everybody. Jay Francis, come on up. You're gonna present to us about the South Valley Chamber of Commerce, the 2025 annual report. We welcome you.

Thank you. Thank you very much. I guess it's ready to go.

Yeah. Liz will bring it up. Just usually, it takes a second.

Okay. Great. Feels like we were just here, and and yet it's been a year. I but we're I'm excited to share what we have tonight. Okay.

Here we are. So we'll come back to this slide at the very end, but members of the city council, mayor, staff, we're excited to be here. We appreciate this opportunity every year to kind of come and report on 2025 and the year past, and and I'll probably insert some stuff that's already happened in 2026 because I just can't help myself. Our staff, as you've said, most of them are here with us tonight. I'll ask them to stay in.

I'm gonna I'm gonna ask this is I'm gonna ask them to each say their name and their title. Then so we'll start with Dana. That way I didn't make any mistakes. And there's a few a couple that aren't able to be with us tonight. I got a text from one of who said, I'm at Costco.

Well, bring us treats. So then I wanted yeah. Our executive committee is Scott Wester with WCF, Rob Bruff with Mountain American American Credit Union, Jen Sylvester, business owner small business owner who's incredibly successful with Sylvester and company, Heather Curtis with Coca Cola, and Dave Dennison with the Gardner Group. And be with them, plus our board, is why I sleep well at night. We have a great board.

The executive committee has my back, and we're able to function really well together. And and they help us move things along. And we just we just work really well, and we're just kinda hand in glove. What we do, and we'll go through this now, this is sort of an abbreviated version for those of you who are at the state of the chamber. But we can we connect, we educate, educate, advocate, and grow.

And then we've added and more and we'll cover the and more, which is kind of our fun stuff. Under the category of of connecting, we celebrated 14 ribbon cuttings in Sandy and we appreciate the support we get from the administration, from the mayor, from the US city council. And it makes it means a lot because a lot of these people have risked everything to open up their little shop or their they bought a franchise. And to have some people show up for the ribbon cutting. It's a big day. It's a red letter day for them. And and so to have your support, we we appreciate that. It means a lot to them. Under connect, we have our committees. We have 25 members serving on our ambassador committee.

We have 25 under our government affairs and public policy committee, which we have really ramped up, and we've really kind of made a difference and are really growing our efforts in, government affairs and public policy. And I'll talk about that in a few minutes on another slide. We have 38 that are serving on a small business committee, which are they're really helping us guide some of our tools that small businesses need as well as helping us build and get small businesses to attend some of the our our business boot camps and our accelerators and our the education tools. Our tourism committee, you'll hear them a little bit more from Zoram in just a minute on that, but we have 35. And we Zoram and I have worked hard to to be able to reach out to hoteliers, restaurants, and with the others, the attractions.

Real, the hockey, and and jazz are now part of our tourism committee so that everybody knows who's coming and what we're what we're offering. And, you know, there's gonna be more coming. This now it's sort of interjecting into the future because as the salt palace shuts down, there's gonna be more stuff coming this way, and Zoram is all over that. Our 24 serving on our women in business committee, and we had 24 junior WIM participants in 2025. And we held their graduation last April, and they each received a thousand dollar scholarship, but we paid the thousand dollars to a college or university of their choice.

It's just something I'm really pleased with. We we started a long, long time ago with eight, grew it to ten, ten, and now the last three years, we've been at 24, 25, the senior girls from from all the high schools throughout the two, school districts. Under educate, we have programs. So we have our leadership South Valley, which you have sent a number of of people from your administration staff to. And it's I this is something I wish had been in in existence when I was coming through my midcareer because it's hands on learning.

They get we we go to different places, and they're learning from those who are who are making it happen, whether it's today's Tuesday, so not tomorrow. On Thursday is transportation day, and we're gonna start out at Stadler and look at they'll make all the trains for the light rail as well as all over the world. Then we're going to the airport. We're going to the to UDOT Command Center. And they're learning from the people, not just the admin staff.

We we get the leaders. And on our health care health care day, we're at hospital and our nursing facilities. And on our arts and entertainment day, we'll we'll do probably not the Delta Center because it'll be they'll be off and they'll be renovating, but we'll probably go to the Jazz Practice facility. We'll go to the hockey. We'll go to Pioneer Theater. We'll go to Hale Center Theater. And they're they're getting the behind the scenes. We'll go to the prison. Last year, we went in 2025, we went to the prison. And, I mean, we were we were shoulder to shoulder with the inmates watching them.

Yes. They do make license plates there. That's not just a rumor. And making calendars. And then the women's section fed us lunch. And so we are it's so fun to see and to have hands on. It's and I could go on, but I should move on. Our business accelerator is something we're pleased about. We're we're probably in our seventh year now where, small businesses get to take what we call our mini MBA and be able to take principles and apply it. And and and we watch them kinda get a lift as they learn that it's okay to hire.

I I need a financial statement. I need a marketing plan, and they learn how to do all those things. Every our everyday entrepreneur continues to be something that we're pleased with. Those who are sitting at home thinking they want to start a business, they would like to do something, and they'd like to do it you know, learn how to do it, but they've got an idea in their garage or in their kitchen or their basement. And they're smart enough to come walk through this ten week class because some of them complete it and start.

Some of them get about four week four or six and say, yeah. I don't think I'm ready. And and for $400, we've just saved them thousands of dollars because everybody has a great idea. I'm just glad I didn't spend all my money on my great ideas. But and so that's a success as well because they learn, and then they they can go tweak, and then they can come back.

Our business boot camps, we had four last year with a 127 attendees. We'll have more this year. But these are hands on workshops that around marketing, around sales, and even culture that small businesses, you know, they don't have access to the tools that I was used to, you know, coming up through big business. They don't have a marketing director. They don't have a CPA.

They don't have a HR person. And so these boot camps help give them those tools and the resources to go through that. Under advocate, as I mentioned earlier, we have really stepped up our committee, and we have really, had a good voice, chaired by Steven Foxley and, I should say, co chaired by Steven Foxley and Kelsey Berg. Steven Foxley is vice president of government affairs for Regent Blue Cross, and it's in his blood. His father, Doug Foxley, you know, was one of the great probably the best lobbyists in Salt Lake City.

And then Kelsey Berg spent her time with senator Romney and then the Larry Miller Group and most recently now is the director of government relations for other We've

a the

of

we've on.

2025. We hosted We've two in the nose, one on the big beautiful bill, and then one on the Wasatch Front Regional Council came and made a presentation about the transportation plan for the South Valley. We held a a legislative review with, link senator Lincoln Fillmore and Steve Ellison. Under GROW, we these are the events. Connect after hours, which is something that we went a full year with last year.

This is after hours. This is we help move it around the South Valley, and it's turned out wonderful. When they first came to me, and I may have mentioned this last year, I was hesitant because I, in my earlier life, I'd seen some not so fun situations with connect after business after hours. And I said, we just gotta keep this under control, and they have done a great job. And it's been fun for them to be able to be in a fun place or just to gather, connect, and for an hour and a half, and it it just continues to grow.

And so I'm really pleased with how our committee is running that. Our let's do lunch. We have five events and 728 attendees. Our meet the member, we had five events. We alternate that with let's do lunch with 396 attendees. Our meet the members have become a favorite because we take 12 to 14 businesses, and they get to pitch. They get to stand up and brag about what they do. And they get to, you know, hand out samples or flyers, and it's it's become a real favorite. Our women in business, we had 10 events with 1,275 attendees. Our women in business committee hosted or chaired or overseen, probably is better, by Jamie, is just knocking home runs.

So every time we it seems like we're having say sold out and because they're just finding the right speakers and the right content for our those who are participating in our women in business. And we're getting more and more men to attend. They're really smart. Let me just say about our events. I said, you know, five and a half years ago that, if we were gonna take time and and plan events and ask people to come to our events, whether it's one of these lunches, that they needed to go away from our lunch, event, our education meetings, that they need to go away saying, I learned something.

I met someone. I'm better. And if we don't do that, then we have failed, and we should refund their money. Because important that they've taken time away from their business, their family, or something else they could be doing, and they need that hour, hour and a half. They need to be rewarded for that. The Anne Moore. This is the fun stuff. We held three golf tournaments with over with 430 participants. We held our Titan Awards with four honorees, 650 plus attendees last year. We honored a small business of the year from the Salt Mine.

And then we held Shark Tank where 10 students pitched their businesses, and we awarded them $9,500 to, you know, to first, second, third place to be able to help their idea, their business, their product. And then Brandon Fugal last year was was on our our he was one of the judges, and he just happened to have maybe a little cash in his pocket. He awarded fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh, and eighth a little bit of his own personal money too. So Valley Tourism, I'd like to bring Zoram up for a minute and have him talk a little bit about South Valley Tourism. I have some follow-up information on that as well.

Thank you, Jay. Members of the council, it's a privilege to speak with you this evening. In my capacity in this hybrid role between Sports Salt Lake, which is the athletic division of sports tourism underneath Visit Salt Lake and working with the South Valley Chamber. I have a unique opportunity to see the impact of tourism throughout the county as a whole, and I can tell you that Sandy City is right there at the top and leading in tourism efforts. And as mentioned, we're only gonna see that to continue to grow as we see some renovations take place at the Salt Palace, which is gonna allow us to bid on more business here at Mountain America Expo Center, which is currently the second largest venue utilized in sports tourism, second only to the Salt Palace.

So we're very excited to be able to bring some of those large scale volleyball tournaments and other youth events down to Mountain America. These numbers come from our events from last year. Just back pedaling just a little bit. So the South Valley Tourism Committee meets every other month. And as Jay mentioned, we're about 35 members strong, a mixture of hotels, businesses, venues, and we all come together to talk about how we can achieve these goals, how we can achieve these numbers.

And I can tell you again, in my capacity of Sportshall Lake, this would not be possible without the South Valley Chamber support and the tourism committee as a whole. Without these hotels, without these businesses creating the overall experience of Sandy City for these events, they wouldn't continue to come back to Mountain America. About 80% of our business is repeat business, groups that have had an enjoyable experience here in Sandy City at Mountain America, and they continue to grow their event here with us, and we couldn't be more happy to see that. In 2025, we had about a 180,000 visitors that were brought into Sandy City through sports related tourism, which generated just shy of 41,000 room nights and about a 66,000,000 economic impact overall. So these are dollars spent in restaurants, shopping at the the shops here at Southtown, as well as revenue generated at the venue itself.

We utilize a number of facilities throughout, Sandy City and the South Valley area, but we did wanna highlight some of our top events, that were hosted at Mountain America this past year. We hosted USA Gymnastics, which is an Olympic level national governing body for two major events, which generated nearly 4,000 room nights for one event and 9,000 for another. You can see the economic impact as well for those events. Some other groups, we host natural National Archery in the Schools program, which is one of the nation's largest archery programs, and we host their national their Western National every single year. It's one of the events that is booked several years out at Mountain America.

They couldn't be more happy to host the event at the center. Their only criticism of the center is that it may not be big enough in future years, but we hope to be able to see some growth there and be able to keep them here at Mountain America Expo Center. Triple Crown is one of our largest volleyball tournaments. They're actually hosting a boys tournament this year in December at the Salt Palace Convention Center, which is an event that we are very hopeful that be able to bring down to Mountain America Expos Center during the renovation period and hopefully retain them here, once the Salt Palace is up back to full capacity as well. Jam On It is a large scale basketball tournament that we host each summer, and Fit Con is a large fitness convention that we host.

So as you can see, the center is well equipped to host a wide, variety of different sorts of events, everything from youth volleyball, basketball, all the way up to these adult amateur fitness competitions and archery, and we we continue to look forward to other opportunities to grow and utilize the facilities.

You, Zoran. We're we have a great relationship with Visit Salt Lake and Sports Salt Lake, and it makes bringing everybody together be able to have those kind of numbers and that kind of economic impact. We also ran tourism campaigns. We did a a winter tourism campaign in 2025 2024 into twenty twenty twenty five into 2026 a little bit. And then we also did a staycation because, you know, our last two winners have got a little bit of a slow start.

And so we took some of the budget, the recommendation of our hoteliers, and we we did a staycation. And we had great results with both campaigns. And I would tell you that the campaign we just finished, we had to pause, you know, because there wasn't a whole lot of snow. And so we paused because we wanna be but then when we had big alerts, we would we pushed it out, and and people responded. They were sitting back somewhere anxious to come.

