City Council - Regular Meeting

Recording so online folks can join the meeting.

Recording in progress.

Madam Chair, we're at 05:15. We're ready to begin whenever you are.

Alright. Welcome everyone. This is the Sandy City Council meeting for Tuesday, 04/07/2026. We start our meetings with a prayer. Miss Christensen, would you mind starting us off with the prayer this evening?

Our dearest heavenly father, we are so grateful to be gathered together this evening to help guide Sandy City. Please bless us so we would be able to listen to those who have come to speak and to make the best decisions for our city as a whole. Please also watch over and protect all of those employees that are taking care of our residents. We love thee, and we say these things in the name

of thy son, Jesus Christ. Amen. Thank you. Would everyone please rise for the pledge of allegiance? Alright and introductions. Mister Fratto would you lead us off here?

Of course, thank you madam chair. My name is Dustin Fratto. I'm with the city council office. There are a couple other council staff members in the back of the room Justin Sorenson and Liz Theriault and the council legal counsel mister Caddell will be here shortly.

Chris Edwards with the council office.

Chris Nichol District 3. District 1.

Cindy Sharkey at large. Allison Stroud District 2.

Brooke D'Souza at large.

Just I didn't know if you wanted me to jump in. Marcy Houseman District 4.

Thank you. I'm Sandy Mayor Monica Zoltansky.

Shane Pace city administrator.

Lynn Pace city attorney.

Alright. Thank you everyone for joining us tonight and I can guess what many of you are here for and I welcome you. Thank you for joining us. So the way is this gonna work, we have a public hearing tonight. We have a consent calendar that the council needs to adopt and then we have an information item later on.

We have general citizen comment at six p. M. That's for things generally that are not on the agenda but maybe someone wants to bring up to address the council on. I think that this will work pretty similar to those of you who were here for the Planning Commission meeting. Me read the Dustin prepared some notes for me just so I wouldn't forget exactly how this to tell you exactly how this is gonna play out.

So Utah code requires that we hold a public hearing for annexations. As has been noticed to the public, we're holding that public hearing this evening. Thank you for joining us. We will have one public hearing during which each person who would like to speak on tonight's annexations will have the opportunity to do so. Each speaker will have three minutes to address the council.

To help the council understand and track your comments, I'm going to announce each annexation in the order that it appears on the agenda. I'll then invite the property owners of that parcel or parcels to speak one at a time. After we've gone through all the property owners of those annexations and all they've all had a chance to speak, I'll invite other members of the public to speak on the annexations again. We'll start with people who are in the room and then we'll go to people who are online. If you're one of these speakers that's not a property owner but would like to speak, we'll ask you to specify which annexation area or agenda item you're commenting on.

And when there aren't any new speakers remaining, I'll close the public hearing and then the city council will debate, deliberate, and vote. Okay. If you are here in the room and you're planning to speak, it would be really helpful if you filled out one of the blue cards at the back of the room. That is for us for required record keeping. So if you haven't done so already, intend to speak, fill out one of those blue cards.

Please hand it to Justin and that will help us for our record keeping. We'll ask you to step up here when you're ready to speak. Pull either of those microphones or both of them close to you and speak really close into them so we can hear in the room and so everyone online can hear as well. All right. I think that's it for our instructions of how this is going to flow.

So on the agenda is the public hearing section for the annexations. And Brian McHouston, if you would like to introduce this item, we'll allow the council to hear your remarks and ask questions. Then I will open the public hearing for remarks.

Alright. Thank you, madam chair. Good evening, everybody. It's a pleasure to be here. As you mentioned on the agenda tonight, there's 27 different annexation proposals.

All of these are on the East Side of the city. All of these annexations except for one, which is the Newman annexation, are situations where the property owner had a property owner signed a previous water agreement, where in exchange for Sandy City providing them water that we would annex that property into Sandy City at some time in the future. And now is the time when the city has decided to act upon those agreements. In the case of the Newman annexation, they had signed consent agreements indicating their desire to be annexed into Sandy right now. So the Planning Commission reviewed all of these different annexation proposals on March 19.

They are forwarding a positive recommendation to adopt the annexations and the zoning. There are a number of property owners where the planning commission changed the zoning and added animal rights to that zoning because that is a right that they currently have in the county. And so on one of the items tonight, which is agenda nine, which is the Hilton annexation, they are also in that area where they have animal rights, and that was not included in the planning commission's recommendation. So staff would recommend that that property also be zoned with animal rights. And I'm here to happy to answer any questions you may have staff. Obviously this is here for the public hearing now.

Okay, council members. Any questions for Brian at this point in time? I do not see any.

Thank you.

Alright. Okay so that allows me to open the public hearing. I don't want this to be complicated and I want to make sure everyone has a chance to speak that wants to. So we'll make sure that we're very clear on where we are, where we're headed, and what we're talking about. So the first item up for public hearing is the Walters annexation.

That's at 2587 East Little Cottonwood Road. And I'd like to open it up. If if the property owner or owners are here, you are welcome to come up to the podium and make a public comment. Alright, looks like we have no one that would like to know property owner. Oh you are Okay. I thought you were walking down to take a seat. Please go right ahead.

My name is Jim Akins. I'm related to the property owners. They are both out

of town.

Hey, sir. You need to you need to stop yelling in the council meeting. Okay? Unless you're recognized. Thank you. Thank you. The volume's up quite a bit. If you would like

It's very tight. Yes.

Yes. I'm I'm happy to raise this for you if you'd like me to. Yeah. Yeah. I'm gonna walk down. There's a button. Can raise it up for you. Okay?

So, mister Aitken, you are not the property owner. Is that correct?

That is correct. I'm rep they've asked me to represent them.

Okay. We'll go ahead. Thank you for coming. We'll let you go ahead make your comments. I'll make it clear. First we're treating property owners to this opportunity but go right ahead. I'll make sure in other cases that we stick to the format that we've adopted.

Being out of town, they were not able to be here today, so they asked me to represent them here. They want to go on the record as vehemently opposing being annexed into Sandy City. They asked me to express my opinions on it. As we discussed it, they were both in accordance with their opinions also. The Walters are my daughter and my son-in-law, so that's why I was asked to represent them today.

Years ago, many more years than I wish to to really admit, We had a meeting in Granite area on the same issue of annexations that was taking place by Sandy City. We had a town hall meeting. We invited a representative, councilman Prince from Sandy City to come and represent Sandy City. He stood before the populace of Granite and said, we do not want to annex you. We have no plans to annex you, and we just don't want you.

In fact, it costs more for us to provide services than it does to annex you when we annex you then taxes and revenues we would get. As we confronted him on some of the issues, he said, we want to work with granite. And I said, great. I was on the community council, and I cornered him in front of the populace. And I said, let's set up a meeting to meet.

And we did the following week. When we walked into the meeting, the first thing he said to me standing right next to me, he said, I don't know why you're fighting this. We're gonna get you anyway. I said, wait a minute. You just stood before our populace and said, you do not want granite.

He said, that's our public stance. This is what we do in in private. Now it seems that it's hasn't changed very much. Now that we're coming to many years later, the desire is for you to have Sandy. Now I was told councilwoman Sharkey that at a meeting not long ago of a council meeting or of a candidate's meeting in our area up there, you were asked, what about the incorporation tried by the residents of Granite?

And your reply was, I believe that the residents of Granite should decide for themselves.

Sir, that's the end of your three minutes.

And yet here we are being forced. Not deciding for ourselves,

but we are now. The end of your three minutes. Thank you for your comments.

And it's a shame.

Thank you, mister Aiken. Are there since mister Aiken's told me there are no more property owners here for the Walters annexation, I'm gonna make one final call for any of those property owners. Alright. We will move on to the Sievertz annexation. That is at 9876 East 20 must be south. 2700 East. Any property owner or owners here for the Sievertz annexation? Seeing no one. I'll move on to item number three public hearing number three. That's

Excuse me. The property owner Anna Stevens asked me to represent her since she's out

of the country. Can I come up

with that?

We'll we'll definitely give you that opportunity. Let's move through the primary property owners first and we will be happy to include you a little bit later in the program. Okay. So number three is the Anderson annexation that is 9635 South 3100 East. Any property owner here to speak to the Anderson annexation?

My name is Jeremy Anderson. I'm representing Dean and Donna Anderson. We had signed a letter or my mother signed a letter of protest against this annexation. We believe that the Granite Community Council has done everything they can to give us a real feasibility report so that we could become our own city. And I believe this annexation is trying to thwart those efforts that they've made.

Because quite frankly, if they're able to if you guys annex one of these properties, then all the work that was done by the Granite Community Council will be null and void, and they'll have to redraft all their their maps. So anyway, you guys received a letter from the Andersons in opposition of this annexation.

Thank you, mister Anderson. Any other property owners that wanna speak to the Anderson annexation?

Madam chair, may I just give a reminder? If if any of property owners are joining us virtually and you'd like to comment as the chairs running through these individual annexations, just go ahead and click the raise hand button on your screen and we'll make sure to call on you.

You'll watch for that please. Thank you. Good reminder. Thanks. Alright. Next up item number four is the Clark annexation. Any property owner here or online to speak to the Clark annexation? Right seeing no one. The Miller annexation is item number five on the agenda. 3017 East Granite Meadow Lane.

Any property owner here or online to speak to the Miller annexation number five. Alright. Moving on. Item number six is the Pingree Annexation 9620 South 3100 East. Any property owner here or online to speak to the Pingree Annexation.

Agenda item number seven is the parish annexation. 2995 East Mount Jordan Road. Any property owner here or online to speak to the parish annexation. Agenda item number eight is the Lacai annexation at 9565 South Wasatch Boulevard. Any property owner here or online to speak to the Lacai annexation.

Item number nine the Hilton annexation at 10424 South Dimpledale Road. Any property owner here or online to speak to the Hilton annexation. Alright. Item number 10, Southwick annexation. That is 10524SouthDimpleDaleRoad.

Any property owner here or online to speak to the Southwick annexation. Item number 11, TP real estate annexation at 10209 South Dimple Dell Road. Any property owner here or online to speak to that annexation? Okay. Item number 12 is the Brown annexation at 3149 East 9800 South.

Any property owners here or online to speak to the Brown annexation? 13 is the Scrub Oak annexation at 2998 East Apple Hollow Cove. Anyone in the room or online to speak to the Scrub Oak annexation? 14 is the MSMR annexation at 9682 South Oakwood Lane. Any property owner here or online that would like to speak to that annexation?

15 is the Yondik annexation. 2627 East 10000 South. Any property owner here are online to speak to that annexation. Okay. 16 is the Knight annexation, 10116 South Alta Via Drive. Property owner Yeah. Come right down.

Hello. Hope I'm speaking loud enough for everybody. So my name is Douglas Knight. I'm one of the property owners there at 1016 Altavilla Drive in Sandy. Thanks for the forum. Appreciate it. Former Sandy City resident before. I was just a couple blocks away. So I mentioned this in the the planning meeting.

I

I thought in the document, you know, it talks about us signing this water agreement and exchange thing. And it's like, I asked to have it amended to say owner was forced to sign said water agreement. You know? I had no choice. You know? Water is like an essential thing for everybody, and there was no other choice. You guys are a monopoly up in our area when it comes to water. I have no other choice. I can't go to Mount Olympus and have them deliver thousands of gallons of water to me every week to get water to my house. So there was no choice in signing this agreement, and, you know, I protested that.

So and, honestly, I don't really know how I feel about coming back in the Sandy City or being in Granite, but my fundamental thing is I just want the choice. We're gonna vote as a community, and I'm willing to go with whatever the community votes for. And, you know, I don't know exactly all the great benefits of being with Sandy. I I know the concerns. You know, we specifically built on that street for the atmosphere that we have on that street. You know? There's no curb and gutter. There's no streetlights all over the place, polluting the light around us. You know, there's a certain field, you know, the the way that it was zoned for our property. That's why we chose to live there.

And, you know, there's been no communication from Sandy City. All I get is these, you know, little things. Hey. Come to Sandy City. Your taxes are gonna be the same. It's like, okay. Great. I'm looking at two alternatives where my taxes are the same. How's my life gonna be better, you know, if I'm in Sandy City? Right? That still hasn't yet to be articulated, you know, to me. And again, I just want the choice. I just wanna be able to choose my fate here of what's gonna go on. So that's all I gotta say. Thanks for the time. We'll see you.

Thank you, mister Knight. Any other property owners for the Knight annexation either in the room or online that would like to speak? Alright. 17 is the S Miller annexation at 10345 South Altavia Drive. Any property owner in the room or online that would like to speak to that annexation?

Okay. 18 is the Frick's annexation. 10364 South Altavia Drive. Any property owner here or online that would like to speak to that annexation? Alright. 19 is the Cassell annexation. 9538 South Deer Run Place and 2802 And 2798 East Cassell. Any there we go. Step right up.

Hi. I'm Rod Glover. I'm the homeowner of 20 at 2802 East in this annexation proposal. I've lived there approximately thirty five thirty three years. When I purchased this property from the builder, I had no notice in the closing or in any documents, any recordings, liens, whatever from Sandy City that I would be annexed into the city at some future time when you all chose.

I still would have bought the home, but I'd like to have had some type of notice that that was a lien on my property just to possibly address it at that time to see what it really meant. Currently, my property yeah. You run we're down a little lane that if, by chance, Granite does get incorporated and I'm already taken into Sandy City, then I will be an island within a, the city of Granite. And so I think that goes against some of the rules here. I I really don't have anything against Sandy City in general, but I do like the opportunity to be a granite city of our own so we can control our little area there.

It important to me that I can have that opportunity. I feel you're jumping the gun to do this annexation before we have a chance to see if the citizens in that area that fall within the Granite City potential city area does don't have a chance to vote for what they would like to have just as the gentleman before before me spoke. So I would like the consideration to postpone this annexation until that opportunity is given to us. There's been a lot of work put into it, a lot of research, and it I I think it would be nice if we had the opportunity to choose for ourselves what would be best for our little area. So thank you.

Thank you.

My name is Ron

oh, I don't like that one.

My name is Ron Bird. I live on 2842 East Cassell Drive, and I wanna know that I do not wanna be annexed into Sandy. Now Rod and the other gentleman said you'd like a choice. You're not gonna get one. I'll explain why in a minute.

Forty two years ago, we had a vote for the Granite Township. 84% of all those that voted wanted a township. But Sandy, other real estate developers, and our state legislature passed an ordinance that said, you gotta have 70% of everybody that lives in the area. Now how dang ridiculous is that? But that's what happened, so they killed us.

Most of these public hearings that I've been to throughout the state, they meet a a formal part of the law where you have to have them. But I've seen very few of them actually listen to and do it. And I don't have any more confidence in this in this group here either. Like the rest of you, we would like a vote. If we lose our vote and we go into Sandy, fine.

But we're not gonna even have a chance to vote on this, and Sandy's gonna see to that. One of the ways they'll see to that is each of these these lists that we've got here, they can use that against us because they can keep throwing those at us, and we use up our time. We only have so much time to complete these before we go on to the next one. Well, we have completed this. The state has said it's it's possible for us to do that.

But Sandy is gonna throw another one of these units at us, and we have to start all over. So I'm sorry to tell you, you probably are not gonna have your vote heard. And that's just the way it is. Also, in my neighborhood, I'm hearing taxes for Granite City of 4,005 thousand dollar increases. Do you people know what our taxes are gonna be in Granite City? Can you tell me what they're gonna be? Are they gonna be 4 or $5,000 more?

I can tell you it's gonna be more. Yeah.

Well, on the twenty seventh, I don't remember the exact date, we'll be looking at those for our city. And they're not gonna be four and five thousand. The state wouldn't have given us the permission to go on if it wasn't something reasonable that we could work with. And for Sattie to be out there telling us 4 and 5,000. At least that's what two of my neighbors told they were told when they called in. Thank you.

Thank you. Any more property owners included in the Case annexation on Deer Run Place in Cassell Drive? Alright. Agenda item number 20 is the Alta Villa 1 annexation at 10093 South Alta Villa Drive 10058 South and 1088 South Grouse Creek Circle. Any property owners here or online to speak to that annexation?

Alright 21 is Alta Villa 2 annex ation at 10149 And 1000189 South Alta Villa Drive. Any property owners here or online to speak to that annexation? Okay, 22 Hidden Pine Annexation, 9516 And 9525 South Hidden Pine Lane. Any property owners here or online to speak to that? 23 is the LCR 1 annexation.

32493251 And 3269 East Little Cottonwood Road. Any property owners here or online to speak to that annexation? Okay, 24 Janke, Yankee Flats Annexation. That is 302030233030, And 3033 East Yankee Flats Lane. Any property owners here or online to speak to that annexation?

Okay 25 is the turning point annexation at 2945, 2 thousand 955, 2961, 2977 and 3003 East Turning Point Circle. Property owners here or online that would like to speak to that. '20 '6 on our agenda is Finley Mini Annexation 2030 And 2060 East 10765 South. Property owners here or online to speak to that one. Alright and the final one is the Newman annexation.

10713107151074510747 South 2000 East. Any property owners here or online that would like to speak to that one? Okay. We can go back to the top or actually anyone in the room who is not a property owner that would like to speak to any of these annexations, you are invited to do so now. We'll start with people in the room and then we'll also extend the same ability to people online who are not property owners but would like to speak to any of the applications or annexations.

This is the George Ebert

Sir.

Estate next to my property.

Mister Bert, you you used your three minutes, sir. You used your three minutes, sir.

What's that?

You used your three minutes already, sir.

Think he used all three.

They said for another property. My neighbors asked me to speak. My neighbors not for me, but for her.

No. Everybody gets one opportunity to speak.

Sir, come on down. Tell us which annexations you would like annexation or annexations you're speaking to.

My name is Von Cox, and I'm speaking to annexation number two, the Sievertz annexation located at 9876 South 2700 East. This property in their water contract had an opt out clause, which said that if she wanted to opt out of the annexation provision, all she needed to do was write a letter and submit it to the city. This she has done. She was told by the city staff that her letter may or may not may or may not be honored by the council and that she needed to be here at this meeting or to send her agent. I am her agent.

And I'm I'm told that her letter exercise exercising her opt out option is in her packet. I ask the counsel to honor her letter and the contract and to allow her to opt out of the annexation and to vote not to proceed with the annexation of her property. K? That's my first item. I'm also here as one of the sponsors of the Granite Incorporation effort, and I want to start by addressing the elephant in the room.

I want to make sure everyone understands that this meeting is not really about annexations. Rather, it's about stopping the incorporation of the city of Granite. Annexations are only a means to that end. The city of Granite is on track to be on the ballot for this November's election, but Sandy City wants to stop it. It wants to stop a democratic election.

If even one of these annexations are approved, the map of Granite will change. Granite will be required to redo the incorporation work already done, and it is not possible to do this in time for the twenty twenty six election. It's you throw this in and all of a sudden, we're out. If Sandy succeeds, it will not only be canceling an election, but but also silencing the voice of the Granite community and denying the Granite community its right to self determination. Sandy City claims that it has a contractual right to complete these annexations, but that is not the case.

Any government entity, like a city, cannot give you a permit, water approval, or whatever in exchange for you giving up a fundamental right, like your right to speak, your freedom to speak, your freedom of protest. That's not something that you can give up in a contract in a contract. I'm here to ask the Sandy City Council to stop these annexations, but I fear that I will be be disappointed. Sandy City appears to be caught up in the fervor of a hostile takeover of the Granite community. The sentiments are so powerful that nothing else matters.

Any thought of these actions as being inappropriate, unethical, or unlawful are pushed aside in the excitement of the possibility of finally succeeding and taking over granted. Please stop. Please take a deep breath and ask yourself three questions. Is this right? Not can you get away with it, not can you come up with a legal argument to justify it, but it is right. Is it right? Number two is is this consistent with the democratic principles that we all hold so dearly? It is not. Number three, is this something that we will be proud of after the dust settles? Is this forced annexation of Granite something you wanna tell your grandchildren about?

Please let the voice of the Granite community be heard and stop these annexations. Thank you.

Thank you.

Ladies and gentlemen. So Ladies and gentlemen, we look. It's important that everybody gets a chance to speak, but you're out of order if you applaud in this setting. Okay? So, look, you can't boo. We don't want look, pop look, the political speech is very important in this room. Right? So no one should feel shamed if they say something that the group disagrees with by booing, and no one should get excited when someone starts clapping or applauding. Let's just make sure everybody has a chance to say what they're gonna say, and let's just anybody who applauds or yells or boos is out of order here tonight. Okay?

Thank you.

Sir, go ahead.

Three minutes.

My name is Goran Klugarvik. I live on Dippledale Road. I have lived in the same house, moved in over the July 4 weekend fifty three years ago. So I've been here a long time. In that time, we have constantly and consistently fought off being annexed into Sandy City.

We have had ever since mayor Dewey Bluth, there seems to be something inherent with the Sandy City people and the council of the mayor that they wanna grab land and and get more power. So I I represent myself, but I'm also on the Granite Community Council. And as you know, we have been working on incorporation for the last year or two years and done a lot of work on it. We spent a lot of money on it. And I think it's interesting that all of a sudden, now out of the clear blue sky, that we're on the verge of having the ability to determine our own way and to have our own city and have it the way we want it, that all of a sudden, Sandy City comes along and puts all these annexation signs up all around the city, not at the request of the property owner, but because they wanna stop our annexation.

Well, I'm gonna tell you something. We happen to like our little community of Granite. We like the rural atmosphere. We like people to have their horses and their cows and their buffalos even. And when we get annexed into Sandy City, that all may change. Now there's a group of us that have met with your mayor and your city administration, and they've talked about allowing us to do the same thing, having an overlay zone and so forth. But you know what? We don't trust you people. We have been lied to over the years many, many times by different administrations. We don't wanna be in Sandy City.

We don't wanna have your curb gutters and sidewalks and city lights. And you'll do that by creating a special service districts and then charge these extra. Yeah. Our property taxes will be the same as Sandy City's perhaps, but what you don't tell us is that you're gonna put in special service districts and charge us for putting in improvements, and that's not a part of taxes. They're, again, part of the deceit.

Now give us a choice. We're gonna have a meeting in a couple of weeks where we are gonna be able to have a vote and have a decide be able to decide whether we wanna be a city or not. A vote of the people. So what I'm asking you to do is this. Do the honorable thing this time and put this vote off and let us have our say. Put it off until after we have our election and let us decide. That's all I'm asking. Just be honorable. Thank you.