And so that we continue to be able to drive people, you know, to the South Valley. And that's what it's the the campaign is titled ski South Valley. So 2026. On 2026, we're gonna be focused, strategic, and purpose driven. And quickly, we're gonna focus on, and we already are, in doing some service and community impact.

I've learned from my previous life that it's important to serve in the community and to give back. We feel it's important for us as a chamber to help teach that principle with our chamber members and give them opportunities. We're gonna be focused on business growth and economic development. Member retention and providing value to our members is something we're really focused on. We've gone through a lot of growth the last five years, and we're continuing to grow.

Corey and and Diana continue to push us to new heights with memberships, memberships, but we wanna retain those. If we to be able to just get them and have them just leave us a year later doesn't work. And so we have a really strong retention effort going on with the support of our board and executive committee. I mentioned earlier our public policy because of the size of what we are and who we represent now, we need we need to be the And, you know, I've never been up to the capital as much as I have the last two years in my whole life. I mean, you could take my other fifty five years because that's all that that I'm the only fifty five.

And but all the years all the time my trips to the capital before the last two years would not add up to the number of trips I've been up there the last two years. And we're making a difference. And the things that we're doing are helping business and helping small business. And when we partner together with Salt Lake Chamber or Chamber West or Utah Valley Chamber, we really are making a difference. And we we were this year, even though we're not talking about 2026, but we were able to kill four four bills that were gonna be harmful to business and and three of them to small business.

And so we really made a difference by partnering together. We announced that our state of the chamber that we're doing a new small business impact award, and we appreciate working with your team and and recently selected, and we'll be honoring a business from Sandy on May 5. And to be kind of just separated from everything else we do in honor of small business, we call it the Small Business Impact Award, and we'll be hosting it over in our event room at our offices. We're excited to to do this and and have hopefully as many of you come as as is able to come that day. We believe we look at our relationship as a partnership, not a membership, not just privileges, but we really look at us as as us and Sandy as being a partner.

And we think that we're an extension of your economic development, and we have the opportunity to meet with Casey and Rob and and his team about every other month and and work together on making how can we do things things for Sandy businesses. And just yesterday we were talking about something that's coming up in next week and holding hands together on that. Strengthening communications and trust, advancing shared priorities, strengthening the community brand. And then again, as I mentioned, we really believe that this is a partnership, not just a membership. And we hope that you see it the same way.

And we used to say our theme used to be better now, but now we're saying we're better together. And as we work together, we really and as a chamber, we really feel that we're better by working together and working with each of you. Thank you for your time. Any questions?

Council, questions, comments, compliments? I knew you'd be good for that. Miss Houseman.

I would say I record this for my mom. Oh, she can hear. Better than she ever has.

Oh. No. And and and we know that that is something your family's gone through recently and very tender.

Thank you.

We're thinking of you. Yeah. Really, mine is not a a question. It's more of a comment. I've shared this with with you but I want to share it publicly. I am pursuing my MBA right now in large part because of Business Accelerator. I I think that is one of the best decisions I made and I learned about it just because of our many conversations. I was hesitant, but I got nudged, twisted a little, and I'm so so grateful that I did. I did not see myself in in kind of that business accelerator space. I was just, you know, sort of launching my my consulting business and it was so significant.

And I love that you just continue to invest in that and grow people. And and for me I saw myself differently at the end of that business accelerator program and it gave me a lot of confidence and there are nights though doing managerial accounting right now that I'm like why did you even unlock this in me? Just kidding. I'm grateful. It's really hard, but I'm grateful.

So thank you. I know my story is just one tiny story of so many business business leaders, business community members who see themselves differently and have courage and confidence in a way they would not have without the chamber. You build a community that that is phenomenal. And I echo I mean, again, my story is one of countless, but I share it because I know that there are hundreds and hundreds of others who, if they had a mic and could say it to you, they would. So I'm speaking on behalf of them.

Thank you for all you do. You unlock potential and you make dreams happen, and I'm so grateful. We we we are grateful. The city is great.

Miss Christensen. I'm so excited to be back on the board again. I've missed you guys for the last four years. And I just love that watching the sports and tourism piece of it come so far to fruition after I mean, I've seen Chris out there and, like, it's been six, seven years since we were working on tourism taxes to help support and fund this. I just you guys have done an amazing job keeping that going and and making it successful for our city. So thank you.

Thank you. If I could invest my $4.00 1 ks and get that kind of return, would love that.

Miss Stroud.

Thank you so much for what you do. I I mean having such a strong community partner, you're out there everywhere advocating for small businesses, advocating for large businesses, advocating for Sandy and that is something that that residents look to. You know, that we look to, the city looks to and and you know, you're very recognizable anywhere, you know, throughout the city and that is you know, something as we move forward and move past COVID, you know, and continuing to grow, you know, having the relationship that we have with you is is such a a valuable asset. So thank you for what you do. I mean, you just look at all these numbers and every year when you come, I'm like, my gosh, that is just so much and the amount of work that goes into it.

So thank you everything and looking forward to another great year. Thank you.

Mister DeKaiser.

I'll echo that. It was great seeing you at the forty under forty and I've seen you at lots of things. So appreciate the time and the work that goes it. I feel a little awkward being the only one to ask a question.

I wasn't the forty under forty.

I was yeah.

That was confusing. But

the I'm wondering about, like, certain types of events you said we're gonna be able to attract more or go after more business. In some of the graph you had, there were like hotel nights versus the revenue generated and some like the JM Adan had like half the nights as the Olympic event but like significantly more revenue. Are there certain types of events or related to sports or or certain visitations that we're looking to attract to to increase that $66,000,000?

Yeah. Absolutely. So we we wanna be targeting youth and family events. We find that when little Jimmy has a basketball tournament, usually that means mom and dad are coming also, perhaps a sibling as well. And so, obviously, we're gonna see more dollars spent in the community because of that. So we do tend to go after a lot a lot of these youth basketball, volleyball, baseball events, things like that. They do tend to generate a larger economic impact, more room nights than maybe some of these adult amateur events do. It's not to say that we don't want to track those events as well because we realize that those are different dollars spent perhaps at local bars or restaurants and things like that as opposed to shopping in the centers and things. But we do tend to to focus primarily more on the youth amateur type events.

Thanks.

And one of the events, I think it's been at the Salt Palace a lot, but we'll be getting is the volleyball. And volleyball moms have no credit limit. In be in between matches, am I wrong?

The the numbers at the the City Creek Mall do do support that, and we hope to be able to bring that down to the shops here at Southtown. So the numbers do support that city.

So I have a question for you. Actually, starting with a comment. Going to the events, going to the lunches, going to the ribbon cuttings, the support, the encouragement, the enthusiasm that the South Valley Chamber shows for our businesses is so appreciated by Sandy City. I just it's noticeable. It's clear what you guys do to help businesses in Sandy's. I really appreciate it. I heard recently a definitive statement that the South Valley Chamber is better than the Salt Lake Chamber. So I'd like to know your opinion on that.

We work hard. I'm not I have no comment, man. Have we have a great partnership with them. We work hard. I would if anybody wanted to check out other chambers' calendars, we do more events, more activities than any other chamber I'm aware of in in Utah, least.

So I think that's what was being described, that you guys are full service all the time, all hands on board, and that's what makes you so successful and help make our businesses so successful. We really appreciate

That's why we sleep at night.

I am still jealous that it's not the Sandy chamber, but the South Valley chamber. Still want an outsized amount of attention to Sandy but anyway, you guys do a great job. Thank you so much for everything you do for us. Appreciate it.

Thank you.

Alright. You know, we're at that kinda dilemma point where we're three minutes away. Do we have any blue cards?

Currently, I don't have any. I don't

know if there's anyone in chambers that wants to fill one

out. Okay. Got one. So we're gonna start this public comment period and we're just gonna hold it open till 6PM. And so it looks like Darren's gonna come up. Come on up and and we welcome you. Thank you. Darren Butler.

Thank you. Darren Butler. I live in Sandy, but I'm representing the library, the county library. And I just wanted to tell you that I made mistake the last time I talked about the pasta maker. We don't have the pasta maker at the Sandy Library.

So I'm sorry. If you come to request it, you'll have to go to I think the Mill Creek Library has it. So anyway, I just wanted to let you know about some upcoming themes. You may or may not know that the county voted to do some bonding for the libraries, and part of that bond includes some sandy library remodeling. We're supposed to get a new roof and replace carpet and lighting and maybe some staff areas.

Whoops. Some staff areas. But we just gonna have to see how far the money goes. But that's exciting for us because if you come to the library and look at our sad, sad carpet, you'll know that we really need some improvements. So we we are looking forward to that. And then I just wanted to highlight just, like, four events. This is our this is our events calendar. It's very colorful, but you can see that we have a lot of activities, a lot of things going on. So some things I just wanted to highlight. We do ability activity kits.

And these are designed for adults and teens with intellectual disabilities. The library it's important for us to have access to everybody and to do programming for everybody and not just story story time, which we're famous for, but to just make sure that we have access, give access to everybody. So we have activity kits. Another thing that's really popular is our writers group. We have a couple of people that have been going for several weeks, and they are about ready to publish books.

And so that's a really great, great theme. We also have Read to a Dog, which I don't know if I mentioned that last time or not, where kids can come if they're shy about reading, they can come read to a dog who's not gonna be judgmental. These dogs are trained to be read to. So it's a really great, great program. And then lastly, I just wanted to highlight the the community art day, America two fifty Sandy Community Art Contest in partnership with Sandy City. So that's gonna be Saturday, April 11 at 10AM and no registration required. You can just come and do some art.

Okay. Thank you. Thank you, Darren. Justin, do you want to go ahead and invite the online audience to public comment if they care to?

Certainly, madam chair. If you're participating on Zoom and would like to make a comment, please use the raise feature, and I will call you in order. And you will have three minutes to make your comment.

Doesn't look like we have anyone online.

Comment? Looks like I don't have any more takers so I'll close the general citizen comment period for tonight and we'll move on in the agenda. And that is Devin Weider. Devin, please come on down. Have asked Devin to come and fill us in on the phase one implementation of transportation in Little Catwat Canyons. Thank you for joining us tonight.

Yeah. Thank you for having me. I really appreciate you taking time to let me speak and I guess answer any of your questions you may have after this presentation. So, yeah, I'm Devin Weider. I'm a project manager at the Utah Department of Transportation, and I'm currently the project manager for the Conway Canyon Transit program.

So as you can see here, this is a quick summary. I've left out Big Cottonwood Canyon because that's not out of the environmental phase yet. So what's currently what they were moving forward with is what's shown on the screen. That's a $125,000,000 mobility hub at what's currently the Walker Or Granite Gravel Pit. It's a $56,000,000 intersection improvement, which is going to be a great separated intersection to lead into that mobility hub and a future development that's planned, as well as increased bus service that will lead from that mobility hub as well as from 9400 South at the existing park and ride up to the O'Conway Canyon.

By 2050, that'll be around five minute service. We're hoping to start with ten minute service. So ten minutes from the mobility hub, twenty minutes from 9400 South. That's an improvement over the current thirty minute service. That this is also paired with a snowboard Snowbird Resort bus stop as well as an resort bus stop.

And these aren't just small bus stops. They're actually, like, 7,000 square foot facilities with lockers, bathrooms. They're heated, enclosed, and they feature pullouts for all the buses. So we can quickly get buses in and out without having them have to go into resort traffic which is where we spend a lot of time and money on the bus service. Because every time you get stuck in that traffic, it's either less round trip time, you know, like, or the bus comes less frequently or we have to spend more money on more buses to get those buses to come more frequently.

So that's kind of been the aim of this whole program is how do we spend tax dollars wisely improvements so that we can have lower operational costs. This would also be paired with tolling. Tolling is one of the few tools that UDOT has to manage traffic in the canyon. We can manage speed. We can manage safety and the roadway geometry.

But when it comes to managing demand, we really only have one tool that's legally allowed and that's tolling. We recently submitted our tolling application to the Federal Highway Administration because we need their approval in order to actually implement a toll in the canyon. We'll also be doing parking restrictions in the Upper Canyon near the ski resorts. We see that as a safety issue as well as operational issue. If you go up there in the mornings when there's ski traffic or in the afternoons, there's a lot of people parking on the sides of the roads.

There's a lot of people walking on the sides of the roads and just a lot of people making u turns at the end of the day. So if we can remove that parking on the roadside, encourage people to ride transit, we think that all of these improvements will lead to a much better situation in the canyon, more people able to get up the canyon in a faster and more efficient manner. So this is that has been the plan since 2023 when the record of decision was released in Little Cottonwood. In December 2025 we announced that we're actually moving forward on that plan. So while we are under current under litigation currently, we are moving forward and we're implementing phase one.

Since the since December, we have made progress on ordering the buses. Those will be that order will be placed most likely in July. That's around 50 buses that we'll be ordering. We've selected an architect for mobility hub that is VCBO, and we've advertised the interchange. So we've made progress on most of the capital improvements.

What we are still working on is the resort bus stop improvements. We still need to do concepting for those. We need to work with both town of Alta, Alta Resorts, Forest Service, and over to really nail down what these concepts look like, what are these bus stops going, how exactly will they look. Because for the Forest Service, it's very important that these blend into into what they call the built environment. So when you drive up and you see this bus stop, you're not going to think that that's just some out of place thing.

It needs to look like it fits in Stover. It needs to look like it fits in Alta, and it needs to look like it fits in the environment. So it's not really being detrimental to what they call the view shed. And we're making as I said, we're making progress on tolling, having submitted our app formally submitted our application to Federal Highway Administration. And we're moving forward with the roadside parking restrictions that will those won't go into effect until the bus service starts. But we're making progress towards talking to all the community members, making sure they all understand what those restrictions will look like. In Big Conway Canyon, we're proposing many of the same things. Very similar resort bus stops. It's going to be the same improvements but expanded in the gravel pit. So the mobility hub will get larger.

The there could be an additional bus lane that leads out of the out of the gravel pit and a bus bridge so you actually can sneak around the traffic and the buses can go straight up the canyon. And it could also be beneficial for little Cottonwood traffic because those buses can use that bridge as well. And same thing, resort bus stops, tolling. These are not final yet. We're still working towards our decision which we expect to have in May.

For a little bit more detail on the bus service, you can see here there's the gravel pit marked in the 94, Highland Park And Ride. So ten to fifteen minutes to start with from the mobility hub up Little Cottonwood. Right now it's 1,500 stalls for that parking garage, but we are looking to increase it to around 1,800 parking stalls with the Big Cottonwood Canyon Environmental. And then a fifteen to twenty minute service from 94 in South And Highland. This would not be paired with increasing the size of that park and ride.

That was looked at as part of the Little Cottonwood Canyon but it was determined that it wasn't needed at this time. Here's just a nice graphic showing all the recommendations from the Little Cottonwood Canyon Environmental Impact Statement, record of decision. Phase one is what we're working on right now. So you can see phase two which would also be the Wasatch Boulevard improvements, widening Wasatch south of Fort Union. There'd be the snow sheds in the Upper Canyon in Little Cottonwood as well as trailhead improvements.

And then phase three, the bus service would stop and the gondola that would run from near near the mouth of Little Cottonwood up to Snowbird and Alta. That's when that would come into effect and the bus service would stop. Currently only phase one is funded. We have absolutely no funding for phase two or three. And here's a quick timeline. You know, we're in final design and permitting. We hope to be pretty quickly moving towards property acquisition which is relatively minor. The only properties that we're really purchasing are at the gravel pit. I don't believe there's any other properties that we will have to purchase. In Big Cottonwood, there will be more properties that we have to purchase, but that's still in the environmental phase.

And then purchasing the buses, as I said, hopefully in July with a delivery in 2028. And then we'll have implementation of all these improvements by 2028. And now any questions?

Council member questions. Questions. Mister

Souza. Thank you. Thank you for coming tonight and giving us this update. I just had I had a question about the future bus stops at both Snowbird and Alta. Yeah. And I know that that it's very early in concept and whatnot but from a like where it's planned to be located standpoint. Is it are they planned to be located in the property owned by the resorts? Is it forest service land? Like, where will these

Right.

End

up? Most likely forest service land. So most of the resorts own very little property themselves. Snowbird owns some. I believe Alta owns some, but most of it's actually forest service property that they operate on. For Snowbird, it's going to be Entry 1. So right as you come into Entry 1, it's going to be just North of Creekside across the little across their parking lot from Creekside. That's on Forest Service property. For Alta, it's going to be right in the town of Alta. So kind of in between the two entrances for the Alta Resort up on the hillside.

There we do have some access issues there where we need to get people both down to Alta and back up to the bus stop. But it's one of the few locations that isn't already developed in Alta. So that's we're still working on the exact concept for that one. And it may the Alta location may shift slightly. But it's all on Forest Service property.

Okay. Yeah.

Well, that helps. The technical the technical answer helps. But from a perception standpoint and and how people view the property

Mhmm.

At least I'm I'm thinking if it's entrance one for for Snowbird, it's like within that that entrance.

It is. And it's actually below so if you're on the road, it's below the road. Okay. So the road road is climbing. Right. And, yeah, it'd be like the second story would almost be level with the road.

Okay. Thank you. That's all I had. Yeah.

I have a whole lot of questions. Okay. Hey, Devin, can you steer back to that first slide where the very first one? Okay. Yeah. Oh, I'm sorry.

No. You're good. I was hit too many times.

So I'm adding up 275,000,000.

Yeah.

Does do these costs include the buses?

They do. So the 40,000,000 is the bus purchase cost.

Okay. And the buses that you haven't ordered yet, 50 of them, diesel or electric?

We're clearing diesel and we cleared diesel in Locabo EIS. We're still open to other options. You know, I've been talking a lot with UTA to understand they run all of the different types of buses. And so it's really just working with them to understand the pros and cons of all the different options. Electric is more expensive. Clean natural gas has some downfalls. Diesel is just kind of the reliable option. But we haven't nailed down exactly what we're going to order.

So but 40,000,000, what does that cover?

No. That's diesel.

That's the diesel estimate. Yes.

So what's the increased cost for electric at this point in

time? So diesel is around $800,000 each depending on who you buy it from, and electric's about 1,100,000.0.

1.1?

Yeah.

Okay.

It's around 300,000 a

month.

Okay. And availability of electric buses for this kind of use, is this does this exist today? And what is availability like?

Yeah. I'm gonna say it's not you it's not a specialty bus. You know, if you're ordering this is a we'd be ordering a normal bus that UTA would really order with a few modifications. Right? Maybe a stronger engine or different drivetrain, but it's really nothing special. Same with electric. It'd just be a normal electric bus with maybe a few modifications.

What about this issue of charging electric buses? Could you could you discuss that? I'm hearing things about the frequency of needing to pull them out of the fleet to charge them just because I don't know if it's because of the grade of the road. I'm just curious about that. That's one of the issues that tends to come up a lot. And now that we have the subject matter expert here, it's a chance to ask you.

Yeah. I I would say it's not infeasible. It's just a challenge with some you know, when you're if you've ever driven electric car or one, going up a canyon is just really energy intensive. And so it's the same thing with the bus. Where with diesel, you can just keep going longer and then refilling is really quickly.

You just have to have more planning effort into how that charging is going to work. So when we've done some modeling and we're gonna try it we'll hopefully try it with some UTA buses, you can probably go up and down two or three times without recharging but then you'd have to recharge and that can take, you know, thirty, forty five minutes. So it's really just in the difference between diesel and electric is you have to plan. You have to say, okay. At this stop, you're gonna charge. Right? When you, like you maybe even go all the way to Alta without charging. When you get to Alta, charge, and then charge again when you get back to mobility hub. But you just have to have more effort in that charging. It's not something that's infeasible.

So wait. Did I get this right? Two or three times up and down the canyon before you have to start stop and recharge thirty to forty minutes?

I would say, yeah, it's around there. The charging times could be a little bit longer. It really depends. It it's complicated because the faster you charge, the more money you're going to end up paying because how how high of a demand this is. Most of us never have to deal with this in our personal lives.

But when you get over a certain when you're drawing too much power from Rocky Mountain Power, they start to actually charge you four to five times as much money per unit of energy for that same amount of power because it's just such a big demand on their grid. And so that's and you could easily get into that with two buses. So at two once you like, one bus isn't quite enough power demand, but two buses could easily get to the point where you're paying five times as much money per unit of energy. So you really have to spend a lot of time and effort into planning how you charge because even though there can be a cost savings from that, you know, using electric buses, it can especially in this time frame, it can be cheaper than gas and diesel. But you can if you don't do it correctly, if you don't plan correctly, you can easily spend a lot of money on electricity, even more than it would have cost for gas or diesel.

And so back to the original question, the $40,000,000 is 50 diesel buses. You spend quite a bit more for electric electric buses. Could be some diesel savings but not sure whether in terms of power and electricity and a charging, would you have to build a charging station that isn't included in that too? Yeah.

You'd have to add additional charging both basically per vehicle because they generally charge each one at night. Like, so that's about 60,000 per bus for night charging plus all the other infrastructure to charge during the day.

So what's your number? If it's not 50 diesel buses, but it's 50 electric buses.

Hard to say right off the top of my head. Mean, you add 3 to $400 times 50.

That's a lot of money.

Yeah. Do you

have that?

I I mean, it's possible. I have $350,000,000 currently for the whole program, but the program also includes all the improvements in Big Cottonwood. Right? And it includes maintenance facility. It includes all a lot of other items that need to support this. And so, you know, when I'm making those decisions on what fuel type to select, it's based on the whole program. Right? And, like, can we see cost savings on the operate because I I'm really aiming all this as if, you know, this is a we're not gonna see this kind of investment again in the Canyon for quite a while. And so when we when I'm making this investment, I wanna do it in a smart manner. And so if I it means I spend a little bit more money upfront.

Like, one of the plans is to have bus parking at the mobility hub, which all the architects are like, why would you ever do that? Why, you know, like, that's gonna cost so much more money. But from the operation side, it means that a bus driver have to drive from 9400 South at some other parking lot every single morning. So we're saving forty five minutes of their shift every day. So it's just things like that that we have to take into account when we're making the overall plan and placing this first order to see if we're actually gonna get cost savings in the operations.

And if we buy diesel now, we'll have these buses for between ten and fourteen years. And so it doesn't mean we're locked in forever. Right? I'm gonna make sure we're future proof so that we can go electric in the future and we can make that decision in, you know, ten, fourteen years.

What is your budget for you indicate that phase one is funded. Mhmm. What's your budget?

How much money? Right around 350,000,000.

Okay. Okay.

And this that's why, like, big hot wood isn't shown. The cost for the maintenance facility isn't shown. There are a couple other costs that aren't shown just on this one graphic.

So $3.50 is not only the capital cost but operational cost?

That's just capital.

Just capital.

Yeah.

Okay. Where are the operational costs gonna come from? Do you have a budget for that as well?

We don't have any current allocation for ongoing funding. We have the CCT TIF, which is an ongoing collection. It's a subset of the transportation investment fund. Collects right around $20,000,000 per year from the TIF, but that needs an appropriation each time their money comes out of it. So it's possible we could get get that 20,000,000 for operations funding. It's possible that operations funding could come from somewhere else. Okay.

Tolling. So you have an interesting photo here that shows tolling in effect at $25. I've been trying to get this number out of you guys. Is that the number? Is We don't

have an exact number. And I think that's and like, the point is I can't I can't I don't want to say that it's just one number because it's a variable priced toll based on congestion.

Tell us about that. How do you envision that working, the tolling?

Yeah. So we don't have an exact we will have we will have to have an exact metric or formula. Right? We the Utah Transportation Commission will have to approve the way that we set the toll. But at this point in the environmental phase, we haven't laid out an exact formula. But the point is going to be to keep the road working. Right? So if the road isn't flowing, if people aren't able to go up and down the canyon, then we're gonna have to set the toll appropriately. And that's it's gonna be that's going to be our overall metric. Right?

We're gonna have to come up with an actual formula for that, an actual way to implement that that is approvable by the commission, but that's the goal. Right? The goal is not to create revenue. It is just to make sure that the canyon the canyon road is working. Both for transit as for normal drivers.

If traffic isn't flowing, the toll goes up.