Thank you, sir. Anyone else in the room that would like to make comment on any of the annexations that it's not a property owner?

Here's my blue card. Don't count that on my time.

And which annexation or annexations would you like to comment on?

My name is Mike Hanson. I've been a resident of Granite for thirty nine years. I've been a practicing lawyer for forty six. I've been president of the Salt Lake County Bar Association. I've been on the Utah Board of Bar Commissioners for five years. I served on the Utah Judicial Council. I served on the Utah Judicial Conduct Commission. I'm an AV rated attorney by Martindale Hubbell. I've spent forty six years practicing in courtrooms throughout the state of Utah. The agreements you had these people sign, myself included, is what is called a contract of adhesion.

In other words, you must sign the contract. There is no alternative to signing the contract if you want to have water. The most important thing in the West is water. And for the last at least seventy five years, Sandy City has used that most powerful weapon that they have in the West, water, to destroy the community of Granite. If a if a developer buys piece of property that currently has one water hookup, if that developer wants to to subdivide and they are that the property that they have gotten is contiguous to Sandy, they have to annex into Sandy to get more than one water hookup.

If I when I bought in my home thirty nine years ago with my lovely wife, We weren't contiguous to Sandy anywhere around us. But we had to sign that contract of adhesion that said if someday Sandy wants us to annex into Sandy, we have to do it. I'm telling you that is a contract of adhesion. I believe it is unenforceable. I spent ten years on the Granite Community Council, five years as chair of the Granite Community Council.

I currently serve on the board of the South de Spain Water

I'm

team. Community Council and And was I'm primarily responsible along with others for the development of Granite Park up in the Granite area. We've given our lives to the to the Granite community, And you folks are going to destroy that way of life. Please do not do this. Please allow the citizens of Granite to have their vote. Let us have our vote. Thank you.

Thank you, sir.

Hi. My name is Dave White. I'm a property owner in the Nippledale area, and I'm here today representing a number of neighbors we have in the community to express our opposition to having the Turning Point facility annexed into the city, specifically Number 25 on your agenda. That property is has been in contention with us for a number of years now, actually actually over five years. It's basically a a rehabilitation facility that is a commercial enterprise that is existing and operating in a residential area.

And we have been contested there. They are desirous of expanding that facility. And and all of us have been affected in our lives by someone we know, a family member, a friend, or so forth, who've had issues with drug addictions and so forth of one sort or another. And we and we're so sympathetic to that. It's hard not to be in today's today's world. But this facility does not belong in a residential facility in in residential area. And the opportunity to expand it would would simply expand another commercial enterprise in a rural area that we were attracted to when we first moved here. And so we've been fighting it for over five years. We currently have our case before the administrative judge right now for the Santa Clara for the for the Salt Lake County. He has not rendered an opinion yet.

But if this property gets absorbed into the into the city, this is gonna create a problem for the city because it's gonna get it's gonna get contested one more time. And we don't think that's fair. We spent thousands and thousands of dollars trying to contest this and have the the thought of this now landing in in in the Sandy City's jurisdiction and have it recontested. The city is is gonna be looking for is gonna be looking for a legal challenge, which I don't think you're gonna wanna have to deal with again. Our request is to not annex turning point into the into the city and let this work its way through the administrative judge as it is right now, and we'll see where it takes us.

And and just by the way, the the the annexing into the city, this current property is Zone R 140. R 140 specifically to city code dis disallows rehabilitation facilities in that in that in that area. And so it it already disqualifies. But it will get contested. They've been fighting us for quite a while now. And I I you know, I think we we're asking that the city not defer this until this at least gets adjudicated and and resolved. Otherwise, it's gonna get on the city's hands, and you guys are gonna have to resolve it. And there'll certainly be expenses associated with that. Thank you.

Thank you. Do we have any other speakers in here who would like to address the council on any of the annexations? Hi. Hi.

I'm Jill. We live in Granite. We've been here sixteen years. We're on Dumbledell Road also. We've met some of these people and our neighbors for this reason. There's a maybe a silver lining. We have three kids. They've heard the stories that I hear, and they're the neighbors talking about what happened to them. It's the neighbors who are you know, I go outside. I talk to the neighbors.

What happened to your water rights? What happened when you annexed into Sandy? Was that a good deal? Our kids are hearing that side of the story, which is not ideal and how it looks on Sandy. I didn't come in planning to talk, but I came in planning to support the cause of being granite.

I'm trained as an elementary school teacher. I have a master's, And I agree with the idea that was offered to postpone, and I agree with everything mister Cox said. The rules of this system and how the whole thing has gone down do not seem fully ethical from my point of view. That's my concern. So I can I'd like to be relaxed.

I'd like to be open to options and changes. Change can be hard. But whatever's done, it should be done in an ethical and reasonable manner as adults. I would beg and ask you, why not make it correct? I think you're gonna do something. My grandparents settled here in Murray a long time ago. However long ago, that was a long time ago. We've worked to be hard, to be a part of Granite. Granite. I have to ask a couple questions.

The first is what does Sandy really want? Why are they doing all this? I want you to ask, I guess, yourself that. And maybe it would take more than three minutes to answer that. The other question is would request of you to look at the whole history. I mean, just tiny snippets of all this have happened. All these things. Tiny snippets. But to put it all together in one place and see how is that fully ethical and how can you feel good about it. I've got a lot of examples.

I've got forty seven seconds to talk but I only I've got so many examples of standing outside talking to neighbors about all the pros and cons and how can this happen and what about streetlights and what if we don't want streetlights and why don't we have a choice? That's where I'm at. I got a lot more to say but that's all I have to say.

Thank you. Thank you.

Hi. My name is Ted Bodendistel. That's my wife, Jill. I did plan to talk, so I have a few notes. So excuse me for my bluntness, but I've only had six minutes over sixteen years to talk about these challenges. In fact, my wife has potentially warranted concerns about me even speaking here as for fear of retribution last time I was camera on the news. What kind of agency would spur that kind of worry to those it wishes to govern? We're not interested in being coerced into joining and then being governed by an entity that has shown itself to be unsupportive, misleading, and willing to blackmail in order to fund and meet its goals. Blackmail may be a bit strong, but hopefully, it gets your attention as to what it looks like from our perspective. I I'm an industrial wastewater engineer.

I've been doing it for over thirty years. I totally get the water rights issues, and Sandy City needs to provide its residents first. But it seems really incongruous to me to justify a requirement to annex in based on potential lack of water, but the city obviously has the water since they're going to allow additional water services. Misleading and dishonest. There is a precedent for allowing this.

We live on a property as do our neighbors that was provided water service after being subdivided from an original, and we're still in part in granite. So it's not like this doesn't happen. We were never asked to sign anything. As far as I know, my property does not have that annexation rule that you made everybody else sign, and maybe that's why we weren't part of this whole annexation. Sandy City keeps telling us with the cost comparison table, but the only increased cost is due to them providing us our culinary water service where they charge us 20 18 to 25% more than Sandy City residents. Why? It's to push us into annexing into Sandy City and collecting our tax dollars. Sounds a bit unscrupulous to me if someone that wishes to govern us. They've been showing us the cost comparison argument on taxes for as long as we've lived here to convince us to annex. Why?

As far as I can tell, they want the tax dollars. They can take change the tax rates tomorrow, and you don't get anything for free. Construction of curb and gutter, storm water collection, conveyance and retention basins, street lighting, sidewalks, ongoing operation and maintenance of all these improvements, even this government building we're meeting in all right now, are all things that I don't want or need nor wanna pay for. Salt Lake County, I don't know that any of their representatives are here, is not suggesting adding any of these expensive items or chasing us for the money we send them as they seemingly don't have the big bills coming due. I myself appreciate the free water that nature provides our yard that flows off the street that is that these costly infrastructure steals.

Well, what if Sandy promises to not add all of these items? They can't. In order to my maximize the infusion of tax revenue, they'll put $23.02 to $3,000,000 homes on a lot that previously supported two as is currently going on adjacent to us. One loses all the rainwater infiltration due to the streets, driveways, and roofs that will now cover around 80 plus percent of the land. Thus, they have to provide storm water control measures. I've also seen the plans for widening of Dimpledale Road and watch as it happens to annex subdivisions right across the street where they put in a nice light that shines right into my front window for nobody. No reason. I was told in a meeting by Sandy City staff they would never use eminent domain to seize our property as part of this road widening. Is annexation just another word for eminent domain? Thank you.

Thank you.

My name is Craig Aild. I live in the Dimpledale area for about the last twenty seven years. I appreciate your statement about being out of order with the clapping, but by the same token, it's the closest thing this group will get in a way of a chance to be able to vote and show you where we feel. You've not heard a single person speak in favor of this annexation yet at the time that we're here. Again, I've been in the area for twenty seven years. We live in an unincorporated area right now. That's not subject to what you're dealing with. But I assume that's only gonna be a short period of time. It seems very disingenuous, the timing of this. You know that we're at the point of being able to make this decision as it relates to Granite City and that this would be a way to be able to interrupt that.

Self determination is something that we all value in being able to work with it. We had a prior vote. It was just you know, you can tell me how many years ago it was, but where we had the vote on the islands. And it overwhelmingly was by the people that live in that area decided they didn't want to be incorporated into Sandy at that time. We've already voted and said no on Sandy, and now you're just gonna take it. And I guess I find that extremely disingenuous. And, again, I I would ask if this is such a great idea where the people speaking in favor to it. Thank you.

Thank you. Looking for anyone else in the room who would like to address the council.

On blue cards or annexation?

On anyone wishing to speak on any of the annexations that is not a property owner. Come on down.

Hi. I grew up in Granite.

What's your name?

Oh, Anna. I'm so sorry. Thank you. Anna. I did fly out fly out. Fill out a card. I grew up here. My grandfather built the house across the street from us which has been torn down subsequently and, has sat vacant and that broke my heart. I am here to plead with you emotionally. You have had a lot of arguments for the infrastructure, infrastructure, taxes, the logistics kind of things.

But emotionally, I plead, please let us have a vote. I grew up here. I am my heart and soul is in this. I am on the ground up preservation committee. We have so much riding on this. We wanna keep our identity, we want to keep our small town values, we want to just be

who

we are and run things how we want, we want to have a vote.

We

have so many good traditions with our fourth of July parade. We have so many so many friends and neighbors and a lot is riding on this and we just really hope that you can just wait and hold off on these annexations. Please, not to be rude but this is aggressive. It's very aggressive. And it is it broke my heart to see so many orange signs go up overnight in my, neighborhood and the routes I drive every day.

The anxiety goes up, especially after all this and the, you know, the study came out in favor of us. And yes, we can adjust those numbers but we just want a chance. We want a chance to let this ride out and please, please, please let us have our vote. Let us we don't wanna change the maps right now. We wanna be able to freeze our boundaries and please, like, let us be who we are.

And also, maybe this is inappropriate, but, there is a council member eating on camera and, it seems so disrespectful when we are giving our heart and soul into this. Just please, please don't, disregard so many of us who are willing to show up for this and thank you. Thank you.

Alright Dustin. Let's

Madam chair. Yeah. Alright so I have three cards here that were marked as wanting to speak on this and I just wanna make sure that they're not waiting for us to call them.

Please.

Let's do that. A couple of them didn't mark necessarily this item but I just wanna make sure we get everybody.

Please.

I have a Gorm Clunder Clunder, Vic. You spoke. Okay. Thank you. I just missed you, sir. Appreciate that. I have the Carl Ebert estate. Was there somebody who spoke?

I was representing Carl.

Okay. Thank you, sir. And then I also had Deborah Kemper. Were you wanting to speak on the annexations?

Yes.

Okay. Thank you.

Good evening. My name is Deborah Kemper and I'm a member of the Granite community.

Deborah, could you speak into one of the microphones, please? Thank you so much.

No problem, buddy.

There you go.

So my name is Deborah Kemper and I'm a member of the Granite community. As Anne said, we have spent a lot of time on this. Okay? We have actually gone around and spoke to many of the people in our neighborhood. We've taken votes. We have gotten signatures. I think this is just so so distasteful of what you're trying to do. First of all, you know, that's that's kind of what our our society is about. Okay? Community service and getting involved.

And that's exactly what we did because that's what we want. I moved here over thirteen years ago from California. Gotta tell you the truth. I only committed to two years, but after I lived here, I decided I didn't wanna move back even though all of my family lived in California. I am the one that got the save the deer signs on Dimmel Dell Road. Am the one that's constantly watching out for that Canyon. And I am so afraid of what you were gonna do to our area after what you spent, what, $10,000,000 for that helicopter pad that you put at the traffic light at Little Cottonwood Canyon. I don't want that. And I just wanna make my voice clear here. And I hope you all have a nice evening. Thank you.

Thank you. Alright. I'm going to assume that is everyone in the room. Dustin if you will invite anyone online who would like to make comments to do so and tell them how to do it.

Of course. If you're joining us virtually this evening on Zoom and you'd like to comment on the annexations on this evening's agenda, go ahead and click the raise hand button on your screen now. I will call your name in the order in which you raised your hand, and you'll have three minutes to comment. First up, we have Andrew Rothkopf. Andrew, I'm gonna go ahead and allow you to begin speaking. Please remember to unmute yourself, and you'll have three minutes.

Yes. Hello. Can you hear me?

Yes. We can.

Awesome. Thank you. I'm calling rep or, I am, I joined the Zoom meeting, representing a property owner, at 4094 Cory Drive because we did receive a public notice sign and document saying that we were supposed to be part of the Zoom meeting, but I didn't see it on the agenda. Is that is that community no I'm no longer a part of the annexation, or was it just not on the agenda for some reason?

We answer that question. Do do you you recognize hold hold on just a second, Andrew.

Yeah. That particular property was included in the Little Cottonwood Road 2 annexation and that one and the Alta Approach annexation were tabled at the Planning Commission meeting.

Okay.

So they are not on the agenda.

There you go. So

if they were tabled thank you for that. I do appreciate that. So if they were tabled, so they're not part of the annexation then? That's that correct?

Yep. Tabled.

Okay. Thank you very much. Thank you very much. I appreciate your

time.

Thank you.

We'll give it just one more minute, madam chair. But as of now, I don't have any other raised hands on Zoom. And I'm not seeing any other hands raised madam chair.

Same here. So I we have invited all the property owners, anyone else who wanted to speak in the room and anyone else who wanted to speak online. Would you like to come down? Go ahead. Please state your name and what annexation or annexations you'd like to speak to.

Yes. My name is Jody Thompson. I'm the HOA president of the, Dimpledale Ranchettes, which is up on Charles Road and Dimpledale Drive. About a year and a half ago, I spoke with the heads of certain departments here at Sandy City. There are basically four main concerns that we had with the possible annexation of our community into Sandy. Number one was the snow plowing of the hill, and it's a big concern because, no offense, but Sandy City in the past has been notoriously bad in plowing their roads. Maybe that's changed, but that's how it used to be. Number two was the lights. We don't want any headlights or, excuse me, lamp lights in our neighborhood. Number three is the sidewalks.

And number four is our cell tower that we have. Now in speaking with the different heads of the departments here in Sandy City, they all assured me that we would not get the lights, we would not have sidewalks, we would have a priority rating on our snowplow to come through behind first responders like the police, fire, and hospital. And number four, that our cell tower would not be taken nor its revenues from us.

Can

you can you assure me of this, that this is gonna happen?

It's we don't answer questions here of that nature, but if you if you would like to stay past this agenda item, we can certainly have staff meet you out in the lobby and talk to you about that.

I would love to, but I've got a HOA meeting at 7PM. So, unfortunately, I'm gonna have to leave early. So the next point that I've got is you've gotta let these people decide. If this is as good as you folks are saying it is, they'll annex into Sandy. But you have got to give them the opportunity to decide for themselves.

That's what this country was built on. That's part of the fabric of our society is being able to vote on what we want and what we don't want. And when you take that privilege and that opportunity away from the people, you end up with disgruntled citizens. And with Sandy, I know you take great pride in your city. It's a beautiful city. I'm part of it as well. Make sure that your citizens wanna be there. And if they don't, that's up to them. But let them make that choice. Thank you.

Thank you. Alright. We've covered all the speakers and we'd continue to keep it open. I'm going to close the public hearing at this point in time and we will bring it back to the council for discussion and deliberation. Council members including action.

Madam chair I'll make a motion.

Alright miss Nickel.

Go ahead. Move that the council table annexation number one three five six sixteen eighteen, nineteen, and twenty until future

date. Second.

Alright. So let's repeat that motion for everyone in the room to make sure that we have an understanding of what your motion is. Could you repeat the annexations that you're proposing to table that are in tonight's packet?

Yes. The motion is I move the council table annexation items one, three, five, six, sixteen, eighteen, nineteen, and twenty until a future date.

Okay. Council, any discussion to that motion? Seeing none, we will take a roll call vote on that.

Madam chair was miss Trout the second?

Was it you?

Yes. Miss Nicholl.

Yes. Miss Trout.

Yes.

Miss Houseman.

No.

Miss Sharkey?

Yes.

Miss Christensen?

Yes.

Miss D'Souza?

Yes.

Madam chair that motion carried five to one. Okay.

Okay so everyone follows what followed what just happened right? So you're clear on exactly which annexations were just tabled by the council. Alright. We have some more issues to take up. Does anyone have a further motion? Sir, sir public comment is over. Okay. I will do that. I will do that. So, Okay.

Go ahead.

1356116.

Sorry. 181920. I'll repeat it. 1356, 161819, 20.

That's madam chair. I have another motion.

Miss Stroud, go ahead.

I move that I move that

the council approve item number nine on the agenda, adopting ordinance twenty six fifteen, annexing that property into the city and zoning the property upon annexation as recommended by city staff and by the planning commission, but with the addition of animal rights.

I'll second that and thank you. Wouldn't forgot that.

Okay. So, the motion with a second is on annexation item number nine to approve the annexation and add the animal rights designation to the zoning. We have motion and a second. Any discussion to that motion council members? No. Okay we're ready for a roll call vote on that.

Miss Trout?

Yes.

Miss Nichol? Yes.

Miss Houseman?

Yes.

Miss Sharkey?

Yes.

Miss Christensen? Yes. Miss D'Souza?

Yes.

Madam chair that motion carried six to zero.

Alright, counsel. We still have some annexations to take up. Do I have another motion? Miss Christianson,

go ahead. I would

like to make a motion that the council approve annexation items two, four, seven, eight, ten, eleven, twelve, thirteen, fourteen, fifteen, seventeen, twenty one, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, and 27 on the agenda adopting those 18 proposed ordinances annexing the properties identified into the city and zoning those properties upon annexation as recommended by city staff and the planning commission.

Do we have a second? Second. Okay. So we've got a motion and a second. Do we need a repeat? Everyone want a repeat? Okay.

So it's two, four, seven, eight, ten, eleven, twelve, thirteen, fourteen, fifteen, seventeen, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, and 27.

Any discussion to that motion council members? Alright, we have a motion and a second we're ready for a roll call vote.

Miss Christianson. Yes. Miss D'Souza.

Yes.

Miss Stroud.

Yes.

Miss Nichol?

Yes. Miss Houseman?

Yes. Miss Sharkey? Yes.

Madam chair, that motion carried six to zero.

Alright. That concludes the public hearing items. Council, we do have another annexation item on the consent calendar that is passing an intent to annex the remaining parcels at the Lacay property. I will accept a motion to adopt the consent calendar.

Madam chair motion to adopt consent calendar.

Second. Alright motion and a second all in favor say aye. Aye. Any opposed? All right.

Thank you everyone for joining us tonight. We appreciate you bearing here. Alright it is time for general citizen comment which we overran our time at 06:00. So I have no blue cards for general citizen comment. Do you have them, Dustin, to the extent of your knowledge?

Madam chair, I don't have any cards for general citizen comment. Would you like me to go online?

Let's go online.

Okay. If you're joining us virtually this evening and you'd like to comment on any city business, now is the time. Go ahead and click the raise hand button on your screen. Allow you to speak in the order in which you raised your hand, and you'll have three minutes.

Ladies and gentlemen, if you're gonna have a meeting, could you please have your conversations out in the hall? We still have business to take up here.

Madam chair, I'm not seeing any hands raised for general citizen comment.

Same here. We'll close general citizen comment for this evening as well. And the last item on the agenda is an information item on the administrative services department presenting a preview of the budget. And that is Mr. Kelly. Welcome.

Thank you. Good evening council. Thank you Liz.

Thank you, Chris. All right, Brian.

Okay. As you know and as was mentioned, this is a budget preview for the upcoming fiscal year 'twenty six, 'twenty seven. Tonight, I'm going to give a really high level overview. In four more weeks, we'll be coming to you with the tentative mayor's tentative proposed budget for your review and adoption of that tentative. And then it becomes yours to consider and review and modify after that point.

So tonight's kind of a preview of that. We'll have the final document for you ready then in four weeks. And then that night, it's May 5, I believe, and the subsequent three weeks, we'll have in-depth conversations and presentations from each department, including our HR director, Katrina Frederick, will be here talking more in-depth about the compensation plan proposal. And then each department will go into depth about their specific items as well. So you'll see a lot more information.

You'll have the document tonight just to give you a preview of that really high level. So first off, wanted to just touch on our key challenges that we're facing. These aren't that different than the prior years that we've talked about. And number one is just we want to meet our citizens' service expectations. We have a reputation for a high level of service.

We want to keep that going and exceed it where possible. We're always trying to balance that along financially prudent and managing the taxpayers' money effectively and efficiently. One of our challenges is the life cycle status of our city. Sandy City is more mature, built out. We're not seeing the heavy growth that we did in the '90s, early 2000s, '80s.

So that puts pressure on us financially because we don't have as much growth happening and larger growth, new businesses coming and new homes. So that puts a pressure on our core services that we provide. How do we keep funding that? Cause our costs keep increasing just like everybody is with inflation. We have unfunded needs that have been requested in the past that we're still trying to get by without.

We have public safety service needs. The dynamics of the world have changed and public safety has become riskier and more prevalent issues and more complex issues. Inflation, as I mentioned, remains above the Federal Reserve's target rate of 2%. The last reading was at 2.4%. It's down from the peak of when it hit 9% a few years ago, but it's still above where the target is.

We're trying to rebuild for the future. We're maintaining our fund balance. We want to keep that at a healthy level to keep our AAA bond rating in place as one key aspect. And then employee retention and recruiting is a key challenge we have because so much of our services we provide are employee based. That's really crucial for us to keep that level of service.