Yeah. It's possible. And I'm and there's always a point. Right? Like, there's a point in which you can't raise the toll anymore. But $25 back in 2020, we conducted a poll and reached out to a lot of people, did a market study, and $25.30 dollars was right around the number that people said they would where they would start to change their behavior, take transit. And I think you see that with the ski resorts. Right? All of them have set their parking reservation costs right around the same price.

Will revenue from the tolling go to operational costs? Is that another source of funding for operational costs?

Yeah. Definitely possible. We haven't the restrictions that we'll have on the funding will both come from federal highways as well as from whatever the legislature and the commission sets. But, yes, very we're definitely aiming to have that funding be able to be spent on the operations as well as making you know, trying to keep get that money to be spent on the canyons themselves.

And this fluctuating cost of the toll. Will that also apply to things like how many people are in the car, things like that? Is that another

Yeah. It's something we considered. I we didn't say whether we didn't say one way or the other in the in the environmental. The biggest concern with what's called high high occupancy vehicle tolling is that it's basically at this point unenforceable. The best practice right now in the that is standardized across the nation is basically you have a little switch in your car that you switch back and forth on whether or not it's high occupancy. As you can imagine, that's not really

I think every car would be high occupancy.

Right. When the toll is $25, the incentive is high to not be honest. And so when we look at we already have a relatively high occupancy in The Canyon. It's about 2.2 people per car during the ski season, a lot higher than average in the valley. Just the the risk of saying, okay because if if you say it basically the way it works, if you say there will be a high occupancy exemption, you're stuck with that.

The way way the federal system works, you're stuck with that no matter what. And so there's always a chance we add that occupancy restriction or exemption in, but at this point with the technology it doesn't make sense to have that exemption right now. If we get to the point where we can accurately say there's four four people in this car, you should be free, you're cheaper, we're open to that. But just right now it just seems like everyone would just be saying

So the technology doesn't exist to figure that out. So you'd have to kinda trust people if you went that route. So that's kind of interesting. And so without stopping people because that's not what we want to do, right? There's no gate. And you stop a car and you assess the toll and you charge it and do the transaction. Right?

Right. Because yeah. Because the whole point is not to try to pay off this investment. The whole point is to make the road work better. Yeah. And having a gate or having and the highway patrol has a really hard you know, we have all of these on the freeway. Right? And the high the highway patrol has a really hard time enforcing it while also being safe. And so trying to make that trade off, it just didn't seem like the correct choice for the canyon.

So the goal is to get people out of their cars and into buses.

That's right.

That's the goal.

Or or more car cooling but there's only there's a limit to how much car cooling helps. Yet at some point you need to go into these way higher occupancy transit vehicles.

What will we see first in terms of these things that are coming? Phase one is funded. 2028 is what we're looking at. What will we see first? What will we see and in what order?

Yeah. First thing you're going to see is most likely work on the gravel pit. So you'll see I mean, you go out there right now, there's already work happening. It's the current owner is working with us to try to find all the faults. And so if you go and drive by right now, you'll see large trenches as we try to locate the Wasatch fault through the area. But that's where you'll see the work first. You know, we're going to start you'll see foundation work. You'll see roadway work start to happen on the interchange. All of that most later this year, early twenty seven is when you'll really start to see work work out there. And then really, like, not that much in sand.

Like, there's no roadway work that you would see until the buses start running. You know, the Wasatch will mostly stay the same outside of the gravel pit. In later twenty seven, I would expect we'll start to see work at the ski resorts for their bus stops. And we may those are a little behind schedule, would say. Like, they're just with the lawsuit, the work the concept work and all that was a little bit delayed. The environmental work that the forest service has to do has been delayed. So there may be some work to just try to get bus pullouts at the ski resorts and maintain some semblance of those bus stops up at the resort.

Seems like a lot to happen in a short period of time.

It is. It is, you know, feasible, but it's a lot.

Ten to fifteen minutes service from the gravel pit, fifteen to twenty minutes service from 94th And Highland. What that means is a bus will be leaving the gravel pit every ten to fifteen minutes and a bus will be leaving from 94th And Highland every fifteen to twenty minutes. These are buses operated by UDOT, not UTA. Right?

Yes. Most likely. Yeah. We've been working with UTA to define, like, the the split in the service. So UTA would still serve up to 94th and up the 94th Mobility Hub or 94th Park And Ride and up to the mobility hub. So you can still take transit to get to that point. But the decision was made, you know, like and the one fun interesting anecdote that I really made me understand service a lot better. If you look at current UTA service, they both start at tracks basically, the two services they run. And the average person gets on at tracks. Like if you were I I whenever I try to get on the ski bus I don't drive to tracks to get on.

I go to the canyon because that's the most easiest place for me to go and I can never get on the bus. Right? I go and I'm like, why is every single bus full when it shows up to this park and ride? And so when we looked at that data we said, you know, it really doesn't make sense for the bus service to start for that. Because if we're gonna build this large investment, whether you drive there or you take transit there, you should have equal opportunity to get on the ski bus. And so decision was made. You know, let's split it there. UTA will serve the valley. UDOT will serve the canyons. And so you will get off your UTA bus, you'll get out of your car, and you'll get off the UDOT ski bus and go up the canyon.

So does the gravel pit is gonna be the focus of most of the effort to transport people up the canyons. So a bus leaving the gravel pit is not going to 94th and Highland and then up. So they're going straight up either canyon depending upon it's like an express bus. Right? Pretty much.

That's correct. There Yeah. There could be intermediate stops, but I wouldn't expect we'd serve all the stops that UTA currently serves because it's more of an express bus.

And why is it not the same frequency at 94th as it is at the gravel pit? Is there a reason for that?

The split just the split traffic. Even for Little Cottonwood, it's still 65% of people are coming from the North. And so when we're targeting this investment at this phase, eventually, we will have to have a mobility hub of some sort, right, a parking garage on the southern end. But when we looked at the traffic models, the northern traffic is where most of the generation is so we're gonna target that investment there. Our models with big Cotton show, you know, probably fifteen, twenty years from now is when we're really going to have a need for a larger parking structure somewhere on the South and 9400 South could be a good location.

The bottom of the future gondola could be a good location. So those were both identified in the EIS as places where we could have a parking structure.

You've indicated on that final slide that phase two and phase three are funded. Is there a world in which UDOT sees that phase one achieves the goal and nothing else is needed to achieve the goal?

I mean, it's always possible. But based on our modeling of both population growth, growth in skier demand, we always see that at some point, you can't run a bus fast enough. Right? You just can't even if you're going direct to each ski resort, once you're running a bus every I believe it's four four minutes, four to five minutes, that's really the limit because you can't even load a bus fast enough to get a bus out the door every four or five minutes, especially with skis and kids and all the stuff you have to get on a bus. So it's at that point the bus system really stops being functional and you have to start to look to other options which is why in the end the gondola was recommended because it is another more it's much easier to load.

The capacity is much higher. It's and that's what we may need in 2050. But where it's not funded right now, right, the EIS is a a plan and a recommendation but it's not we don't it unless it's funded by the legislature.

Yeah. Yeah. And how do UDOT projects get funded? Does where does the legislature draw the money from to fund UDOT projects?

Yeah. So I think actually the current phase one is a really good representative example. Phase one has what's called TIF money. That's transportation investment fund. Money there there was money set aside in 2019 for high growth tourism areas and so we had quite a bit of that money left left over from the EIS. So that money went into this. That transportation investment fund is funded from your gas tax. The state gas tax, it's funded from state sales tax as well as other voter fees that you may pay. And a subset of the TIF is what's called the Cottonwood Canyon Transportation Investment Fund. It's all the same taxes.

The legislature just said, hey, set aside some of that for future growth and spend and things in the canyons. At the same time back in 2023, the legislature gave UDOT a $100,000,000 from the general fund. So we get money from sales tax, we get money from gas tax, we also can get money from what's the general fund which is just, you know I don't actually know exactly all the taxes that go in the general fund but all the rest of the taxes that go in the legislature can go in and say, here's additional money. Most UDOT projects are just funded from the transportation investment fund. That's our savings account that there's always money going into there.

We work with the legislature. We work with the transportation commission to plan and and WFRC to plan and program that money and then get it approved by the commission.

So none of this and none of this transportation investment fund is gas sales tax and motor fees.

General

fund, yeah, I don't know either because all income tax goes to education. So by constitute by, you know, Utah laws.

So I would I would guess it's mostly sales tax. The I think we get I think the tip is something like

A percentage?

3%. Okay. Don't quote me.

So mostly sales tax.

I think it 's sales tax but I'm not legislative analyst.

Okay. You may be right.

Chat GPT may not.

So no property tax. You do not draw on property taxes for we do not as a state. UDOT does not, the legislature does not use property taxes to pay for UDOT transportation projects.

Not that I'm aware of. So

we've been hearing that there is a narrative out there that every household in Utah will pay $1,200 for this end result, which is a gondola. What does that even mean? I mean, people think that they're going to actually get an assessment on their property tax bill for $1,200 That's how that's how miscommunicated this is. So do you have any idea what it that's supposed to mean? What that number? Do you have do you know, Devin, where this comes from or what it's supposed to mean?

Or

I would guess that it's probably someone taking which I will like, environmental impact statements and diversity planning. Right? These are all things that are complicated complicated financial statements that actually, there's a funny coincidence where if you take what's the present value of parts of this project and project them out to 2050, which is what WFRC does to try to say, hey, if you're doing this project in 2050 what could it cost? It happens to be around the same number as doing a lot of this stuff in another phase. So people get confused and they start throwing out this like $1,200,000,000 number.

That's a projected future cost in 2050 which as we all know from most recent past like inflation is real and inflation when projected over twenty five years looks huge, you know. So your house that your parents bought that was $10,000 is now worth $900,000. So I would guess that someone took those numbers of, you know, it's $1,200,000,000 divided by the population population of of Utah. Utah. Here's a number. Right? It's not based on any exact tax that you might pay and it's not based on it's just based on an instantaneous calculation of numbers that isn't really that meaningful.

Yeah. And it probably includes the $350,000,000 that you already have and intend to spend now. Right?

It does.

So you can take that part off because that's covered.

You already

have it. Yeah.

Yeah. So I guess my last question would be success. What is success of phase one? What is is this an effort by UDOT to get people to get out of their cars and onto a bus so we can have the traffic throughput that we need? How are you going to measure success?

How are you going to measure since you're even showing us at the end of this and the record of decision was a gondola. But we don't know if we're ever going to get there. Right? Is phase one a test? And if we can get enough people out of their cars and into buses, we won't need a gondola. Is that what we're about about to embark on? Is that the definition of success that we can apply to this? I guess what I'm trying to say is for those of us in Sandy, do we say to people, do the right thing? Get out of your car. Get on a bus.

You don't want a gondola. You can control that. Get on a bus. Stop driving your car up the canyon. And I'm it seems to me that at one time, Josh Vangira said that. Right? So but we could get that messaging out there if that is the definition of success that stops future investments here. What are we looking at? Can you

I guess I would say my definition of success for this will be are you able to get to the ski resorts? Are you able to get where you wanna go in the canyons without major heart, you know, heartache? Without major pain? It's still an incredibly demanding area both with the level the level of demand. Right? We see huge visitor numbers both summer and winter in these areas. You see some of the crazy especially little cottonwood, some of the craziest weather. Oh, this year was not a good example. You know, we this section of road has some of the most avalanches of any road in North America as we all saw in 2022, 2023. So the buses won't fix that.

Right? If we have a year where there's a lot of avalanches you're still gonna have closures for safety, you're still going to have closures that no one can go up and down the canyon and a bus doesn't solve that. And so understanding that all those big snow years or even normal snow years where there's there's always closures on normal snow years, the bus won't solve that. And so that's one piece where you can't if you're trying to measure success of the bus system, like, that's just something that it'll never fix. It's better in Big Cottonwood because we don't have as many avalanche closures. It's just terrain. Right? There's just not the same terrain. It doesn't create the same avalanche risk. So the buses work better in Big Cottonwood Canyon.

But that's yeah. My definition of success is are you able going to be able to go up the canyon in a reasonable time without unreasonable delay delay and not, you know, be frustrated at the end of the day. One thing I do like to say is as someone who grew up in Salt Lake, you know, I've been going up the canyons forever. Not as long as some people have but there didn't used to be delays. Right? There used to be an odd day where you were coming down from Brighton or coming down from Snowbird and you'd get stuck. It was a snowstorm but you were understanding. Right? You were like, oh, it's a massive snowstorm. Of course I'm stuck.