And I want to kind of key off of that and talk a little bit about our salary survey from this year and looking at employee turnover. You can see this goes back to 2016. Just the bottom row I want to hit on 2018. You can see we spiked up at just over 17% turnover. We don't want to be in the double digits.

That gets concerning. We can see in 2025, we just went into double digits. It's not as bad as 2018, but we want to avoid getting there. And we need to also drill into why what's driving those numbers. Are they involuntary separations, voluntary where employees are leaving to go for some other reason or retirements?

This shows in '25 we had 21 voluntary which was below the average. But you can see the average is being driven up. If you look back at 2018, we had 56 voluntary terminations or separations. We had a few years, 2021 and 2022, we were above 40. Again, we wanna avoid that.

So we wanna maintain a a positive culture here as well as competitive pay so that that doesn't happen because it's very costly to replace people. We lose a lot of institutional knowledge and expertise, and it has real costs associated with it. Our unemployment rate for the state right now is 3.6%. In The United States, is 4.4%. Inflation was 2.7% for all items in 25% at December.

And the Social Security increase for inflationary increase for Social Security people was 2.8 starting for 'twenty six. This is a history of the most recent things what we've done in our pay plans as far as pay. In '21, we did a 1% COLA. We did some additional targeted adjustments for bands two through four and revisions to the police step in grade plan. In 'twenty two and 'twenty three, you can see we had those were years where we had the super high inflation and we were doing a 6% COLA for all employees and a 7.5% the next year, plus an additional 2.25 for non sworn employees to try to catch up and be competitive.

We were having, if you remember the turnover data, we were having really high turnover. And we also did major revisions to the fire step and grade plan that year. And then the following year, '24, we just did a 1% COLA. Last year, we did a 3%, thinking we were going to try to catch up because we had lost some ground the year we did the 1%. And as we look at our data here, this is the salary survey specific looking at our different pay bands.

And overall, the bottom line is the overall citywide weighted average without bands nine and ten, which are the sworn police and fire, our ranges are where one would be your right at market with our competitive sister cities. So 0.95 is a 95% of market. So you can see it, the min and max were below either at 95, 93 and then our actual average is at 99% of market. If we step back, we look at the last three years, we can see that if you just pick that bottom row again, if you look at 2023 and just look at the actual average, were at 1.02, then we dropped to one, now we're at 0.99. The ranges have also dropped that are in red there, 9.98, 9.7, and last year nine point six and nine point five, now we're nine point five and nine point three.

So we're just kind of slowly lose slipping, losing ground. Even though we made a really concerted effort to try to hold ground and catch up a little last year, we actually didn't. So all this is going to is playing into what we're going to recommend into our comp plan. We look at this data and it helps drive our decisions. So the key takeaways on the salary survey is that we're struggling to maintain competitiveness.

The bands two through six for public employees, we're gonna be recommending a two and a half percent cost of living. And we're hoping that that will it won't bring us fully up to where we need to be, but it'll it'll be a good strong effort towards that. And police and fire, sworn officers, are we've been wanting to stay above average in that area. And so we're going to be proposing an additional 2% for police and fire sworn officers because they're slipping as well. And I'll go into a little bit more detail on that here in a few minutes.

So as we're putting this budget together, we obviously wanted to take your priorities as a council into consideration. So we have those here on the screen, economic development, quality of life, infrastructure, community safety, fiscal health. And we tried to put together a budget that meets and is consistent with your priorities. And so as we go through subsequent slides, we've got some of those icons on the different slides that I have that kind of help you tie in what your priorities are and how they match with what we're proposing. Before we get to there, I want to talk about just some of the demographic and economic trends.

And sales tax is our largest source of revenue for the general fund, so that's what I wanted to bring up. We're looking at the estimate for in the state is for '26 is about 3.5%. This shows how we've been back to 2001. And it's fluctuated, of course, but 3.5% is the projection statewide this next year for retail sales. Percentage of population is important because half of our sales tax is driven based on population.

And our population as a relation to the statewide is, as you know, is just slowly decreasing because the state's growing faster than we're growing. And so our portion of that half of the statewide pool slowly diminishes. And that's important for all the economic and residential growth that you're all endeavoring to contribute and build and grow to keep our population relevant and as much up to state growth as possible so that we can that will help our economic engine and sales tax. These are Sandy specific tax growth year over year. And what we're showing here next year is in 2026, the current year, our estimate is about 2.6% growth.

Next year, we're estimating about 1.4% off of that current year estimate. It's about it's closer to 5% off the base of our budget, but 1.44 off of our current year estimate. So fairly modest. You know, it's not flat or decreasing, but it's it's not going gangbusters either like we've had in, as you can see in the early 2000s. And even if this slide went back into the '90s, we would see more of those bars up above 1015%.

Okay. Some more specifics about our revenue growth. We're projecting $3,300,000 in growth overall in the general fund. Some of our major sources, we are not proposing a tax increase for property tax increase. So we're that's one of the challenges. We're trying to balance the budget without that. We have some new growth that we're projecting because of new business, new commercial growth, housing, annexations, all of that we're projecting about 2% growth to our property tax. Sales tax at 5% based off the budget. Franchise taxes are looking slightly down about 1%. Our state road funds are looking pretty good at 9% growth.

Building permits are strong at 38%. And then some other notable sources are ambulance services. Our number of transports have increased with the change in the contract with Gold Cross. So those are up 18%. Our court fines are actually down 18% and interest income is down as the Fed cut had three rounds of decreases.

It's been held flat in recent months. There's talk of maybe actually increasing it because of inflation spiking. But also, as we've spent more of our capital on Alta Canyon or the new recreation center, our fund balance in our capital projects fund has been drawn down. And so we're going to earn less income interest income on that because our balances are less. Okay.

So moving on to our ongoing sources in the general fund. So again, our projection is $3,300,000 The requested needs that came in from departments to to do

help.

So So we're not not committing going all that. Of it so that next year we have at least some that will be freed up when we start the budget process. In one time sources, have $4,800,000 available in revenue. We had $10,800,000 in requests come in from departments. And so we have a funding gap of $6,000,000 there.

And then we have restricted revenue, which is most of this is road transportation funds, 5.6 of it, and then impact fees, about 625,000 that's available for restricted. And and like I said, most of that's for going for roads. So the major themes that we're looking at as we try to balance and present a budget is doing it without a property tax increase. So in order to do that, we feel like we've had to streamline where we can, try to cut costs where feasible to save for this next year. We're also trying to position ourselves for the future years.

We wanna maintain a high level of service and to be able to keep quality employees, our best employees. We also are trying to break down any barriers or silos to service delivery. We want to improve our infrastructure and invest in our fleet replacement. This has been a multiyear goal we've been having because our ongoing fleet amount has been underfunded. We've been funding the same level for decades.

We've been trying to slowly build that up and then add one time money to get that caught up. So to do that, you know, in talking about streamlining cost cutting, we asked all the departments to put scenarios together as they submitted their request. Not only what did they feel like they needed, but we we asked them to look at a 2% across the board cut in their departments as well as a 4% cost cutting scenario. And they submitted those to us and we reviewed it. Ultimately, we decided not to do any across the board cutting, but we pursued a targeted approach.

Part of that, one of the big things in this budget is a proposal to merge our public utilities and public works department. I'll go into a little bit more detail on that, but we're estimating that that would generate to the general fund about 435,000 in savings. We're also looking at other ways to reduce in the general fund of about in other departments, 340,000. We're gonna propose a reduction to our art skill transfer subsidy of a 100,000 and information technology cutting our charges to that for by 75,000. And so with all that cost cutting and streamlining, what we're trying to do is re prioritize where we can.

So the big priority is maintaining a competitive compensation plan to keep our quality workforce. That's gonna be 2,100,000. Priority on public safety. So we have allocations for police of just over 400,000, fire, 115,000, and an extra market adjustment in pay for police and fire would be 600,000 on top of the 2.1. So the total comp package would be 2.7.

We wanna add a 120,000 to our ongoing base of fleet replacement. Our risk charges, this is largely insurance costs, liability insurance, workers' comp insurance, things that we have to keep up. That's going up 350,000. And then our software contracts for all the the dozens of types of software we have are going up a 180,000. Those are things we've tried to see where we can save and cut there, but we feel like we have to be able to maintain these ones here.

So here's a little bit more detail on the comp plan. It's, again, two two point five COLA, an extra 2% for fire and police officers. The step in grade adjustment according to their existing plans for police and fire and then a 3% pay for performance for other civilian employees. Now just talking a little bit about the more about the merger with Public Works and Utilities. This is still really high level.

There's a lot of details to work out. But some of the reasoning behind it, part of that is better customer service. So we're streamlining the process. When the development community come in for reviews and approvals, There's been some confusion in the past as to what gets approved by which department. And they go to one, they think they have everything checked off, and then they're told they need to talk to another department.

This will kind of break down some of those barriers, bring things more unified across the areas for the review, also inspections, information systems. Those are some of the key customer service seeing. There will be some position reductions that would happen this coming year in July as well as we've identified future ones that we think can take place over time through attrition. And as the departments are able to cross train and work things out, see see what's working, we believe there will be even, more position savings as well as fleet and heavy equipment savings. They'll be able to share that equipment and get more synergies from from using it and being able to cross train and and be work being working under the same crew leads that they can share and coordinate better.

A a big capital savings is we think we can, do away with the need for the phase three of Public Works Building, which was estimated at $11,000,000. So that's, you know, tremendous savings, taking that need off off the table. It will be offset by some onetime costs. We think that it would be necessary to improve the the current public utilities office operation building and to be able to situate the staff where they would like to have them. So we're estimating that would be about $1,000,000 in costs in the first year.

Okay. Moving on to general fund reductions. So most departments, you'll see they're either cutting costs or they're staying flat and just keeping the same budgets, maybe adjusting some line items to keep up with actual trends. And then that is being prioritized to police and fire. There will be some position reductions in these other departments this year and potentially more in future years through attrition.

And when I'm talking about some of these position reductions, some of these are vacant positions, but there are some that are not that we'll be working with employees on. Okay. As I mentioned, public safety is a focus here. So we're allocating or going to recommend allocation of employees some AI reporting tools to help them be more efficient, save their time so that they can work smarter, spend more time with the public on solving crimes and not just writing reports and reviewing reports. They're they've been testing three different tools.

They wanna go with one of them, and they've they've seen a a lot of benefit on that. They also wanna improve the drone program, which we've had in place throughout the city. This is shifting it, upgrading it more and going to a subscription type of program where they can keep their drones up to date and the software that goes along with those. And it's been a huge benefit in solving crimes, investigating things, finding either victims or perpetrators. It's been a huge help and great efficiency to the police department.

Also, real time crime center, the police will talk to you about some examples of this where they've seen huge success. Some small increases to ammunition or dispatch fees are going up for both police and fire that they they need to be funded. And then there's a a South Valley shared investigations cooperation unit that each of the departments in the South Valley are contributing to. So it's about 20,000. It's not a lot, but there's some allocation going to that.

And then in fire, they have equipment contracts that are increasing with inflation we need to keep up on. The because of the increase in ambulance services and transports, there's a correlating fee that goes up with that that we need to fund. They have a part time staff support that's needed at their new fire station. And then I mentioned the dispatch fees. Okay.