That's still going to happen on those snow days But what we're trying to get rid of are those days where it's a bluebird day, there's no issues, and you're still stuck in the canyon. And that's because too many people try to go up the canyon all at the same time or try to come down the canyon all at the same time. So to your point, yes, like if we can solve it with the minimum amount of spending, I'm sure the legislature won't wanna fund anything else. Right? There won't be there won't be a demand. Right? No one's going to be saying, hey. Like, I'm stuck in traffic all day. But if we can't solve it with the buses, then there will still be demand, then the legislature will still wanna respond to that demand.

I wonder about that measurement of getting people up and down the canyons without a big delay. One of the things I'd love to measure because we hear this a lot from Sandy residents is that Sandy residents are driving to Ogden to ski because it's easier than getting to Snowbird. So I still want to be able to measure what is that willingness to sit in traffic. And I certainly to prioritize, I want to prioritize Sandy residents. I want to make sure that they are getting where they need to within and approximate to Sandy.

So I'm going to be interested in how we measure this success. You talked about avalanches and things. Buses don't solve that problem. Do you is it your vision that snowsheds are a foregone conclusion because that at least helps significantly. Does that mean your feeling is we'll at least move into phase two because anything that's road based, whether it be a car or a bus, has the chance of being held up by avalanches there's a safety issue. So do you think snowsheds are gonna happen no matter what?

I I don't think they're foregone. Mean, it's definitely it's in our recommendation. Right? But it's the same thing if snowsheds are a little different because they're both a safety and an operations aspect. There's those the snowsheds that were recommended, I believe they account for something like 80% of the avalanches that actually cross the road. So they while probably we would still have to close the road for avalanche closures, we'd have to have it closed less for less long. Because every time an avalanche crosses the road even if we trigger it, right, with our avalanche control, we have to go clear it. But if we have a snow shed and the avalanche just goes over the road then the second we're done with our avalanche control and we see the roads clear we just open it back

up. Okay.

So it can go from, you know, like a we could be open by 09:30 instead of 11:30. So it's not a foregone conclusion but it really is still just based on if we're not seeing that improvement, if we're still seeing this issue, then does the legislature fund that next that next phase?

Yeah. I'm wondering because the frequency of buses going up to Little Cottonwood from 94th is less frequent. Are you think are you trying to attract like Sandy and Draper anyone south going directly to the gravel pit and bypassing the park and ride at 94th And Highland? What are what is UDOT thinking is the most expeditious way to get people?

As part of what what we're beginning on is the final operations planning which is really laying out like this level of planning is just saying where does the bus start, where does it end. We're getting into the actual operations of where along the route does that bus stop. Right? So I really do still wanna make sure that if you live near the mouth, you're not just being like, oh crap. I have to drive to 94th or I have to drive all the way to Mobility Hub. We need to make sure we have intermediate stops. We probably won't have the level of intermediate stops that UTA has which they really have planned as more of a local route. So, you know, in my mind the what's called the Swamp Lot which is, you know, pretty big parking lot near, I don't know, 9800 no. No. 8800 South.

There's intermediate stops that we still wanna serve. But I do see your point. You know, without increasing the number amount of parking in 90 94th And Highland, I could see how that could fill up quickly with this increased service. And it's something we're just gonna have to monitor and check and say, work with you that's going to be an end of a future UTA route as well. And so maybe that's something where we can work with UTA to create something that's not just for the ski service. It's a parking garage or a mobility hub that serves the valley with multiple routes, not just ski routes.

Of this, I keep thinking it's my last question then I come up with another one. Sorry, guys. Good, good. How much of this $350,000,000 investment becomes obsolete if UDOT does decide to move on and the legislature does fund a gondola?

Currently, if we did nothing like, we didn't plan for it, it would be the resort bus stops and that's it. The resort bus stops, I'm still I'm working with the town of Alta. I'm, you know, on Big Hot Wheels. I'm working with the town of Brighton to make sure that these can be community spaces as well because even in the current plan, they're only used, you know, six, seven months a year. The rest of the year they're not used.

And so I'm sure that if at all possible these resort bus stops become more than just bus stops. But if we didn't do anything at all, it would be the resort bus stops in Snowbird and Alto that become they have to find another use. Everything else can still be used because the mobility hub is actually sized, which is why it's increasing in size, it's sized for twenty fifty in Big Cottonwood. And so at some point the Big Cottonwood traffic is actually gonna say, hey, there's too much Big Cottonwood traffic in this thing. Little Cottonwood needs to find another location. And that's where, you know, we need to have either another mobility hub near the mouth of Little Cottonwood or 94th pick up the slack. But that's really the intent is to not have anything become obsolete when the Cottonwood comes online.

Okay. Miss Nicholl, did you have questions? Good.

So of the 50 buses that you're ordering, are those specific to Little Cottonwood Canyon and will only service Little Cottonwood Canyon?

No. Actually, that's a good point. 30 of them are Little Cottonwood Canyon. 20 is big.

Okay.

Yeah. That's a good point.

Thank you. And so we you said that buses won't help with avalanches. Will would a a gondola be able to run-in an avalanche?

It would either significantly reduce the closure time or potentially be able to run during an avalanche. The the gondola was designed the reason it's so tall is it's designed to be above any avalanche debris because you never know when it's gonna happen. Right? Like an avalanche could technically happen at any time and so we it was designed to be above outside of it, the ski resorts and where it comes lower near the stations, it's designed to be above any avalanche or outside of avalanche zones. So yes, like a gondola could technically run during an avalanche.

Okay. It's good to know that people won't get a bill from UTA for $1,200 and that we've determined that, you know, income tax and your UTA is paid from a completely different tax. So I think anybody in here saying that should be able to be able to stop saying that. So thank you.

When I did think of another one. Give me two seconds and I'll think of another one. And when a gondola ever happens in the it sounds like it's pretty distant future. What will still be allowed in the can will buses still be allowed in the canyon, and will cars still be allowed in the canyon? What's the game plan?

Yeah. Our plan is to not continue the bus service, but that we're not precluded from doing that. That just it. Once you run-in a gondola, there's not much need to be running in a second transit solution. Cars are still allowed by this these routes are what's called federal aid routes. We've taken federal money for these routes which means that we have to abide by the restrictions that come from federal highways. That is to make sure they're public access roads. So that's why we can't do timed entry like the national parks. It's why we can't do a lot of things like the national parks do because we're bound by these federal laws that say how we can manage, how we can operate these roads. And for the most part, we don't even own the road.

These are actually we have right of way from for the forest service for most of it. And so most mostly it's owned by the federal government anyway. K.

Mister DeKeiser, go ahead.

Thank you, madam chair. It's nice to meet you. Thank you so much for all the progress you've made. I understand based on my many meetings with your predecessors that this could be a challenging role. So appreciate being here tonight, and I too have a good amount of questions. I just wanna clarify. Is it correct that UDOT previously canceled bus orders?

No. Not to my knowledge. We've never we've we really couldn't place any orders until after Little Cottonwood Rod was released. I came on right around the time of the record of decision release. I I worked at UDOT previously but in different roles and we had not placed any orders at that point.

Okay.

There's no canceled orders.

So so I might have missed this, but can you clarify the need for more buses and how that relates to my recollection of the issue of UTA not being able to staff the drivers?

Right. So, yeah, that is one piece. So UTA will be stepping away from the canyons. Right? UDOT's gonna be coming in. With that, UTA can use their existing buses and they have a ton of uses for them across their rest of their service area. So UDOT's gonna come in and buy all new buses. We're I think we're at least quadrupling their fleet in order to meet these service times. And so they're just

Quadrupling the Canyon service fleet.

Yeah. Okay. And so we're you know, they're taking their buses. They're gonna use them throughout their service area. We're come gonna in with new buses. While u UTA really does a really good job in my opinion serving The Canyon, they do a really good job making sure their buses can operate in The Canyon. We're, you we're coming in with a fresh look and saying, can we do it a little bit better? Are there improvements we can make both to the buses so they can go to the speed limit? Is there is that mean they're electric so they can, you know, go faster? So we're looking at a lot of that stuff to say, can we do it a little bit better?

Okay. So fifteen to twenty minutes on 9400 South during peak hours in the winter, I don't know that that's sufficient to meet the demand. I think you could probably run them every five to ten minutes. For example, I know on Valentine's Day this year, the first four buses that arrived to Snowbird were completely full, which means that people were left stranded down in the valley. So if if we if we have some level of predictability for peak times, what is UDOT going to do to ensure adequate resources if if if we know historically that fifteen to twenty minutes doesn't cut it?

Right. That's a great question. We are still while there is the demand, there's also just how much money do we have allocated to the project and where can we make those improvements. So I think that there is a world in which you can just start with five minute service. Right? There's always going to be a demand and you'll make the ride more and more comfortable, but we also have to understand, like, that comes with increasing increasing operations costs. And so we're trying to size this correctly where we're not spending too much money on the operations. We're not spending too much money upfront while also sizing it correctly. So it's a bit of a we have to try it and see. Obviously, UTA used to run fifteen minute service.

That was fifteen minute service on three routes. It's very similar to what we're showing right now. You know, this is a significant significant improvement improvement above above that, that, but we're gonna have to see. If we've undersized it, we'll know pretty quickly and we can order more buses, get more operators, and start talking about future improvements to parking on the Southern end.

Is there any element of in this plan with, like, surge buses?

No. This really is the plan. Like, the surge buses and the goat what I think UJ calls ghost buses are something that I see as it's good that they're able to do that and get more buses out there, but it's also not something you can plan on. So as a rider trying to say is another bus coming, can I plan on another bus showing up? That ghost bus or surge bus is not something I wanna plan on. It's something we should just have that bus frequency be higher and then go with it.

Well, if the buses are full every twenty minutes and you're planning on the bus I mean, it seems that surge buses would be helpful, that that's okay. I wanna clarify. You said on 9400 South, the service is going to completely change. So there won't be buses coming from other parts of the valley like the interstate. The the 9400 South Highland Drive hub will be where service starts.

The the UDOT service.

The UDOT

still run service from other locations. That exact service plan hasn't been figured out yet, but before we start our service, we will know the exact exact plan that UTA will have. It could even come with more service because UTA is putting a significant effort into the Canyon service. And if they just took that same effort with serving the valley on, you know, the same routes for the same amount of time, it would be very significant service to those points.

So a fundamental principle in transit planning is to reduce the amount of times that people have to transfer. What what has been the thought around the inevitable transfer that people will have to make ticketing, etcetera?

Right. I think it goes back to what I said where when I looked at the data, you don't want to incentivize people to ride longer on transit. And right now the incentive really is go to the first stop on the line because that's where you're gonna get a seat because the service times are not fast enough. It's possible that, you know, in five years we look at it and say, hey look, the buses aren't always full. Maybe we start talking about extending the routes, having them start earlier. But it really does make sense at this point to say, you can take other buses to get to this point. But it at the point where you the UDOT service starts is where you get out of the bus, you get out of the car, and you get on the canyon service.

K. The model you mentioned for phase one probably not solving the transportation issue due to growth and demand projections. Does that have any environmental calculations like our terrible winter and how that will affect demand?

Right. It does. I mean, it's really just bay mostly it is based on population growth. Right? It's hard to predict whether or not people will continue to enjoy skiing. When we looked at the climate models, what is interesting is we do get like we saw this year, we get shorter winters but those peaks still exist. And other places in The US are gonna be even more affected than we are. As we saw, like, Colorado was really affected this year. There's ski resorts all across the Southern US that might close. Like New Mexico, there's resorts that might just be done after this year.

And so as we see that our winters get shorter in the next thirty years, other places won't have snow. And so there's a chance that we might actually get more visitation because we'll still have snow. It won't be as good, but other places won't even have it. And we didn't we did not take into account an additional growth on top of what we were projecting. Our projections if you looked at the last the pick up the conwit study was had the benefit of being post COVID.