Now moving on to the one time items. As I mentioned, fleet replacement's a priority. So we're gonna recommend another 1,400,000.0 of one time money go towards additional free fleet replacement. And then 200,000 for the recreation center to help them phase into the new center that's scheduled to be opened in in January. They've they're eating through their fund balance, and they're it looks like they're not gonna make it.

We need to give them another 200,000 to get by this next year. And then snow removal. So as you know, the last two winters have been pretty dry. So our averages and costs have gone down. But we do you know, three years ago, we had a huge spike.

So instead of maintaining our funding level at that same spike level, we wanna keep it at a lower, more average level, but put some away into a reserve fund that in the event we do have a heavy winter, they could draw on that. So we're gonna recommend $100,000 of one time money go to a reserve account for snow removal. In capital projects, you'll hear more detail on this as well, but 6,300,000 towards roads. And that includes some of the a lot of that is restricted road fund money. You can and I feel really good about this these amounts.

I think they're equivalent or better than we've had in some years. We have a lot going to street reconstruction, hazardous concrete. There's some 300,000 being set aside for the intersection near Alta High School, sidewalk expansion and other miscellaneous. Parks and trails about 1.5. Playground replacement, the parks department will continue to work on that.

And a wall replacement, these are back facing walls, 700,000, which is a really large investment in that. We want to put a program in place similar to our replacement in front of homes where residents that want to contribute half of the cost of the wall replacement, the city would go in and we would try to do sections at a time to achieve economies of scale. And we think that will go a long ways to accomplishing that backlog of work that needs to be done there. And then there's some money we're going to recommend for gateway beautification at the entrances near the freeway into the city, and then some miscellaneous projects for restroom improvements, backstops, and irrigation systems. Our buildings, we have some investment we need to do in city hall.

Our west stairs are crumbling, and they're a hazard. And we've tried we're coating them three times a year to keep up on them. That's a major cost as well as the skylight at city hall needs to be replaced. It's fiberglass, it's coming apart, and we need to take care of that soon. So those are some of the big ticket items in the buildings.

And then kinda moving outside of the general fund now into the waste fund. And as you know, we have a lot of enterprise funds, and the departments will go into those in more detail. This one I wanted to call out because it there is significant cost increase in this, which are gonna drive some fee increases. So their costs overall are going up $317,000 Most of that's because of the contract with waste management. There's an inflationary factor in the contract, and that went up 4.8% this year.

Also, the recycling tip fee has increased. So those are the big combinations of costs going up. Our fund balance in the waste fund isn't enough to absorb it. We looked at that. Can we just absorb it and hold on the fees?

But we're not able to do that, so we need to pass on that to the users. And what that is looking like, I know this is small, but the top row there in the middle, the change would be 54¢ for the first waste and recycling can. And then if you have a second can, it would be 1.5 And then if you have a third or more, it'd be 2.85 And also on our dumpster, the bottom row, we'll be recommending a change of a $100 to rent a dumpster. There's been some data analyzed in the public works department identifying that they haven't been covering the cost of the tipping fees the dumpster rental, and that's averaged about a $100. So that's what's driving that up mostly in addition to the current rate of the dumpster rentals going up $10.

So, anyway, I went through that fairly quickly. But do you have any questions at this time? And again, keeping in mind that we have a lot more information to come in the future weeks.

Ms. Stratt,

I had a quick clarifying question and I probably just missed it as I was taking notes. So back on the graph where you have the Sandy sales tax growth year over year, it's towards the beginning. Page twenty, twenty five, Slide 25. Some have numbers, some

That one?

Yes. So, it looks like it's and then so the percent growth over there, we're looking I think you said it's around two and a half percent?

The current year we're estimating 2.6, yeah.

Okay. And then the next

That's that first green bar. It would be about 2.6.

Okay. And then the very next slide.

Yeah, I've got sales. Yeah, the difference here with this 5%, this number is going is the increase off the base budget versus the one before is off the it's the current year estimate off the budget. And then the 5% is taking what we're projecting next year in 2027 off the current year. So it's taking current year budget, going clear kind of combining both of those blue or green bars, the estimate plus our forecast for next year. I can explain it later, but

Okay.

Yeah. The difference is one's off budget, one's off estimate. An estimate is higher than the budget. That's why this number is smaller.

But we're still estimating. So

this one's an increase of estimates. One's Doesn't

tell me as much. Okay. I'll probably need you to explain a little bit more Okay. On then next question. So I think it was like slide 31, 32, where it cuts to the arts guild and IT.

31.

Oh my gosh. I thought I had that. Let's see. Where was it? Where is the cuts? My slides are different.

31. It 31? He was just on 31. So

I had the cuts. Seventy transplant.

Yes. That's the

Did he have it? Oh, there we go. So I was wondering where the arts that's not it. 31 maybe.

Reduction. Yeah. Was, like, a 100 k for

A $100,000 reduction to the skilled.

75

and 75,000. There we go. So transfer out to art skilled. So what is that reduction? What what are they what are we reducing in art skilled besides money?

We don't really feel like they'll have to reduce cut much of their budget. They proposed, I think, about $12,000 in cuts on their own. This is they don't need this transfer as much as they have in the past. So because they're generating more revenue themselves. So our subsidy doesn't need to be as much.

So we just

don't need it as much of a subsidy?

Yeah, it's not equating into cuts for them necessarily.

Okay.

That they wouldn't have done anyway.

Good to hear.

Yeah. Good to hear.

Is that similar? So the IT, the 75,000?

No. The IT, we are we're doing some reductions there. Probably going to be a position reduction there. If we didn't do that, it would be 75,000 more.

So it's about a difference of $150,000

Well, our costs are still if I look at the one slide, costs are still increasing 180,000 So they would be closer to $250,000 or so if we didn't do some cost cutting there.

Okay. Those were the couple questions I had. Thank you.

Miss Nickel.

So why are dispatch fees going up again?

I don't have the exact their contracts, it's it's all in the formula of the contracts. We'll have to have the police explain that in more detail.

Have we looked into the cost of Beck versus Salt Lake City recently?

Yeah, I think they've done that numerous times in the last few years and my understanding is it's still cheaper to stay with Salt Lake City than Beck.

Okay, thank you.

So I have a question about slide 21, the salary survey takeaways. The next

one more

then no the other way 21. One more.

I don't have numbers on There you my Oh no. Okay.

You went the wrong way.

This one?

One more. There you go. Okay. Market competitiveness. So obviously we do these salary salary surveys. Surveys.

And this whole thing about struggle to maintain

Market market competitiveness, obviously I think that applies to all of us, right? We're up, we're down. They're up, they're down. It's all over the place. We're all trying to stay. All of us cities are trying to stay competitive with one another. My question is are performance bonuses and spot awards included in the salary comparisons?

In the actual pay they are as part of the spot awards or not because those are not even budgeted those are usually are generated from savings in a department. That's the only way those are given out if they can but the 1% incentive for non topped out employees that is in there.

And so any merit pay like often we're doing like 3% merit pay or performance pay Are is that included in the salary comparisons with other cities as well?

Yeah that shows up in the actual average.

Okay.

Because that goes into an employee's base pay.

Okay.

And it shows up when they look at the number of incumbents in a position and what their actual pay is. That's where that would show up.

It shows up in there, okay. Yeah. Even though it's just a single year, right? Because we adjusted every, but every year you're adjusting for that and including it in the salary surveys.

Yeah the performance pay is how employees move through the range you know based on their skill development, learning, their performance and they're obviously the longer they're here the more they gain those things and can move through the range. So that their base pay progresses as they move through the range and that's where it shows up in the actual pay.

So the public works public utilities proposed merger. You've got some cost savings in here for like and expenses for the remodeling of the public utilities building to accommodate more offices and then the $11,000,000 savings for being able to skip Phase three. Are you going to be able to be, when the budget comes out, even more specific about cost savings that lead to efficiencies, that lead to lower budget demands? I'd like, as a council member, I'd just like to have more certainty about whether the merging of these two departments does produce a net savings. Is it a dollar savings?

Is it an increased efficiency? What is it? Is anything going to come out in the budget that's going to get specific about projected savings and efficiencies?

Yeah, you'll see the actual numbers that we're budgeting. So that'll be in the budget. Some of this will have to be worked out through the next year. Some of the, you know, the employees will need to be cross trained. The department head and the the division managers will have to work with the employees to see how it's best gonna fit together and that'll take some time. But in the budget we're gonna propose it will start January or July 1. There will be you know we're gonna be budgeting estimated savings. Yes you'll see that in the proposed numbers.

Starting effective July 1. What you're saying is we'll be able to take a look back at last year's departmental budgets and that's how we'll see what the savings are if any.

Yeah yes. Now like the example of the the $11,000,000 expansion for phase three, that was a planned project in the capital project section. So that'll be removed, but you'll see that removed out of the capital projects future year. But it's not gonna be in next year's because it it wouldn't wouldn't have been there. It wasn't in the current year either.

Okay. I have a quick question. How much is in that right now? The phased Is there money in there that we've earmarked for that building?

No. It's just planned. Okay. It's an estimate.

Okay. What's the number estimated? 11. Thank you.

Madam chair, Councilmember Houseman has her hand raised.

Oh, thank you. Thank you. Go ahead. Miss Houseman, go ahead.

Thank you, madam chair. You actually asked a couple of the questions I had, so I will. I'll just I'll consider that for now those questions asked, but I did want to just probe a little bit further on one of them. You were talking about performance pay and and want to make sure I understood correctly. That is that is a. That is the department head deciding which employees warrant that pay. It's not it's not a sweeping increase for all employees, at all pay bands. That is a like an incremental decision made by department heads, correct?

Correct, yes. And it doesn't apply to public safety officers. They have their step in grade system. But for the civilian employees that are in ranges, yes, that amount is budgeted and it's given to the department head for discretion based on and then they allocate it out based on the performance reviews and consultation with their division managers and and those reviews. And depending performance of the employee, they could get zero of that or they could even get a little you know, in some cases, if there's a star performer that's doing well, they could get more than that.

But it's it's kind of a essentially a a pot of money or a pool of money that they they can use. It's a tool to reward good performance.

It's it would not be appropriate to characterize it as an additional increase on top of the COLA because it will not apply to every employee.

Yeah not an across the board increase but yeah if you you know if you after the fact looked at a list of employees definitely people are going to get on that list, a random list, people will get more than their COLA because most employees are ones that are performing well will get some of that. So.

Okay, and the reason I ask is I'm trying to be mindful of. Of all of our employees and the these these additions that. I wanna make sure we have the full picture of what is being recommended here and the the full picture of of the performance pays. I do not believe it equates to what is being recommended as obviously, we've got the COLA COLA increase, and then we've got the increase for, step in grade. And then we've got they're recommending additional increase for police and fire and the additional performance pay.

But I want to make sure we're understanding that this performance pay is not equal to the additional increase for police and fire on top of step in grade because it won't be applied necessarily equally distributed across all of the employees who are not our sworn officers, our step in grade officers. So I just wanna make sure that we're we're we're being clear on that.

Yes. That is correct. The the extra two point or 2% for police and fire officers that I talk about. I can find the slide here. That extra 2%, that's a targeted market adjustment, which would be applied across the board.

And their ranges would move up the 2% as well as the two and a half, which it's different than the 3% performance pay. Sometimes performance pay is called merit pay, but different organizations use that term differently. So just to be clear, I like to tie it to its performance based on their evaluations because some organizations use the word merit differently. And maybe I'll just add too. A lot of times when you hear on the radio or the news a sound bite that there was such and such agency or state or city or company, they gave a 1% or a 2% pay increase.