If we were to only look at the growth during COVID, we would be you know, I'd be projecting two minute bus service because the growth has been so extreme. UTA cut their service from fifteen minute service to thirty minute service, and today they serve the same number of people as they did with fifteen minute service. So the level of growth, you you couldn't you know, if we continue to grow like we have, you can't under plan. And so that's really the line is like can we plan correctly without over planning and without overspending and ending up in a position where maybe the market does turn and people don't wanna see as much. It's, you know, it's a fine line.

Can you speak to the proposed widening improvements on Wasatch Boulevard in phase two?

Sure. I guess what would you like

to know? What does it look like?

In the record decision, it was the imbalance alternative. So that's two lanes southbound, one lane northbound. So basically you're widening southbound for sections. There would also be a separated bike bike trail. I think it's like a 12 foot bidirectional bike and ped trail. And then if the level of service on the road, which is a roadway term for, like, how fast and how, like, reasonably quickly can people travel through? Like, are they able to travel at the speed limit? If level of service hit f for northbound, we would add a second lane going north. So then it'd be two lanes north, two lanes south. But we are we would start with two lanes south, one lane north.

Regarding tolling, I don't know that 25 or $30 is gonna dissuade anyone from going up the canyon. I mean, people pay $50 for valet parking. And chairman had some questions on this that you couldn't specifically answer. But is there anything in that regard that you can tell me about the application to the h FHWA regarding tolling? Or is that is that document publicly available or something

It's not released publicly. It's it's just a submission to federal highways. So it's not posted.

So is there any information in that submission about the plan for tolling at all you can talk about?

Or

It's really just a reiteration. Most of the submission is the the environmental impact statement. And then the the EA which will be decided in May, that's most of the submission, most of the detail. There is some additional but there is nothing in there that says, like, this what the adopted toll would be. That's not part of the program. The program doesn't set the toll. You know, we just explained what I explained today that we would use our state laws and the commission Utah Transportation Commission to set the toll.

And you yeah. You said they would approve the the tolling procedure.

Well,

I I just wanna say gosh. I have so many things to talk about, but I wanna end my time. I don't wanna take too much of your time. But I had a question about trust with the community that I'm not gonna ask. But my feelings kind of are unchanged.

We see in the presentation there's 1,500 stalls at the gravel pit, yet you're talking here about 1,800. And my experience as a community organizer has always been like this, and it's pretty wild. But generally, as someone who's interested in transportation and transit planning, I I just have concerns about the way the process evaluates the miles up to the canyon and the the transfer issue that we talked about. There isn't a a seemingly regional perspective. I know you've received letters from other elected officials asking for canyon transportation management program that has a holistic approach.

So I would just ask that in in your future endeavors and and the progress that you make on this that we think about it more of as a region and less just the vehicle miles traveled up into the canyon. Thank you so much for your time.

Ms. Stroud? Thank you, Madam Chair.

Kind of like two different questions, and I think Aaron maybe got a little bit on some of them. But I wanted to clarify. So the $1,200,000,000 that's coming, it's not going to be a line item. Is any of it coming from resorts or is it public money either from sales tax or TIF?

Right. Yeah. At this point, no. The resorts do fund almost all of the fares. Like currently, if you look at what very few people are actually paying for the bus fare, they're tapping their resort bus their resort season pass and then that's coming from the resorts. So the resorts are funding a lot of the operations. I expect that same to continue where we're gonna keep working with the resorts for operations funding. But as in terms of capital that we're currently talking about, no. Outside of the sales tax that they're attracting, they're not contributing directly to this project.

Okay. And then okay. And then going back to the so taking a bus and the difference of having UTA served to a certain point and then UDOT after that. Mhmm. And you said something about people would take a bus, they'd have to get off, and they'd have to get on another bus, and then continue. And that's because you said, like, an equal opportunity. So

Yeah. And it it's really just I guess I came at it from a the perspective of effective use of bus dollars. Like, you you don't wanna as it is right now. We're incentivizing people to get on the bus as early as possible and then that same that bus just drives all the way up and no one else along the way can get on and goes all the way up the canyon to the top and drops people off. And the people who are closer to the canyon have to just keep waiting until all the demand from further away gets on the bus.

And then finally, a bus that's not completely full will show up. And so if we're gonna have these large investments, if I'm spending a $125,000,000 on parking at this location which we've identified is like a critical point where because right now vast vast majority of people are driving. Like I it's at least, you know, 90%. We have the exact number, I don't remember it. Vast majority of people are driving.

And so if we assume that it's the same, we need to put get those people to be on equal footing because if you're incentive if you're starting to transit way further away but putting the parking in the midway point, those people would all of a sudden never use that because they're gonna drive there, park in the mobility hub, and the first 25 buses are gonna pass them completely full. And that's just not a good use of the bus dollars because you're paying a bus driver to drive someone from really, really far away when they you really should be paying it from closer if you're building this big investment here. There is the the proposal which would alleviate it somewhat would be to put mobility hubs throughout valley. But then you're talking about a massive investment both in capital and operations for what is at the end the day a seasonal bus service to ski resorts. So when you talk about regional transportation planning, regional transit planning, that should be done to serve people throughout the valley, throughout the year, the week, and then those regional systems should tie into the seasonal service for for the ski resorts.

You shouldn't plan a seasonal ski resort service that goes throughout the entire valley because the the cost would be enormous both in operations and capital. And, you know, trying to we're trying to target this investment. It is seasonal. It is to ski resorts, but there's also a lot of demand for it. So we're trying to target it to be in there for the right amount of money, both in operations capital without being wildly extravagant.

Yeah. It still just seems like you're you're de incentivized. You're almost punishing people for taking public transportation. I mean, that's you know, I I see when I'm when I'm driving around here in Sandy. I mean, I see all along 9400 South.

You'll see somebody who's standing out there with their board or their skis. I'm going, okay. So you're gonna ride the bus for five minutes, have to get off, wait, and get on another bus. There's there's no world that I live in that if I have two kids and I'm trying to get them up there, I'm gonna ride a bus, get off a bus, wait, and get onto another bus. I mean, I I'm just really struggling to see how this is helpful.

I mean and I and I do understand. Mean, that's, you know, when you're talking about, well, you'd have to put mobility hubs throughout and just the infrastructure for that finding, I mean, the land to build that. But I I mean, I I'm looking and going, okay, you know, the mouth of our canyon, we have and and on snow closure days, you know, I mean, it's it's crowded. We have residents that are, you know, they're they're frustrated. You know, their their driveways are being blocked and some of that's just that that stacking happens.

You know, we're trying to get the kid kids to school, trying to get to work. I mean, there's a a lot of that. But if if you are saying you can't take a bus because you're just gonna have to take another one. There's not an increase of bus or somehow I I mean, it it's it just it seems like this is this is being set up to fail from the beginning. And and and this is coming from, you know, I I was a single parent, you know, of trying to shuffle kids. Know, it it just became so much easier to throw all the stuff in the van and take everybody up and like, nope. You know, I know your hat got in the car and I know your gloves got in the car because I put it there.

Right.

You know, it's not going from one to the other. But, you know, and then, you know, 345 stalls.

Yeah. Something around there.

345, ninety fourth and Highland, you know, to try to push, you know, people if that is the model that's moving forward. You're trying to push people to Highland and 9400 South, you know, almost almost in the middle of our city. You know, and have all of this traffic coming through Sandy to try to park there because they don't wanna catch a bus to come here to get on and off. I mean, I'm not sure if that 345, that's that's going to be a struggle. I mean, what what does UDOT plan to do to help out Sandy?

To say, you know what? Now we're taking people that live maybe a little further east or, you know, live in Draper and instead of going and and just finding a bus stop somewhere is now we're gonna push you to Sandy, which, you know, for the businesses in the area, you know, that may be a great thing. But I'm just not thinking 345 stalls is gonna be enough. You know, what does what is UDOT planning on do doing to help Sandy manage some of this that you are pushing people here because it's no longer a get on a bus from a further point?

Yeah. And I guess from my perspective of, you know, looking at especially Mobility Hub, the question really is like if you're able to hop on a bus and get dropped off right in the bus area and walk five feet and then you're in the lot you're either in line or already on the bus that's going up the canyon, that for me I do I have a child so I also understand everything with kids. That for me is still better than parking and trying to make your way through the giant mobility hub parking garage to get to the bus. Right? So, like, if you can get on a bus, that seems better for me.

Trying to do this I've done this I used to ride the ski bus all the time. I've ridden the ski bus as an experiment in the last few years and it's, you know, it's really challenging. So for me weighing that that frustration of would I rather know I can get on the bus and that I'm in an equal and fair line or have this fight of where how far back along this line of bus stops and bus parking and parking rides do I need to go before I can get on a bus at all? Right? Like because if this really alleviates the traffic that we're putting or the demand that we're putting on UTA's system unnecessarily.

There's people that, you know, I've spoken to. We went out and sat at the park and ride where the bus starts right now and ask people, like, where are you coming from? And they're like, oh, I live right near the mouth of the canyon and I drive all the way over here to get on the bus because I used to go to the park and ride at the mouth of Big or the mouth of Little and sit for two hours and wait for the bus to be not full. So, like, there's just so much out of direction travel that while I totally understand we're adding we're adding one transit switch. Right?

We're adding one. It's no longer gonna be a direct route for some people. Or the avenue, like, right now 50% of people are at least get on to that first stop and then ride all the way up. So there will be some people that are gonna have to switch, but it's better than having a continuous of full buses going by, just passing all of this infrastructure we built for them. And it is completely, like, frustrating to use now.

So yeah. I guess maybe let try me to clarify my question. Instead of getting on the bus earlier in the the valley, you know, we're gonna be the the goal is to try to push people to these mobility hubs. One of them being at 94th And Highland. So we are now pushing people to 94th And Highland, which doesn't have a significant amount of stalls comparatively to 1,500.

What what is UDOT going to do to help to help Sandy manage these people now coming to 94th And Highland instead of getting on on 72nd or on a Hundred 6th or wherever else they are, you know, these these ski bus routes are are coming I

guess well, first of all, like, UDOT has been working with the city of Sandy for at least a year, year and a half on a solutions development study, which I believe concluded, I don't six months ago. I wasn't involved in that one. But, you know, we at the end of the little comment with Rod, that's what we heard was, hey, you know, Sandy has all these other concerns especially with ninety fourth. And so you guys been working to try to see what that looks like. Right? It's a solutions development study. So the recommendation I don't even I wasn't a part of it so I don't remember what the recommendation was. But the recommendation was here's all these other things that you need to look at to solve that. I believe one of those was looking at that park and ride for what does that need to look like in the future. Because it's not just a right now it's a UTA park and ride.

In the future it's going to be UDOT and UTA and UTA has at least two routes that are planned to go into that year round, not just seasonal service. Ninety fourth is already one of the major arteries for everyone going up there. So we're really not out inducing more traffic there. Like we're saying, hey, here's the that's that's already a major parking ride for the bus service. It's already a major place where the ski service picks up.

It's just it's going to be the start of UDOT service, understanding that, hey. You know, it there could be more people who are trying to drive there to pick up service because they don't wanna take another bus to get there. And that's why, you know, we initially, as part of the enhanced bus service alternative, said there could be a mobility hub there. I believe we heard from Sandy that they I wasn't on the EIS at that time, but I heard, hey, you know, maybe there's some pushback to having mobility up there and creating more traffic to that point. And it's, you know, are you gonna tell people they have to take transit to get there or are you going to provide parking for them at that location?

As you said, it's gonna be really tricky to have tell people to take transit to get the transit. But as we all grow, as this valley grows, we're gonna have to get more used to transit or the demand is getting higher and higher and we're not always gonna be to drive everywhere. Right? As we grow, like, we're trying to accommodate the driver. We're trying to accommodate people's existing behaviors.

But as we see with the canyon, unless we're willing to put a three lane highway or if I guess effectively a lane road up both canyons, you can't be in your car the whole time. You're going to have to get out. And if you're not willing to get out, you're gonna have to pay the toll or change your plans. But there's you know, the road's already at capacity. I see it in the data. Like people will look at the data and say, oh, well the busiest day is 1,200 cars. So it could go as per population goes up, it could go to 1,500. I'm like no. This road is a hose, right? It's 1,200 is the limit.

So as you look at the data more and more and more hours start to hit twelve hundred hours 1,200 cars per hour. That spreads into Monday into Tuesday. The fourth busiest day is now Wednesday. Friday is super busy, Saturday and Sunday are super busy, and I guess people work half a week and say, probably worked enough. I guess I can go on Wednesday. I have no better explanation. I've asked are there deals being run at the resorts on Wednesdays? Why is it Wednesday? They don't they're like, we don't know. But you just don't know what people's behavior will do as these systems hit their breaking point.

And that's what the road's at at this point. It's just overcrowded. The road is not functioning correctly because there's too many people for how big the road is. And it's really just a roadway problem that we are now trying to fix with transit to get more people up the same road.

Okay. And then one more question. So phase three, we've tried everything. It's had a little bit of help, but it hasn't had the impact that we wanted to. So we're moving forward. And the legislature says, you know what? Gondola, we need to move in this path. You said that you would stop all all busing service?

For Little Cottonwood, that is the plan. It's to stop bus service off the canyon.

And and would that include in the summer months as well?

Right now summer is not included in any of

the plans.

So it But it would be so you'd be eliminating

okay.

So anything going from Highland and 94th would then go to the base station, Gondola.

Yes.

So you'd be driving, taking a bus, getting off, getting on to a Gondola, and then going up and then coming back.

Yeah. And there's also a planned mobility hub at the Gondola Base Station with parking. But I mean, looking at what we've done with phase one, right, this is part of it is going to be when that point comes and we're starting to say, hey, these are not working anymore just like we are with the road. We start looking to UTA, we start looking to, you know, whatever other transit may be in effect at that time and how can those connect to the gondola. Right? It's not just going to be like exactly as the EIS says it in twenty years. You look at the you work with the planning department and you say, hey, like, how is this how is this going to work? Are there there's always going we always wanna have transit service connecting to our transit especially with the growth. But there will there is a planned parking component at the Pogondola base.

Okay. Thank you. Yeah.

Madam chair, may I ask just one more question?

Sure. Go ahead.

In my disorganized notes, for me it's kind of the elephant in the room. You mentioned that high high occupancy tolling doesn't work. What about a toll that disallowed single occupancy vehicles?

I I think it's kind of the same question. We don't like, unless you're out there, the the best way to do it, the only, like verifiable way to say effectively whether or not it's more than one person in the car is stopping every single car. So there are new technologies that are developing that I have personal problems with where you can, like, hold a camera up and it forces you to, like, wave your phone around the car to show everyone's faces in the car. I love the idea of that. There's future technology that maybe could make it where we verify how many occupants are in a car.

But where we already have 2.2 people per car on average, more than one is what we have now. And there's really not a benefit from like, the HOV would have to be three or four and to really make it dent in it at all.

And and the reason we can't do that is because we have to keep the traffic moving.

The only yeah. The only verifiable way to do it would be to stop every car and have an enforcement, you know, Sandy City, some enforcement agency actually looking in the car and verifying occupancy just like they do at the ski resorts when you park.

Yeah. Okay. Thank you.

This is scary, but there is a camera in my car because my car tells me every once in a while, look at the road. Does anybody else get that? Yeah. K. Stop watching me, Carl. I I

don't wanna be looking through that camera.

I I know. I know. You said something that was kind of interesting. Interesting. Miss Howesman and I, a couple of years ago, we went to an EDC Utah event and Fraser Bullock was the keynote speaker.

And he said something really interesting about climate predictions. He was talking about the fact that when it comes to the Olympics that probably what will start happening on Winter Olympics was that there'd be a few venues identified for Winter Olympics and it would just rotate between those venues. And that and it was because of what was happening with snow and snowfall. But that luckily, Salt Lake City was one of the places that would be continued to be in rotation rotation because the climate models were suggesting that up to and including 2060 that Salt Lake City would still be getting snow. So your point about, hey, maybe we get busier, not less busy.

Fraser Bullock might agree with you.

Yeah. I think it's gonna be a challenge for the resorts because you might get less busy still throughout the season as we saw this year. Right? But as I see in the numbers, the days that it snows are insane. Right? Like, we're just having less days, and that sucks from a skier's perspective and it sucks from the resort's perspective. But from a roadway challenge, it's even worse.

Yeah.

Because then the road is only failing when it's really bad infrequently and that makes the bus service even more challenging.

How do you I just wonder how you adapt to that. How do you, like, right now put x number of additional buses and x number of additional bus drivers? Anyway, that's your problem to figure out.

Yeah. I I would say that the answer is you choose lower operational costs. Buses are a very high operational cost. You have a lot of buses and you have a lot of drivers. You have to choose lower operational cost things such as a gondola where there's a lot less operators?

It's hard to predict what the market will adapt to. There's something on the news, was it last week or the week before, that said that Americans were traveling to Europe to ski because it was cheaper to get your whole family on an airplane and fly to France. Why don't you try that? Would that work for you and your family? It's interesting. So, thank you. I, anyone else have any questions? You survived. No,

you for all your questions.

Thank you, Devin for coming tonight. We really do appreciate it. We appreciate partnership with UDOT. Yes, we did receive a presentation on the 9,400 South potential plans that was between 13th and all the way up to Wasatch. Do buses do well in roundabouts? Because that's kind of what that other side of UDOT was talking about for the future of Wasatch Boulevard and Little Cottonwood. It's a big old giant roundabout.

Yes. If you desire

it correctly.

Or in Europe if you're crazy enough. I've as I've been on some crazy buses in Europe take roundabouts.

Okay. Thank you so much for our viewers. Appreciate you. Alright. Okay. Moving on to the consent calendar. We've got intents to annex. We've got a proclamation recognizing Arbor slash Earth Day slash Sandy Beautification Day all in one. Thank you for putting it all together in one and a couple of sets of minutes. Do I have a motion to approve?

Motion to approve the consent calendar. Second.

Motion and a second. All in favor? Aye. Any opposed? No. Alright. We good to move on guys? Okay. One more item left and that is the council voting item. This is a second reading for Ms. Houseman's proposal on FTE's. Go ahead Ms. Houseman.

Thank you Madam Chair. I just want to thank everyone again for the good conversation we had last time and took that feedback and re kind of reshape the language to make sure there were some things that you had all expressed were really important. We made very clear, so I won't draw this out and revisit everything. Just kind of high level though for for for those who might in the public who might be hearing this for the first time. So this amendment is not creating new authority.

It clarifies how we exercise authority that's already spelled out in state code. It assigns the legislative body responsibility to adopt and control the annual budget. We often during budget season talk about how the biggest portion of our budget is personnel. Personnel costs are 60 to 70% of our general fund. And so I think it's important for us to consider this role we have as a governing body in terms of budget authority.

So really this is about establishing a ceiling on full time positions. We're not actually controlling the budget. If we're not establishing that ceiling, then we're not actually in my opinion performing our duties as the budget authority. So I think it's important that we set this in place so that we are exercising our legislative oversight. I think that's what we were elected to do. I think it's an appropriate adjustment. And that's what I bring forward for a vote tonight.

I just had one question. So in writing it, you also took into consideration that we didn't have to or that the administration wouldn't have to do a public hearing in Correct. Okay. So that eases some of the concerns that they had on that. I like that. Thank you.

Yeah. Yeah. So if I could just elaborate. We made it we made it clear that this is as as the mayor presents the tentative budget the staffing you know account or the staffing schedule is in that budget. So she comes to us with the proposed staffing. We adopt the budget. If there is a need to adjust that, all this requires is coming back to the council for discussion relative to the staffing. The only time a budget, I mean a public hearing would be required is if it is they're asking for an additional appropriation. That's a different conversation. So then that would be but if if we're just having a adjustment to the staffing that's not a public hearing.

Thank you. Thank you for that question. Council,

any other questions for miss Houseman? Mister Pace.

Thank you. I just have two quick questions. This refers to strictly the departments. This doesn't apply to the mayor's office or the council office since they're statutory.

Correct. This is department.

Just wanted to verify that. And then the second thing, just let me use an example and see if this is what your intent is. If we've got a person who's retiring and we wanna bring a person on three months earlier or two months early to learn the position why that current person is in place. Do you consider that in this wording you've got temporary positions? Do you consider that a temporary position or we still need to come to you to get permission to bring on somebody temporarily why to be trained by the person who's retiring? Does that make sense the question I'm asking?

Yeah, I think it makes sense. I. Like I'm on I'm I'm haven't thought of it that way. It's sort of on the spot here. Would have liked to have heard that before tonight.

So I could have thought through what that means. I mean we we did we did have the discussion around part time seasonal and and we heard the feedback from administration that it it if I could just if I could not include seasonal that that would be really helpful to give the flexibility. I think this this is a slightly different I don't see this as seasonal. I think what we're trying to say is if changes to staffing are being made beyond what is adopted in the staffing schedule we'd like administration to come and talk to the council about it.

Please. Madam chair, May I offer some feedback on this? Please. I think if the council would ask me how I would interpret that. I would say to the administration that that is a provisional employee. A new hire is a provisional employee and I think that the administration could could do that in terms of replacing somebody because they're not adding a position. Right? I mean, they might be hiring a provisional employee prior to that other employees leaving, but that doesn't fit within the adding a new employee definition, I would think.

So it's not it would not be part of the FTE count

is I would what you're think so.

Does that answer your question?

That's all I needed. That was perfect. Thank you.

Mr. Lynn Pace did you have some thoughts to add to?

Maybe I shouldn't say anything now. I don't disagree with Tracy, but provisional isn't in the ordinance. All it says is part time, seasonal, temporary. The challenge you've got is if you hire A new city attorney to work with me before I retire, that's not intended to be a temporary position. It's a permanent one. But the overlap is temporary.

But then yours temporary.

Agreed. Anyway, we just have to think through that. I think if I were looking at this, I would say a temporary employee is someone that is intended not to be a permanent long time. And if you're hiring, for example, a new department head to overlap, that's not intended to be a temporary position. But it's just my thoughts.

The condition is temporary but the employees know. Yeah.

Overlap is temporary correct.

Ms. DeSouza.

Thank you. You know I'm hearing the conversation here and it seems to me that those situations would be more of an exception. I can't imagine that that is something that the city does on a regular basis for every employee. Right? And so at a time, you know, if if if this ordinance were to pass at a time where that becomes a question or a potential hindrance and it's a conversation with the council. You know, we aren't, I don't see us looking to impede the function of the city but rather to protect the budgetary impact of adding FTEs even midyear for on a continual ongoing basis.

So

my is we take that up on the exceptional cases, the case that it happens where there's questions about it.

That makes sense. Mr. Caudel, any additional thoughts?

Well, I just I guess the way I look at it is they're not adding an FTE, right? I mean, purpose and I think the ordinance says that when it talks about no increase in the total number of authorized full time benefited positions. I don't see how, depending upon when you hire a person, that's not adding a new FTE, think, in terms of this ordinance. Mean, I think what you're getting at is, are we adding another person? Are adding 10 more officers to a department?

Right? I mean, we're not talking about that. I think because sometimes the person's going to be hired three months after a person leaves, right? And so we're down in FTE then. The hiring date to me doesn't necessarily matter. Mean, I think that FTE is the issue. I don't I'm Okay with it as is. And look, if we run into a snag, we'll bring it back and we can amend it later.

Yeah. That's true. Thank you.

Miss Nicholl, did you have a question? No. Any more questions at this time?

Madam chair. I just want to say I'm I'm good with this affirms the way we've conducted business and administration since I've been mayor. Thanks.

Like Tracy's definition that we're not in that scenario where there's an overlap. We're not adding an FTE. Going So to right now. So this is a voting item. So that means we will be taking public comment on this. I don't have any blue cards. But if anyone in the audience would like to speak you can step right up to the podium and Justin let's go ahead and invite our online participants.

If you're participating on Zoom and would like to make a comment please use the raise hand feature, and I'll call you in the order that you raise your hand. And you'll have three minutes to make your comment. I don't see any hands raised.

Right. Close public comment on this item. Bring it down back to the council.

Madam chair. The motion. I'll make a motion to approve ordinance twenty six zero six.

I'll second. Thank you.

Alright. We have a motion and a second. Any more discussion council? Seeing none we're ready for a roll call vote. Who's taking it? Justin is.

Thank you Madam Chair.

Council member Nickel?

Yes.

Council member Hausman?

Yes.

Council member Stroud?

Yes.

Council member Sharkey?

Yes.

Council Member Christensen?