Usually, as my experience has been, when you drill down in that, you call those people and see what actually their overall pay line item went up that percentage. They're not telling you exactly what was each employee was eligible for. And so when we come and so in recent years, we've presented that number to you. We'll calculate what the line item in growth is for pay across the city, and we'll share that number with you too when we present the tentative budget. But it's usually a lower number than when you start adding these blocks together and seeing what the potential could be. That's the overall line item of pay across the organization is a smaller percentage in growth.

Okay. And how does this 3% pay for performance, how does that compare? And you might have already spoken to this and I missed it, but how does that compare to what we've done in the past? Because I I feel like every year we are we are offering this bucket of money, this pay pay for performance that department heads can use and allocate it in the way that they feel is the best form.

Yeah. This is standard. It's similar to the step in grade for police and fire. We're just trying to be transparent that it's there, but it's been there every year except for during the Great Recession is the only time that we ever took that away. It's very important for employees to be able to have You know, they rely on it being eligible for it.

It's a key performance management tool for managers as well to be able to have that incentive to motivate their employees. And it's the way that they can progress through their pay scale here at the city. It's definitely a huge key in keeping quality employees.

Sure. And I'm not questioning that. I just I wanted to make sure I understood what you are presenting here because it I do I did. So you just confirmed that we we do this pay for performance year over year. It's similar to the step in grade adjustments for police and fire.

And so what stands out to me as an additional recommendation you are making is this 2% extra. The 2.5% COLA we talk about COLA every year as well. It seems like this 2% extra for fire and police officers is on top of what we typically discuss as we talk about increases with compensation.

Yes, that is an extra. So yeah, I mean, we could take those bottom two bullet points off this slide because in a way, because those are kind of standard built in, what we've always do. The COLA is something that changes from year to year based on the economic environment. And then we did we have done targeted adjustments like and that's basic that's what the 2% extra is for police and fire. But if we go back to this, you might remember the year that we targeted some adjustments for employees in our lower bands because the survey was showing that they were further out.

This chart here. So in 2023, we did an additional 2.25 for non sworn employees. And in 2021, we did an adjustment for bands two through four. And then the years that we revised the police stepping grade plan and the fire, those were '21 and '23 as well. Those were targeted adjustments we did those years. So it's happened. We recommend it where we see it's needful. It's not every year, but it's something we are recommending this year for public safety.

The only thing I would add and then I'll be quiet is I really, really love the call out around investments in technology. And you kind of elaborated on how helpful that has been specifically to our first responders, our police and our fire. I love that that is an emphasis. I am curious and I know there's many more conversations ahead, but when I look at compensation and the full compensation plan, I am factoring in more than just like the salary adjustments. I want to make sure we are thinking about the full picture of compensation which in my mind includes tools, investment in tools, investment in training, ensuring especially our police and fire officers have everything they need to be confident, to be you know safe, to be capable, all of those things.

And I think that it's going to be important as we go through this budget process that we are ensuring we are thinking about the full approach to compensation. I think recruitment and retention doesn't fall solely on a dollar amount. I think we need to be thinking about tools and training as well. I think that our and this is from past employee surveys, of course, but there's definitely a hunger to have the right tools to get the job done and to have the training that sharpens skills and helps helps all of our, you know, employees feel not just capable but safe because of the training they've received. So that's the last little piece of feedback I would say is I want to be careful with that 2% that we're asking.

What are we not able to invest in in the form of tools and training if we were to make that choose to have that be our investment. I'd love to unpack that a little bit further as we move forward. That's all I had. Thank you, madam chair.

Yeah, just we agree with you on that as well. And as you see as departments present, are trying to restore some training that has been cut in departments with some of the reprioritization. So you'll see that in many departments. There's a big emphasis on the police department. There's a recommendation for 100,000 increase in police training.

And that's the big one. But other departments are also wanting to restore some of those reductions that have happened. And in addition to trying to streamline this year, just remember last year, we also reduced the general fund by $1,100,000 And the year before that, we reduced it by over $300,000 in the general fund and other departments, another 400,000 plus. You know, we've heard you as a council wanting you know, you definitely want us to be physic fiscally efficient, conservative, you know, reprioritize where we need to. And we've been doing that consistently. And of course, we're trying to do that again this year.

Thank you. It's a follow-up on Marcy's question. The performance how do you guys calculate that?

It's just a percentage of the employees pay.

So you calculate you calculate at 3% for every single employee?

Yeah. Yeah. On top of that. That's budgeted and then.

And do we usually have salary savings in that? After or where does that go? The leftover if there is, does it go back into that feed that line item or?

Well, there's usually not much leftover that's not given out because. You know, star performers are given more if somebody's given less. So it's usually allocated by the departments. We do have salary savings from turnover. Generally, it's where most of our salary. And they're they're not a 100% of it's always given out. Right. There's there's definitely, like, I've seen every year, some of it's left on the table. It just ends up as departmental savings and then it helps fund the comp plan the next year.

So does every department have a budget line item for performance pay? Or is it

It's just part of the regular pay line. It rolls up into that line item.

Into their in in each specific budget?

In each department. Each cost center department's budget. Okay. Thanks.

Mhmm. Miss D'Souza.

Thank you, madam chair. I guess I do have questions around around the pay and I I realize this just really introductory and high level and so when this gets presented in the with the tentative budget, I I'm sure there will be a lot more questions. But when you talked about enacting 3% COLA across the board, doesn't that contradict the goal in trying to bring people to market rate? If you're just in the market rate survey, it seemed like somewhere closer, somewhere under, maybe somewhere over but if everybody's getting an across the board 3% COLA then doesn't that create more employee salaries that are out of whack with the survey?

The COLA is 2.5%

what

I'm proposing but now the when that's given out the ranges are also adjusted at the bottom and the top of that amount too. So if it's 2.5% this year for every position the bottom of the range will go up two and a half percent, the top will go up two and a half percent. So that whole range will move up two, then the next range will move up two and a half and two and a half. So you gotta worry about compression because you wanna keep, you know, each job is re is evaluated when it's created for where it would fit in the ranges and based on, you know, the experience, the skills, the type of position, the risk involved, all of those things. So we want to keep the proper range for each position.

And we look at that when they do the survey each year too. And sometimes there's a request to evaluate that.

But if everybody's moving up 2.5%.

It's just to keep up with inflation. Does that answer your question?

Well, it's hard without additional context and information. And so I recognize this is a really high level conversation. But I think that is one area that's always been a little bit difficult for me to understand with the information that's provided. You know. So, I'm okay to wait until we have a more comprehensive review of that, I suppose, and more documentation from Katrina.

Yeah. Maybe we could Maybe I'm not understanding your question right. But if inflation is going up, social security raise their inflation 2.8%.

I know but not everybody raises not everybody's coal is the same. And if we are always annually doing a market survey to understand where we fall in market, it doesn't seem logical to assume that just because of social security identified inflation at one percentage that every single municipality is going to also increase their employees compensation by that same percent. And so I guess I'm just trying to understand like how this this market survey that we do, it almost seems somewhat irrelevant if we're applying two and a half percent COLA to every single employee in every, you know, job category in band. Like I'm I guess I'm there's a disconnect for me in how it's being used in conjunction with that. I don't know if maybe I'm all by myself but and then the other question that I have is on merit, is there is there a policy does the city have a policy around how merit increases are provided per department?

Is there a city policy? Is it by department? Is it the same? Is it consistent across departments?

Yes. We do have a policy on pay and and part of that policy does address pay for performance and how that's given out.

Could you forward that to us? That might be helpful.

And it is essentially how I've described it here tonight. It's up to HR tries to evaluate just to make sure there's consistencies. We've done analysis on that in the past to see if there's disparity between departments and how it's given out. I mean, it's not a perfect thing because there are it is subject to subjectivity in some cases and philosophies. But we try to keep it consistent across the city as much as possible.

Okay. Well, would be helpful to have that in what kind of in writing that I can refer back to because maybe that will help me bring together conversations that are being presented in the way that I'm interpreting it.

Yeah. And maybe if I could try to answer your question. Sorry. I'm not I don't know if I'm hitting it right. But you're on the COLA, you know, when we do the market study, that's after the fact. We do it, you know, all the cities are on the July to June 30 cycle. Most of them are given out the same timing as we are. Some, like the counties, they do theirs on the calendar years. But, we present our budget. It's approved by the council.

It's given out. We do start doing the survey after that in the fall months. So what we project is going to happen doesn't always happen. Like last year, we thought the 3% cost of living would would actually make some ground up within our survey. But once once we actually did the collected the data and looked at it, we didn't make up ground. We actually slipped a little bit. So it's always an after the fact study of what's happened most recently. And then we try to adjust, but it's it's never perfect. It's never like a destination when you talk about pay. It's always a moving target.

You're trying to get there, and it's you adjust, and you try to stay competitive. It's like council chair Sharkey said. It's it's it's ever evolving, and we're trying to stay competitive just like every other organization is. But it's it's kind of a moving target and you try to adjust each year to try to stay there.

Sure. So the market study that you're using to determine this 2.5% COLA was conducted in the fall after the budget was approved last year, right? Is that what you're saying? Yeah. And I'm assuming that you're making certain assumptions, making assumptions in that in some way or like are there assumptions being made when trying to adjust or how, I guess how do you know?

So yeah, it goes, you know, it starts in the fall. They probably don't wrap it up until January, they finish. But we're part of a group. All the cities collect the data. It goes into like a unified source. And you have to have we look at job descriptions to make sure there's a match. And there needs to be at least four good matches based on the job description, qualifications, and experience, and skills required. And if we have a good match, then we match that job. But only about 50% of our jobs have good matches. So not every single position.

Some of our positions, you only have one person in it, and there's not a great match in any other city. So last I looked, I think it accounts for about 60% of our employee population as a good match. And then from there, we do internal equity analysis as well. And how do we feel like one position relates to other positions in the city internally? And so we're striving for external equity with our sister cities as well as internal equity with our existing positions within the city. And we try to balance all that together and make a projection and look at the data and what we do the next year.

So this database that everybody's pooling, is it required that everybody do it? Is it voluntary?

It's voluntary.

And from an accuracy standpoint like are all of the cities participating equally every year?

Most of them do. Sometimes we have to call other cities because they're behind or they're not putting in their data as fast as we want them. And sometimes it doesn't look accurate or there's a question so we call that city up and talk to their HR department. Okay.

Well, I don't need to keep asking questions about this but I do, I think I would like to learn more about that process because it is it is the the largest our employee compensation rightfully so is the largest part of our budget and every year that's one that always eludes me a little and I just like to to be better acquainted with the process that you and Katrina and our employees undertake in creating the budget that you put before us. Okay.

Yeah, Thank you, you're welcome.

Seems like we always have good questions about this every year and it merits really good questions. And so I'll keep on asking more questions. Does is seniority taken into consideration on these salary surveys? Because that would be an important component that if it's missing. I mean I'm assuming that the minimum and maximum are the lowest paid employee in a pay band that earns no performance, no merit bonus, no performance bonus.

And the high end is the highest paid person in the salary that has earned the full merit bonus. Is that correct? So if you have a lot of, if you are as we're seeing, we're having a lot of retirements and the assumption is that when we replace these retired employees they'll come in with employ, they'll be backfilled by employees with less experience and at a lower rate of pay. Right? So I'm not there's a lot to know that isn't in here.

And personally I don't get all upset about a point nine nine. I'm you know? And so I just I think it does merit because it is the biggest portion of the budget. Just making sure we're in the right place to the extent that we can get not too low not too high, the Goldilocks place. I don't know. Let's we're gonna try to get there. Yeah

I mean we don't get super concerned with a point nine nine either. But when you get below you get down to a point nine five because that's of market, that's of the average. So if you're below that, you're below average. And if you want to keep high quality employees, you need to at least, I think, stay close to average. If you get down to a point nine five, a big red flag for us.

And yeah, some things, just to comment on what you're saying is, as far as the range is when you hire people in, yeah, Katrina will talk to you about the amount of salary savings you have when somebody retires. And we capture that and we use it to help fund the comp plan the next year. So she'll go through that number. I think it's over $1,000,000 in salary savings we're capturing this year. Like in this environment, this job market, in a lot of our professional jobs, we can't hire people at the bottom of the range.

We wouldn't get anybody to come that's qualified. So sometimes we do have to make offers that are above the bottom of the range. Not in every case but it happens. So you don't have a lot of salary savings in some cases. And

to Marcy's point I mean compensation is one aspect of employee satisfaction, The

culture and like all those things she mentioned, we know we've seen those and heard that training Just and

a question Brian about that waste management inflationary factor. Was the 4.8 spelled out in the contract or was there a formula in the contract that led to 4.8 for this coming year And how does that track with the rate of inflation?

It's tied to an index for waste related type services in the region. There's an index out there. I can't remember the exact name of it, but it's tied to that. It's not that number itself isn't in the contract but it links to that inflationary index. And that's what it was this year.

So Brian stay there. I'm going to ask the council. I'm going to kind of circle back to that question that I asked about savings and expenses in a proposed public works and public utilities merger. Council, as you are well aware, we have a management study going right now for the public works department. And this is a significant change and it makes sense that since a consultant is currently looking at this that we add like to ask the council if you would like to consider adding changing the scope of the contract to include an analysis of this.

Now Dustin, you have the staff has kind of looked into this just a tiny bit so we can have an understanding of what a cost and a timeline might be. Can you share that with counsel?

Yeah. We did ask Matrix who's our consultant doing the public utilities management study just to give us some some options. And one of the options they provided us with was a kind of higher level analysis of this proposed merger with some pros, cons, obstacles, you know benefits, those types of things. They've expected that it'll take about four to five weeks. And so if we're going to have them do it, I'd like them to start as soon as possible so that we can have that information really soon after the tentative budget is presented.

And the cost that they've told us it will cost about additional $6,000 to do. So not a huge cost, especially since this is a large part of what will be in the tentative budget. So with your direction we'd be happy to speak with Matrix and submit a change order to expand the scope a little bit.

Do you have a proposal with where the funding would come from for the change order?

Yeah, would suspect that we would pay for it out of our council office or the council contingency.

No one have any thoughts on that? I'm thinking that we're hearing that we're seeing the budget presentation in a month and it's going to take about four to five weeks to do this. It's going to cost about $6,000 I mean my point of view counsel is that it would be worth it and it would make sense to add that. What do you guys I'm seeing heads nodding. I'm even seeing Marcy's yeah. Yeah. Is that good enough direction? Do you want to vote?

I don't necessarily need a motion. We're happy to move forward with getting that taken care of.

Do you feel you have what you need?

Any more questions for Brian on this overview of a budget presentation? Nope. All right. Thank you.

Thank you. Appreciate you.

All right. That is the end of our agenda for tonight. That means we're at standing reports. Dustin?

Madam chair, just to note based on that direction, we'll work with Matrix to get the scope expanded and get that taken care of. A couple notes on the agenda planning calendar. So next week on the fourteenth, we do have an individual coming in to be interviewed for possible appointment to the architectural review committee, the top of the agenda. The Central Wasatch Commission is gonna come provide their annual update. Lynn is gonna present some information based upon the housing report that was adopted couple of weeks ago.

We do have four more public hearings for additional annexations around the Granite area. There is a RDA meeting to discuss city departments potentially locating in the newly purchased Arbor Building. And then also there is a possible consent item related to the TRCC grant. So that's next week, the twenty first. I'm not gonna go into a ton of detail on that date, but I will note that we we do have the youth council graduation at the beginning of the agenda that evening. And I'll leave it there. Thank you.

She's she's passing to you, my turn. Yes.

I just wanted to

thank a couple of people, Ben and his staff, for giving me a tour of the Sandy Rec Center today. I really appreciated that. Yeah. It's coming along. And then also, chief Nyber and captain Arnold for giving me a tour of the police department.

Thank you very much. And for going over to the MVP shelter with me today and took a tour there with Shelter the Homeless, The Road Home, and the Fourth Street Clinic. So I appreciated that. And then also, just wanted to thank the mayor and the administration for the Sandy One Awards. I was really impressed with what a good job that was and the quality of winners that we had from Sandy there. We've got a really just amazing community.

I too wanna take my hat off to everyone who did anything to that great event last week at Hale Center Theater. I too enjoyed it. I look forward to it every year. I also want to comment on the weekly departmental reports. I want to comment James on how much appreciating the reports I'm seeing on the ALJ and it looks like we are really having really good results there.

I'm very impressed. I like what I'm seeing. I have on occasion like grabbed the code enforcement officers when I see them in city hall to ask them. They seem to really like it as a tool. Seems to be expediting their efforts and making them more fruitful. And so the way I see it it's a win for us and it's going really well. Some of these years long problems are finally getting fixed. And I just want to commend our judge and your staff everyone who's putting those together and having these great results. Appreciate it. Alright. Miss Drap, you have something? Nope.

Just kinda the same thing. I think the last time I was up at do we call it now? Sandy Rick Center. Right? Yeah. Up there, it was snowing but the amount of change from three weeks ago to today is just incredible. I mean having that ground level already bricked in. So you know it's a you blink and something changes up there. So you know thank you for that. Know and then just to repeat here you know the Sandy won awards look forward to them every year.

You know what a great way to to acknowledge and all of the businesses, the not even all, just a fraction of the businesses and residents. But, you know, it's it's always gone over very smoothly and so impressed with, you know, the v videography and the the quality of awardees. Thank you.

Alright. We're ready for a mayor's report.

Thank you. Thank you, madam chair. I want to welcome interim chief Jeff Nyber to the Sandy Police Department. Chief Nyber started yesterday serving as interim chief and we look forward to the council's action on advice and consent when you're ready to proceed. Yesterday, I had the chance to represent the city at a press conference with the Great Salt Lake Watershed Enhancement Trust.

This is an organization that is working with Metro Water, Salt Lake City, and Sandy. We are able to divert our surplus water resources that we have to energize, activate, and hydrate the Great Salt Lake. This isn't a water share giveaway. In fact, the city is receiving handsome compensation for directing surplus water resources. We will be receiving between a 100,000 and $400,000 a year that will help us maintain our water infrastructure.

So it is a win win for the Sandy taxpayers, also for the environmental health of the Great Salt Lake. We all live downstream and that was a great opportunity to work with our metro water partners, Salt Lake City partners, and state environmental partners to be part of this combined effort. And our city is reducing water consumption 10% year over year. And so the few minutes to go from thirty minutes to just reducing sprinkler times by three minutes 1010%. All of that cumulative effort and conservation that Sandy does residents do so well our businesses do so well is allowing us to direct this us these surplus water resources.

So that's where it comes from It wouldn't be possible without the great work and support from our residents. Congratulations to Leslie Kassel. I saw her today. She can't seem to stay away from city hall. I don't blame her after forty one years of working in community development.

Retired and celebrated her retirement and so many people returned to congratulate her people who had worked for Sandy in business and planning commissioners and development staff worked for Sandy since the 1970s came out to congratulate Leslie. So we send our well wishes for a successful happy retirement. We sure are going to miss her. Leslie was in charge of business licensing. Congratulations to our one Sandy Award winners.

It was a stellar night celebrating all things Sandy rising. We had outstanding award winners from business to residents. The stories are remarkable and they are are available now on the city website, on our YouTube channel. We will be posting them on our social in the coming weeks. These stories are so compelling.

The generosity of spirit, time, talents that our businesses and our residents give to build community. We wouldn't be this great city without them, and it is a great night to spotlight the efforts from the lunch lady at Indian Hills president Josh Chandler, who was the impetus behind our sister city in Bucha, Ukraine, colonial flags, their great work and leadership nationwide, but but starting the healing field in Sandy, and and so many others. And then I want to send out all our well wishes to volunteer of the year, Paul Corlette, who waited until the following morning at 05:30AM to undergo a very serious medical procedure. When he's recovering, we're sending our love to Paul and his family, to all the businesses, Lunatic Fringe, La Condesa Restaurant, and Infinity Jewels. Capturing them all.

And then, of course, our police explorer group that had the surprise award. Thank you, council members, for sharing in that presentation. And that was so nice to recognize their volunteer efforts and their great contributions. Gosh, I hope I'm not forgetting anyone. And then to the incredible staff to plan, to Katie Atkinson, Susan Wood, Kelly, McKayloft, and IT, to Nick, went seamlessly.

And thank you to our generous hosts, Hill Center Theater. It was a beautiful night in the Legacy Room. Thanks to all who attended. I also attended Beehive the Beehive School, the International Cultures Day. That's a year they celebrate cultures from around the world every day.

Of course they have a multicultural student body and it's so interesting to see the elementary school and the middle school presenting their cultural traditions, the celebrations. This year, the springtime this year, there were a lot of spring festivals represented, the students representing India and the Middle East cultures. And I had a really fascinating conversation with two girls who had Mongolian heritage who talked about eagle hunting on horseback. So it's not every day you get to step into a trip around the world, and it's happening right here at Beehive School every year at International Cultures Day. Okay.

And I think I think we're we'll leave it at that. So that's the mayor's report. Thank you, council.

Thank you. CAO report.

I don't have anything. Thank you.

Ben, do you have a construction report for us? Well,

think the council members caught the the wow of what the facility is looking like in our tour today. But the masons have finished on the east side of the field house. Electricians are working on the overhead in the field house and gym. The second level deck will be was poured or will be poured tomorrow. So we're seeing the track come in.

So we were able to actually walk into where the field house was, and you can see the where the track is starting to to form. Pool chemical storage walls are being waterproofed. Concrete is working on forming the Far East exterior walls and then it's just a note that next week on April 16 at 05:30 we'll be hosting the Youth City Council. We'll walk them through a little bit of a tour and explain some of the the jobs that we have in Parks and Recreation.

Alright. Thank you. I do have one more thing,

madam

This Saturday from eleven to 02:00, ten to 02:00 at the Sandy Library. This is a reminder this is our America two fifty art day at the Sandy Library. It's open to everyone of all anyone of any age to put artistic rendering of Sandy two fifty, America two fifty to submit to the Sandy America two fifty art competition. All materials are provided. It's free. It's open to everyone. So calling all artists. Come to the Sandy Library. We'll see you Saturday afternoon.

Okay. Thank you. Council, I will take a motion to adjourn.

Move to adjourn. All in favor?

Aye. Any opposed? Aye. Good night everybody. Thank you for being here.