Yes.

Council Member D'Souza?

Yes.

Council Member DeKaiser? Yes. Madam chair, that motion passes seven to zero.

Alright. That is the end of our agenda tonight. So, that just takes us to standing reports. Justin you're ready with standing reports for the council office?

Yeah thank you madam chair. Just a quick reminder Sandy won awards this Thursday. There will be opportunity for a photo one hour prior, so at 05:15 on the 2nd Floor of the Hale Center Theater. So please arrive at that time and be ready for that. Other than that, just a look the agenda planning calendar next week. We have a public hearing for the annexations coming back as well as FY '27 budget preview. So it should be a full meeting next week. And that's all I have. Thanks.

Thank you. Council member business? Anyone got something they'd like to share?

I just have a question for Shane. The study that you talked about, the solutions delivery study that was talked about that was being done or was done by the UDOT representative?

We received a presentation on that at council meeting.

Yeah. Never mind.

I thought that's what you were asking so I was gonna answer. Yeah. Britney gave it to us. It was months ago, right? Do you remember when it was?

Brittney Ward, city engineer.

We finished that project up probably about eight months ago,

I think. So council member Nicole, I can forward you that presentation and the slides and the materials.

Can you also forward this study?

You know, I will send it

to Dustin and he can send it to all

of you. Perfect. Thank you.

Thank you so much. Yep.

Thank you for bringing that up. Yeah. Alright. Anyone else We're seeing miss Christiansen, go ahead.

I just wanted to quick update. I know we already heard from the South Valley Chamber tonight, but they had their shark tank activity on the twenty fifth, which is do you guys all know what that is? Yeah. With kids from high schools, and they come and present their projects, and then they're judged by local businesses. And it went really, really well.

There's some super talented kids in our area. And then also Nick Derson, who we love seeing, was giving up update on the point. And I've asked for that presentation so I can share it with you guys. I think there's some things in there you'll find really interesting, especially about the Olympics coming up. So and then I attended the Educate Canyons Education Foundation Gala with a couple of you, and that was a really nice event and a good night for raising funds for our students.

Just for me, thanks to Chief Arnold and to Lynn Pace for joining with the county and the Expo Center and having a discussion about security and First Amendment rights. We'd had a couple of meetings that didn't really gel and we didn't really make decisions so the two of you joining was really very helpful I think. So I want to thank you for your time and joining the convention facilities advisory board, the DA's office, and people from the county on that issue. My thanks to you. Allison, do you have anything?

So we had kind of a rare typically historic meet historic committee meets once a month. In this last month, they met twice. And they had selected an individual to kind of work with doing some code updates and, you know, just looking at modernizing, you know, we do the same thing kind of with regular code. It was pretty interesting listening to this gentleman talk, a lot of it within that historic district, the concerns, residential, commercial, new construction. But one really interesting part towards the end is he just and he asked.

And he said, well, I mean, speaking from a council perspective, where were three places that I would take people if they came to Sandy? And it was just it it was it was interesting, you know, to to think about that. And, you know, and my responses, you know, out of out of I gave four. I can't count. But three of them were well, okay. One of them was county area. But the others were our parks. So it was just something of saying, this is what Sandy is all about. I mean, this access that we have. So that's something that maybe the rest of the council kind of think about that.

Three places that you think somebody came here, hasn't been here before, where would you take them in Sandy and why? And that was and he was kind of tying it back to trying to drive people. Why would you go too historic? What is there? And what can we do to kind of bolster that area and make that a draw for the city?

So that was an interesting take on things. And then, you know, so one more thing, you know, with the youth council, the applications are now open for next year. You know, Chris and Liz have done an outstanding job for the past several years. You know, and this year, it says, you know, the council, the youth council is as large and robust and energetic, know, and full of life, you know, as as it has ever been. You know, the applications will be open until May 15.

You know, you can go to sandy.utah.gov/youthcount, you know, syc,sandyyouthcouncil. They'll also be on the council page. So start encouraging tenth, eleventh, and twelfth grade students. You know, they can be homeschooled. They can be private school, charter school, part of the public school, you know, as long as they are residents here in Sandy, then they can apply. That's a great opportunity. So, I just want to pass it off. Thank you.

Aaron, do you have anything tonight?

Thank you, madam chair. The only thing I did last week outside of council was attend the mayor's intersection safety team tour and that was really good. We, you know, this is created in response to the tragedy that happened at the intersection at Alta High School and we we went around and toured a recent our newest light on 94th And 7th West, something like that. And there's some good changes that are happening in like the way we're able to program the lights. If we do have like a flashing yellow for example, which I understand there's not that many of in the city.

Maybe we can add some of those. But if the pedestrian has hit the button, it will it will stay red. There won't be a yellow flashing. We've also talked about no right turn on reds. This is a big issue for, like, the intersection on 80th South And 7th East. Lots of parents complaining about, incidents at that location. And then we drove around some roundabouts. We went up by Brighton High, and overall, was really good. It was nice to be on the street, working with a a group of various stakeholders and concerned residents. Just a couple days after that, there was an incident in Alta High where a vehicle you turned from the shoulder and a student motorcycle ran right into it.

And it happened right behind me. And it was really upsetting for for the family. For my family, I'm saying, obviously, for them. I had a meeting with Shane about it. So I'm I'm looking forward to the city doing what it can to continue work in the area, but also I'm calling for a need to meet with the district because the whole drop off area in the school right there is a disaster.

And we shouldn't wait for instance like this to happen. I got an email from a constituent today about e bikes and her concerns. And just yesterday, I was driving on 114th South going down the big hill and noticed an e bike on the sidewalk, clocked it at 40 miles per hour. And when I got to the light, my green light, guess what I did? I stopped.

And two seconds later that if I had turned if I had turned, no doubt would have hit me. So I think what we're seeing on our streets is a a pattern of problems. I honestly do. I brought the Vision Zero presentation to the council eighteen months ago because our streets are designed from a previous time. They're wide. They're fast. They're high speed. Now we have more forms of mobility. We have e bikes. We have scooters.

And it's it's really dangerous out there. It's really sad as a parent with a student at Delta High School to see something like that happen. And, you know, we don't we don't have an $80,000,000 bond sitting on the table to fix these things, but there's a lot that we can do as a council. We could begin tomorrow by aligning our speed limits with the reality situation out there. Our roads are dangerous. You cannot drive without seeing people on their phone all the time. It's really, really, really concerning as a parent. And so if any of my colleagues are interested on tackling this with me, I'm asking you to reach out and let's find solutions because I'm concerned and focused on what matters most which is keeping our business safe. Thank you.

Mayor's report.

Now, We're getting a lot of mentions and complaints and a near miss reports about e bikes and e scooters and as the weather warms, as the day gets longer, we're gonna just see more and more of it. The council did pass the ordinance preventing e bikes from the sidewalks, but that pushes younger unlicensed drivers of these e vehicles that can go so fast onto the roads. And it is yes, it's not just in Sandy. It's every city. But we really I think it is time that we focus on our e bike policy for our parks, for our canal trails, and how they overtake pedestrians and the speed limit, the distinction between pedal assist e bikes versus the e motorcycles.

So we're gonna be seeing a lot more trail user conflict and a lot more serious accidents because of the speed. If you look at any American Academy of Pediatrics right now, they're calling e bikes and e vehicles as one of the biggest dangers to serious accidents to youth in America. So thank you council member to Kaiser for coming along on the missed team tour. We went to three different types of intersections, intersections, the four way stop, the four way traffic light, and roundabout. And we got out the group, the stakeholders, the community representatives, thank you public works and police for attending that.

It was really good to get that interdepartment conversation with the council member, with the residents, and people just cross pollinating ideas. It was really productive. The neighborhood representatives and the standout was the representative, the student representative Bridger from the Sandy Youth Council did a great job participating in that and also kind of teasing out from his classmates and colleagues and schools what they like from at Brighton High School, what they like about the roundabout there, what they like or dislike about the new flashing stop signs at Alta. So he was a kind of our in the know, on the ground cub reporter or as it news as it happens. But interesting, the perceptions of the team members, what we thought we would prefer at the beginning ended up at the end of the tour.

And it came from actually getting out walking those four ways and being kind of testing each other's sense of safety, what we liked about certain elements and public works. And Katie Atkinson did a great job arranging the tour and making it very time effective and informative. So thanks to all the missed team members, and we are going to continue to report back. Congratulations to the Canyon School District for their annual Gala Foundation fundraiser. Great to attend with council members, so many in education, and so many people committed to the well-being of the students.

It was inspiring to hear the scholarship award recipients and hear how they're accomplishing so much in Kenyon School Districts, giving everybody great access to a brightest possible future. I attended and spoke at the Beehive Science Center Tech Academy twentieth anniversary. Can you believe Beehive's been a school for twenty years? Most of their time, of course, has been in Sandy, but it started as a school in an office building in Salt Lake City, and their gym was the parking garage. So they talked about the history of the evolution and the vision and the commitment and just their their excellence and their awards speak for themselves.

Today, I visited Beehive with International Students Day today. So the students were dressed representing countries from all around the world, offering food and holiday traditions and a lot of information every I think there were over a 100 countries represented between the middle school and the and the elementary students at the International Day. So thank you, Beehive, for the warm opportunity to visit with the children today. I also spoke to Sunrise Elementary today and Glacier Hills yesterday to talk about America Two Fifty, the constitution, using your voice, how it's as important today as it was in 1776, and inviting the students to participate in America two fifty Sandy art competition. As you heard from the library director, it is set for Saturday, April 11.

That's not this Saturday, but next Saturday from 10AM to 2PM. It's open to kids of all ages. Anyone can come. It's free. All you have to do is show up. The art materials, the paper that is of submission size for the art competition is available. Please, council members, come and give us your best rendering of a of Sandy two fifty and America Two Fifty. I'll be there. And it's the kids are really excited about the submissions. So it's a wonderful partnership.

Thank you to the library to Salt Lake County for hosting that. It's again, it's Saturday, April 11 at the Sandy Library in Petunia, and it's all free. And they our competition will be open until May 16. And there are prize money up to $50 for prize money. The kids are really excited.

Categories for prizes from the youngest to adults. So calling all artists to participate in our America two fifty art competition. And just wanna wish everybody a happy Easter week. This Friday is Good Friday, and if you are observing on Good Friday or all throughout the week, and have Easter weekend. The city has been full of Easter egg rolls and a lot of excitement for the spring weather, and we've got it's a great time as kids are on spring break or preparing to take time off with families next week. Great time for renewal, respite, and just want to wish you all happy Easter. Thank you.

CAO report.

Thank you. I just have one thing. The bathrooms are being opened at all the all the parks. Just wanted to make sure you're aware of that. They're also charging up the sprinkler systems, making adjustments to them. So you might get some calls from residents saying why are you watering. They're not watering. They're just turning them on and adjusting them so that they're ready when we start watering. So you can explain that to him if they're going. Thank you.

Thank you. Ben, do you have a Sandy Recreation Center report?

Yes, thank you. The construction crew in Layton was very excited to hear that we came with a official name for that for the rec center. So that was great. They can move forward with some of the signs and and be rest assured that wasn't gonna hold anything up. Concrete walls of the pool equipment and west walls were poured.

The mason is is completed on the east, wall of the field house and continues to be, put into where the locker rooms are. It's kind of fun that all phases of the construction is going on right now. So you have concrete, masonry work, electric electrical going on. It's all completed in the ground, and now it's going up walls and over ceilings. The steel crew continues the decking around the track and the roof above the fit the field house.

And then the plumbers have begun installing carriers at the locker rooms. And I had to look up what carriers were, but it's so you don't rip a bathroom feature off the wall when you use it. So those get put and are hidden inside the wall so they can, keep things sturdy. And then the last thing is the road base and the field house has been, prepared. So it's really fun to see everything that's happening. You go up there now, and you can really see the shape of it coming together. I know we got another tour coming up next week with Brooke Christensen, so we'll be looking forward to that. And alright. So any questions? I mean, at this point, there's

so much going on.

It's like, any questions about the construction?

No. Thank you.

We'll

keep letting you know.

Thank you so much. Alright. I am looking for a motion to adjourn. Anyone wanna do

that? Move to adjourn.

I'll second.

All in favor? Aye. Aye. Any opposed? Good night everyone. Thank you.